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Poland Spring Case Study: How to Craft Persuasive Messages

Derek — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:48:27 +0000

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Have you seen the new Poland Spring packaging? They added a bright yellow box that said,

Skip the Sugar

A typical 12 oz soda contains the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar: Water has no sugar: Replacing one soda daily with one water can cut 3,650 tsp. of sugar a year from your diet. Be Healthy.

We know sugar is bad, but how much of it is bad? Will 3,650 tsp make me gain weight? Is it that unhealthy?

Poland Spring confused their customers. Instead of providing inspiration to drink more water, they created several unanswered questions.

In the remaining part of this article, I will show you how I would improve Poland Spring’s message. Please note, you can apply this to anything including: small business advertisements and blogging.

Poland Spring’s Problems

We all know that the key to persuasive communication is to stress benefits. Tangible benefits. Poland Spring didn’t do this. Additionally, here are some other problems with their message:

“Healthy” is Intangible – I’m willing to bet that if you ask 10 different people to define “Healthy” you will have 10 different answers. How can we desire something that we can’t define?

3,650 is Insulting - Poland Spring told us that there are 10 teaspoons of sugar in a typical 12 oz soda. You don’t have to be a math whiz to figure out that 365 times 10 equals 3,650. Yet, they wasted a full sentence on doing the math for us.

Water Has No Sugar - Really? Who would have thought…

Why Save Sugar? - Is there a reason why we should cut 3,650 teaspoons of sugar from our diet? It sure sounds like a lot of sugar, but what does it mean?

In short, Poland Spring wasted a ton of words to communicate what we already know. They didn’t promise any tangible benefits or give us concrete reasons to drink water.

Poland Spring’s Solution

Anyone can point out something wrong with a marketing campaign, but not anyone can point out the wrong and make it right. So, here is how I think Poland Spring could improve their message:

Skip the Sugar

A typical 12 oz. soda contains 160 calories of sugar — water has no sugar. With around 3,500 calories per pound, replacing one soda daily with one water can cut 16 pounds from your diet in one year.

Isn’t my revision much better? Now lets take a look at how I did it.

Incredible Communication

While I switched the scope of the message from “healthy” to “lose weight,” it just sounds more appealing, but why? What makes my revisions much more “sticky” than Poland Spring’s original?

Let’s refer to Chip and Dan Heath’s communication handbook, Made to Stick.

There are six characteristics of ideas that stick and they are:

Simplicity
Unexpectedness
Concreteness
Credibility
Emotional
Stories

Poland Spring’s original message was simple. If you want to be healthy, you should drink water because it doesn’t have a lot of sugar like soda. However, it lacked every other characteristic on the Made to Stick scale. They talked about vague benefits, 3,650 tsps. of sugar, and insulted their customer’s math ability.

To fix this, I incorporated three “Made to Stick” characteristics into Poland Spring’s message.

Unexepectedness - Not many people know that 3,500 calories equals one pound. It would be a surprise and it would teach people something new.

Concreteness – While we know 3,650 tsp of sugar is a lot, we don’t know what it means. So I went with what people know and that’s calories and pounds. Over the course of 1 year, 160 calories per day on soda can add 16 pounds to your diet.

Emotional – Who wants to gain 16 pounds in year? No one. So talking about 16 pounds appeals to someone’s desire to be fit and healthy.

What Else Works?

While this is a great case study, you are here to learn how you can improve your messages. So, in addition to the “Made to Stick” scale, here are two other traits of persuasive messages.

1. Action Oriented – While thought provoking can be entertaining, you need to include an action for your customers. You want to explicitly state what you want them to do and then convince them to do it.

2. Benefits and More Benefits – While reading I came across this great analogy: “People don’t buy grass seed, they buy a greener lawn.” In other words, customers don’t buy products, they buy benefits.

My Open Invitation

Do you want me to help you make your short message much more “sticky?” Either leave a comment or send me an e-mail. I will be glad to help.

Please note, I am in no way affiliated with Poland Spring or their marketing team. However, if anyone from Poland Spring comes across this article and wants to talk about it some more… send me an e-mail using my contact page.

How to Be a Novice and Join the Newly Successful

Derek — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 17:14:58 +0000

Photo Courtesy of Mike Baird

Almost the entire world relies on experts. We listen to experts talking about our economy, our health, our businesses, and everything else. They say what can or can’t be done and why. They give their “expert” opinion and many people change their life because of it. We blindly follow these opinionated experts and I’m here to say it makes no sense.

