Killing the Tiger

You know this story; you’ve heard it a thousand times before.

It’s a story that our ancestors told around the fire, at festivals, and in the village square thousands of years ago.

Imagine for a minute that you are one of those ancestors. You are a 14-year-old boy who is the newest and smallest man in the village. News has just reached your people, confirming that the rumors are true – there is a predatory tiger pillaging your village’s herd of goats.

You’re angry. You know that drought has burned up most of the productive land in your area, and the only thing standing between your family and starvation is those goats.

But you’re also terrified. There’s only one way to get rid of a killer tiger. The village must organize a hunt, find the tiger, and kill it. A simple enough idea but a daunting proposition because you know there’s nothing more dangerous than a killer tiger.?

The chief sends word around to the whole village.?All men meet in the village square, and bring your spear.

When the messenger comes to your hut, he frowns and shakes his head. He thinks you’re too young to go.

In your heart, you are afraid that maybe he’s right. You only JUST became a man. You’re small – even for your age. You’re too skinny and weak.

But something even deeper tells you he’s wrong.

If the village doesn’t kill the tiger, it will ravage every one of your goats, and the entire village will die.

To save your people, you and every man in your tribe must work together to kill the tiger.

You are painfully aware of the fact that you might not come back alive. Gathered in the village square, you’ve heard the village storyteller recount the Tale of the Tiger thousands of times.

You know that all the men with spears will fan out to make a circle around the tiger. You know that the chief will call you forward step by step until you have it completely trapped. You know the tiger will snarl; you can almost hear it now. You know the menacing look he’ll have in his eye as he studies his adversaries. You know that he’ll find you – the weakest man in the group – and attack you. You know that sometimes the man kills the tiger, but more often, the tiger kills the man.

You pick up your spear and head to the village square. The chief smiles when he sees you and tells you to have courage. You and all the men set out to find the tiger. It isn’t long before you hear the telltale bleats of a baby goat being dragged into the jungle. You also hear the roar of the tiger.????

Every man knows what he has to do. The Tale of the Tiger is seared on your minds. You surround the tiger and begin moving closer.

As the chief calls you forward, you catch the first look at the tiger from 50 paces away. Realizing he’s trapped, the tiger lets loose a roar so loud you can feel your belly shake. He measures his enemies one by one as he looks around the circle until his eyes lock on you.

Your knees begin to shake. It’s exactly like you imagined it every time you’ve heard the Tale of the Tiger – only worse. Again, the chief commands everyone forward.

Now he’s 30 paces away, and his eyes haven’t moved off you. The weakest and smallest man in the village.

Like the storyteller told you it would be. You feel the fate of the village resting on your thin shoulders. The chief calls everyone forward ten more paces. The tiger screams a terrible scream and begins racing straight at you. Just like you knew he would.

In the final moments before he reaches you, you relive the thoughts of the hero recounted by your village storyteller.

You must face the tiger. If you turn and run, you will die, and so will the village. Kill or be killed. Wait until the last possible moment before you throw. Then kill the tiger, even if he also kills you. Face the tiger.

Your legs want to run, but your heart and mind pull them back to their place to face the danger. You draw back your arm, clutching your spear in a sweaty grip.

The tiger lunges forward and leaps in the air. His roar is like thunder. He reaches the peak of his flight and begins to descend on top of you. You wait until the last possible moment and throw the spear with all your might.

The tiger crashes into you, knocking you unconscious. Just before the world goes dark, you think to yourself, “I have done this before. I have done this a thousand times before.”

When you awake, your whole body aches, and your head throbs. It is dark, but the village is alive with the joy of drumming and shouts of joy by the fire. The tiger is dead, and you saved your people.

The chief sees you awake and calls the entire village to your side. As congratulatory greetings descend upon you, the chief calls for silence. The storyteller tells the Tale of the Tiger, and you’re the hero. You feel like you’re living it all again, but it isn’t the second time you’ve lived the tale – it’s the thousandth.

Storytelling: How Great Marketing Helps You Kill The Tiger

Most of us think of marketing and storytelling as a polish - that last coat of paint you literally or figuratively put on "the real product" in order to trick people into buying it.

That lie you tell. Or, more nicely put, that point of differentiation you exaggerate to meet the customer's spec. Marketing is the last-second squeeze you make to get them to do business with you over your competition.

Its market share, its competitive landscaping, its reach, and its frequency.

Marketing to most people is the space between that emotional high you feel driving off the lot in your new, used car and the stunning realization that you got conned when it breaks down on the side of the interstate less than a week later.

"Shoot, I fell for their marketing."

It's a sign of gullibility, a rouse not to let yourself get pulled into. Marketing is the evil trick we allow to perpetuate throughout society - just as long as we're the ones doing the collecting and not the ones being collected from.

In tech, it's gotten so bad that one of the worst things an engineer can say about another company is that "they just have good marketing."

Because it's all lies, right?

Really, at the end of the day, Steve Jobs and Apple really just made a better mp3 player, Airbnb just sells an old version of hospitality in modern packaging, and no one at Whole Foods actually believes that their food is any better than the supermarket down the street. Do they?

We believe it's the wink and nod inside every company. The semantic gymnastics we do to get people to buy our stuff. The story is just that - it's a nice story that other people can believe, but it's beneath us.

After all, this isn't personal, it's just business. And maybe that's why we hate thinking about the marketing we do.

Because we know that story is so much more than our cynical interpretations, deep down we all know that a story is what you tell your tribe to prepare them for the day the tiger attacks. It is the conditioning element that runs through every person you seek to inspire and encourage to action, from your employees to your target market.

But when we’re facing a down quarter and we can feel the investors losing confidence in us – in our idea, it’s a whole lot more convenient to run the guy next door’s script. There’s a lot less required. At least that way, you're not really on the hook for the outcome.

Because it's a lot easier to answer the question, "what do you do?" Then the more difficult "why do you do it?" It’s a lot simpler to fight for existing demand instead of creating your own.

The not-so-secret behind our disdain for storytelling is that in a world of 24-hour cynicism disguised as media, we don't really believe in anything anymore. It's all been debunked. All of this marketing work is just glamor to put a nice shine on the fact that you just want to get your hands on as much of your customer’s money as possible.

"Everyone" knows this, and as usual, "everyone" is wrong.

It's why a majority of companies waste their entire marketing budgets and why 82% of digital marketing spending goes up in flames the second it's purchased. Because the story behind your ad copy is, at best vapid and, in most cases, a flat-out lie.

Because running the script and underdelivering on the promise isn't honest. It doesn't differentiate you to make bold claims and come up short. It differentiates you when you give your customer the courage to face their tiger and win. Your story is only as true as you make it, and it’s only interesting when the danger is palpable.

Start telling stories that matter, start giving your tribe something to believe in, start helping us kill the tiger.

Make something different. Make people care. Make fans, not followers.

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