It’s the year 152 AD
Lucian the great ancient greek satirist and teacher wants to teach a critical life lesson to his young students – “Patience and perseverance always wins”
Amazing thought from a great thinker!
There was only one problem.
He had repeated the point to the young kids for 2 days back to back.
But on the 3rd only a few of them remembered.
And none of them understood what it really meant!
After a lot of struggle, he came up with an idea!
The next day he stood in front of his class and said “Once upon a time there was a thirsty crow…”
We all know this story.
It ends with – “Hence – Patience and perseverance always wins”
A lesson we all learned as kids!
So… not only did the students listen, and understand Lucian’s point.
They shared it with their friends and family.
And with the generations that came after them.
What’s the point of Lucian’s story here?
As marketers, we all struggle with turning our brand from something no one understands or cares about to something they’ll remember forever.
And Yes, we can bombard them with a gazillion ads!
Or we could just solve the problem using Lucian’s approach
Because no matter which industry you are from or what your target audience is.
They have one thing in common with Lucian’s young students!
“They may not understand or care about your point, your marketing message. or your brand. But they DEFINITELY care about something.”
In the case of Lucian’s students, it was curiosity. The desire to know – “What’s gonna happen to the poor thirsty crow”
You just have to figure out what that something is your audience and then talk about that.
Of course, while implicitly embedding your message in the conversation!
In short, you just have to find your thirsty crow story
And no it doesn’t literally have to be a story.
It could be just a 2-word slogan like think different or got milk.
Or it could capitalize on their existing habits Kitkat break banta h
You can even build on to the way they talk “Kya chal raha h, Fogg chal raha h“
And it all starts with answering the all-important question.
“What does your audience really care about?”
Even BEFORE you ask “what’s my marketing message and how do I get it across?”
You may not have a multi-million dollar brand like these examples, but unless you start with what THEY really care about,
they just won’t listen to you…
Because nobody really cares about your brand or your marketing message!
Note: If you want to know How to test if your content is really effective.
And if it’s not, then how to iteratively improve to make it more effective.
Then you should check out the shittier version of this article Once upon a time… A timeless tale of user-centricity (Original).
Followed by the user testing case study that led to this version.
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