Aligning the Brand with the Value Proposition Is the Most Powerful Way to Create Value Momentum

good afternoon everyone let's get started I want to let you know if the outs it that I have the flu and we debated whether I should go on or not and I have an apartment in our campus and and I have been resting and then I'm come straight from there to here to begin so bear with me if I stumble a bit but I'm ready and I didn't want to miss today and I'm glad to see names coming up like Elon and David carrier and Fogle and and Sean and we're gonna get right into it take a look two treatments control everything is not as it appears because I want to show you this experiment and contrast it with another one and talk about a subject where there's great confusion there's a non-branded and a lightly branded page the brand has been somewhat blurred but you can see the two and you can get the sense of what's going on here what do you think the impact of the brand is on conversion it's very important because we often take brand for granted but take a look guess the impact and let me show you the result taking the page in doing nothing but adding the brand increased revenue by 40% now if you think you understand what that means let me show you another experiment this is also a huge brand on the left side there is light branding on the right side there is significant branding there is a slight difference in the pages when you talk about how we isolate that in variable clusters I won't get into it but take a look because in this case the fully branded page reduced conversion by 34% what's going on here good call David by the way Dave Vogel what is going on here why is there such a difference in terms of the brand in fact everywhere I go I hear confusion about brand it's become an industry this very morning I was on the I was on the phone with a vice president of marketing for an organization that just rebranded they rebranded and conversion is dropped and they're missing all of their numbers and she asked me what is the problem and then she suggested the answer the new brand creates confusion does not add in a fool who they are and doesn't do the job that a brand is supposed to do B where many my listeners are agencies and agencies I'm not against you I'm for you but agencies have made an industry of rebranding and often what happens is we don't want to fix the plumbing so we just paint the house and we think it's going to make things work better but it does not it disguises the problem on the other hand brand has enormous power to move people through a process we see that with Apple and others so how do we understand the relationship between the brand and the value proposition what's most important how does changing or revising your value proposition impact what should be happening in the brand and when we do a rebrand can we afford to ignore the value proposition or should the value proposition be REE articulated when we do a rebrand all of this begs a critical question and we're going to dive deeper into that question in just a few moments but I want induce you to two leaders Paul Montgomery and Lynn Stevens as you can see from the notes on the slide they've been leaders in the precious metal industry it's a multi-billion dollar industry and the marketplace was suffering from poor reputation they decided to launch a new precious metal company so to do this they evaluated and developed a new value proposition based on their experience and they worked with our scientists and ultimately they had to answer this question to formulate their value proposition if I am a current precious metal investor why should I invest in precious metals with you rather than any other precious metal provider that's a tough question there was tough competition I have worked with their toughest competition and I have also worked with them and they had to formulate an answer and that answer is essentially an argument and that argument can be summarized as a reason now when you underst dan that you realized it if you don't get a sufficient answer meaning you can't feel the strong enough argument then you don't have a reason to start that business so what you do well many of you are on the call right now and you may have a small business and you think I can't even deal with brand right now it's just I can I can barely afford building my website listen brand is something all of us should pay attention to even a small business because brand is a symbol it's like stored equity when I reach in my pocket and I don't have one right now or I wouldn't take out a dollar bill if I were to hold that dollar bill up to you you might tell me what it's worth it's worth one dollar if I were to hold up a thousand dollar bill you might tell me it's worth a thousand dollars but what is that piece of paper worth not much it's not really it's not really that that green bill is worth that money it's that it represents that used to it represented something stored in Fort Knox not anymore in the digital economy however your dollar bills are still symbols of value and in fact every day we move around value without touching those dollar bills we do it electronically in the same way brand carries with it a value weight Warren Buffett has been astute in seeing brand value in a balance sheet that didn't appear in the numbers that's why I made the investment in Coke one of his best investments so you as a small business or you as a as a fortune 10 business both need to be concerned with brand learning how to foster it and create it and build its value over the years is the surest way to create long term financial viability so what do we do well in the case that I just brought up we went through a value proposition intensive and we developed a series of levers around appeal and exclusivity these are critical claims that could be come part of that argument that could be summarized by that reason and you can see what we worked with there I won't spend a long time on but ultimately after for shrinking those we developed a statement which was not perfect it's not marketing language but it's the essence of the argument so why should I choose if I'm a current precious metal investor why should I choose the