If I had a nickel for every time I heard on a conference call, or in a meeting, “…but people NEED to know XYZ….”, I truly would have a bucket of useless nickels.

Just because we NEED someone to know something does not at all mean that they have even the slightest INTEREST in what we need them to know.

Unless you can approach them in terms of what is in it for them, save your effort and save your nickel.

What we are talking about is…what is the difference between a benefit and a feature when it comes to marketing and communications?

To put this simply, it all comes down to, “It is all about them, not you.”

A feature is all about us (our product/service)

A benefit is all about them (what value they will derive from the product or service)

Whenever we have the opportunity to promote, sell, feature what we do, the onus is on us to let others know why they should care about us.

Tell them what is in it for them. Clearly and simply.

This is one of the most under utilized communications tools in existence. I drive my family nuts by pointing out non-benefit communications, sadly there are lots of opportunities for them to hear, “Why would I ever care about that?”

For instance once a week we publish a new opinion piece on our blog.

The benefit is that it makes you think about something differently.

Next time you need to influence, remember, it’s not you, it’s them.

Do the work, get the result.

Saturday afternoon I ran in to a Safeway to pick up a few items. On my way back to the car, a man called out to me. I wasn’t certain what he said at first, but after he spoke a few more sentences I got the gist – he was without money and unable to get himself home. He appeared to be highly intoxicated.

He then clearly said, “No one will help me.”

I weighed my options. I didn’t think he was going to be able to get himself home without significant help, I didn’t have money on me to give him and I didn’t feel safe bringing him home myself.

I decided that some words of encouragement were all I could offer that day.

I left feeling as though I’d made the wrong decision. I’m still not certain how I could have been most helpful to him. But I feel I let someone in need down.

Fast forward to Monday morning when I found Sasha Dichter’s blog.

What brought me to his blog was a comment on Twitter about his “generosity experiment”. He too experienced a situation where he wished he had responded differently to a request for help.

As he describes,

The experiment was an intuitive, gut reaction to an incongruence I felt between my commitment to creating massive social change, my work with philanthropists to support this mission, and how I saw myself behave in the face of acute need right in front of me.  The “Experiment” was just that: a chance to test what it felt like to live with a totally different orientation.  It was a commitment to take a door that was too closed for my taste and open it wide.

If you follow the PROVOKE blog regularly, you might be wondering why we’ve decided to post on Tuesday versus Friday….it’s because along with being Valentine’s Day it is also Generosity Day 2012.

In the past year, many of the projects we’ve have had the opportunity to work on revolve around tough social problems that require a shift in thinking from the “me” to the “we” (i.e., we are all interconnected and in this together).  We feel that the intent behind the concepts of generosity and giving are an important piece of the puzzle.

So go ahead and live Sasha’s advice for today:

Today you can give yourself permission to be outrageously kind, irrationally warm, improbably generous.  I promise it will be a blast.

Recently we were asked to explain the difference between brand and positioning. With our penchant for bringing clarity to things, we were excited to do so.

In fact, we have observed for a long time, that this is actually an area that is often murky, and misunderstood. It is one of my pet peeves, right next to my pet peeve of strategies that try to masquerade as objectives (and are not) and strategies that are actually tactics…but that is for another day!

So we thought, why not bring clarity to the differences between the two?

The words branding and positioning are often used interchangeably. And while they are interrelated their definitions are quite distinct. Positioning is where it all begins. A positioning statement is the basis for a brand.

Positioning is the aspect that makes people want you/your offering/your organization. It is the collective expression of need and benefit. We think of positioning as the stick you shove in the sand identifying exactly what place you own and what value you provide. Slightly aspirational, always truthful, but definitely the best version of what you are. It is the singularly focused mental space that is of compelling importance to your audiences and at the same time clearly sets you apart from others in your sector. Only you can define a positioning statement, it is your work to do, your audiences will not take the time to figure this out. We regard this as step one in establishing a brand.

Brand is the process that lets people know you. It is the result of the full set of associations with your organization. It predicts the type of experience a person will have with you, and generates an emotive response. Brand happens with or without your purposeful effort, as it occurs only in the mind of the audience.

