The Drivers of Desire with Michael Fishman - I Love marketing Episode #279

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish. And this is the I love marketing podcast.

In this episode, you'll discover the driver of how to know what people want and how to let them know you have it with Genius Network member Michael Fishman. Michael is a trusted advisor to brands and personalities on marketing, positioning and business growth, with special category expertise in health and personal development. Michael also leads the annual Consumer Health Summit, the preeminent Invitational mastermind for CEOs, entrepreneurs and marketing leaders, which he created in 1994. Recorded live from the Genius Network annual event. If you would like access to the full feature video presentation, the show notes and the special resources for this episode, please visit ilovemarketing.com 279 that's ilovemarketing.com 279.

Next presenter is Mr. Michael Fishman. I've known Michael a long time. He's a marketing, positioning and strategy specialist in the consumer health, wellness and personal development space. And he's been doing it for over 20 years. He's the co founder of BehaviorCon, which is a conference which focuses on consumer psychology and behavior economics. And so he's going to talk about the drivers of desire, a way to understand what people really want from you. So give it up for my friend, Michael Fishman.

Thank you, buddy.

Thank you.

Hey, good evening to you. Good evening to you. Here we go. It's an honor to be up here. This is called the drivers of Desire. Sometimes called how to know what people want and how to let them know you have it. But before we get to that model, I want to ask you all a question. Who are the art historians in the room? Anybody? Anybody know who painted this? Not one. Guess. Rembrandt. Rembrandt. Good guess. What's the other one? Okay, this was painted by Pablo Picasso at the age of 15. 15, who later became known to the world and to you for stuff like this decades later, 15 years old and decades later. Now, why would somebody of the skill and superpowers that could do that later use the artistic license, the creative license to generate this? Is it about less is more? Is it about freedom of expression? Is it about simplicity? Is it about him truly communicating the essence of his message? The point is, he was acknowledged for this kind of work and revered because he had the classical skill to know how art functioned, to know how to create something to the level of photo realism. Now, how well would the aircraft that enable Peter Diamandis projects work these amazing customized aircraft, if the designers of the aircraft didn't know the basic laws of aerodynamics they wouldn't work very well at all. How well would Picasso have been revered if he had come up with work like this, without any mastery of the basics? And yet we go about our business and we go about marketing sometimes and do all kinds of things, breaking rules we don't even know exist and fumble around. And yet, when you know how marketing works, when you know how business works, when you know how art works, as Picasso did, you can break the rules in ways that you're aware of. You can depart from standard form in ways that are workable. When you're breaking rules and laws and best practices that you don't even know exist, it's very hard to win. Let me share with you a simple model of psychology that I use and have devised from different sources that have impacted me, that have helped me understand marketing and bring a high degree of certainty to the work that I do. When we do marketing and we send out emails or we send out infomercials or other kinds of marketing, it's important to bring a degree of certainty because you never know what's going to work, you never know what's going to make that work. But the more you can bring to your marketing, that can bring a degree of certainty that you're going to get good results. It's like an insurance policy, right? So I came up with this model called the Drivers of Desire. Oh, by the way, and here's what Picasso said, learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist. So whether you're doing marketing or designing spacecraft, knowing the rules is important. So what do people really want? What people want is a very hard question for most people to answer, because they have the ants, they have their wits, they have the extent to which they can reach into their consciousness to look for the answer to the question, what do you want? But as Clotaire Rapai said in a great book called the Culture Code, most people have no idea why they do the things they do. And they also similarly have no idea why they want the things that they want because they have the answer and the reasons from their degree of consciousness. But there are other areas of the brain that drive people's decision making and people's resonance with products and with language that they're not aware of. So this is the model, the Drivers of Desire, that I came up with to really answer some of these questions and to bring a degree of certainty to this exercise about understanding people's experience of your product or service. The Drivers of Desire looks at three areas of people's experience. Number one is what they, if asked, would tell you about your product or service. This is their experience that they're willing to report on. They're aware of it and they will say they will tell. Number two is what they would not tell, which means they're aware of it, but it's too sensitive, it's too private. It's kind of an area of shyness. It's an area of sensitivity or privacy. They're aware, but they won't tell. Then there's what they can't tell, which is below the level of consciousness, which is the impressions that are generated in the reptilian brain, the things that help us to survive. And this is where our brain is really running the show in terms of the language. We resonate with the products, we resonate with the brands and personalities. And yet it's operating below the level of awareness. It's our survival based brain or what's sometimes called the reptilian brain. So let me give you a few examples of how this might work in real life and in real marketing in the weight loss market. An example of will tell. And this differs from culture to culture around the world. In our culture and in North US and Canada, the willingness to lose weight is something that people are generally willing to talk about. You know, we have weight loss centers. People gather in communities around the aspirations and desire to lose weight. So it's something we're willing to acknowledge openly. In the domain of won't tell, people's experience of your product or service in terms of won't tell is really like what we might call the gory details, like where it's jiggling, where it's hanging over the belt a little bit, where there's a little bit extra going on and then there's the can't tell, which is that for a lot of people, the physical insulation on their body serves a purpose in terms of like a psychological purpose in terms of insulation between them and their outer world, in relationships, in community. That's why you see brands like nutrisystem using language like comeback make your comeback. When you shed that physical insulation or that barrier between you and the world, you're making your comeback to your community in pain relief. This is really interesting. We're all animals and our brain doesn't think of joint pain, for example, as a threat to our survival in nature. Any animal with the fullest expression of pain can't do two things that are critical for survival. Number one is to defend itself. And number two is to gather food. And when Animals aren't doing those things for very long. They're not surviving. And so for our brain, pain that creates immobility is actually a death threat. We don't think of it in those common everyday terms. So the can't tell in pain relief is really immobility or the failure to survive. People will say, I want to be pain free. People might be aware of but would not say, my independence has been impacted. I can't tie my shoes, I can't dress myself, I can't take care of myself. But the can't tell in pain relief that the brain is aware of but we're really not in our consciousness is that pain is a threat to survival. We don't think of it that way, but that's how the brain experiences it. Here's the last one, which is an experience from my own life. I've owned two homes, and I've attracted to myself homes that have had water sensitivity, you know, in the basement. I've had water in the basement. The thing I've said to contractors that have come by is, you know, the floor is wet. I want the water out of here. It's coming through the septic field. So there's the additional charm of having smelly water in my basement. So just horrible. The won't tell in that case between myself and the contractor is I panic when this happens. It's not something I would share with this person, but really that's what was happening, was I was panicking. But as a marketer and as a business person and someone who studies consumer behavior and consumer psychology, I kind of looked in the mirror and thought, well, what is it that is having me panic about this situation? And I realized that at the level of survival, with three little kids and a family and a home that didn't feel safe, or it just didn't feel safe, I felt like, okay, I chose the wrong cave. I chose the wrong shelter. So at the level of survival, the insufficiency, the challenge that was happening with water in my basement felt like a survival threat, not only to me, but to my family. There's a couple ways that you want to use these things in your business. Number one is to. It helps you to. When you embed these things in your marketing and in your business. First of all, just knowing them helps you be more compassionate as marketers and as business people. It's compassionate to speak to people and market to people, not only understanding the psychology of what drives them both consciously and unconsciously, but also enables you to use language, which is the Language that they say to themselves when they wake up in the morning and say, I wish things were otherwise. It's compassionate to speak the language to your market that they use in articulating their own challenges. So you can use the words that they use, not your words. Right. Like no one ever woke up in the morning saying, wish I had optimal wellness. I wish I had financial literacy. These are terms we use to. These are terms we use to sound smart, but which no one ever said.

