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Recently I've encountered a sales pitch which was trying to tell us about the 14
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reasons that their product was superior.
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Or maybe it was even 17 reasons, I'm not sure, and it doesn't really
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matter because honestly, no one cares.
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When they were at reason number seven, I didn't even recall number two anymore
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because that's just not something that the human brain is good at.
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And so, the more relevant question for them to ask would have been: what's the
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real reason a customer would choose them?
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Part of the brilliance of Apple’s “I'm a Mac” campaign was that they
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made that exact shift from a plethora of good reasons to one real reason.
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Make no mistake, they had a ton of good reasons.
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Each of the 323 spots that had been shot for the campaign focused on
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one of those good reasons for why a Mac would be better than a PC.
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And 66 of those actually aired.
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But none of them was about the good reasons.
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For one, I'm sure that for each of those, you can find people willing to
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dive into a heated discussion about whether that reason would even be valid.
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Apple skipped that discussion and went straight into an
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argument about the real reason.
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For them, it was that Mac users are cool while PC users are not.
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When you resonate with that message – which you might not,
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I know a lot of cool PC guys.
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But when you resonate with that message, the beauty of that approach
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is that the good reasons are all there.
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This is the crucial aspect.
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The good reasons are never the problem.
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If you've done a great job and built something that's actually
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amazing, you're always going to have enough good reasons on your side.
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If you don't, it's probably better to fix your product before you even
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think about fixing your communication.
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But any of these good reasons will always be considered in light
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of the real reason that makes us choose one product over another.
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If you ignore this and instead, only focus on the good reasons, even 66 good reasons
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won't be enough to convince your audience.
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And finally, if you need 66 reasons or even just a dozen to tell me why you are
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the superior choice, you are devaluing the weight of each one of those reasons.
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Give me one heavyweight reason and we're playing a totally different game.
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So, what's the real reason people choose you?
