Transcript of Guy Kawasaki’s keynote ‘The Art of Enchantment’ outlining ten actionable principles to ‘enchant’ people: be likable (Duchenne smile), earn trust (knowledge + competence), build deep/intelligent/elegant products, tell stories at launch, overcome resistance (Nintendo positioned as toy), create enduring enchantment without relying on money, present/customize effectively, enchant bosses and employees (concrete tactics), and remove technology ‘speed bumps’ (e.g., poor CAPTCHAs). The talk uses anecdotes and concrete examples to illustrate each point.
Chapters
These are 10 points about how to enchant people. The first point that I learned is that very seldom are you enchanting if you are not likable. And so I think one of the key starting points of all Enchantment is you have to build an enchanting, likable product, a likable service, and likable people. So there's three key points. The first point is your smile. There is what's called the Pan Am smile. And the Pan Am smile works like this. You only basically use your jaw, and you kind of fake a smile. That's because no flight attendant is really happy to see a passenger. So what you really want is what's called a Duchenne smile. And a Duchenne smile uses a second set of muscles, which is the ones around your eyes. This is a picture of Marie Smith, the Facebook expert. And she's a friend of mine, and I called her up one day and I said, marie, I have good news for you and I have bad news. The good news is, in every one of my speeches, your picture will now be there, and I will talk about you. The bad news is I'm using your picture because you have great crow's feet. I'm telling you, the key to a great smile is not your jaw. It's your eyes. You want crow's feet? Crow's feet shows a sincere level of smiling. The next point is to achieve trustworthiness, you know, because you could be likable but not trustworthy, right? So you could like some Hollywood celebrity, but not trust the celebrity. So the next step is to achieve trustworthiness. Three ways to do this. First, people you can trust are knowledgeable and competent. They have this baseline ability, this baseline sophistication about a topic. I think a very good example occurs every day on npr. This is Terry Gross. Terry Gross is both knowledgeable and competent. The difference between knowledge and competence is knowledge is you know what to do, and competent is you do it, okay? So you need to be both knowledge and competent. The third thing is to get ready three ways. First, I think that the key to great enchantment and the key to great evangelism is you build something that is deep, intelligent, complete, empowering, and elegant. The five key characteristics of a great product or a great service. The fourth thing is to actually launch this thing. Key point, tell a story. You know, great launches occur because someone tells a story, a story of efficacy and power, a story of how my wife had this kind of cancer. So I dedicated my life to curing this cancer. Or why you're. Your kid had trouble with math, so you created this math website. All this kind of thing. Tell a story. It very seldom works that you say, we're ushering in the fourth paradigm of mobile Internet computing today. Very seldom. Okay, tell a story. The fifth point is to overcome resistance to your enchantment, because you will encounter resistance. This is a picture of the Nintendo family computer system. It was introduced in the mid-80s when the video game business sucked. The video game business was completely tarnished back then, primarily because of Atari. And so what they did, the Nintendo group, is that rather than positioning this as a video game, they bundled it with a robot and they positioned it as a toy, in fact, an educational toy. So rather than getting stuck with the moniker of being a video game, it became a toy. And kids for Christmas were asking their parents for an educational toy, which is very different than a video game. That's how they overcame resistance to the video game market. Next thing is, how do you make your enchantment endure? Like the Grateful Dead, who will be here long after Justin Bieber is gone. Key points. Don't use money. All the theories about affiliate fees and commissions and all that, you know what? That's not necessarily the way to enchant people. Enchanting. If you have to use money to enchant people, arguably that's an oxymoron. It's not enchantment. Enchantment should be able to be done without money. Right? So if you're going to compete, create a competitor to YouTube. And your theory is, well, what we will do is we will give people a cut of the advertising that we can sell next to people's uploaded videos, and we'll make that more lucrative for people to upload to YouTube to our competitor than to YouTube. It might not work. It might not work because people might not be motivated by getting $2.50 a month in affiliate fees. They might be motivated by getting more people to watch their video. The seventh thing is to learn how to