Right?

So use the terms your market uses. Market with compassion. Mark it with honesty and integrity. I hope this model works for you. Thank you so much. That's good. Thank you. Thank you.

That I actually love. I mean, the will tell, won't tell, can tell. That would be a really great thing to think through deeply about your prospects, your clients, everyone. You have a question?

Okay, so my question is kind of like, okay, there's the will tell, the won't tell, and the can't tell. And in order to be more compassionate in your marketing and to help them know that you have what they want, do you talk about what they won't tell? You know what I mean? You know, like, okay, if they're nervous to tell someone, are you going to talk about that? And does that make them feel uncomfortable or what?

The language, it won't tell. You can, you know, as a trusted advisor, particularly if the brand is represented by a personality, you can talk to that person. Like, there was a great headline years ago that was used by Prevention, which was never wear the fat dress again. Like a term that women use. So you're speaking to someone in the private voice that they think of or that they might share with their best friend or maybe nobody.

Okay.

And so there's a positive, integrous kind of disarming and creating of affinity between you and the recipient by speaking in that language that only one to one and indirect speech. Exactly, exactly. The stuff about can tell is a little bit harder to execute and there's no perfect right answer. I think it requires for yourself, your creative team and whoever's supporting you in copy to just have a conversation about can't be embedded and integrated every single time.

And you don't necessarily know what it is for each person.

Well, right. I mean, if it's golf clubs, who knows? It's obviously most readily brought to bear with products and services that enable people to be better tomorrow in some way than they are today, which your business and a lot of the businesses and activities here certainly qualify. So it's a model. Right. And I think will tell and won't tell are probably virtually always identifiable in some way. Or you can get pretty close, right? The can tell is something that is a little tougher. But when you, I mean, and let's say you can get to it, you never put it out blatantly because you know at that level you'll kill people off. I mean, it's just weird. But if there are ways to integrate it in a smart and compassionate manner, then you're speaking to the three levels of psychology where people are resonating with the message and are willing to engage with you. Because here's the thing. We spend so much time helping people understand what it is we do. How much time do we help them feel understood by us? Because once they feel understood by you, it's game over. You know, that's really the key. And they'll feel understood by you when you're speaking their language, speaking to their psychology and to the words that they use to articulate their problems.

Right. Thanks, Michael.

Awesome. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of ilovemarketing.com if you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event, go to geniusnetworkevents.com that's geniusnetworkevents dot com if you would like access to the full feature video presentation, the show notes, and the special resources for this episode, Please visit ilove marketing.com 279 that's ilove marketing.com 279.