The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
—Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations
I know a man named Bluegrass Biggs whose life might be even more interesting than his name. Bluegrass grew up dirt poor in rural Oregon and was raised along the banks of the McKenzie River. He spent much of his early childhood living out of a tent and a van. What Bluegrass Biggs’s life has become is something that is completely unpredictable and a testament to the uniqueness, power, and ingenuity of the human spirit—he is the kind of guy that glows.
Today, “Blue” has a PhD in chemical engineering and runs BiggsB, now one of the country’s leading bioscience consultancies. He splits his time between Raleigh, North Carolina, and Nara, Japan. He also owns race cars, sponsors a race team, and has three patents pending for his GPS application called Spotter, which may be the most accurate racing technology in the world. Spotter helps improve safety for race car drivers and helps them improve their track performance. His real-time analytics (on a mounted cell phone) allow a driver to see how they are driving and gaining or losing on any given stretch of track and to make adjustments moment to moment when they hit that same stretch of track on their next loop around.
When it came to BiggsB, however, the benefit for potential clients wasn’t as obvious as Spotter’s benefits for drivers. When I first met Bluegrass, I shared with him the principles of Blocks. He went on to reverse engineer his consultancy and how it presented itself. Most of the leading pharmaceutical and medical device companies that hire BiggsB, no matter the country they are located in, struggle with the morass of regulations that govern their industries and are concerned about whether they are accurately operating by the rule book. One mistake could mean a fortune in fines. But they also do not want to have a consultant come in and disrupt their operations or alter the “vibe” in their workplace.
Because of his upbringing, Bluegrass has a unique sensitivity to understanding how to make something as complicated as regulation a lived-in, easy process. Bluegrass came up with the monolithic Block DEMYSTIFYING REGULATORY COMPLIANCE. The sophisticated bioscience, medical, and pharmaceutical companies that hire Bluegrass are often mystified by the labyrinth of regulatory compliance they are required to observe. That is why Bluegrass’s Block is so powerful to them. After leading with the Block, he then offers an abundance of specific content in terms of how easy and nondisruptive it is to hire BiggsB. He only employs consultants that put clients at ease and never make them feel like they are getting audited by the IRS—which is a common predatory tactic of his competitors. He realizes that his customers don’t want to pay a company that makes them feel uncomfortable. Bluegrass has mastered the arrow and the shaft—the relationship between the radically simple and the more complex information that Blocks carry.
What does this mean for you? Say you were an interior designer. If your client said, “I want a French country home,” you should then use the phrase “French country home” as a Block as you talk to this person in real time. People are emotional about where they want to live, and since your potential client communicated a desire to live in a “French country home,” you know that this idea is emotional. You would then relate all the details in your client pitch to this emotional statement, exhaustively repeating the Block phrase “French country home” throughout any verbal sales or promotional presentation. The Block is the head of the arrow in your message; the rest of the presentation is the shaft—the complex information that backs up your Block. You had better deliver the best French country interior ever or your success will be short lived. The Block phrase should serve as an internal directive or monitor for what you will deliver. When you get this right, not only do you create a comfort level but you are also confirming and grounding yourself in what you need and what is expected. This is not about being Orwellian but rather about listening and being transparent up front, to your potential client and to yourself. In order to stand out, you need to do what you promise—and do it differently or better than others.
People become professionals and create companies to solve problems. Problems are, by nature, emotional. The key is to understand that no matter what you have to do or say, your job is solving a problem for someone, and that’s going to be emotional. Listen to those you are trying to convince. They will hand you the Block that will affect them most on a silver platter. Most of us just aren’t listening.
Don’t shy away from this approach even if it seems reductive or repetitive. Sharing too much information about other specific or technical details will more likely cost you the job, because it will distance your potential client from the emotional reasons behind their actions. If you want to ensure you stand out and connect to your client, constantly repeat and use the term “French country home” as the arrowhead in your messaging, and build all the details about the job to this emotional cue. Your client is also likely to be more relaxed, comfortable, trusting, and much more likely to pay attention to the plans and specs that matter to both of you.