group we talked about Heartland over XYZ because customers can trust Heartland relentless dedication to integrity now by the way that's just BS if you don't know how to provide evidential 'he's relentless integrity and unparalleled market transparency again that has to be backed up so they are empowered to make the most informed precious-metal investment decisions now I want to tell you why that's a poor value proposition statement and yet the best that we could do because the world isn't ideal and unfortunately they're not the only one in the marketplace and there was no way to quantify in English language those statements yet so we create the claim but we we footnote it now look at the footnotes 1 to see the notes 3 each of those tiny footnotes are are the evidential x' to support the modifiers in that sentence some of you are looking for a way to credibly make your claim and you just can't put it into a sentence that's how you match evidential x' with the claims in order to make them credible because if they don't understand they cannot believe if they understand but they do not believe then you still have no value you can communicate to them because they've turned you down they've turned you off your value doesn't exist for them practically speaking there is no value for them first they must understand then they must believe and we've talked about this in other sessions in fact there is a whole series just on value propositions if this is new to you watch that series watch the latest one and it summarizes all of this teaching I can't reach each value proposition today but I can teach you something I have never taught in a setting like this and only taught in our masters degree college program I'm literally pulling the notes from that program to help you understand something today that I think is a mystery I think I think that the mystery is arbitrated or arbitrage let's say by groups who try to make a brand redesign the end-all solution to a problem without understanding how a brand connects to the value proposition so we're gonna go deeper today we're gonna move from Hartman precious metals all the way through Aristotle but if you'll hang with me if you'll commit yourself to thinking deeply we'll come away with something tangible and practical today is not as simple as change the button today is not as simple as fix your headline today we're talking about the essence of your Beason your the essence of your business the reason it should exist and if you don't get that right then all the rest doesn't matter the marketplaces evolutionary survival of the fittest 80% of new businesses fail many older businesses dilute their value proposition and fail as they get into trouble they go for a rebrand and hope that's going to make the difference rarely rarely does it ever so let's learn I also don't mean to be so somber but I'm I'm on a serious subject I'm talking about something that is wrong with most of the people as companies that are probably going to tune in over the years to this particular broadcast and I want to help you and and so let's wait in this is what we did with Hart when we first of all thought about how to create an impression in a minute I'm gonna teach three critical principles even a fourth but I want you to see that we work through various lexicons and when you look at the top row just soak it up for a second can you feel that Midwestern the cowboy pictures a set of values associated with the Midwest they were located in Oklahoma then there's the cool sort of mechanical precision of the middle row and then that fresh contemporary ease that you see on the bottom row believe it or not the colors and the symbols and the pictures matter but only matter when there's consistency between them the claim and the what some people call the brand promise and the value proposition itself so we opted for this piece at the top together and that had to be translated into a series of of words that match the imagery it began with the logo and we rejected many versions of the logo we studied the topography we studied the color palette then putting it all together we crafted a site that was consistent both in the words and in the symbols on the page that support the words that would be the imagery and even the colors so that the and the higher brand package forms a sort of grammar a consistent language with which the company is able to communicate to its prospective buyers now if you're following that you're looking at what might be just another brand redesign except that it wasn't because this choice was tightly linked to the essence of the value proposition all right and so with that in mind here is the question that I want to ask and answer together how do we effectively leverage our value proposition to build a brown especially from the ground up you say well I've got an existing company yes but does your brand have any equity at this point and if you do have equity how much does it have because the stronger you can create this the stronger experience of the brand that you can create the greater the equity you can store into the mental bank that's so important to the success of your business so I want to take you to a systematic approach for thinking through the argument of the value proposition and the way you execute the branch strategy does this make sense can you follow why this is so important let me tell you one easy reason why I've seen a lot of terrible sites get high conversion rates simply because the brand equity was so high I've said this before when it comes to Apple many people have copied apples web page strategy without realizing that it wasn't the web page strategy that made them success it was the brand itself indeed most of us don't have people waiting for three days camping in a line to get our latest product all that friction all that anxiety but Apple could get away with that because people trusted the planned they had a synth for the consistency of what they were going to get from their interaction with the brand and its products Apple is jeopardizing that today but it's still doing well enough because of the pent up equity the huge store of reserve in the minds of the world which is a key point by the way