Donald Miller

Empathetic statements start with words like, “We understand how it feels to . . .” or “Nobody should have to experience . . .” or “Like you, we are frustrated by . . .” or, in the case of one Toyota commercial inviting Toyota owners to engage their local Toyota service center, simply, “We care about your Toyota.”

Being specific matters. Kennedy would have bored the world had he cast a vision for a “highly competitive and productive space program.” Instead, he defined the ambition specifically and as such inspired a nation: “We’re going to put a man on the moon.”

Filling out this grid for your brand is a terrific exercise. Once you know how your customers’ lives will change after they engage your brand, you will have plenty of copy to use in your marketing collateral.

The next step is to say it clearly. We must tell our customers what their lives will look like after they buy our products, or they will have no motivation to do so. We have to talk about the end vision we have for their lives in our keynotes, in our e-mail blasts, on our websites, and everywhere else.

As I mentioned earlier in the book, the primary function of our brain is to help us survive and thrive, and part of survival means gaining status. If our brand can participate in making our customers more esteemed, respected, and appealing in a social context, we’re offering something they want.

Offer access: My wife loves using her Starbucks membership card because it gains her points, which gains her status and the occasional free latte.

Create scarcity: Offering a limited number of a specific item creates scarcity, and owning something that is scarce is often seen as a status symbol.

Offer a premium: Most companies earn 70 percent or more of their revenue from a small percentage of their clients. Few, though, identify those clients and offer them a title such as “Preferred” or “Diamond Member.”

Offer identity association: Premium brands like Mercedes and Rolex sell status as much as they do luxury. Is it worth it? Depends on who you ask. Status really does open doors, and by associating their brand, and thus their customers, with success and refinement, they offer them status.

The controlling idea of this kind of ending is that the character is rescued by somebody or something else that they needed in order for them to be made complete. In love stories, of course, it’s all about the union of male and female characteristics, but the emotional need this kind of story resolves is much greater. It’s about being made whole by external provision