The Jerry Jeff Walker Theory of Communications
Kathy Keenan
Those of you who are into semi-obscure music may be familiar with the Texas Country Rock artist Jerry Jeff Walker. On his album, “Driftin’ Way of Life,” Jerry Jeff proves himself to be an expert in communications theory by noting that if you want to communicate with someone (a woman in this case), you first have to get their attention. (The actual lyrics are so incredibly un-PC that I can’t bring myself to quote them. I would be shunned by all right-thinking people.)
I don’t agree with Jerry Jeff on the subject of gender relations. But he is right about one thing: you have to get your audience’s attention before you can tell them anything.
Case in point: If you are not in the market for a mattress, mattress ads, mattress stores, articles on how to select mattresses, will all be invisible to you. The instant you decide you need a new mattress, as if by magic the universe becomes filled with information on mattresses. Now that we have your attention, we can sell you a mattress.
As business-to-business communicators, we tend to focus on our company’s positioning, key messaging, competitive strengths and product benefits, which is all fine. But we seldom structure our communications strategy with the deliberate objective of first, just getting someone to notice.
Consumer marketers have operated on the attention-getting theory for a long time. The Olympics of advertising designed to attract attention can be seen during the Superbowl. Every ad vies to be more attention-getting than the last. The ads’ creators know that on Monday, if the water cooler crowd stands around talking about “that ad, you know, the one with the lizards, I don’t remember what the product was...” — they have failed utterly.
Business-to-business marketers don’t have the same luxuries enjoyed by consumer marketers. We can’t appeal to our customers on the basis of the primal needs of food, sex and social acceptance. Somehow, we have to penetrate their consciousness with exciting messages about... disk drives, Hall sensors and network management software.
One of the best ways to get someone’s attention is to surprise them. Say something unexpected. Do something routine in a novel way. Take advantage of that brief interval in the prospect’s mind, when the brain-gerbil gets off its wheel for a moment, to deliver your message.
Let’s imagine for a moment that you have important messages to deliver to your sales force at the annual sales meeting. The salespeople arrive in the morning for the event, grab coffee and a roll off the breakfast buffet, and schmooze with the people they know from the office. So far, you have communicated that it’s business as usual, and they can look forward to a day of executive jaw-exercises.
What if they walked into a three-ring circus instead? Were suddenly surrounded by clowns, stilt-walkers, magicians and calliope music? Now you have their attention. You have signaled to the participants that something is different about this particular meeting. Of course, to be completely effective, you have to deliver on the promise you implicitly made that this day will be different, and the information important and interesting.
Humor is another attention-getting technique. Humor works because people don’t expect it, and because they enjoy being entertained. A laughing prospect is always warmer than a non-laughing prospect. Humor does present certain hazards, because not everyone has a sense of humor (although we all think we do), and one person’s humor is another person’s bad taste.
In many cases, it doesn’t cost any more money to grab attention. It does require creativity, and creativity requires taking risks. It also requires approaching each communications task on its own merits, refusing to apply template solutions to communications challenges.
So all it takes is courage and creativity, and there’s lots of that around. Right?