This year on Valentine’s Day, when taken out by the flu, I ended up clicking around on the TV and stumbled across the movie Romancing the Stone starring Michael Douglas.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the movie, and likely even watched it. But what you might not know is that the term “romancing the stone” actually comes from the world of advertising. It means taking an ordinary product or service and turning it into something sexy, new, and exciting.
There are a lot of ways this can be done, from hiring celebrities to endorse it (Air Jordans), by the packaging (Tiffany), by the demonstration of the product (think Billy Mays), and/or by weaving a story about how the product was created or discovered (Airborne).
In many cases, it’s a mixing of these factors, like Cindy Crawford’s Meaningful Beauty skincare line that has celebrity (Cindy Crawford) and an interesting backstory. As a supermodel, she traveled to Paris to see a renowned cosmetic specialist, Dr. Jean-Louis Sebagh. After her first treatment of super antioxidants from a rare melon grown in the South of France (mystique), she saw instant, glowing results (demonstration), and together they developed Meaningful Beauty.
Weaving an Interesting Story Helps Your MSP Brand Stand Out
Most MSPs find this to be extremely difficult, given the technical nature of what they do and (more to the point) their lack of creativity in how they position and market themselves. Truth be told, MOST products and services on the market are a commodity. A “stone.” Inherently boring and dull. When you get right down to it, all MSPs are essentially offering the same types of services, with the same tools, hiring from the same pool of talent, and packaging and pricing things very similarly.
Given those facts, there’s not much you can do to really develop a radical, transformative service that is TRULY unique from everyone else. So the ONLY way to stand out IS to “romance the stone” a bit and weave an interesting story about you, your services, your customers.
One of my favorite examples of this is the George Foreman grill. Before the late George Foreman made it the single most popular kitchen appliance in the world, it was only trotted out at Christmas time as a gift to give someone you didn’t really like or as a gift to your college-bound child as a means for making a grilled cheese sandwich in their dorm as well as to dry their socks.
George romanced that stone by turning it into a diet program. He demonstrated how the grill would “knock out the fat” and drain away the grease from meats he was cooking, helping him become a lean, mean, fighting machine. George also transformed himself into a very likeable character on set, using self-deprecating humor about his weight to win people over.
“Romance” Yourself First
So, a couple of points to emphasize.
First, don’t allow yourself to get hung up on trying to be “professional” in your marketing.
What most people say is “professional” marketing is B-O-R-I-N-G (institutional ads, websites, and messaging that looks exactly like everyone else). That’s NOT what you want. Advertising and marketing should stand out and be MEMORABLE. Anti-boring. It should elicit curiosity, build excitement, and tell a story. The reason our “lumpy” or “object” mail works is because it captures a person’s attention. This makes the follow-up marketing more effective.
“Professional” is also code for not bragging. Not sensationalizing. Not selling.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting you LIE. George didn’t lie about the grill removing some of the fat and making the food less caloric, but he did it in a way that was entertaining.
Second, and more to the point, YOU need to be romantically enamored by your own product or service, your company, and your customers.
You can’t expect a product to sell itself based on its features and benefits or its useful nature. It’s not enough anymore. There is so much of everything in the world and so little true scarcity that simply selling features and benefits is inadequate to get the job done.
It’s up to the marketer and the salesperson to get people excited about something they might not already be excited about. That IS the job you’re getting paid to do.
Candidly, most (if not all) of the resistance to this approach stems not from a lack of creativity and salesmanship but from a lack of personal excitement and enthusiasm about the product or service being sold.
It’s easy to get caught up in the mundane job of running your business. It’s ORDINARY to you because you do it every day and have been doing it for so long, it’s no longer new or exciting. You know all of its flaws and see all of its warts. Like a long marriage, it’s easy to slip into the “too familiar” territory and forget why you found it exciting and interesting in the first place, taking it for granted and disrespecting the beauty of it.
This you must figure out. You have to figure out how to have enthusiasm and passion for your service and your work. In addition, you have to remain interested in and curious about your customers and serving them. Finally, you have to figure out how to sustain your passion when all hell is breaking loose and things are going sideways. This is YOUR job. If you can’t be excited about it, you can’t expect your employees and marketplace to be excited either.
In the End, We’re All Just Selling Stones
In my work, I’ve continually been able to reignite my interest and passion by constantly growing and seeking new ideas and strategies that I find fascinating. If you truly take an interest in your work, there’s always another level deeper in the most basic and fundamental things—onboarding a customer, solving a problem, handling a billing issue, and reducing friction and “unwows” in delivery.
I’m also fascinated with great marketing. I can’t read enough about it, see enough examples. No surprise, I never tire talking about it, particularly with peers who have as deep a passion and excitement about it as I do, who can give me fresh perspectives. I also can’t look at a TV commercial or ad without instantly dissecting it, thinking about how I would make it better, how I would position it differently.
If you don’t have that much love and passion for your stone, you’re going to have productivity issues and a really, really hard time selling it to others.
For more marketing advice for your MSP business, see How to Be Seen as a Trusted Authority and Win High-Value Clients.
