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COMPLETELY REVISED AND UPDATED EDITION!

It’s not what people hear. It’s what they repeat!

The #1 communication secret is here in

The Micro-Script Rules

How to tell your story (and differentiate your brand)
in a sentence…or less.
Survival of the simplest! That’s the bottom line for branders, political candidates,
teachers, advertisers—anyone who communicates in today’s world. Because
with 500 billion messages going by per second, we can’t win by delivering
more data. Our brains crave less. They want help to make snap judgments on
the least info. They want us to package it for them—in very special, short sets
of words called Micro-Scripts. That’s why:
• A new product seizes 50% of the market in 2 years using 7 perfect words.
• A lawyer won the murder trial of the century with 8 simple words.
• Ernest Hemingway thought his greatest story ever was 6 words long.
• The fate of millions was changed by a war, based on a 2 word policy.
• A presidential election turned on a 4 word phrase.
Imagine what magic words like these can do for your brand, your career, your
website or your business plan. They’ve been used by great communicators for
1,000 years. Now they’re yours in this smart and entertaining book.
Advance Praise…
“The Micro-Script Rules is dead on—it’s how to verbalize your point of differ-
ence—the most important point of all.”
—JACK TROUT, co-author of the legendary Positioning: the battle for your mind
“The Micro-Script Rules should be required reading for every candidate and cam-
paign consultant.”
—JIM KITCHENS, PH. D., President of the Kitchens Group
“WOW, one of the most important books you will read in your lifetime!”
JASON JENNINGS, bestselling author, Think BIG-Act Small
“Too many CEO’s forget it’s their job to differentiate their company. Micro-
Scripts make the difference clear, repeatable and unforgettable.”
—GRAHAM WESTON, co founder and ex-Chairman of Rackspace NYSE:RAX
“This is simply the best marketing book I’ve
read in the past 30 years.”
—M. MARTIN MORAWSKI, Managing Account
Director, Ted Bates Advertising, NY

www.brandteamsix.com
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Advance Praise for The Micro-Script Rules…

“Bill Schley’s insights and examples are invaluable to anyone selling

a political candidate or a new tax law, an established brand or a new
product.”
—DAN GOODGAME, Former TIME M agazine
Washington B ureau chief communications consultant

“The Micro-Script Rules is dead on—it’s how to verbalize a point of

difference. And without one, you better have a low price.”
—JACK TROUT, co -author of the legendary
Positioning: The Battle for Your M ind

“The missing ingredient in most marketing is memorability. Bill Schley

has developed a list of Micro-Script rules that solve that problem.
Well-organized and well-written.”
—AL RIES, co -author of the legendary Positioning:
The Battle for Your M ind and War in the B oardroom

“Wow, one of the most important books you will read in your lifetime!”
—JASON JENNINGS, bestselling author , L ess I s M ore ,
Think BIG, Act Small and H it the Ground Running

“The Micro-Script Rules should be required reading for every candidate

and campaign consultant. Political candidates and pundits talk about
the importance of a campaign message, but rarely understand what
that means. Bill Schley’s work is the simple explanation.”
—JIM KITCHENS, PH. D., P resident of The K itchens G roup

“This is simply the best marketing book in the last 30 years.”

—M. MARTIN MORAWSKI, M anaging Account
E xcutive , Ted Bates Worldwide A dvertising , New York

“In today’s always-on, YouTube and Twitter-centric world, anybody

can dominate a market with a few well-placed words. Especially you.
So what are you waiting for?”
—DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT, bestselling author
ofThe New Rules of M arketing & P r and co -author
of M arketing L essons from the G rateful D ead
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“This groundbreaking book spells out the power of Micro-Scripts

and enables readers to create and utilize them in any situation that
calls for persuasive communication.”
—KEN LLOYD, PH.D., B estselling C o -author
(with D r . D onald Moine), Unlimited Selling Power

“Google indexes more than 1.5 Trillion URLs. 300 billion messages
bombard us—per second. It’s a global pandemic of message madness.
Most are loaded with self-serving corporate gobbledygook that delivers
zero value. Too much info. Too many words.