brand doesn't exist on a balance sheet of course it doesn't exist in the company the power of the brand derived from an expectation in the mind apples power is that you expect something from Apple and when they would produce a new product as long as they are consistent you'll continue to expect it in fact it intensifies the moment it disappoints and it has been disappointing the brand suffers all right are you ready that's a lot of thumb intensity so I'm going to take you to the first point here's a critical delineation the value proposition is an argument but brand is an impression now I would help you right now think about the top of your web page where you likely have a brand and ask yourself a question does the brand make an impression that's consistent with the argument of the value proposition in fact let me help you further some of you I've seen this today when I was talking to the vice president I mentioned earlier you have a you have some sort of markup here let's call this your brand now depending on the name and the picture associated with a name so you have it you have a name sometimes an image it may just be a strange way to do the type font but it's a unique image and often you have let's call it a slogan which is not necessarily your value problem that's important to know these three components often work together now this is not all that constitutes a brand we're talking about the mark at the top of the page with your name you know the brand is is elucidated through the rest of the page like we saw the typography the font choice itself the colors etc but let's just do well on this important mark there is something that I worked on as a very young man that applies directly to this and that is understanding how wide the gap is for an implication if you're just joining us we're talking about brand and the value proposition if you liked it subscribe and give us a thumbs up and share I have the flu today I'm trying to teach with the flu but I didn't I didn't want to disappoint you but I want you to see again this point about implication apples implication with its original brand I'm not gonna try to draw it here but we've all seen the Apple is vast that's a big bridge to come somehow connecting the picture of an apple with a bite out of it to the impression they're trying to make was a huge stretch so how do they cost that span some brands the picture connotates very closely the impression they're trying to make but the Apple brand didn't and Steve has talked about why he chose the Apple but the bottom line is before we had all the exposure to the Apple advertising none of us would have associated an apple with any of the slogans or the mindset that Apple tends to generate among its followers so their stretch from the name and the image and the slogan was very far but I plan something you don't half that's two things you don't have it had Steve Jobs and it had a big budget Apple's famous for its Superbowl commercials in one commercial they they impacted thinking all over this country and perhaps the world they spent huge amounts of money in order to get that implication across and then to anchor it with the image but you don't have huge amounts of money perhaps maybe you do but I'm going to assume you don't so that my teaching is more relevant when that occurs what you need to be able to do is to is to is to make a shorter gap between your claim your name image and slogan and the impression that you're trying to make the distance here is much shorter than the distance here so the first key for you to understand is that on your page you need the argument that answers the question if I am the ideal customer why should I purchase from you rather than fill in the options X Y Z the top three choices that's your argument for existence that's the most persuasive point you could communicate to a customer but you want to also generate an impression sometimes even before they have seen your value proposition and then you want to reinforce the impression in the packaging Apple does that very well and in the overall product experience and in the subsequent communication now if that's the case be very careful that you choose an impression that complements the conclusion generated by the argument which brings me to the second point it's a critical one brand stimulates an impression and the value proposition Foster's a conclusion the vice president of that company that I spoke with earlier today beneath the brand which really did a poor job it widened the implied gap did not have a proper headline on the page had a title and then a grand braggadocious claim with no evidence and then a call to action now it's not her fault and in fact she's reaching out to get help she's trying to understand but it's important for you to understand that you've got to get the value proposition articulated right and then you want to create an impression that connects with the argument what does that look like in practical terms well let me give an example if you're up if you're a CPA I'm just making this up it's not in my notes there may be a better way to explain myself and you want to give people the sense that you're trustworthy and that you're reliable and they can trust you with their financial numbers and you can make some claims about your complement your competence and your capabilities be very careful that your website in its if it's shoddy and miss organized orders paragraphs with misspellings in them if the copy isn't on point even that it's creating a negative impression that that that hurts the conclusion you're trying to create now that's a simple perhaps exaggerated point or example but I want you to get the idea make certain the impression serves a conclusion now this is the easy part we're going to get deeper here in just a moment but I want to make sure that you're trucking with me and I want to make sure that was his flu I'm still communicating well enough with you so you know use the chat feature to ask a question if you need help and I want to help you right now and Brian welcome I saw your note and I appreciate you being here with us today and and David thanks for asking people to hit the like button all right here we go brands