Wouldn’t it be great if you had a nickel for every time you’ve seen a commercial or advertisement touting new this or new and improved that? These terms may get overused, but they certainly draw consumers’ attention.
The problem is, just what does new mean? Newness applies so differently to so many things that it seems impossible to pin it down. And there’s such a thing as being too new, right? And I think I hear you saying, “Bill, isn’t “What’s new” dependent upon the audience?’” Yes, you’re absolutely, brilliantly, 100% correct!
Imagine trying to explain the excitement and fun of playing the computer software game Warcraft to a teenager named Zuru, who lives in an African rain forest with a bone in his nose, wearing a zebra loincloth, and has never heard of a computer. You wouldn’t get very far, would you? It’s a sure bet he wouldn’t know what you’re talking about, even though he might have some idea of warfare and show keen interest in that magical-sounding computer thing you mentioned. Zuru is the kind of sales audience you should hope never to have!
You need an audience that already has some knowledge about your type of product or service, so they are somewhat familiar with it in terms of features and benefits. Regardless of what you are selling or marketing, your audience needs to already have a certain level of familiarity or knowledge with your type of product or service in these categories:
· Values
· Expectations
· Experiences
· Reasoning
· Language
Such already-acquired knowledge is what I call the old view. In order for you to say anything new to your sales audience, you have to have a pretty good idea of what’s already familiar or old to them about your type of product/service in one or more of the types of old views. Only then can you be sure you are saying something meaningfully new to them.
Thus, newness depends directly upon what you do with the old view, and I call that the new view. Remember Zuru? If he had enough of the shared, basic old views of Values, Expectations, Experiences, Reasoning, and Language about computers and computer games, then you might have gotten a sale (paid for with lion skins or elephant tusks, maybe?). Since there was no shared information in Zuru’s personal old views about your type of product, there was little communication, no recognizable newness—and no sale.
So what do you do with shared old views when you want to communicate a new view? Simple-you make a bridge from the old view to the new view by using the following five simple yet powerful processes that make anything new, either singly or in combination:
· Reverse
· Add
· Subtract
· Substitute
· Rearrange
Now, this relates to some interesting marketing theory. For instance, in his bestselling Wizard of Ads trilogy, Roy H. Williams (a well-known marketing guru) talks about Broca’s Area, which is an area of the brain just over the left ear and barely forward from the Auditory Cortex. To make sure we’re on the same page (note that I’m establishing the old view, here), let me tell you that the function of Broca’s Area is to filter, arrange, and then forward information to the Prefrontal Cortex of the brain, just behind the forehead part of the skull. That’s where decisions are made, such as decisions about buying products.
Williams teaches, and science supports, that Broca is stimulated by patterns that are not anticipated. In short, Broca is stimulated by newness: “‘Interest me!’ cries Broca. ‘Surprise me with something I didn’t know. If you’re not carrying new information or a new perspective, you’ll not enter my Yellow Brick Road [direct pathway to the Prefrontal Cortex]‘” (Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads, p. 50).
Did you notice that, according to Williams, surprising Broca requires “new information or a new perspective”? Sounds like he’s talking about a new view, right? Up ’til now, that world of new information and new perspectives has been mostly formless for marketers trying to surprise Broca.
You can take the shared types of old views of familiar — Values, Expectations, Experiences, Reasoning, and Language — and put them into your new view kaleidoscope, with its set of five new view lenses, and turn the wheel to see the old view in new ways, in new views. You can use those five types of new views as processes for focusing on any old view and actually tweaking them to — as Williams so brilliantly asserts — surprise Broca!
So let’s construct in our minds a table for generating new views to surprise Broca. It will have five columns coming down from the top and five rows going from left to right, so there are twenty-five blocks within the table.
Now, across the top of the table, as titles for each of the five columns, visualize the five types of new views, from left to right —–
……………………Reverse……………Add……………Subtract……………Substitute……………Rearrange
And, coming down the left side of the table, there are the names of the five types of old views –
Values
Expectations
Experiences
Reasoning
Language
To use this table, you’ll first write in short phrases under each of the old view headings on the left, and then you’ll fill in the empty squares under each of the five types of new views to the right. You fill them with new views by doing the option at the top of the column (Reverse, Add, Subtract, Substitute, or Rearrange) to the old view at the far left of that row. You’ll see in a moment how that works.