“Bill Schley’s The Micro-Script Rules shows you how to put meaning
into your message and get it past the madness. A great philosopher
said, ‘A child of five could understand this—quick, someone fetch
a child of five.’—Groucho Marx. The Micro-Script Rules—quick,
fetch it.”
—STEVE KAYSER, E ditor , C incom E xpert Access ,
the online business magazine

“Bill Schley’s The Micro-Script Rules is the best book I’ve read on
how to boil down a complex message into a few memorable words
that an audience would remember and want to spread.”
—MARK LEVY, Founder of L evy I nnovation,
Author of Accidental Genius

“If positioning is the battle for your mind, Micro-Scripts are the
weapons that win the battle for your brand. Bill Schley has made it
possible for any business to create a word-of-mouth message. Read
this book, and you will have your customers happily repeating your
Dominant Selling Idea.”
—JAY EHRET, CEO and Founder , www.The M arketing S pot. com

“I find myself recommending Micro-Scripts to people in so many

different fields: teachers, entrepreneurs, lawyers. Why? Because this
is how the brain works. Through this witty, creative little treasure,
Bill has captured the essence of how we think.”
—DONNA M. VOLPITTA, E D.D.
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“It’s not what people hear,

it’s what they repeat!”

The Micro-Script Rules

How to tell your story (and differentiate
your brand) in a sentence…or less.

Completely Revised and Updated

2nd Edition

Bill Schley

NW
WIDENER
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To Annie
Still the original masterpiece
and
Leonard L. Schley
Who started it all
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WidenerBooks

© 2018 Bill Schley

All rights reserved

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This publication is designed to provide accurate and authorita-

tive information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding
that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting or other professional
services. Any brand names or individual names are used in an editorial fashion. If
you require legal advice or other expert assistance, you should seek the services of a
competent professional.

First Published in 2010 by N.W. Widener, Inc., New York

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication

Schley, Bill.
The micro-script rules : How to tell your story
   (and differentiate your brand) in a sentence…or less.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
978-1-7327488-0-4 Softcover
978-1-7327488-1-1 Hardcover
978-1-7327488-2-8 eBook
[etc.]
Branding (Marketing) 2. Communication.
I. Title.

HF5415.1255.S35 2010 658.8'27

QBI10-600104

Printed in the United States of America • Designed by Paul Lussier

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or other-
wise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above
publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the
Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and
punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not
participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support
of the author’s rights is appreciated.
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Contents
Part I. The Story, The Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Introduction. “Six Words Are What Change the World.” . . . 3
mm The Universal Theory of Everything . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Chapter 1. Of Your Brain, by Your Brain, for Your Brain . . . . 9

mm Heuristics—Our Rules of Thumb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
mm The Lawyer Got It Right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
mm Ever Caught a Ball? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
mm This is Brain-Speak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
mm Rules of Thumb for GOD and the Great
Communicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Chapter 2. The 4½ Big Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

mm Big Rule 1: It’s Not What People Hear, It’s What
They Repeat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
mm Big Rule 2: Every Screen Is “A Word of Mouth
Machine.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
OO The Word of Mouth Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

mm Big Rule 3: Story: It isn’t everything. It’s the only thing. . . 20

mm Big Rule 4: Give ’Em a Micro-Script. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
mm A Very Important Word on Metaphors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
mm Rule 4½: Our Last Biggie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
mm Big Rule 4½: If You Want a Brand That Sells, Build Y
our Micro-Script on a Dominant Selling Idea. . . . . . . . . . . 25
mm Your “Positioning” and Your “Dominant Selling Idea”
Are One and the Same. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

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The Micro-Script Rules

mm If You Only Remember One Thing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Chapter 3. Now Wait One Darn Minute! . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

mm Bonus Question: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
OO Short Recap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Chapter 4. Branding: Why Micro-Scripts Are Your