can attempt to create an impression that occurs before and after the purchase but if there's not alignment between the brand promise and the experience of the value proposition that impression is nullified it's gone so in keeping with everything I've been teaching you've got to get continuity between the impression of the brand and the experience of the value proposition let's keep going though so let's look at this for just a second on the left is the argument on the right there's a general impression the argument has that horse in the background the Midwest Oklahoma cowboys and we're trying to play on that theme of solid Midwestern trustworthiness now it's not enough by itself but with the argument look at the argument the founders have 50 years experience and have the hi and by the way the reason we chose this you may think this is sort of a weak approach is because they were at the head of let's call it the watchdog agency for the entire industry their big names in the industry and they were those they remember of the the group that enforces ethics within the industry and for that reason they were playing on all of that experience and Trust that they generated from 30 years in the space we needed to make the site match that but the most effective brands now this is where it gets interesting leverage the brand impression to foster conclusion not just about the company but also about the identity of the person now we're gonna start to see something interesting you know people are often buying from you not simply because they're trying to fix a problem that's the shallow level of marketing that we often hear they want something it's true but more often than not beneath the want is something deeper people are striving from meaning philosophers and psychologists from Viktor Frankl to Kierkegaard have seen that what some people call the existential vacuum or the angst that's in our society and one way to to try and solve for that is with materialism and another way is is is to buy something that helps bring meaning to your own identity and that is beneath a lot of what happens in the marketplace and we don't think deep enough to get into that place in the mind so let's see how Apple leverage that with Steve's instincts because it really did so and we'll look at other examples also now you're looking at one of the earlier versions of the Apple logo and think different and as you look at it I want you to look at the pictures what do each of these pictures have in common can someone tell me use your chat feature what is it that these pictures have in common because there's a reason they were chosen each one of them I'll give you a second as you're thinking about that I'm gonna watch for your feedback to come in I want to emphasize to you iconic rebels are lean well said achievement yes radicals people who are different every one of those people represents the exception not the rule now what's going on here look at the Marlboro Man somebody tell me there's been a lot of different models who who were selected for that role they don't even look alike in some ways but they have a certain commonality what is the commonality besides a cowboy hat the obvious what is it about this picture of each one of these men that's communicated in the craggy faces in the hats even in the clothes in the actions Yakov says my own man yes I focus as Gordon that's true there's something in the eyes what is it though what do you see when you look at them what's the what's the connotation of those images all right I'll help you just a little bit you see a rugged man strength somebody said solitaire yeah ready to stand on his own now it's disgusting to me the way the nicotine salesman is using this approach but it works rugged is the right word Shawn listen to me now I'm gonna start to confuse you but if you'll go with me deeply for a second I'll explain why and we're gonna drop in to Aristotle and we're gonna learn something that you can't get in a book somewhere that'll help you with your own company what's happening here is a form of hypnosis hypnosis is the bypassing of the critical sensor anyone who studies hypnosis will discover that you don't have to be in a trance to be hypnotized in fact studies indicate that if you see the same commercial 16 times it'll probably penetrate past your critical sensor inside of your mind let's just let's talk about that for a second inside of your mind so I'm just I'm I'm putting a face here inside of your mind there is a powerful piece that believes almost anything if you've seen a child children will believe that there's an elephant you know outside the door when they're young enough they believe in Santa Claus etc this this piece in the mind is so powerful that when it believes it will it will actually create a lot of things that are possible simply because it believes for instance there are people who if they think they have cancer will exhibit the symptoms of cancer simply because they believe so this piece has a guard that develops from your youth up called the critical sensor and the critical sensor forms a wall and it listens to incoming data and it determines whether or not that data matches the existing program and if it doesn't it rejects that if it does match the program it lets it in without that wall we would all die at an early age because that's that's the skeptic in you that says no I shouldn't step in front of that bus that's the skeptic in you that says no I shouldn't get in the car with that stranger that's the skeptic in you that protects you from buying everything that's advertised on TV what is happening with a brand is it's almost mystical and it's done right what's happening with a brand is it is penetrating the the defenses of the critical sensor and getting into this part that believes you say well that doesn't happen to me I've got a strong mind then why do you sit in a movie theater on the edge of your seat so so wrapped up and what happens to that flashing light on the screen in front of you because the experience of a good story is one most powerful ways to bypass the critical sensor and impact the subconscious mind and in that suspended state that you that you achieve when watching a movie