If you used that term in repetition, your client will pay more attention—and will remember your pitch better than your competitors’—because the Block phrase “French country home” is simple, instantly perceivable, and what your client cares about emotionally. Your knowing use of this phrase will change the way your client sees the details, allowing them to remember specifics that they might normally forget. The specific details are now connected to the Block, so when the Block is remembered, so are the details.
Regardless of talent, an inexperienced designer who has the ability to repeatedly use Blocks and create Icons in the minds of clients when pitching the details of a job will likely be more successful than an established designer who does not use Blocks. No matter how eclectic or unusual, no matter how complicated or mundane, if you look for it, every piece of communication has a Block that can make the message distinct and make it stand out. Your information will be better perceived and remembered by your target audience when you use carefully crafted short emotional statements in repetition based on what matters to the person you are communicating to.
This means knowing the perceived personal benefit to your listener and using it as your Block. The Block commands a response because, as discussed, professions and companies exist to solve problems.
Up to this point, we’ve focused on Blocks—the bold and monolithic image, statement, or message that grabs attention in a blink (shout-out to Malcolm Gladwell). But it’s more accurate to think of your full message or product as an arrow, with both a sharply pointed head and a long shaft.
Imagine trying to be an archer, shooting arrow shafts with no arrowheads. You would never be able to hit your target with consistency. On the other hand, imagine trying to launch an arrowhead without having a shaft to fit in your bow. You might as well be skipping rocks across a lake; your aim wouldn’t be true, and the arrow would miss the mark. So if you want your Blocks to work every time and to remain in the minds of others, you must connect the monolithic, simple, bold Block to the intricacy that follows right behind it.
With his Block, like with Wall Drug and their free ice water, BiggsB taps directly into the emotional concern of its clients: the fear of missing something, getting something wrong, or just being overwhelmed by the compliance laws. Bluegrass follows with copy that explains that he has created the world’s most user-friendly, comfortable way to achieve compliance and includes plenty of information about how it works. That one-two punch has created a market where BiggsB is constantly fighting to keep up with overwhelming demand. Using Blocks can and will drive you far past the competition and make you the indispensable choice.
There’s another example from the tech world that perfectly shows how a Block statement—one that addresses the primary concern of the audience—created instant demand. Intel had a new chip called vPro that offered a ton of robust features. The trouble was, it originally promoted its new chip with all its unique capabilities out front, including fifteen different features. Like so many of us, Intel developers were so proud of everything they had accomplished that they wanted to present every bit of it to the world, all at once, with equal volume. They led with the whole forest of their work and no one who needed to care could see the tree that mattered to them. The message about vPro became indistinguishable noise rather than the symphonic harmony they heard as the creators.
Despite Intel’s best efforts, the product was failing to take off. And this was in an increasingly competitive marketplace where new manufacturers were offering similar products to its business-to-business market at lower and lower prices. Intel had to find a way to maintain its price integrity while retaining its market share.
When vPro’s sales teams were asked what the customers actually cared about in the new product, they all agreed that their customers were primarily concerned with just one unique security feature. It was the ability for company laptops in the field to be controlled, monitored, and, if need be, cleared remotely. Naturally, this is a major concern for large corporations with lots of proprietary information. This concept became their Block, the monolithic idea, the singular billboard, that any audience can latch on to and grasp instantly.
Intel pivoted its product message, leading with a Block banner statement and promoting it outright: “LEADING-EDGE SECURITY FOR AN UNWIRED WORKPLACE.”
It turned out that when companies immediately understood vPro as a security product, they wanted it and needed it. Through Intel’s Block product message and brand it narrowed the scope of its offering down to a singular monolith—the one that absolutely mattered most to its desired consumers—and repeated it tirelessly. It did this despite the complexity of everything its new product could do. Its sales teams still promote vPro’s other features and details, but only after they present their Block, up front, bannered across the entirety of their product messaging.
It is the combination of the emotionally relevant message said in an unusually oversized way (the arrowhead) that grabs attention. Remember, customers are on a superhighway looking for your product or service with an endless number of exits. They will get off at the recognizable, bold, oversized exit sign that most corresponds to their needs. Once you understand this, you can race past your competition. And if your competitors do this, too, you better have something more urgently needed than they do to make a road sign out of.