Ultimate Branding Machine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
mm The Real Definition of Branding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
mm A Good Name and DSI Trigger the Larger Brand
Story: The Story Only You Can Tell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
mm Mini-Case Histories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
mm “They Call It a Journey” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
mm “Pork Is the Other White Meat” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
mm “Enterprise Picks You Up” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
mm But It’s Not Just for Giant Companies—Little Guys
Do Branding Even Better! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
mm An ATM in Every Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
mm McMenamy’s Fish Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
mm How to Brand Like a Micro-Script Master . . . . . . . . . . . 48
mm Micro-Scripts for Salespeople . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
mm The Salesperson’s Greatest Advantage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
mm Words of Wisdom for the Micro-Script Brander . . . . . . . 53
OO 1. The Brand Is Not What’s in Your Head—It’s

What’s in Their Heads. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

OO 2. Better Product Performance Is the Best Brand

Investment You Can Make. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

mm Pop Quiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Chapter 5. Politics: Use Micro-Scripts or Die. . . . . . . . . . . 57

mm Crooked Hillary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
mm So, Trump Kept Having Himself a Micro-Script Buffet . . 60
mm Trump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
mm Clinton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

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Contents

OO Carthage Must Be Destroyed! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

mm More Great Moments from the Hall of Fame . . . . . . . . . . 62
mm Everything Was Great Until “He Furloughed
the Murderer” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
mm We Can’t Go Without Mentioning…The Flip-flopper . . . 64
mm People Think Obama Was a Great Orator.
He Was Not. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
mm Stop The Presses—This Just In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
mm The History Changers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
mm Defending Against Evil Forces: What to Do When
Micro-Scripts Are Used Against You. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Chapter 6. Naming: How to Make Names That Have

Superpowers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
mm The Stupid Hall of Fame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
mm The I.N.I.T.I.A.L. Jockeys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
mm IBM, GE, and FedEx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
mm Great Name Ingredients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
mm When You’re Not Able to Use a Descriptive Name . . . . . 80
mm Coined or Made-up Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
mm When You Start With A Given—Like a Family Name . . . 81
mm The Naming Tour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
mm Take Movies and TV Shows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
mm When and When Not to Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
mm Last but Not Least—Beware the “Richard Dick” Trap . . . 84

Part II. How to Make Your Own

Micro-Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Chapter 7. Basic Anatomy: How They’re Put Together,
So You Can Be a Micro-Script Expert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
mm Learning by Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
mm Classic Clichés . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

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The Micro-Script Rules

mm Template 1. The A/B Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

mm A Is B: The Single, Big Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
mm Template 2. The Stark Reminder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
mm Template 3. Unique Wordplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
mm Template 4. The Whole Micro-Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
mm Combinations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
mm Key Ingredients: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
OO 1. Word Patterns, Rhythms, and Rhymes . . . . . . . . . . 96

OO 2. Vivid, Colorful Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

OO 3. Simple Metaphors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

mm Finally—There’s a DSI in Every Successful Brand . . . . . . 99

mm Let’s Sum It Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
mm Social Micro-Scripts—Modern Lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
mm Marketing, Selling, and Branding Micro-Scripts . . . . . . 101
mm Micro-Scripts for Teaching and Instruction of
Modern Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
mm Take Landing a Jet… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
mm Or take sailing on a windy day. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
mm Remember What Micro-Scripts Are Made Of . . . . . . . . 105

Chapter 8. Your Dominant Selling Idea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

mm How Many Hearts Do You Have? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
mm Dominant Selling Idea 101 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
OO The One Item of Carry-On Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

mm Everyone Goes for the Top Draft Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

mm The Five Ingredients of Your DSI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
mm 7 Rules of Thumb That Guide DSIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112
OO 1. The Number One is Holy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

OO 2. Test for Five Ingredients in Your DSI. . . . . . . . . . . 112

OO 3. The Positioning Paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

OO 4. Simple Always Wins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

OO 5. Specific Is Terrific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

OO 6. The 3 Rs: Repeat, Repeat, Repeat . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

