Perception Matters More than Reality.
Things I believe:
1) You’re wealthy. If you are not freezing in your own house in the winter, if half of your 17 kids didn’t fail to survive to adulthood, if you can warm up and charge up in a public library and get treated in a modern emergency room, if you have access to antibiotics, then you are like a God compared to the robber barons of a century ago. Deal with it.
2) Changing Perceptions Matters More Than Changing Reality. Today, your kids are safer in school, you’re likely to live about twice as long, and you’re considerably richer than people were at about the time I was born. But you don’t necessarily feel it.
3) Reframing Is The Key to Changing Perceptions. Advertising helps you buy feelings wrapped in new frames of reference along with your products. It’s typically not the products that add the value – it’s the frames. Really. People don’t buy the products, they buy the feelings. My work is measured and tested against other work. I’m here to tell you that this stuff is true because it works.
4) Reframing is About Seeing Things In a Different Way and You Can Do It To Yourself. Think about this – you don’t need the product. You can make your own frame, or just enjoy the frame from the ad and leave the product right where it is. (Of course, as an ad guy I enjoy when you reward my clients with your custom, so feel free to buy ;-) But… you can advertise to yourself! Look around – advertising works! Don’t you have some things you want to sell yourself today?
I’ll be writing a lot more about reframing to change your own perceptions and I’ll be working on ways to help you do it more effectively. Watch this space ;-)