[Issue 15] How to Get Attention

The Acropolis approach to attracting eyes to your brand

The Odysseus Files, Issue 15

Build a Castle, Not a Village, Part 8

Building Your Castle Walls

[Note: this is Part 8 of a miniseries within the broader Odysseus Files called “Build a Castle, Not a Village.” These miniseries will group broad topics thematically, helping you connect the dots between them more easily.]

TL;DR - Scroll to the end for the takeaways!?

Welcome back! Hopefully your holidays were less covid-filled than mine (we’re still fighting our way back).?

It’s been a long few weeks, but I’m excited for Q1? - there’s a lot in the works! I won’t give it all away here just yet, except for one thing:?

My book, The Acropolis Model, is on its way!?

The Acropolis Model is the intellectual entrepreneur’s guide to building a business you enjoy that supports a lifestyle you love and a legacy you can be proud of.?

Expect to see it go live sometime in February.?

And, on that note, let’s jump back into today’s topic.?

As a reminder from the last few issues, we’ve started breaking down the individual components of an acropolis to understand how to apply these elements to our brands.?

Issue 13 covered picking a strategic location for your acropolis (brand positioning). Issue 14 talked about the naturally defensible position you choose to build on (your competitive advantage).?

In this issue, we move on to the walls.?

Walls serve two purposes:?

First, they are highly visible. They mark the location of your acropolis from a distance.?

Second, they are defensive. They repel the people you don’t want in.?

This highlights an important principle of building a sustainable brand: you don’t want just anyone coming into your world.?

Even amongst your stated target audience, there will be people who won’t align with your brand’s values, who won’t be good customers, who won’t “get” the value you bring, or who are going to be rubbed the wrong way by how you communicate.?

Don’t try to serve these people. It’s a waste of your time, energy, and even money.?

Instead, get very specific about who you want to help and who you don’t, and let that drive your messaging, content, and the experience you provide.?

So, how can you attract the RIGHT people and repel the WRONG people??

Your walls are your unique point of view you have of the world and the unique mechanism you leverage to deliver value in a way others can’t. This will be an expression of your positioning & competitive advantage described above (much like the walls of a citadel are built to match the contours of the location chosen).?

(As you can see, these components - positioning, competitive advantage, unique POV and mechanism - are very closely aligned. They should fit naturally together, like puzzle pieces, one flowing from the others.)

Let’s break these down a bit more.?

Point of View

What do you believe about your space that goes against how many of your competitors operate??

What controversial opinions do you have that would stir the pot if you shared them??

These shouldn’t be controversial for the sake of creating drama; they should be firmly rooted in your brand identity and values.?

As a part of this, think about who your best customers’ enemies are. In Donald Miller’s Building a Story Brand, he lays out a framework for adapting narrative arcs used in films to how we tell our brand stories. Within the context of the traditional “hero’s journey,” he argues that you, the storyteller, are the guide. The hero of the story is your customer. Your role - much like Gandalf’s role within the Fellowship in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings - is to guide the hero through the perils they will face, obstacles that get in the way, and personal transformation that occurs to allow them to get to their desired end point.?[1]

Within this framework, if you identify what “enemies” you can help your customer “slay,” that customer will bond much more to your brand. (Much like the surrounding people can flee into the acropolis for protection against enemies in a time of danger.)?

These enemies can be internal, such as fear, self-doubt, or addiction, or external, such as the government, a common (toxic) problem within your industry that results in people being taken advantage of and not getting the results they need, etcetera.?

Once you’ve identified some enemies, you now have a reliable source of content to draw on - highlighting these enemies, uncovering just how insidious and dangerous they are, and helping your customers discover how to defeat them.?

(If these enemies are real, and truly felt by your customers, you should expect them to fight back, by the way. Expect criticism, pissed off complaints, and more from whichever people fall into the camp of your customer’s enemies; these people won’t like you sacrificing their sacred cows.)?

Unique Mechanism

Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt once said “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”?[2]

Regardless of what you’re selling, your customers are looking for a transformation. In the Harvard Business School article citing the above quotation, the authors argue that every product or service is being hired by a customer to do a job. That job may be very pragmatic - such as drilling a hole - or one that is more intangible, like helping a reader escape to another world through a piece of fiction.?

There are, of course, many ways to deliver a transformation. In order for people to choose the transformation you offer, they need to see that you deliver it in a way that stands out from everyone else.?

And not just that it stands out for the sake of standing out - it needs to be different in such a way that people considering your brand can believe that it offers a faster, cheaper, better, or more reliable way of getting their desired transformation.?

This happens through your unique mechanism: a framework you develop to uniquely solve your customers’ problems.?

You uncover your unique mechanism by thinking through all of the above: your positioning and brand identity, your competitive advantage, and your unique point of view. Use these as you map out your customer’s beginning and ending points of the transformation you promise them.?

Focus on how you help them get from Point A to Point B, within the context of all of these pieces we’ve discussed so far.?

If you sell a physical product, maybe it’s a feature rooted in a different way of tackling the issue it's meant to solve. Or it could be an intriguing origin story.?

If you create content, maybe it’s a framework used to convey an idea in a different way that helps someone grasp the concept for the first time. (For example, Olly Richards’ StoryLearning method approaches language learning from the perspective of storytelling instead of grammar rules, which helps customers learn languages far faster and easier.)?

If you provide a? service, it could be part of your own story or philosophy in how you approach your work, or a way that you conduct your work that is clearly differentiated from how others in your industry do.????

Takeaways

These past three components of your castle brand - brand positioning, competitive advantage, and the unique point of view or mechanism you lead with - are all closely intertwined. They support each other in an integrally connected way.?

Because your unique POV or mechanism is the most visible part of your brand to outsiders, it’s how your positioning and competitive advantage get communicated. Built correctly, the right people can see your walls on the horizon, the first step in your brand becoming their destination.?

Incidentally, starting with your unique POV or mechanism means a unified message throughout the rest of your marketing. This simplifies everything else you do: instead of reinventing the wheel or starting from scratch every time you go to create a piece of marketing (whether content, advertising, design, or anything else), you know it has to be anchored in this core message.?

Build your walls correctly, and you’ll attract your best customers, repel those you shouldn’t be serving, and form a protective cover around everything else you create in your world.?

[1]?Donald Miller, Building a Story Brand, 2017.

[2] Quoted in Clayton Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall, “What Customers Want From Your Products,” Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 2006.?