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Contents

OO 7. Other People’s Heads Are All That Counts . . . . . . . 114

mm After Your DSI, You Can Have All the Supporting
Features You Want . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
mm Seeing the DSIs All Around Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
OO The Smartest Marketers Are Doing It Still . . . . . . . . . . 117

mm And Don’t Forget to Spot the DSIs in Names . . . . . . . . 118

mm Sometimes the DSI Comes From the Performance
Alone—No Words Needed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
mm A DSI in Every Product . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
mm The 6 Steps to Position Your Brand: What
Micro-Scripts Have Taught Us. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
mm Positioning Puts You in a Category of One. . . . . . . . . . . 122
mm Politicians Have Used This Tactic Forever . . . . . . . . . . . 125
mm One Last Tip on Positioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
mm Pop Quiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
mm Remember these Rules About DSIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Chapter 9. More Practical Tips for Making Your Own

Micro-Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
mm Make it About Something Specific: Something You
Can See or Touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
mm We Start at Square Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
OO Here’s the Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

mm Step 1. Hypothesize—Pose Simple Questions . . . . . . . . 133

mm Who Should You Talk To? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
mm Master Aligning Questions (MAQs). What to Ask . . . . 134
mm Some Real-World Examples of Golden-Nugget
Mining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
mm You Don’t Have to Make Anything Up! Borrow
the Proven from the Already Great. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
mm My Arc’Teryx Jacket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
mm Summary of Tips on How to Mine the Masters . . . . . . . 142

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The Micro-Script Rules

mm Step 2. Memorialize—Jot Down a One-Page

Brand Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
mm “The Best Headline’s Always in the Copy” . . . . . . . . . . 143
mm Another One… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
mm 3. Synthesize—Mine Your Brand Story for Those
Micro-Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
mm Some Real Brand Stories and Their Micro-Scripts . . . . 147
OO Brand Story for the MV-1: The World’s First Car

for People in Wheelchairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

OO The World’s First Car for People in Wheelchairs . . . . 147

OO The First Car Built Especially for People with

Disabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
mm The Brand Story for MapleMama: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
mm MapleMama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
mm 4. Revise: Keep Listening and Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
OO Make Listening a Core Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

mm The Term “Micro-Scripts” Was Proof Itself . . . . . . . . . . 154

mm Your Go-to-Market Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
OO Remember the Micro-Script-Making Process . . . . . . 155

Chapter 10. Micro-Messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

mm Every Key Communication Needs to Go Micro . . . . . . . 157
mm Start With Your “Micro-Pitch”: An Elevator Pitch
That Works in About a Floor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
mm The 59-Word Micro-Pitch for the MV-1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
mm The One-Line Micro-Pitch: Going All the Way! . . . . . . 160
mm The “Name/Tag Combo” Solution for Your
One-Line Pitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
mm Shocking True Fact! “Testimonials” Are Dead.
Unless You Shorten Them to Micro-Scripts. . . . . . . . . . 161
mm Mission and Vision Statements in Micro . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
mm Twitter, Too . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

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Contents

mm Same for Your Google Results Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

mm Remember the Rules for Communicating Everything . . . 168

Chapter 11. Survival of the Simplest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

mm A Few Concluding Thoughts and Themes . . . . . . . . . . . 170
mm Be a Crusader for True Content… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
mm Remember That Micro-Messaging Is for Everyone… . . . 172
mm Because the Brain Always Gets Its Way… . . . . . . . . . . . 172
mm The Reason to Jump Out of a Perfectly Good
Airplane… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

Preface from the First Edition: The Secret Email . . . . . . . 187

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Part I

The Story,
The Rules
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Introduction

“Six Words Are What

Change the World.”
 
If glove doesn’t fit, you acquit.
Just a simple rhyming couplet. Yet it vaporized the state’s
entire nine-month case vs. O.J. Simpson in the trial of
the century. It was all the jury remembered—and what
we remember still. It was more than a sound bite.
It was magic.

Not long ago I was talking with a famous journalist and

ex-big-city newspaper editor. He said with a trace of disdain,
“You ad guys—you can spend a whole week writing a six-word
tagline, can’t you.” And I replied, “Yeah, Ted, we can. Because
‘six words’ are what change the world.”
I said it with confidence.

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The Micro-Script Rules

Because in the few years since The Micro-Script Rules was

first published, we’ve seen it proven everywhere from branding
to politics to journalism to teaching just about anything:
• The right “6 words” will always beat 6,000
and
• Story matters more than ever—but you have to be
able to tell it in a sentence, or less.