you get lost in the story and this fake person who has memorized the lines who's not even really in the in a movie that you might have seen three times and you already know how it's gonna turn out and yet you sit there on the edge of your seat deeply concerned about the outcome movies drive us they they draw us with two things curiosity and then suspense curiosity is what's going to happen next but suspense is more important suspense is what's gonna happen that person next and the more you identify with the character the more you care about what happens to them now listen a great brand gets past the critical sensor and into the mind and there are a number of ways to do that you can go to a brilliant hypnotherapist I'm not talking about some scam artist but I'm talking about a gifted psychiatrist like Erickson and he can work with you and you don't even know that he's getting past the critical sensor and he gets past it and does surgery and fixes something a paranoia a fear of heights a problem with being in public and on and on the list goes many many neuroses have been cured by these geniuses who understand how to bypass the critical sensor and get into the subconscious mind and rework the programming now that's not just the province of hypnotherapist or psychotherapist psychiatrist in every way each day we're being impacted by messaging and culture inoculates us to a button Germans call the velcro song a worldview where we see the world through a certain set of eyes one of the most powerful influences on the entire culture we all know is the film and television industry and it has a means of bypassing the critical sensor and tying up this inside in knots with new thinking now stop for just a second and listen to me when you see I mean why did the tobacco company spend so much money take me back why did the tobacco company spend so much money on those billboards and on those commercials now they've been forbidden for television for a long time so they've had to had to resort to billboards at times they've been on television but in every case they are trying to get you to believe something about yourself that's connected to their product one of the great masters of this you want to watch the best commercials and in television it's the beer commercials somehow in the American culture drinking alcohol makes you more of a man makes you a better friend and on and on the list goes we are always being tied up in knots I study marketing because I study psychology because I want to understand philosophy oh because I want to understand myself and one of the great insights that that has shook my life is understanding how hypnotized I am by all these messages that are being poured into my mind in various ways to try and influence my behavior now although all of that sounds negative there's a good and positive way you can leverage bran to help people it's not the gun that's wrong if the man who pulls the trigger I'm not here to talk about gun control I'm trying to make a point you can use marketing to help people take free inoculations you can use marketing to help the world and make it a better place you can find meaning in your marketing some of you I know on here David carrier uses marketing to help the middle class protect themselves against a horrific tragedy and everybody needs somebody like David in their marketplace to help them there's value when you do this right but you first of all need to understand the power of this so how many boys girls growing up on TV watching a star with a cigarette in their mouth decided that some house sucking on this cancer stick is going to make them become something that they want to be it's actually absurd let's keep going let's take up let's take it deep show you why it works so here is a bust of Aristotle Aristotle's famous for his work in logic and many other things but da syllogism is the form of logic that that Aristotle wrote about some have you heard about it I'm going to show you how the cylinders and works in your branding ok can I just stop for a moment I know that I'm talking about something that's a bit abstract give me some feedback is this on point for you are you following the logic give me I'm watching your chat feature and talk to me very quickly so that I can I can get an impression as to what you're thinking and to make sure I'm still zeroed in on what matters to you I'm watching for your feedback so far I've got zero I assume that means I'm boring as mud okay thank you Brian I see yours coming in this next piece is where you start to see how that all ties together all right thank you for your feedback team I'm watching you and I want to just what I'm doing I believe the audience optimizes the speaker let's look at Aristotle's syllogism it consists of three things p1 p2 and p3 and if you don't understand what you see on the left let me show you the famous formulation on the right all men are mortal that's the p1 that's a middle term in a predicate Socrates is a man so that's the subject and the middle term again remember the man piece that you saw up at the top middle man at p1 and then man in p2 where does man appear in p3 it's not necessary because now we're able to conclude from p1 and p2 by looking at the subject of the predicate if you don't understand this just look on the right therefore Socrates is mortal think about it for a second all men are mortal Socrates is a man therefore Socrates is immortal that that's simple to understand in its essence that's called a syllogism now listen to me that's what's happening in brand you say wow I don't understand let me show you brands Creed of virtual syllogism in the minds of their customers by bringing their subject the customer experience into alignment with a clear predicate what could that be well here we go I'll show you but let me take you through a little bit maybe two slides forward I'm gonna resolve the tension of this but take a look when Steve took over Apple maybe had 90 days of money left app but Steve looked for just the right person to help him he had a friend he brought him in and and the art director was trying to help Apple communicate something it was hard to communicate hard to put into words but he was inspired by