Get them to care before they commit

When thinking about communications strategy, it's worth reflecting on what Plato said:

“Nothing taught by force stays in the soul.”

This is why creative agency folks are always so insistent on producing emotionally engaging work. It's not because it makes for better work (though conceptually it can), it's because the work works harder.

You draw people to you by entertaining them, and that buys you some license to deliver information. It can be the difference between having top 2 box awareness and yet people not really caring about you. Or having brute force awareness through high media spends and huge volumes of attention decay.

Because you can buy your way into impressions, but you can't just buy your way into a strong brand image. Which, in turn, gives you things like higher memorability, bigger pricing power, more efficient media performance, etc.

The more people buy into what you stand for (or what they remember about you), the more they are to buy from you when it counts. This also works for internal and B2B audiences, of course (most of these findings tend to).

When talking to clients about what they should do, forcing the narrative rarely works either. So before getting them to commit to something, you need to get them to emotionally care about it. For example, the answer to an over-rational client sometimes is to find a way to bypass the rational arguments and get them to emotionally care about the problem you’re both solving.

Otherwise, you’re playing their game and frankly you’ll likely lose. Or equally bad, you ‘win’ (according to you) and then perpetuate the battle for rational arguments which water down the thinking until it’s perfectly rational, perfectly logical, and incredibly boring and de-motivating for everyone.

The more we grasp this and live by it at work, the less frustrated we get with how we sell things, and crucially also what doesn't get bought. Because let’s be honest, 90% of anything never gets bought. So the more we learn to manage this reality, the better off we all are. You can’t commit until you care.