What we’re talking about is the power of a tiny yet magi-

cal kind of sentence or phrase—about 2 to 10 words max—
made the way we’ll show you in this book. Something called
a Micro-Script.
Micro-Scripts are what people love to remember and repeat,
word-for-word, to persuade others, share an idea, know what to
do in an emergency, or teach the lessons of life (Where there’s
smoke, there’s fire. Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. Size doesn’t
matter).
We originally coined the term to explain to our clients why
the greatest advertising taglines stick around for decades, while
others are forgotten in minutes (The Ultimate Driving Machine.
A Diamond is Forever).
But we began to see these little bits of wordplay everywhere!
Politicians were using them to win Presidential elections (He’s a
flip-flopper! She’s crooked Hillary); history was defined with them
(A day that will live in infamy. The Cold War); leaders launched
their vision with them (I have a dream today!)—even the Navy
seal s train with them (Slow is smooth and smooth is fast). It

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Introduction

looked like these little Micro-Scripts might be the holy grail

for any great communication.
So, we published the first edition of The Micro-Script Rules,
and we thought we were done.
But the idea of Micro-Scripts took on a life of its own.
Everyone had a Micro-Script story to tell us, little gems we
wished we’d put in the original book like:
5 Hour Energy.
There are riches in niches.
To go fast, go alone. To go far, go together.
A brand is just an idea attached to a name.

But none more important than:

Technology changes every day, but humanity never does!

And when we looked back at our marketing heroes, we

saw them there, too.
Here’s how Rosser Reeves, the greatest ad man of all time,*
talked about the power of a few short words vs. many. He was
talking about Micro-Scripts:
“It will always be true: People have lived for words. They
have died for words. Wars have been started, and cities have
fallen for words. Say four blunt words and a person will punch
you in the face, or burst into tears and kiss you. A single sentence
can make him your enemy or your friend.”

* Rosser Reeves was in fact the real Don Draper from TV’s Mad Men, according
to an associate who knows the show’s creator. Rosser was Chairman of Ted Bates
Advertising, NY in the 1960s.

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The Micro-Script Rules

Rosser wrote the tagline: “Melts in your mouth, not in your

hand” for M&Ms and hundreds of others. His ad agency, Ted
Bates, New York, sold more products than any other agency
in history.
And if you still question the power of a few short words to
change the world, Rosser offered some like these:

ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL. GIVE ME LIBERTY OR

GIVE ME DEATH. WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE—
YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS!
I HAVE A DREAM TODAY. WOMEN WANT EQUAL PAY
FOR EQUAL WORK. DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU’D HAVE
OTHERS DO UNTO YOU. OUR FATHER WHO ART IN
HEAVEN, HALLOWED BE THY NAME.

Since our first edition in 2010, we’ve branded an $8 billion

global company and dozens of others, watched Donald Trump
win against the odds, and seen time and again how Micro-Script
thinking applies to areas of life and business we’d never imagined.
In fact, Micro-Scripts show us the real truth about making things
“simple,” a concept we gave the restrained, yet humble name…

The Universal Theory of Everything

What Micro-Scripts do is to point us at the heart of the
matter—what a great Israeli special forces commander simply
called “the center”—the center of a problem, the center of an
opportunity, the center of an issue or reality itself. It’s the one
thing that’s most important in any problem or situation you’ll
ever be in. That’s why Micro-Scripts have so much power.

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Introduction

At the center is truth. The truth is simple. By learning how

to shrink complex ideas down to Micro-Scripts, we’re learning
to find the center and stay there. And that’s really important
because your ability to make things simple will give you a huge
advantage no matter what you want to do in life.
Seeing the center is your “ah-ha!” moment. Keeping it
simple is how you make others understand it and want to act
on it. In the process, these fundamentals will be re-affirmed
time after time:
a) There’s only one center.
b) It is always simple or it’s not the center.
c) The center aligns everything that comes after it.
d) It is energizing and exciting for anyone who finds it.
e) Revealing it to others is the key to all leadership.
f) You must be able to say it in a few short words.
g) You find it by repeatedly asking the simplest of
questions, again and again.
h) No new technology or device changes these rules.