However, strategic management of a brand is a highly influential effort that can positively shape and enrich expectations, awareness, experiences and strengthen and sustain relationships between the organization and its audiences.

So while a change in market circumstances (i.e., new competitors, new innovations, new mandates, new economy, new market, etc.) may require that the positioning statement be reviewed to ensure it is current with the conditions, a forward-thinking, well managed and grounded brand should essentially remain true to its core.

Can you clearly identify your positioning vs. your brand? You need to know both to maximize your impact.

For the first 25 years of my life, I was taught to solely rely on the facts. To ground and then develop my thoughts and my writing based on data, statistics, and peer reviewed literature.

Good practice involved reading entire bodies of research and then regurgitating what I read through my own lens. Referencing each and every assertion I made with precision and detail. This is still my go to method of working, and the role that I actively fill at PROVOKE, the “prover”.

I first started working with PROVOKE when I was in the later stages of my PhD. At this point, I was a complete stickler to ALWAYS having well-supported ideas (meaning if I didn’t have literature to back me up, I wasn’t going to offer my point of view).

Joining with PROVOKE was a culture shock. The recommendations we provided to clients were grounded in literature, research, and data, but there was a clear element of a sixth-sense to our work. Everything wasn’t black and white and some of the problems we were tasked to solve didn’t have answers that were found in journal articles. Thinking out of “the box” was required. It was the first time I was really pushed to exercise the right side of my brain – to take knowledge further by connecting disparate pieces for an entirely new thought.

Early on, I remember asking,

How do we know for certain that what we are suggesting to our clients is right? What makes us so sure?

The answer:

There is no 100% certain answer. There is a range of possibilities and we need to use our facts and our instincts to find the best option.

The answer really had me really considering the nuances of problem solving and it was very uncomfortable for my highly disciplined academic self.

At the time, this response caused me considerable anxiety and it still does in the early stages of projects where I can’t see the true question we are trying to solve let alone the answer (Trudy tells me that is part of my charm, to play the “yeah but” role). But I saw time and again, that this approach worked. Clients were more than happy, they felt informed and confident and their results were stellar.

What I have truly come to appreciate about PROVOKE’s methods is that the strategic combination of:

Our heads: the factual, precise, data driven, rigorous methodologies

AND

Our guts: what we feel, sense, believe, respond to

allows us to develop solutions for our clients we would otherwise never reach.

Have a tough question or issue you are grappling with in your organization? Take the time to cognitively think through the issues, but also listen to your gut.

I have to admit, I find the task of message development really stimulating and satisfying. Interestingly 2012 has so far been a big year of message development.

Funny enough, clients often hire us to write their messages, but none in almost 14 years of business, have ever asked us to TEACH them how to message, until last week. We were up for the challenge. Vicki and I had a LOT of fun working with an enthusiastic, engaged group of people on messaging.

But as I got us ready for this, I realized it is one thing to know how to do something, and it is another to then figure out what your magic is that makes it happen, so that you can teach it to others.

After much careful thought we were able to find a way to talk about it that was truly reflective of how we do it at PROVOKE. We were excited to share it, because we KNOW that effective messaging is a challenge for so many people and therefore so many organizations. So, you our awesome readers – get to have a bit of what we developed too. Because, wouldn’t this world be a better place if we were all more effective in our communication?

Where we started is how to even spot a good message, which lead us to identify what makes a message memorable.

Messaging Made Memorable (just do this)

The PROVOKE Method

Succinct (get to the point)

Impose as little time as you can to have another get your point. Be clear, be brief.

Focused (say what?)

Know whom you are talking to and talk to them specifically.

Only one thought/point/concept/fact at a time.

Credible (who says?)

Ensure that your message is believable, truthful.

This can be a result of a trusted source or a salient fact.

Desired (so what?)

It’s not about you, it’s about them. Why should they listen?

Your message needs to provide value to the receiver.

Real (get it?)

The approach must be genuine. Make it tangible, personal/human, conversational.

Feel (it gets me)

To remember, people need to feel it.

Resolve (and so?)

Provide a solution, hope, a call to action.

We (and our group from last week) know that it takes a lot of work to get a memorable message, but hopefully this gives you a frame of reference to get you started. Happy communicating!