this surrealist painting the treachery of images you can see it and it says in French this is not a pipe now I'm at the beach in Florida there's somebody who copied this I doubt the surfers know this many of them but they'll they'll show they'll show a certain weird looking shoe and say this is not a shoe and it's essentially a sandal disguised as a shoe and they use the same approach of this pipe and I'm sure they're harking back to this but this stuck in the mind of the ad team and they doodled something down right here the idea that something is more than what it appears to be and this this advertising man wrote this is not a box and that's sort of what computers look like in those days and then he shifted dr. Seuss who so many characters are outcasts they're different and he and he wrote next to one of the doodles think different and that was the genesis of something percolating in the subconscious forming a mosaic in the mind of these men as they tried to communicate something about Apple that was unique eventually they chose the slogan think different and it had powerful impact it influenced the great Super Bowl commercial and Steve said and this is important thank difference celebrates the soul of the Apple brain I want you to notice these words the creative people with passion can change the world for the better now that led to a syllogism all people whose Apple products think differently I use Apple products therefore I think differently and remember a word is just a container it has a handle you pick it up put it with other words to create meaning it doesn't represent it is not meaning itself it only represents meaning it is a container it carries meaning and in this case think differently didn't just mean different it mean that looks creative people if you are old enough you remember that in those days Apple was still being used by the art community Bill Gates had destroyed it to the business community i monopolized it but artists still like there and there was this peculiar group of radicals who still favored Apple over the PC even when they couldn't get the software they needed and even when Apple really screwed up the line of products Steve went right into the essence of their legacy pulled out that artful creative who wants to do something different tied it to the word think differently built a virtual syllogism and then messaged in such a way as you started to think wow I want to be one of those people who thinks differently and for that very same reason he resurrected the brand and using that messaging he appealed to you in a unique way he helped you see yourself in a new light and therein is the power of brand to create an impression pain so stay with me we really marketed to women in the 20s marble did not begin marking them in and to the late 50s when concerns about smoking cigarettes without filters began affecting the market inspired by the ruggedness of TV Cowboys marble focused on appealing to that type of person it wanted these men to be admired and here we are all people who smoked marble are rugged tough and manly I smoke Marlboro therefore I'm rugged and tough and manly do you know how preposterous that is do not absurd that is do you know how stupid that it's hard for me to believe such things work but it worked because we have a unique capability as human beings to since the sighs content and to to believe and make so things that it's hard for psychologists and today yet even in neuroscience to explain what's going on there indeed it works we know it works we can't explain why and even what I'm laying out here is a and I know I've oversimplified it for those of you with lots of expertise I'm trying to help an audience but even this is a theory but we can use this theory and get a result and we could get it over and over again to help patients or to do what Marvel did and which I think by the way it's crime but you're not here to hear me talk about crimes and and so ultimately what you need to take away with from this whole conversation is the power of brand to operate like a virtual syllogism and it leads me to a critical conclusion and I'm going to get ahead of my slides because I want you to learn this and by the way Shawn I know your note the opposite argument has been made I'm looking at Shawn Hoffman's quote it was culture that turned me off to Apple there was a there are some people you can always see this when you're when you're designing your campaign some people move towards opportunity some people move away from fear some people identify meaning by being different some find meaning by being like others you can take the opposite end of this and there are many successful campaigns that leverage somebody's desire to be like everyone else and indeed it depends on who you're targeting and what your message is but let's keep going I'm going to show you one more thing and this begins to help you understand something that will be practical about changes to the copy on your website today and here it is before you've heard me teach this I just put it up here I won't teach it look at the earlier videos and you can learn it people make some observations based on the branding on your site that's an observation and the messaging and those observations lead them to form a conclusion everybody remembers this right observation conclusion somebody tells me what comes after the conclusion the conclusion influences what I'm gonna watch here till I see it Dave Vogel loves his iPad alright somebody tell me what happens from the conclusion because this is how people become customers this is in Greek called Metanoia all right you're almost there Yakov before the experience before the conclusion they make a decision and the decision comes with an expectation there you see the power of brand and the expectation is followed by an experience which becomes the new observation I've taught it before so I'm just touching it fast what I want you to see now however is that this observation leads to this conclusion and this conclusion ie this is the right choice for me leads to a decision I will buy and that conclusion by the way has four components and I teach them in the value proposition but I want you to notice something