Ben Dunlap: The story of a passionate life

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Going Up? What do you do?

I’ve always had trouble telling people what I do. I had never been able to nutshell “I talk to clients, listen to what they need, find a metaphor to carry the communication, develop the plan, discover the shape of the data, design the look & feel, create the collatoral, execute the production, work with programmers, deliver the solution to the client” only ever gets a blank “huh?? what the heck does that mean??” on a good day, and a “So how about that local sports team, they’re doing great, aren’t they?” on most other days.

This recurring instance reached a point a few years ago that, under the self-imposed stress of the question, I began lying about what I did.

“I’m a model” I would say.. “I’m an Airline hostess”.. “I make playdough” and when they’d look at my obviously non-America’s Next Top Model figure say “I’m a *BEFORE* model!”. When they’d look at my obviously too wide hips and mentally comparing them to the width of the plane aisle I’d say “Yeh, I just do the PA announcements”. When they’d raise their eyebrows at the thought of someone actually making play dough by hand, I’d challenge them “Well it doesn’t make itself, you know!!”

Even though this was quite a bit of fun at the time, that sort of brat-like behaviour to the prefectly legitimate question of “What do you do?” didn’t win me any new connections. It didn’t move my career forward nor did it provide any hook for potential “word of mouth” opportunities that may have come my way. I decided to pull my socks up, do a little bit of homework and be prepared for the next time I was asked that question in a social situation.

Checking the Internets lead me to the term “Elevator Pitch“. Simply put, the Elevator Pitch is the ability to sell an idea to a stranger (the decision-maker in a company, for instance) in the time it takes the elevator you are both traveling in to move from the Ground Floor to the Top Floor and then to the Boardroom – with you in tow of course, because the stranger has been so wowed by your pitch he wants the CEO to meet you. A perfect example of this is in the 80 movie Working Girl when Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) sells a media solution to the owner of her company, Mr Trask, in the elevator. Her pitch changes his mind, gets her the job of her dreams, and gets the added bonus of her double-dealing boss being fired.

My research revealed Elevator Pitches need to be:

  • Concise: 30-60 seconds (assume short buildings)
  • Clear: use plain language (leave off the jargon and acronyms)
  • Compelling: hook your listener (show your passion)
  • Credible: know your stuff (there are going to be questions – be prepared)
  • Customised: know your audience (modify your pitch to the CEO compared to your pitch to a peer)
  • Consistent: know your message (get a couple of examples up your sleeve – don’t be a one trick pony)

With those thoughts in mind, I’ve developed a first draft of my “elevator” pitch:

I work with a talented team of web-fanatics in South Melbourne. We build smart, beautiful websites for companies who want to make a strong, positive impression online. Our clients hire us because they know we understand how to target their audiences, how to encourage customer participation and how to communicate the right message. My specific job involves making our websites easy to use and understand, and have them work for as many people as possible.

With a bit of work I think that might be able to be tucked up into my sleeve for the next time I’m asked “What do you do?”

How about you? Are you interested in devoping your own pitch? Take the Elevator Pitch Challenge – what are you going to say next time someone asks you what you do?

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J.J. Abrams: The mystery box

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Seeds and Weeds: Cloverfield

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Two things I love: 1) movies and 2) experiencing an awesome sales experience. Combine the two and I’m quite happy to suspend any and all beliefs to go along for the ride. Late last year I buckled up for a few hours sleuthing the online popcorn trail of JJ Abrams new film Cloverfield.

Do you remember The Blair Witch Project? Way back in 1999, snippets from the movie were seeded onto the internet. These trails fed into a website packed with documentation which added authenticity to the movie’s plotline. This was an extremely successful campaign for the film, which in turn delivered on its hype with big returns at the Box Office. How about Snakes on a Plane? The interwebs were writhing with fan-based content for that one, the kind of word-of-mouth activity marketers can only dream of. By all accounts, the viral activity was way more fun than the actual movie. Then in 2005 there was the case of Joss Whedon’s huge fan-base promoting his Firefly-on-the-big-screen Serenity on blogs, forums and buttons – unfortunately, when the film didn’t gross as predicted, the studio decided to pack up it’s bat and ball and sued those same fans for infringing copyright – the fans, in turn, invoiced the studio US$2.1M for marketing the film in the first place.

All fun and games in the online movie-marketing space.

Now we have Cloverfield – a film by JJ Abrams: best known for the television series Felicity, Alias and Lost, which alone has hooked a dedicated audience of web-active, articulate followers. The man knows how to make sticky television. Can he translate that to the big screen?

The Cloverfield seed was first planted with a titleless trailer which played before the Transformers movie in July 2007. This generated a lot of curiosity and discussion about what exactly this movie is about. A Cloverfield titled trailer followed which fuelled the speculation. Information and clues have steadily appeared online and keeps the appetite of those who are hot on the Cloverfield trail whet leading up to the launch date of January 18th. The breadcrumbs to look for include a trail of real and fake websites creating an alternate reality where the film’s characters and plotlines live far beyond the edges of the celluloid.

This kind of fake viral marking has to be done right, though. While some companies like Quicksilver get it right with slick fake viral video advertising like their Dynamite Surfing, some just open up a whole can of worms and get it wrong – just ask Sony how their fake blog and graffiti videos fared promoting the PSP. What a lot of agencies don’t “get”, is trust is the currency of the Internet – folk don’t like being lied to: they don’t mind “playing along” but they do not enjoy being told they have believed something that was deliberately not true.

Campaigns need to be slick enough to be believable, but with just enough flaws to enable the customer to understand they’re playing along. Cloverfield manages this, and hits its demographic right between the eyes and they love it. No doubt about it, utilising Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG) as advertising is turning out to be an extremely powerful tool heating up the movie marketing space for 2008.

If you’d like to follow some of the online clues to find out what the movie is about before it’s release on January 18th 2008, check out some of these links:

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