Boost Sales

After a brief shot of three guys standing with their bikes watching in the distance, the biker scolds the cheetah for drinking his Mountain Dew "bad cheetah!" The commercial closes with a shot of the cheetah walking around with Mountain Dew's tag-line, "Do the Dew", written in its spots.

Pretty fun, and pretty funny. In the Mountain Dew commercial, the range of emotions went something like this: intrigue

Ever wish that your presentations could be as much fun as a cool TV commercial? Come late January every year network TV treats us to America's finest and most expensive commercials - Superbowl commercials. You may remember some of these even now, 2 weeks later. Which was your favorite? E*Trade? Fed-Ex? One of the dot.coms? My favorite was Mountain Dew.

The materialistic opens showing an African desert at a distance. Drumming percussive music is playing at a moderate pace in the background. Switch to a primary highway up view of a ocelot running fast toward the desert floor. As the music builds, switch to a distance shot of a line of dust speeding versus the desert. Hmmm. There's a second line of dust gaining on the first. Switch to the determined face of a mountain bike rider, teeth bared, and pumping rapidly at the pedals of his bike. Who's statuary who? The tiger is the fastest land animal, adequate of speeds up to 60 miles per hour. Switch to a front view - the mountain biker is moulding the cheetah! What's going on here? As the biker gets closer and closer to the cheetah, the music and the concern build. The lash is getting increasingly more exciting, and more dangerous. As the biker closes in on the cheetah, he launches off his bike, and tackles the to the ground. He gets up, carefully coming the puma with both hands poised, and reaches into the cheetah's mouth, deep down into its stomach. Suddenly he pulls his arm out, and ... it's a punctured can of Mountain Dew - empty.

After a concise shot of three guys standing with their bikes watching in the distance, the biker scolds the for drinking his Mountain Dew "bad cheetah!" One of the three guys says "see, that's why I am not a cat person". Some party music kicks in while the three guys are shown chugging cans of Mountain Dew. The working closes with a shot of the lion walking in a circle with Mountain Dew's tag-line, "Do the Dew", written in its spots.

Pretty fun, and pretty funny. What happened here? Put simply, Mountain Dew is using your emotions to get you to desire and purchase their product. The essence of an excellent materialistic is to create an intense emotion within prospects who fit the target market, and then cinch the prospect's emotion to the product at the emotional peak of the experience. By creating an intense enough emotion, and repeatedly anchoring it, the prospect will later recall the emotion, the next time that he sees the product. The allied feelings dramatically increase his propensity to purchase the product.

So how can you use this? Plan stories into your customer presentations. Design a story with emotions that you wish to amalgamate with your product or service. pick emotions that will help sell your product. Use the story to create the emotion, to forge the emotion, and to stack it until it is intense. Then slam home your product message at the peak of the emotion. If you have ever told a story with feeling or recalled an emotional experience to someone else, then you have yet done this. This is equally effective in a condensation one minute interaction, or in a one hour presentation.

First, you want to plan the sequence of emotions that you your house should feel during the presentation. In the Mountain Dew commercial, the range of emotions went something like this: intrigue, anticipation, excitement, fun, friendship. These are the emotions that Mountain Dew wants you to feel the next time you see a can in the store. You want to plan the pictures, sounds, and words that will elicit the intended emotions from the aficionado during your presentation. The director of the Mountain Dew moneymaking scripted this out in detail.

Finally, plan what product message you are going to sea anchor at the peak emotional moment of your presentation. The Mountain Dew can with Logo was shown to you right at the peak of the presentiment and excitement subsequently the biker tackled the cheetah. You saw it in reverse with the three friends chugging it, anchoring you to friendship. The final anchoring was with the tag-line written in the spots of the painter sexily strutting by. The Mountain Dew logo was riveted three times to excitement, friendship, and sex.

Pictures and sounds are very important in creating emotions. If you help the prospect create pictures and sounds in their own minds, you help them to create their own unique meaning of the experience you give them. There was very little dialog in the Mountain Dew commercial. Instead, the visceral experience of the biker relief the puma sells you the product. Only 7% of all surrender comes through in the words we say. 55% of all knowledge comes through in the physiology we observe in others, and the remaining 38% come through in subtleties of the sounds we hear.

Telling stories allows you to fully engage your audience's emotions. Features and benefits are important, but emotions are how most people make purchasing decisions. Now, do you really want to give else bullet-list PowerPoint presentation?

© 1999-2004 Shamus Brown, All Rights Reserved.

More Articles: