You can’t find the Prospect in a four inch screen and other thoughts about everybody-gets-a-trophy

I preach a great deal, push a great deal about The Prospect as the heart of everything we do.  It seems there are some – what I thought were fully explained – confusions about what I mean when I say this. 

Creating a smart, insightful Kamikaze Prospect Definition isn’t mere intellectual exercise.  It’s not descriptors – education, sex, age, marital/parenthood status, income, geography.  They can’t give you the gut feel needed to strike a previously unexplored balance between who the Prospect is, what they may think about your client’s product/service.  Let alone how to meld the two into one universal Prospect centric concept carrying a can’t miss message in a Hey that’s me! Language of Concept.

It’s not how they dress.  It’s how they feel about how they dress.  Not who they vote for.  It’s how they feel about the act of voting 

We frequently work with huge, seemingly disparate Prospect Pools.  Not everyone is like everyone else, but they do fall into marketing maven determined classifications based upon general societal commonalities.  There will also be something – some universal truth, emotional thread, actionable attitude – which holds them together beyond the classifications, descriptors, categories.  Find it.  Push behind it, under it, through it.

Strip it down.  See, feel, intuit what’s behind its every shadow

.   

Working moms with corporate management positions suffer the time/balance crunch between kids, home, job, self and hubby.  But how can you use that conceptually for any product with nothing – zip, nada – to do with the time/life balance crunch? 

Push what’s behind, through, under the commonality.  Find new ways to express it, interpret it for both Prospect and client. 

Okay, we know all Prospects in the Prospect Pool struggle to find and maintain a healthy life/work/family balance.

What came before it?  Will having kids/family keep me from fulfilling my professional goals?  What’s before that?  What are the accompanying/often conflicting questions – and all possible answers – leading up to the time/life crunch we’ve been given?  Push. Push.  Strip it down to what’s before that.  And that.  And that.

What comes after?  Do kids/family give me the grounded support I need to remember what I’m working for?  Push. Push.  Work through all the accompanying/often conflicting questions, all possible answers.  Then push some more, even when the answers you find lead to – of course – yet more questions.

How do you pass through it?  Better hire a nanny, cook, tutor, babysitter, house keeper.  If only.  Ditto the questions, ditto the answers.  Push. Push.

What about what’s under it?  Is this all there is?  What was I thinking?  Is it even possible?  You know what comes next.  Push. Push.

One universal truth.  At least four threads – each leading to at least four more threads + four threads behind those.  Each expresses a single, different commonality/emotional thread.  All could lead your Prospect to your client in unexpected, conceptual ways.  On message and in Language of Concept (tone/voice you use to speak to the Prospect).

Yet too many students, beginners, even professionals – still see that working mother within the single dimension of one convenient label.  No matter they've found all the disparities, all the intellectual details, may have spent hours mining hard data.

 

What they don’t do is apply their gut.  Not their imagination.  Not what they see as probabilities.  Their gut.  That sense of coming trends, individual insight, recognition between seemingly vastly different people across rooms, miles, countries, lifetimes.

Can you do motivational, Prospect Centric work on gut alone?  I don’t know about you, but I can’t.  And I have one heck of a “gut” developed over decades of growing up always “the new kid,” living as a local in places I obviously didn’t belong.  Listening.  Watching.  Most importantly, talking, asking, exploring, caring.  Without judgment.  Without reservation.

 

In other words, being one with the world.  Whether it’s my world or not.

With apologies to Salt-N-Peppa, Herbie Mann, Push. Push.

I’ve been seeing some pretty strange, confused and confusing interpretations of this lately.

If you consider your prospect pool a single person, give that person a name, a specific job, number of kids, pets, a certain family unit and geography, your correspondingly narrow creative strategy and solution can eliminate the rest of the group.

Consider your Prospect Pool too broadly, your creative will be everywhere but where your Prospect will find it motivating.  All you’ll have to build on will be clichés, generalizations, product information.  Regardless how huge the group, how general you think you have to be to address them, there are always at least four more ways to express, dissect, examine, push your gut and intellectual universal truths into less expected, surprising concepts.  Before, after, through – push.  Push.

I realize this may be difficult for those living life in a four inch screen to grasp.  This bigger picture/universal truth aspect of Prospect Definition’s far too big.  The screen, barely the size of a decent selfie.  The creative possibilities, impossible to divide into neat little touch screen compartments.

 

Your universal truth – your Kamikaze Key Fact – is at once common within the group, even as it barely skirts the boundaries of what makes everyone in your Prospect pool different. 

We may all see a different culprit in the time/family/work balance formula – traffic, non-stop after school activities, travel for work, eating meals standing up/on the go – but we must expose what’s behind the obvious to speak differently.  To cut through the clutter surrounding a prospect pool constantly bombarded with the obvious: how little time they have.

A few more Prospect Centric thoughts spinning my head of late:

Q:  How can you expect ten dollar words to motivate someone with the (sad but true) American average Seventh Grade Reading Level.  What’s the solution?  Dumbing down your copy?  Or helping to raise the reading average?

Q:  Who is it I’m supposed to know?  How do I get behind, under, through, before?  Go Zen.  Be the prospect.  Be the Tree.  Learn to see through descriptors from the inside, out.  Live the Prospect, don’t just observe.  Observation only creates pack imitation.  Be the Prospect.  Be the tree.

Q:  If every kid gets a trophy, must we stop group sports and other non-competitive competitive activities before no one’s left who understands the difference between genius and mediocrity?

Q:  It’s about time to stop this post, don’t you think?

As with everything posted on kamikazecreative.blogspot.com, this entry ©2015, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative™ unless otherwise noted, dated.