Creating Material for a Commercial Ad
Let’s take a look at how our table can help you write an advertisement.
Here’s a realistic business situation we can work with:
Harper’s Cabinets in Birmingham, Alabama, sells great cabinets at thrifty prices. They need advertising ideas — they’re not sure just what — for the marketing push they want to make so they can expand their business.
To use the our table to help the folks at Harper’s Cabinets to write the copy for some advertisements, we’ll put in a blank line just above the table that states the overall old view that people have about cabinets in their home.
So visualize this just above the table:
OLD VIEW: Cabinets are very useful and can add style to any home.
In the old view spaces on the left side of the table, we’ll identify all the familiar features and benefits — the old views — that customers generally have about cabinets, including Harper’s, like this:
Values
quality materials, elegant, inexpensive, easily installed, trusted
Expectations
last long, resist damage, friends will admire
Experiences
customer testimonials; quick & clean installation
Reasoning
have a need, can afford it, & guaranteed, so buy the bargain
Language
familiar & standard vocabulary, font, grammar
Now it’s time to fill in the new view squares off to the right for each row. Once you’ve got those old views filled in, you’ll be surprised at how much more quickly new ideas will pop up in your mind. It frees your mind up, really!
And don’t be too particular about what you write down for your first reactions in the empty squares. As with other brainstorming techniques, the big idea is just to get something written down, without being too critical, and you can make changes to it later, as needed. Most importantly, never forget this timeless and true adage:
“Good writing is ALWAYS the result of REwriting.”
To demonstrate how you could fill in the empty squares with newness for each row on the table, left to right, here are some possible new views to enter for the Values row, which has, “quality materials, elegant, inexpensive, easily installed, trusted”:
Reverse
all that quality plus such low/reasonable costs— naw, can’t be true
Add
lasts WAY longer (grandkids will grow up with them) & WAY more stylish
Subtract
2/3s cost of competitors; no install charge; warranty– no worries
Substitute
show your adult kids & get them to buy it for you
Rearrange
priorities—don’t go on vacation: buy it & add lasting value to your house
Now, let’s just take a closer look at the contents of that Reverse block:
By reversing the entry from the old view features under Values, and using that verbiage now in the Reverse block (“all that quality plus such low/reasonable costs—naw, can’t be true”), we can fairly easily imagine the following TV or radio spot——-
A man and his minister are sitting in a living room watching TV, and they have just heard the last line or two of all the fine features and benefits about Harper’s Cabinets. The man turns to his minister and says, “Reverend, that’s all just too good to be true, isn’t it?” The minister turns to him and replies, smiling: “Well, son, I had Harper’s Cabinets installed a year ago, and I can tell you that everything we’ve just heard is true — at least in my experience.” The man replies, “Wow! Wait ’til I tell Melanie!” and he excitedly rises, hurrying from the room with a big smile on his face.
End of commercial.
Cha-ching (ring of a cash register)!
Remember, any features or benefits of your product or service that are meaningful and new — the new view — have to be linked to familiar, old, and shared material — the old view — which is made up of Values, Expectations, Experiences, Reasoning, and Language that are already meaningful to or valued by the audience/customer.
How linked? With one or more of the new views — by Reversing, Adding to, Subtracting from, Substituting for, or Rearranging the keywords and key concepts of the old view material.
By using this table, as we did above, you can tweak old views with each of the types of new views to generate interesting, attention-grabbing, and interest-holding content for your advertisements.
And you can surprise Broca more frequently and more reliably now that you know about the five types of old views and the five types of new views.
As Yoda says — “Burn images into minds, you should, with laser precision. Stimulate sales, you could, and watch company bank bags ballooning, you would.”
Right on, Yoda!
Read more on Rhetoric – The Great Hoax…