Hanging the Story

tl;dr: without clarity about the worldview of an audience, the chances of a story being persuasive fall dramatically.

One of my favorite books on marketing is Seth Godin’s “All Marketers are Liars.”

The title is deliberately provocative, designed to force us to think differently about the role of marketers and marketing.

Godin’s point is not that marketers are actually liars. His point is that EVERYONE is a liar.

We lie to ourselves about what is good for us or why we’ve made one decision versus another so that we can have internal harmony with the direction of our lives.

You’ve done it. So I have. Self-justification is another word for it.

His point, however, is that if you have a product or service you genuinely believe in, the most important thing to figure out is: which story do I tell people so that they can then lie to themselves, if they want to, about why it makes sense for them?

The answer lies in understanding the roles of frames and worldviews.

Figuring out the Frame

Early on in the book, Godin defines a frame as:

“elements of a story painted to leverage the worldview a consumer already has……A frame, in other words, is a way you hang a story on to a consumer’s existing worldview.”

Telling the actual story is not easy, but it’s not impossible.

There are thousands of books on storytelling (5 of them are in this post) and plenty of great other resources, like Matthew and Bernadette.

It’s something most people can become proficient at, with enough practice.

What’s challenging to figure out is the frame because frames are, according to Godin, a function of worldview.

“Worldview is the term I use to refer to the rules, values, beliefs, and biases that an individual consumer brings to the situation.

If Jason got completely screwed the last time he bought a car from a used-car salesman, the worldview he has when visiting a dealership four years later is a little different that that of someone who is buying her third car in four years from the same place.”

To get the worldview, and thus the frame, it takes the discipline to shut up and listen.

That’s where I (and many traditional marketing and sales people) struggle, since we’re so eager and excited.

But questions like:

• Where is this person coming from?
• What are the things that are important to this person?
• What are the experiences they’ve had that inform the way they think?
• What’s the context in which the person is operating?

are the way we uncover opportunities for framing.

Framing Crypto

For nearly 5 years now, I’ve been thinking about how to frame the story of crypto.

And I’m not alone. There’s no dearth of information available for people to educate themselves.

Sites like 99 Bitcoins, Jameson Lopp’s world class repository of Bitcoin information, or JW Weatherman’s 10 Hours of Bitcoin, among many, many others seek to tell stories about the potential of Bitcoin and why it matters.

All of these are worthwhile efforts to tell stories.

Still, I’ve struggled with it for a while, for a few reasons. Most Americans/westerners:

• have a difficult time getting their heads around significant inflation (unless they are older)
• are convinced that “money” can only come from the government
• haven’t had to flee a country, had their assets stolen/seized, or been censored by the government
• aren’t sending a lot of value across national borders, so PayPal or Venmo does the job.
• are not tech early adopters

So, the challenge is to figure out an existing worldview that does align with the unique value proposition of crypto for those that are ready.

More and more are changing their worldview on a daily basis, particularly since coronavirus arrival (see WFH and “where is all the money coming from?”)

Those are the ones to frame a story for now. For the rest, it’s about being patient, giving time for the worldview to come around.

But, when they do, the frame will be different than for those who arrived last week and yesterday.

What’s the worldview?

What’s the frame?