Bringing out your 'character's edge' for connection, engagement and sales
“Your goodness must have an edge, else it is none” - Emerson
Your ‘backstory’ doesn’t help you grow your business directly.
But, it does help lock in some important things.
It gives us your values, motives, character traits… Things that can be ‘woven in’ to marketing in later stages. So it’s important for the founder to do.
One question I ask in the backstory work is “What are some of your pet peeves?”
I’m trying to figure out what pisses off the character.
What annoys them.
One guy said:
“Maybe it’s when I say something in a certain way that it’s not understood in the way that I meant it…”
Hmm. We’ll need more than that.
He wasn’t able to come up with anything tangible.
His ‘edge’ was vague.
And this, my friends, is the topic of today’s article
Revealing your character’s edge in your marketing.
Behind closed doors, among friends, or with family, we all have a pet peeve or an edge. Things irritate us. Or we avoid certain things. Or, we have weaknesses or flaws or obsessions that we work on.
But in the ‘marketing’ game, we often have negaphobia
‘The fear of bringing out anything that could cause negative emotion.’ Problem is, a completely positive (or neutral) character, business story, or marketing campaign isn’t natural.
It doesn’t resonate.
Stan Lee, who was the creator of Spiderman, talked about this in in an interview. And why Peter Parker was such a relatable character.
“He's become the most famous. He's the one who's most like me - nothing ever turns out 100 percent OK; he's got a lot of problems, and he does nothing wrong, and I can relate to that.”
Basically, he was a normal guy.
He was shy. Or not very social. Whatever. And so readers could suddenly relate to him on a whole new level.
Service businesses are ‘character driven businesses’
So if there are two services, and one provider is more relatable or magnetic, they will attract more clients, and work with them for longer.
We’re all looking to work with (and buy from) people that we can relate to. Or people that we respect and trust.
When you bring out your edge, you highlight your goodness as well. And when you work on this in marketing and deliver, it may - I’m not saying it will - but it certainly can help to - amplify your engagement in social media, and sales in emails.
Fear of the Edge
Why do we avoid the edge? Robert McKee talks about how this plays out in marketing, it’s called ‘negaohobia.’The fear of the negative. And it’s prolific in marketing and branding. Everything is so perfect. But that’s not the way that life is.
So in marketing, or with a business character, when there’s no edge, or it’s too perfect. It pushes us away. Marketers get stuck in this trap because they don’t want to be the ones to bring negative emotion to the brand (or personal brand), but they also see that without it, there’s no polarity or engagement.
There’s a house around the corner from me that won’t sell.
On the sign it says: “Perfectly renovated.” And has some new paint.
Now I’m not saying that’s stopping the sale, but nothing is perfect. It reeks of a cover-up job, and something is hidden.
Contrast that to a photo I saw of a T Bone steak.
“Humanely raised, but occasionally verbally abused”.
It’s a bit tongue in cheek. But that’s it, right? The farmer is looking after these cows, one steps on his foot or something, I don’t know, and he starts swearing at the cow. That’s how it really is. So that’s more trustworthy.
A compelling character doesn’t replace quality service
It amplifies it.
Bringing out your ‘edge’ won’t make your results better with clients.
But it makes you more trustworthy, because you are relatable. It’s not a gush of vulnerability. It’s just the removal of the masks that we tend to wear as business people, that helps you attract more clients and work with them for longer.
The three places we can start to bring out your character ‘edge’ include obstacles, pet peeves, and weaknesses or obsessions.
Step 1 - Obstacles the character faces
Imagine you watch an ad on TV. And it opens up with a scene of a happy family. There’s the parents, and the daughter Jane, and the son Billy. And they’re happy as Larry. Everyone is smiling.
It makes you smile.
Then that fades and it opens to the second scene, which is another even happier family. Wow! super happy. Everything is perfect.
That lasts for a few seconds.
You’re like “OK…” this is a bit weird. but whatever.
Third scene comes on.
Somehow. It’s an even happier family. In disgust, you throw your remote control at the TV, or you turn off Youtube or whatever you’re watching, and you never buy from that brand again.
Why? Because without a negative setup, every positive is cancelled out.