You learn with these, you teach with these, you keep yourself
on course with these. You fly a plane, sail a boat, or write a
book with these. And especially, for readers of this book, you
brand a product, differentiate a business, and win an election
with these.

This is the Universal Theory of Everything.

We were in Israel a while back researching a book on the

secrets of Entrepreneurship. As we kept peeling back the onion

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The Micro-Script Rules

in interviews that went from great entrepreneurs to Navy

seal s, we suddenly saw it was exactly what we did every day
when we were creating new brands or nailing a strategy: We
were asking a small set of questions to get to the center of the
problem, and, when it was simple enough, we could talk about
it in Micro-Scripts. The book was called The UnStoppables and
ended up on the New York Times bestseller list.
Micro-Scripts are basically the Universal Theory incarnate
when it comes to communicating anything.
So, whether you’re a global company or a start-up trying
to create a brand, a political candidate, or you’re just trying to
get yourself a date, this book is for you.

In the following chapters you’ll find:

• What makes Micro-Scripts mental magic
• How to capture your own
• The #1 tool for branding: how it works
• The #1 tool for politics: how it works
• How to stop attacks when these tools are used
against you
• How to sharpen your intuition to solve problems
• in any situation
…and much more!

Welcome to the Second Edition of The Micro-Script Rules.

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chapter 1

Of Your Brain, by Your Brain,

for Your Brain
 
Isn’t it interesting and a little ironic that when an organism
is mortally threatened—when a gun is pointing at your nose,
or your stove catches fire, or the mother bear spots you holding
her cub to take a selfie—that life finally starts to get simple. It
works at every level of the food chain, all the way down to cells
and organs. When the body thinks it’s freezing, for example,
it shifts to the heart of the matter, literally. It shuts down blood
flow to the extremities and directs it all to your heart and brain.
It doesn’t have commitment issues. It’s truth time. It’s simple
time. And it’s hyper-effectiveness time.

Heuristics—Our Rules of Thumb

Behavioral scientists tell us that in moments of crisis or
uncertainty, we shift to intuition that is remarkably fast and
accurate—unconscious intelligence that skips normal reasoning
because it doesn’t have time. Our intuition comes from a built-in

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The Micro-Script Rules

set of heuristics, more commonly called Rules of Thumb—which

are just simple mental instructions to take pre-set actions for
the best-chance outcome. We’re born with them. They tell us
how to make snap judgments on inconclusive data—without
analyzing a whole set of facts.*1
But what they’re really showing us is the heart of the mat-
ter—the center—not just faster but often better than process-
laden analytics—by telling us to do the opposite of what schools
and corporate cultures have taught us from day one: they make
us discard information, not collect more, to get smarter.
This is really important so I’ll say it again:
When things get complicated, tense or dangerous, built-in
heuristics or Rules of Thumb direct us to a smaller set of more
vital data at the heart of the matter. They tell us that Data
overload gums up the works.
Simpler makes us smarter.
Too much data makes us dumber!

The Lawyer Got It Right

Our brains know this, even when experts don’t. After
eons of evolution, our brains are wired to simplify, they like
to simplify—and they find it irresistible when others help us
simplify.
Johnny Cochran, O.J. Simpson’s lawyer, understood this
when he offered his famous six-word solution to the jury to decide
the case vs. nine months of testimony by the prosecution. He

* From now on, the terms “heuristics” and “Rules of Thumb” will be used
interchangeably because they are synonymous.

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Of Your Brain, by Your Brain, for Your Brain

said you can take a billion bits of evidence, or save the trouble
and just remember one thing: o.j. was framed by racist cops.
And then he offered them a catchy little script to make
remembering easy—If [the] glove doesn’t fit, you acquit. A mini-
logic set, in a memorable little word package, that could be
repeated by everyone.
Ten years before the age of social networks and universal
texting, o.j.’s lawyer Johnny Cochran knew the power of turn-
ing 6,000 words into about six. He knew about Micro-Scripts.
Today, when your message needs to fit on a cell phone screen
or a Twitter post and is competing with a zillion other conver-
sations from every direction, that would be pretty important,
don’t you think?