present as an enchanter. You have to learn to present. First thing is customize your introduction. Customize introduction means that when you're speaking to a group of people, build something, particularly in the front end, that makes it much more relevant to the organization. So you don't look like a generic speech. This is a picture that illustrates this. I was in Rio de Janeiro. I was speaking for lg, and after I got there, I figured out, you know, we have an LG washer and dryer. I should have taken a picture of an LG wash our LG washer and dryer and put it in my presentation to LG at the start. That way they'll know I'm this loyal customer. It'll build this bond, you know, blah, blah, blah. Of course, I'm in Rio de Janeiro at that point. I can't exactly fly home just to take a picture of that. So I text my two sons. You know, the same two sons who want the Mustang. Yeah. I text my two sons. And I have a backup plan because If I text 1, the odds are he's not going to do it. I have to text both. I have two bits, not one. So I text him and I say, go downstairs with your iPhone, take a picture of our washer dryer, send it to me right away. Because I'm about to go on and I need this picture right away. Send me these pictures, Send it to my two sons. Few hours go by, no pictures. So I send a text message to my older son Nick, saying, nick, did you get my other message? Send me the pictures. So I sent him this text message. You get my text message? Noah, his older brother Nick responds. Noah said, he did it. Can you get us TVs? So this is my older son approach to life, right? He doesn't send me the picture. He says his brother did it. And by the way, since you're speaking to LG, can you get us some TVs? And actually I did reciprocation, gave it to his other brother. The eighth thing is how to enchant your boss. Special topic. How to enchant your boss. Three key ways. First of all, I hate to tell you, but the primary way to enchant your boss is when your boss asks you to do something, you drop everything and you do that first. Whatever your boss asks you to do becomes top priority. Okay, I understand that you're a, you know, you're an intelligent person. You can take the long view and the big picture. So you might think, oh, I should weigh his or her request against what I'm currently doing? Is what his request or her request doing optimal for the organization? Not him or her in particular, but is it the best thing for me to do for the organization? I'm telling you that is wrong. Your boss says something, do it. Drop everything else and do it. That will enchant your boss? Because you don't really know why your boss is asking you to do something. It could be that his or her boss is asking for this. Drop everything else. First way to enchant your boss. The opposite of this is how do you enchant down or enchant employees who work for you? 3 key ways to do that. First, you provide map. Map is this. You enable your employees to master a skill. You come work for me. You will learn how to use social media as a marketing tool. You will master a skill. You come work for me. You will learn how to program a phone. You will learn how to market things. Alright? So I offer you not just compensation, not just a job. I offer you an opportunity to master a skill that you can use in other contexts. Second thing you offer is autonomy as you master this skill. How to use Facebook, how to use Twitter, how to use social media. I am not going to be micromanaging you. You are going to operate autonomously. And the third thing is we have a higher purpose in this organization. Our purpose is not simply to go public or to sell out or to buy homes in Woodside that we never furnish. Right? Or to buy a Tesla. That's not the goal here. Our goal is to make people more creative, more productive, to improve people's lives, to give them peace of mind. So when you come work for me, I offer you three great things. You can improve yourself, master a skill. You'll be working by yourself. I'm not going to be breathing down your neck. And we function here for a higher purpose. You provide a map. Wow. You'll enchant your employees. The tenth thing is to use technology. Perhaps not necessary in this audience, but some three points about using technology to enchant people. First, you have to remove the speed bumps in using technology. This is captcha. I think the first word is H O L B E r. But let's say I want to become your customer. I want to open up this account. I want to sign up for your service. So I have to prove that I'm not a bot, but I have to prove that I'm a human who understands Sanskrit or Farsi or Korean or Kanji or Mandarin or I don't know what the hell that is, but who could figure out that captcha. How many of you have speed bumps like that? How many of you have captcha systems like that Is the mantra of your company? We prevent bots from signing up. Or is the mantra of your company? We enable people to become more creative or more productive. Which is it? Pick one. Pick one. Sam.
