A *LOT* of Planet Perry people spend their days selling a logical, reasonable, rational, “no-brainer” proposition to the world. Whether it’s some health product or a mechanical assembly or a service company, it’s basically:
1) Have Problem
2) Give Me Money
3) Solve Problem
…and sometimes you wonder why nobody’s getting’ excited.
What do you do about that?
The answer is found at a U2 concert. What goes on there?
C-level executives stand on their chairs holding up cigarette lighters and cell phones, holding hands, singing along with Bono. That’s what goes on there.
How many are immersed in the sensory experience, self consciousness melted away, doing air guitar, imagining that they’re Edge, that a coliseum of surging, raving fans is swinging to their axe?
How many middle-aged, middle-management, normally staid men are sitting their in their seat with tears streaming down their cheeks when the band finishes “How Long Will We Sing This Song” and Larry Mullen finally lays down his sticks and exits the stage?
After witnessing that, can you ever again delude yourself into thinking that we’re all just logical, rational creatures? Can you ever again suppose that above a certain income level or social status, people somehow stop being the quivering mass of feelings and emotions that make us all human?
Andrew Fletcher said, “Let me write the songs of a nation; I don’t care who writes its laws.” The waves of music carry us faster and further than the laws of logic ever can.
HINT: Somewhere, somehow, there is a connection between your “logical proposition” and that squishy, tender, irrational, emotional core.
I can’t tell you how to access that in one short email. But the word I have for you today is:
DON’T FEAR IT. EMBRACE IT.
Then, the doors will open.
Perry Marshall
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About the Author
Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.
He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.
16 Comments on “U2, and Rational = Boring, Irrational = Fun”
“The waves of music carry us faster and further than the laws of logic ever can.” That is just pure poetry.
You gotta love Perry’s followers referencing Carl Jung, Irving Berlin, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), John Carlton, and Frank Betger, and more.
I would just add that Socrates talked about how the arts are able to bypass the logic gate in our being and touch us at a deeper level. This is contrasted to when the Orator speaks to us directly, we tend to overly critique and analyze.
Loved the posting and rich contributions.
The pop up for the course is really annoying on this page. I couldn’t get rid of it! Could you provide an option to close it?
That’s very unusual. Will have my tech team look into it
Everybody’s got a secret Sonny
Something that they just can’t face
Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it
They carry it with them every step that they take
Till some day they just cut it loose
Cut it loose or let it drag ’em down
Where no one asks any questions
Or looks too long in your face
In the darkness on the edge of town
– The Boss
One of the best exponents of emotional marketing to “hard nosed” businessmen I ever came across was Frank Betger. I stumbled across his book, ‘How I Multiplied My Income and Happiness in Selling’, long before I went into sales. In fact it was probably this very book that persuaded me that I could make a career in selling, I even started out in the same industry as Frank and copied his methods.
I later discovered that this book was a sequel to his better known work, ‘How I raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling’, the company I joined as a salesman used this Betger book as a training manual. Frank always got to the “heart” of his client’s problem in every respect.
If you can find copies of these great books, grab them and devour them. 35 years on my copies are ‘dog eared’ and well used.
Love this post!
I would add to your U2 example that gala for
Queen Elizabeth last night.
In one of John Carlton’s “Marketing Rebel” Newsletters he had a passage that came to mind…
“Your customer needs a ton of rational reasons why this is a great deal, so he can give his wife, his buddies, and himself a good and plausible sotry supporting his buying decision. AND you need to appeal to your customer’s “belief wiring” deep inside – hitting all those silly hot buttons he would NEVER admit to having any sway over him – example – “Hey, I bought this Porshe because it’s a great investment and a work of art, not because young woman suddenly look at me differently.”
Also storytelling came to mind when reading your post – engaging our customers with an interesting story that you are able to relate to the situation/problem or solution.
Hmm… I think we have been socially conditioned to push our emotional side away. Anything that cannot be easily quantified or controlled gets a shaming label.
In the Academic World, which usually is quite socially inept this is usually the case. So what happens?
People have bottled up emotions that they can’t express.
In our marketing we must accept that there is a factor which we can’t understand, explain, or count. BUT it’s there.
Maybe if we allow ourselves to let that factor exist, even if it doesn’t seem to fit the “formula” our clients/customers will feel SAFE enough to light up their lighters too.
