Start With Why

frequency, the measurement commonly used by ad agencies to gauge the number of people exposed to the advertising, was very good. There is no doubt that their message was loud. The problem was, it wasn’t clear. It was all WHATs and HOW and no WHY. Even though people learned what the product did, no one knew what BCI believed. The good news is, it’s not a complete loss; the products will sell as long as the ads are on the air and the promotions remain competitive. It’s an effective strategy, but an expensive way to make money.
    What if Martin Luther King had delivered a comprehensive twelve-point plan about achieving civil rights in America, a plan more comprehensive than any other plan for civil rights ever offered? Booming through the speakers that summer’s day in 1963, his message would have been loud. Microphones, like advertising and PR, are fantastic for making sure a message is heard. Like BCI, King’s message would still have reached thousands of people. But his belief would not have been clear.
    Volume is reasonably easy to achieve. All it takes is money or stunts. Money can pay to keep a message front and center. And publicity stunts are good at getting on the news. But neither plants seeds of loyalty. Many reading this may remember that Oprah Winfrey once gave away a free car to every member of her studio audience. It happened several years ago, in 2004, and still people refer to the stunt. But how many can recall the model of car she gave away? That’s the problem. It was Pontiac that donated $7 million worth of cars, 276 of their new G6 model, to be exact. And it was Pontiac that saw the stunt as a way to market their new car. Yet although the stunt worked well to reinforce Oprah’s generous nature, something with which we are all familiar, few remember that Pontiac was a part of the event. Worse, the stunt didn’t do anything to reinforce some purpose, cause or belief that Pontiac represents. We had no idea what Pontiac’s WHY was before the stunt, so it’s hard for the publicity stunt to do much more than, well, be a stunt to get some publicity. With no sense of WHY, there is nothing else it’s doing.
    For a message to have real impact, to affect behavior and seed loyalty, it needs more than publicity. It needs to publicize some higher purpose, cause or belief to which those with similar values and beliefs can relate. Only then can the message create any lasting mass-market success. For a stunt to appeal to the left side of the curve of the Law of Diffusion, WHY the stunt is being performed, beyond the desire to generate press, must be clear. Though there may be short-term benefits without clarity, loud is nothing more than excessive volume. Or in business vernacular: clutter. And companies wonder why differentiation is such a challenge these days. Have you heard the volume coming from some of them?
    In contrast, what would have been the impact of Dr. King’s speech had he not had a microphone and loudspeakers? His vision would have been no less clear. His words would have been no less inspiring. He knew what he believed and he spoke with passion and charisma about that belief. But only the few people with front-row seats would have been inspired by those words. A leader with a cause, whether it be an individual or an organization, must have a megaphone through which to deliver his message. And it must be clear and loud to work. Clarity of purpose, cause or belief is important, but it is equally important that people hear you. For a WHY to have the power to move people it must not only be clear, it must be amplified to reach enough people to tip the scale.
    It’s no coincidence that the three-dimensional Golden Circle is a cone. It is, in practice, a megaphone. An organization effectively becomes the vessel through which a person with a clear purpose, cause or belief can speak to the outside world. But for a megaphone to work, clarity must come first. Without a clear message, what will you amplify?

Say It Only If You Believe It
    Dr. King used his megaphone to rally throngs of people to follow him in pursuit of social justice. The Wright brothers used their megaphone to rally their local community to help them build the technology that could change the world. Thousands of people heard John F. Kennedy’s belief in service and rallied to put a man on the moon in less than a decade. The ability to excite and inspire people to go out of their way to contribute to something bigger than