So, whether it is a painting, a photo, a revolutionary idea, a company ethos, or a chip, our success in an overmessaged world starts with the arrowhead, a road sign, the Block. Add repetition of the Block, and we have a foolproof system that all of us can get right every time. Intel repeats this message about vPro anywhere and everywhere it can, at every customer touchpoint—it is why it has been so quickly “Icon’d” into the minds of its customers.
Think of your giant Block arrow as having a disproportionate head that is much, much larger than the shaft—at least the way it is presented up front, visually. Once the arrow strikes and slices through its target, then the shaft becomes just as relevant as the arrowhead (the Block). The shaft causes the arrowhead to fly, cut deep, and stick in the mind.
Leading with simplicity eliminates distraction and cuts through the human resistance to data overload. Complex information attached to a Block causes that information to become readily available in the mind.
What’s essential here is to constantly repeat your Block, alternating that first one to three Blocks with more complex or technical information. In the end, the interspersing of the complex information and the Blocks causes your message to bypass distraction, stick, and then remain in the mind.
In order for Blocks to work, all brochures, advertising, websites, everything you aim at your audience must have massive marquee lettering and imagery so that it can be mentally processed in a glance. This is the access point, the entryway, the road sign and portal to all that you want to communicate. Not using Blocks is like walling up the doors to who you are and what you actually want to say.
Even if you have created the perfect Block to captivate your audience, if you do not say it large enough for them to see, it won’t matter, and it will not cut through.
Advertisers—the professional message makers among us—have been trying to solve the puzzle of consumer fickleness for centuries without really understanding the mechanics involved. This is why we see so many ineffective slogans that don’t really mean anything to us. Ad firms know they need to boil a message down to something that can be perceived instantly, yet they rarely know how to distill it into something we truly care about. They understand the importance of the arrowhead, but underestimate the power of the shaft. Or they craft a message that’s too focused on complex details, leaving out the driving force of the arrow in favor of the weak impact of the shaft. Or they just create a senseless, inauthentic arrowhead for lack of something better. Be authentic, transparent, and direct through Blocks, and you will have a hard time not crafting an effective Icon.
Earlier I said that a Block or Icon is not a slogan. That’s true—but a slogan can sometimes be a Block.
A slogan is a group of words that may or may not get others to care about you, your work, or your company. A Block is an emotional arrowhead that goes straight to the heart of what your potential audience truly cares about. If your slogan does this, then you can call it a Block.
One of the best slogans ever (which also happens to be a Block) was the original FedEx statement from 1978 to 1983: “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”
It was a unique approach because FedEx spelled out exactly the problem it solved for customers, in the most literal way. At the time, it was unusual for a company to describe the end result of its service. The ad campaign was also emotional; before the days of email and the internet, FedEx and only a couple of other services were the only way to send sensitive or original information quickly, and the phrase “absolutely, positively” underscored the urgency customers felt when sending a package overnight. FedEx’s message is a statement of fact, not a tag line.
Today there are plenty of companies that offer similar delivery services, but FedEx has been so effective in Iconing itself that many people still simply tell you to “FedEx” your package when it needs to get somewhere overnight. Markets change and times change, so it also is possible that your Icon may need to change with time. Sending something overnight now has a somewhat diminished importance in our digital world. The key is just to say what you do for your desired audience outright and everywhere, with brazen repetition.
When we see an ad, text message, or email, it’s there for a second and then quickly fades away, like drops of water evaporating in the midday sun. Emotionally resonant Blocks will help your message stick.
Ask yourself: What do you do for your customers? What problem do you solve for them? What result does your product or service achieve? What need does your art fill and what type of person is it going to attract?
Look at your promotional materials: How big and boldly are you stating your audience’s emotional concerns? Is your message loud or prominent, like a banner taking up an entire page? Whatever the medium of your messaging, are you communicating BOLDLY with your central imagery—like Warhol or Van Gogh or the “Red Rubber Ball” guy?