that I haven't taught on here except I've mentioned it in passing that connect to the syllogism they draw two conclusions sometimes three these are transcendent conclusions not before that you learn in the value proposition they draw a conclusion about you they personify your website they conclude that they can trust you or not it doesn't matter what you offer if I can't trust you I'm not going to buy it from you so don't think that you just have to convince them about your product they have to make a conclusion they have to draw a conclusion about you and then about your offering so it's twofold sometimes there's a third a conclusion about you a conclusion about your offering and a conclusion about themselves ie what buying this will do for them those three are powered by the four conclusions of the value prompt which I've taught in other other places and can't teach today so you need to understand that the syllogism works right in here during this conclusion set and Apple helped you conclude that if you buy this new iPad you're going to be different and this implies in its own way superior but that's a different argument so then back to Heartland all investors who use Hartman value family integrity and caring for the future I'm an investor who uses Heartland therefore I value family integrity change the future this is the syllogism powering the brand supported by the value proposition and ultimately it comes together in this argument value proposition is an argument brand is an impression you need to know the difference the brand stimulates an impression the value proposition fosters a conclusion the - this is number three have to agree if there is an alignment between the promise and experience it all blows up and the most effective brands leverage the brand impression to foster a conclusion not just about the company but about the identity of the person purchasing some of us are failing in our copy to help someone see how they are different by purchasing from you some of us are listening to this or thing how do i cash that in it comes right down to the symbols on your page does your brand support the message of your value proposition is it clear that that argument connects to that impression are you helping people understand what what this purchase does for themselves not just in terms of utility but in terms of ontology who they are when you think this way you'll learn how to communicate with far more power some people around you won't understand even great copywriters don't understand it because essentially you're working to get past the critical sensor to establish a piece of real estate in the mind to occupy that real estate and by the way if you capture that real estate and then you don't deliver in the experience you will lose it and you will lose it with prejudice so we must be careful don't fall for the rebranding game yes there's a time to rebrand but do it intentionally and understanding how to link the value proposition in the brand together I see a question from a lot so the uniqueness of the customer experience should be in the center of the brand impression the experience should be connected that allowed to the expectation created by the combination of the brand and the value proposition both of those the impression and the conclusion create an expectation and when they experience the product it should honestly it shouldn't match it it should exceed the expectation and then you really got power jus somebody says you have examples from media industry proud of you I don't know what that question means I've used apple and Marlboro what precisely do you mean if you can share with me more I'll help you I know that I did this with the New York Times and they're a media company and this is how we help them launch their digital offering and reach out and have such success they went from zero to five hundred million on that run they ran on our servers for about twelve years all we were doing was testing critical paths we had 300 paths that we were testing um hiya Dave thank you for the kind words I've been pretty sick today and you've been patient with me and I appreciate that I also know that I didn't give you something as practical today as last week when we looked at web pages and just tore him down and fixed him but I need you to think deeper and I want to leave you with this reason if you're joined us this far don't leave yet I've got just a few more minutes and I'm gonna drop all my notes and talk to you as a marketer marketer in the same way that marble I can deceive us and we've been deceived in many cases by culture most of us have been hurt in the image we have of ourselves as marketers by the cultures connotation for what a marketer is we associate marketing with what we just saw in them in the technique of marble and we somehow lose the most important aspect of our work and that is its meaning if you get up every day and can't find meaning in your work it's hard to keep going if I could reach down with a magic wand and wave it over your head and change something and many of the people who who tuned in it would be to understand that as a marketer you have a chance to make an impact that's remarkable not just in your career but with all those around you to be a truly effective marketer you have to deeply understand happening inside of the mind align with that and use it to create value in the world and you can many of you don't even think of yourself as marketers you're entrepreneurs but that is the essence of marketing it's not the capital you can't build a value proposition unless you understand customers that's a marketing exercise Peter Drucker saw that he said everybody in the organization is in marketing what I want to do with you in the future is build a community who appreciates what we can do in the power of marketing to to drive positive impact but to do that we have to realize that this discipline that we're learning it's like a soft martial art it's a force that you can use to do amazing positive things to bring impacts in the world and that can give you a legacy with your work thank you for being with me thank you for putting up with my symptoms I'll see you next week one o'clock on Wednesday you