We cherish the “wisdom” and “insight” of the experts, yet they are usually wrong. Do you remember when the mainstream media experts considered blogging a joke? They considered it unprofessional, biased, and just plain amateur. Now, they’re tripping over themselves to participate in what the novices started.

Novices are changing the world and the old-school experts don’t know what to do about it. So, are you ready to join us on the fringes?

Novices and New Success

Novices are becoming more successful and have more influence. They are going to further change traditional business and there is nothing people can do about it. The internet and blogging gives everyone a voice and if you’re not participating, good! They don’t want to use your success for their gain anyway.

Now, change every “they” above to “we” because we are going to fuel this change and become the new success.

We change the way people think because we have innovative / non-conventional ideas. While we don’t have years of experience, we don’t have what Chip and Dan Heath call the “curse of knowledge.” We are not stuck in our ways and we are dying to find new ways of doing business.

But what can we do to become successful novices? How can we join the revolution?

Challenge the Experts

If you are looking to become successful, you need to do exactly what the experts say can’t be done. Just find out what they think is impossible and do it.

Seth Godin, Chris Sharma, and Rock Climbing

When I was reading Seth Godin’s Tribes, he talked about rock climbing. The right way to climb rocks was by keeping two limbs on the wall at anytime. It was safe, accepted, and supposedly the right way to do it.

At least that’s what all the experts said.

Then, a man named Chris Sharma changed the way people climbed rocks. Instead of holding onto the wall, he jumps. Impossible rock formations became possible. Just imagine if he listened to the experts.

Comic Books and Business Plans

One of my friends had to write a business plan for a college class. He chose to write one for a comic shop and presented it to a panel of experts. They said it would never work.

Take a guess what happened.

He used the business plan, started the comic book shop, and has ran it for the past 15 years. Just imagine if he listened to the experts.

Blogging and My Success

When I started blogging, I came across opposition from many family members. They didn’t understand the internet or blogging and pushed for me to “get a real job.” They thought I was avoiding reality, but let me tell you that they sure are kicking themselves right now.

Almost everything I have right now I attribute to blogging. I bought a nice co-op with blogging money, I pay my bills with blogging money, and pretty much everything I own is a result of blogging money. Just imagine if I listened to the experts. I would have nothing.

The point is that once you get used to challenging the experts, there is nothing that can stop you. It does not matter what you do because you will be looking at the impossible and trying to solve it. You may fail along the way, but at least you’re trying and if you keep trying, you will join the newly successful.

Accept Novice Fear

Doing something new can be frightening, but it is essential to join the newly successful.

Worst Case Scenario

Just think about the worst case scenario. What would happen if you challenge what people believe to be true? What would happen if you take a stance and hold your ground? Do you really risk anything other than being guilty of expressing what you believe?

Absolutely not.

You can only wear another man’s costume for so long before you want to break free and express yourself. So, why torture yourself?

Best Case Scenario

Now, just think about the best case scenario. How would you feel if you change the world? How would you deal with the success associated with proving the impossible possible?

In a world where we have billions of people there are others who feel the same way you do. Luckily, we have the internet and you can find these people. If you are putting yourself out there and working to change the accepted norms, you will build a following. This applies to business owners, large corporations, and people since it does not matter if you’re writing a blog, selling cars, or drudging away in an office because if you are doing what you feel, you will be happy and other people will find you.

So, what I am trying to say is, you have nothing to be scared of. There are people out there just like you, or, who think the same way you do and will absolutely love what you have to say, sell, or do.

Do Something (anything)

If you aren’t doing anything, you might as well be doing nothing. If you’re not looking for a way to change or differentiate, you are sitting on a growth plateau and you will remain there forever. If you want to join the new success you need to be doing something new and making it your life.

Don’t get me wrong. You can keep a corporate job and still do something new. There are 24 hours in a day and you really don’t have to watch the news or American Idol. You need to use your time wisely and accomplish something. You need to stop being busy and start being productive.

But what can you start doing?

You can start a blog
You can start recording videos to Youtube
You can start reading books
You can start writing books
You can start reading blogs
You can start commenting on blogs
You can start selling your junk on eBay
You can start tutoring people
You can start teaching people
You can start learning to do your job better
You can start reading Prevential.com regularly
You can e-mail your favorite writers

The bottom line is you can do anything. Just start doing it, commit yourself to it, and adapt along the way because your big ideas are meaningless without action.

Start Today

You are extremely lucky to be reading this article because that means you are part of the minority. You are here looking up how to join the newly successful, which means you’re 100 steps ahead of the rest of the population. As a matter of fact, I am so happy that you are here reading this that you should e-mail me right now because I will help you get started today.