Every positive needs a negative setup
Or else it ain’t a positive. If there’s only positive in the lead up to more positive, it all gets cancelled.
So obstacles of some kind are important. And you can just bring that into your world with emails or whatever.
Obstacles like nearly losing a retail store. Or staff issues. Or whatever it is. Some of the biggest businesses I’ve worked with have gone bankrupt, or gotten down to the last ten dollars in their account, before rebuilding.
And those obstacles make great content today.
Step 2 - Pet peeves, or things you’re against
I was speaking to a business owner yesterday who’s building two websites at once. Not just one, but two at the same time, for two different businesses. And so he’s doing all kinds of writing and photos that he’s putting up.
Anyway he’s snowed under with all this work and he said that the thing that really helped him was to use ChatGPT. To write the copy.
And I don’t know if he knows my view on chat GPT or whatever.
But I think he did. So I told him I could never do that, but it was great for him because it was faster.
But Chat GPT is one of my pet peeves.
All these gurus that come onto the scene saying if you don’t do it, you’re screwed, they’re kind of in the pet peeve basket too.
Now a lot of people disagree with me. And you might disagree with me. And that’s OK. But that’s the point about pet peeves, or things that you’re against. People won’t always agree with you, but they’ll like the fact that you stand for something and that you have your feet firmly planted under you.
Flaws is another way to do it
A book I’m reading right now is all about Leonardo da Vinci.
And there were only a couple of works that da Vinci actually finished. And only a couple of portraits. One portrait that he did as an older man is called the Turin portrait. And he drew himself with this setup of three mirrors. And what he did was he didn’t skip over any wrinkle! He drew himself all weathered. And it’s very deep. Every time you reproduce it, you get a different emotion comet through, because it’s so deep.
And the contrast to that is a portrait that a student did. That’s side on. Profile. But because he was the student, he hid all the flaws, and made da Vinci look great.
Longer, straight nose. Thinner eyebrows. Better hairline. Better beard. But in the end the thing is, nobody really wanted that side profile. Everyone wanted the Turin portrait.
So the flaws are something that we want to bring out as well.
That we’re socially awkward. That we don’t trust crowds or whatever.
Not to dumb ourselves down for marketing or social media, but to remove the ‘perfection’ mask, or buffer, that blocks connection.
Step 3 - obsessions or weaknesses of the character
There was an interview with Sylvester Stallone, that you can find. I think it was zurich film festival. A lot of people don’t realise that he’s one of the few who have directed and acted in so many films.
But anyway, he was talking about compelling characters. And he said you have to be careful, if you make this superhero character, people completely switch off. And you get torched for it, as a director.
“Let me make it simple. When the character becomes stronger than the audience, you lose your audience. The character has to have as many problems as the people in the audience, then they can relate. Like here’s a guy. He’s tough, he’s world champion. But he’s scared. He’s still nervous. And I don’t care who you are, when you sit in front of a crowd, you get nervous. It’s that connection.”
“It’s very important to use the ten or fifteen identifiable things that we have in common: pride, ego, jealousy, false pride, fear, insecurity… That kind of thing is what makes the character absolutely relate to the audience. When I don’t do that, it’s a disaster. And I have done that before.”
And you bring that out, by wrapping it into your world or content, so people can identify with you.
We’re subconsciously looking for it, to connect with you.
It’s like the whole interview thing when you go for a job. The HR department runs the job interviews, and the whole point of them is to find the weaknesses or flaws of the candidates, because in the CV’s, nobody puts in their weaknesses. Then they ask in the interview, and the people say “My weakness is that I work to hard” or something. Which of course misses the point completely.
Summary
A lot of people talk about authenticity. And it seems to have morphed into something where you’re supposed to share internal struggles, or find emotional moments to leverage in your life, to create vulnerability.
And maybe that’s it.
But to me, that can be a never-ending trap. And rather than fixate on the word ‘authentic’ (the root of the word is from authentes "one acting on one's own authority," which has little to do with how it’s often used), we can look at the word ‘natural.’
What are some of the natural ‘edges’ of the character?
Rather than being afraid these may repel people, what happens if you relax and let these out?
A lot of times, you’ll see engagement jump, as people finally have something they can relate to, that shows them you’re a real person.
Something to think about.