Jean Paul
You say “In our marketing we must accept that there is a factor which we can’t understand, explain, or count. BUT it’s there.”
It cannot be understood if you use logic. You cannot measure water unless it is contained in a vessel – but then you cannot measure the swirls and twists it makes as it tumbles down a rapid. You have to think outside logic, accept a form of thinking where the thinking itself forms “reasonable” assertions.
whilst this can lead us astray to all sorts of imaginings, if you love nature enough, and concentrate your imaginings into the deeper (and largely unseen) aspects of plant life – you may just get close to something very, very real.
You are totally correct. From experience I learned along time ago to understand Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) as it related to business relationships. Once you understand the way a person’s mind can work you have the ability to use that information in a persuasive way. This is extremely helpful with executives and power people.
An example would be with an ego person is to prefix any thoughts with ‘You explained (taught) to me before’ which will stroke their ego and make them want to listen. There are many phases you can use to control this type of power personality.
They listen to you because they are glowing with how they educated you and now you understand, while not realizing you catered to their ‘I’m always right attitude’ or ‘Either your with me or against me’ mind set.
I have successful disagreed with Presidents of companies but they accepted it because they think I’m telling them what they taught me, therefore they are not offended on what I am saying. They believe my advice is actually coming from them so they embrace it.
So yes emotions play the most important role, if the world was only logical or business decisions were made purely on logic it would not work.
Hi Perry:
I don’t know this Andrew Fletcher dude, but he was undoubtedly quoting
Irving Berlin’s song, ‘Let Me Sing and I’m Happy’.
What care I who makes the laws of a nation
let those who will look after its rights and wrongs
what care I who cares for the world’s affairs
as long as I can sing its popular songs…
’tis a brilliant lyric. I do not recommend the Al Jolson version.
I am a massive believer pushing the emotional buy buttons. We all buy for emotional reasons but our brains try to justify purchases with logical reasons. It’s a gut reaction response. I help clients every day understand this incredibly powerful approach. I recently revised a client’s site links for a mastectomy swimwear campaign using a combination of Barry Feig’s and Perry’s approaches and achieved a 41% CTR. For anyone interested in this area you can’t far wrong with Barry Feig instrumental book ‘Hot Button Marketing’.
There is even a form of thinking that encompasses the things you speak of. It ties into the sort of thing Jung talked about with his descriptions of mythology. It is, if you will, illogical thinking. Yet it has its own rationale in the way that matrix algebra is radically different from Boolean algebra.
However, I struggle to communicate this to those who can only think logically. They are happy to stand on chairs at a pop concert, yet would not dream of doing so in their place of work.
Any logical proposition makes sense to those people who think in the way that the proposition is phrased. Even with a good advertisement, getting 10% of people to agree with you is hard enough – and that means 90% of people do not. That in itself is not logical, is it?
However, the person who agrees with you will say that they made a “logical” decision, and the person who disagrees with your proposition will say that they made a “logical” decision. Each of them based on the facts. When you are only able to see one group of facts, you will see one thing; to another person, the facts they see will be different.
It is all down to their character.
Neat post Perry.
It’s that old chestnut of tying the benefit into the feature isn’t it?
Sell the sizzle not the steak
‘Cos we all know (don’t we?) that us humans..
Buy with emotion and justify with logic.
Well some of us know that. But even then we struggle sometimes with that old conundrum of telling our potential client – WIFM.
Your website is cool btw, I never fail to learn…
Andrew
Andrew,
I think Perry is introducing a powerful, yet subtle message that is far beyond the standard truths of, “Buy with emotion and justify with logic.” or “Sell the sizzle not the steak”
It is being able to connect your product/service to something more powerful: an experiential truth that encompasses acceptance, belonging, with a sense of freedom (and safely) to simply be yourself in a present-moment.
This is NOT “emotional buying”, but rather “purpose buying”.
Just a quick example: U2.
U2 last album wasn’t a commerical success, nor was it a success with most core fans…
… yet, the concerts sold-out pretty fast, with hardly any new materially being plaayed.
In other words, the people who bought the tickets were fans before who ALREADY had been to a U2 concert, and ALREADY heard the same songs live.
Yet, they ponied up the money, again, to hear the same songs.
Why?
Because as Perry just wrote. “How many are immersed in the sensory experience, self consciousness melted away, doing air guitar, imagining that they’re Edge, that a coliseum of surging, raving fans is swinging to their axe?