Ever Caught a Ball?

Our built-in heuristics help us constantly in big and little
ways. Like when your 8-year-old buddy throws a rock at your
head, they tell you when to duck. According to Professor Gerd
Gigerenzer, you use what’s called the “Gaze Heuristic,” a shortcut
that evolved over millions of years for animals to intercept mov-
ing prey. It saves the brain from running a thousand differential
math equations to calculate the object’s trajectory. Your brain
tells you one simple Rule of Thumb instead:

Fix your gaze on the rock. If the angle stays constant, duck!

That’s it. One decision to make, one button to push that

automatically triggers a whole set of actions in the right order.
It’s the same rule of thumb a dog uses to catch a Frisbee or a
Little Leaguer uses to snag a pop fly.2

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The Micro-Script Rules

In fact, a basic animal heuristic is the actual reason we like

brands so much. It’s a heuristic that we and the woodchucks
were born with:

The one I know is the one that’s safe.

This is Brain-Speak
Our Rule of Thumb are not just for times of stress. We
make a constant stream of instant bets to fill in the blanks as
we go about our normal day. Below the surface, faster than we
are consciously aware, our brains are speaking to us—calcu-
lating the value of everything we see, every second,3 from the
items we pluck off the supermarket shelf to our route home
in traffic. These unconscious Rules of Thumb cause our “gut
feelings,” which have three things in common: 1) they appear
quickly, 2) they appear for reasons we are generally not aware,
and 3) they’re strong enough for us to act with the least pos-
sible information.4
Again, our brains love to work this way. After a zillion years
of evolution, they naturally default to “fast and frugal”5 to save
time and precious electrical energy when it counts.*
Today, for all of us who may wish to communicate with
other humans amid the media chaos all around us, respecting
this default is no longer optional. It’s the brain’s way or the
highway. For our communication to penetrate and stick, we

* Neuroscientists have calculated that the brain has about 40 watts of electrical
energy to make its billions of neurons function. When the battery runs down,
thinking capacity drops with it. So, the brain is designed to do as little thinking
and take as many shortcuts as possible to save energy for real emergencies.

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Of Your Brain, by Your Brain, for Your Brain

have to talk to other brains the way brains want to work. We

need to use the simple techniques of Brain-Speak. And that’s
what the Micro-Script rules are all about.

Rules of Thumb for GOD and the Great

Communicators
The best news is that, using Micro-Scripts, you can easily
invent heuristics for brains to use for your own messages and
tasks, once you know how they work. Humans have made up
heuristics since ancient times to deal with anything dangerous,
challenging, complex, or uncertain—from spelling to sports.
Then to pass them along, they’ve verbalized them with Micro-
Scripts (Keep your eye on the ball. Stop drop and roll).

Here’s the most famous example:

The Ten Commandments—heuristics created so that a dusty,

illiterate mob in the desert could make them the basis of all
modern law going forward. There were just ten, so they could
easily be counted off with the fingers of both hands.
These are generally considered the most important set of
heuristics ever devised for the Judeo-Christian religions and
Western civilization.
It’s rather telling that when the Almighty wanted to teach us
something rather important, she gave us—what else—ten Rules
of Thumb to guide civilization with. And then, she wrapped
them up in Micro-Scripts to make them stick.
Likewise, in keeping with the Universal theory (which the
Almighty also invented) any Rules of Thumb that we might
invent must always be:

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The Micro-Script Rules

1. Short
2. High yield—they set off a string of correct actions
with one decision
3. Few in number
4. Triggered with the least amount of information

And, to be most effective…

5. Say-able in words—repeatable words

These rules will boost your communication results in the

new media world, the old world…or any world.
May the Rules begin!

