24 CREATE THE STORY
Nobody has time to listen to a pitch or presentation that
holds no benefit. If you pay close attention to Jobs, you will see
that he doesn’t “sell” products; he sells the dream of a better
future. When Apple launched the iPhone in early 2007, CNBC
reporter Jim Goldman asked Jobs, “Why is the iPhone so impor-
tant to Apple?” Jobs avoided a discussion of shareholder value
or market share; instead, he offered the vision of a better experi-
ence: “I think the iPhone may change the whole phone industry
and give us something that is vastly more powerful in terms of
making phone calls and keeping your contacts. We have the
best iPod we’ve ever made fully integrated into it. And it has
the Internet in your pocket with a real browser, real e-mail, and
the best implementation of Google Maps on the planet. iPhone
brings all this stuff in your pocket, and it’s ten times easier to
use.”^10 Jobs explains the “why” before the “how.”
Your audience doesn’t care about your product. People care
about themselves. According to former Apple employee and
Mac evangelist Guy Kawasaki, “The essence of evangelism is to
passionately show people how you can make history together.
Evangelism has little to do with cash flow, the bottom line, or
co-marketing. It is the purest and most passionate form of sales
because you are selling a dream, not a tangible object.”^11 Sell
dreams, not products.and customers. If the release had started with one thing
that the new CEO planned to do immediately to improve
service, it would have been far more interesting and
newsworthy.For the most part, press releases fail miserably at generat-
ing interest because they don’t answer the one question that
matters most to the reader. Do not make the same mistake in
your presentation, publicity, and marketing material.