Here we explain how to use priming effectively in marketing.
Let me give you one last example of priming; everybody knows the story of Sleeping Beauty, right? The new transposon vector that can deliver large DNA cargos to vertebrate cells, making it a useful tool for genetic applications?
Normally that one would have stopped you dead in your readings. Why not so now? Because you've been primed to expect the unexpected. In fact, if I gave a line or two about what most people recognize as the Sleeping Beauty story, that would have caused most people to fugue because they'd be waiting for the "punchline".
Often bringing concepts into a discipline from outside a discipline can break the rules of priming completely and get things into deep memory (examples in the earlier posts in this arc) or priming then "reversing" the prime as explained above. Comics know this very well. Punchlines work because they are dramatic releases of the tension built by priming, the send up or lead into of the joke before the punchline.
Priming can be subtle or not so subtle. Anybody notice my numeration method in the top paragraphs in this arc? I use "a" and "2". A subtle priming to expect the unexpected. Some RSS readers will show up this arc as "Can you fit this couch into your memory?", a phrase constructed to be intentionally ambiguous, another prime to invite you to slow down for a second or two and encourage you to take a look.
I've written before about my lack of industry jargon adds to my credibility in An IMedia Reader concurs.... This arc is an example of what it's taken me years to learn; Prime people for what you want them to remember then deliver it. Not at first, but at second (literally). People might not remember the joke or the punchline yet they'll remember what came after it each and every time.
Prime your audience, release the priming tension, then give them the message you want them to remember. You'll brand them every time.
Oh, before I forget, Prince Charming might not have kissed Sleeping Beauty awake if she were on the couch shown in the first post in this arc. It's a Genetix Clone Select Imager.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Links for this post:
- Priming, Sleeping Beauty, and the World's Most Comfortable Couch, Part 1
- Priming, Sleeping Beauty, and the World's Most Comfortable Couch, Part 2
- Priming, Sleeping Beauty, and the World's Most Comfortable Couch, Part 3
I'll be speaking at the San Francisco April '07 Emetrics Summit on Quantifying and Optimizing the Human Side of Online Marketing on May 7, 2007. Come on by and say hello.
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