Just remember, you can’t start Step 2 until you complete Step 1. So, get to it.

Four Ways to Take Advantage of Your Competition’s Success

Derek — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:58:30 +0000

Photo Courtesy of Exfordy

Have you read Chris Brogan’s “You’re Racing – I’m Improving” blog post yet? He admits that he keeps score against a few other blogs, but he emphasizes that his main goal is to improve himself and his business. Unfortunately, if you’re not keeping score, you will miss crucial growth opportunities.

However, you can’t obsess over your competition and their success. You need to keep score for a reason. You need to find out why your competition is becoming successful and look for ways to duplicate that success in your business.

For example, while I absolutely hate the AWEBER pop-up subscription boxes, many people helped their bottom line substantially with this tactic. If they weren’t keeping score, they would have missed this chance.

Additionally, the now deceased billionaire Sam Walton visited variety stores competing with Wal-Mart regularly. He would walk around his competition and find best-practices that he could immediately implement to help his bottom line and I’m sure you know how successful he turned out.

But how can you use the competition to improve your business?

1. Look for Explanations

Did you stumble across one of your competitors that experienced a surge in growth, whereas you didn’t? Well, the absolute worst thing you can become is envious. Instead, you need to learn from their success. You need to find out what caused their growth and try to implement that best-practice in your business.

Oh, and guess what, if you’re a blogger and your competition is a blogger, you don’t need to look for an explanation. You could probably ask and they would tell you.

2. Ride Their Wave

One of the best things about a competitor who experiences a surge in growth is that you can use it to your advantage. You can actually take out your surfboard and ride their wave to the top.

I remember when some major news broke and a blogger I knew ranked #1 in Google for it. They were receiving around 3,000,000 hits per day for a week. Do you know what the best part was? They were still selling Blogads for $45 dollars a week. So, I bought a few and received millions of impressions for practically nothing.

3. Be The Antagonist

Did one of your competitors see a surge in growth because they nailed their colors to the flag pole? Well, you should nail a different color to the flagpole and claim yours is better. Even if you don’t build a huge following, you will find some supporters to support you simply because you’re the antagonist.

4. Build Off Their Success

If one of your competitors launched a successful new product, you should launch a peripheral product that builds off their success. While your sales may be limited to their niche, it is a great way to get exposure

Want a perfect example of this? Think about iPhone peripherals. There are tons of people making a ton of money off of iPhone apps, iPhone cases, iPhone headphones, and the like. These companies use a successful product to launch their products and it works.

The Bottom Line

Time spent in admiration is time wasted. So, if you’re going to look at your competitors success, make sure you’re doing it for a specific reason that will help your business. Make sure you’re looking for specific action plans that you can immediately implement today so you don’t miss any opportunities.

The Two Most Important Things For New Bloggers

Derek — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 02:38:39 +0000

Photo courtesy of Bootbearwdc

Many entrepreneurs see people like John Chow and Shoemoney making tons of money on the internet, so they assume they can too. They write blogs and form consulting companies. They try to improve their SEO, buy the best logo, and spam comment on every blog they see. Additionally, they submit their articles to Digg and Stumbleupon and hope for the best.

Unfortunately for them, most of them fail and I’m going to tell you why.

Search Engine Optimization is GREAT when you have over 500 pages in your archive worth indexing.
Commenting is GREAT when you have something to leave other than your homepage link.

In short, they are doing the right things at the wrong time. So, lets review the right things for new bloggers.

Same Niche, Different Day

You could spend hours looking for the perfect niche, but by now, every niche is taken. So, you need to pick the same niche, and absolutely destroy it with incredible content. Your content has to be so awesome that you would be willing to tattoo it on your face.

Tip: For each one of your articles, ask yourself, would I be willing to etch this into my body and live with it the rest of my life? If you answered anything other than “heck yes,” you need to rewrite your article.

Focus on the Product

Just imagine how awesome your computer would be if it automatically updated with the latest hardware and software every single day. It would be fast and have all the latest features of all your favorite programs. It would be great, but unrealistic.

However, with blogging, you can distribute new features and functionality daily to your die-hard readers. You can start delivering the only product in the world that updates every single day of the week. It’s cheap (free) and worthwhile (valuable).

Tip: Have you heard the traditional saying that “your blog is your brand?” Well, scrap it. Instead, you need to realize that your blog is your product and you can release new features daily.

The Bottom Line

You may notice this list is short, but this short little list is complete. You could focus on the the 40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content, but without my two important things, it just won’t matter. So, what are you going to do about it?