Author’s Note:
If what we’re describing sounds familiar, it’s not just that
it’s intuitive . Unconscious intelligence has indeed been popu-
larized in recent years, most notably by Malcolm Gladwell in
Blink, his book about “thinking without thinking .” But Gladwell’s
premise came largely from the academic writings and research
of cognitive psychologists like Gerd Gigerenzer, Timothy
Wilson, Gary Klein—and by extension the Nobel laureate
Herbert A . Simon, and George Polya, who wrote about
heuristic problem solving all the way back in 1945 . So, the
notion of unconscious intelligence is not new .
This book uses these learnings to ask a different ques-
tion in this hyper-connected age: What if we could apply
it to human communication?

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chapter 2

The 4½ Big Rules

 
What makes great people great? Sports coaches will tell
you: the greatest players don’t win because of tricky skills or
secret moves. They win because they have mastered “the funda-
mentals” better than anyone else. The greatest players practice
them daily, endlessly. Just turn on the tv. The Hall of Fame
quarterback throws ball after ball on the sidelines between
plays. Even after winning five Super Bowls, his coach comes
over and whispers: “Step into the throw. Follow through.” As
the great Bruce Lee once said: “Fear not the fighter who has
practiced 10,000 different kicks. Fear the one who has practiced
one kick 10,000 times.”
The fundamentals aren’t optional. They are basically the
Rules of Thumb for doing anything—and there’s always a quick
phrase to go with each one for instant recall, i.e., a Micro-Script.
(How to fire a gun: Don’t pull, just squeeze)
And, so it is with communicating. What follows are the
four fundamentals of communicating to mass markets and to
individuals alike—the core of the Micro-Script Rules. They act

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The Micro-Script Rules

as a focus engine so what you say will penetrate like an arrow,

not bounce off like a rubber ball. And if that alone were their
contribution to communication, it’d be worth the whole price
of this book. The more practical, tactical rules will come later
but for now, these are the fundamentals.

Big Rule 1:
It’s Not What People Hear, It’s What They Repeat.

Frank Luntz, the prominent Republican word man who

takes credit for teaching the gop how to use language like
Death-tax vs. Estate tax and No child left behind instead of “The
Mandatory Punitive School Testing Law” in order to shape
debates and win elections, propounded this basic principle for
effective communicating. Luntz said:

“It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.”

Sounds good—but it’s not bottom-line enough for us to

actually create those effective communications. We must go
one step deeper to where the rubber meets the road in today’s
hyper-connected world.
To get your idea across in a digitally powered, consumer-
driven era, it’s not what you tell people or even what they
hear that drives communication. In today’s world, what’s most
important is:
What people want to repeat, after they’ve heard you.

I’ll repeat: The most important thing is not what people

hear, it’s what they want to repeat after they’ve heard you.

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The 4½ Big Rules

This is big. If you’ve ever been in kindergarten and played

the Telephone Game, or sat in a focus group, it will come as no
surprise that what you say about yourself or your product and
what others say is not guaranteed to be the same thing.
They won’t say anything because you tell them to. They say
it only if they want to say it, like saying it, or they gain something
from saying it. And for that, they have to understand it, believe
it, remember it, and think it fits with the story that’s already
running in their heads.
Then, if they do, they will literally say it in two critical
places. First, they’ll say it to themselves, over and over again
in the way they frame and order their own thoughts; second,
they’ll say it to their friends, both personal and professional.
The words they say to themselves are the words they’ll use
to tell others.
This is where the marketing and selling power is in today’s
world. Why?
Because of Big Rule #2…

Big Rule 2:
Every Screen Is “A Word of Mouth Machine.”

In the old days, there were only three media: t v, radio

and print. Today there’s one new master media that supersedes
everything.
(You thought I was going to say hundreds of media. But no,
it’s really one master medium).
And it’s not the Internet or social networking. Those are
just mechanical. It’s a brand-new, 50,000-year-old medium.

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The Micro-Script Rules

You know it as Word of Mouth.

Now, it’s worth pausing for a minute to think about how
amazing and ironic this is. That in a world creating new forms
of electronic media every day—from the Internet to iPhones
to social networking communities—we’re saying that the most
ancient advertising medium of all, simple Word of Mouth
(wom) is once again the most powerful on the planet! The
whole phenomenon of viral networking and marketing runs on
it. The magic that turns a frumpy singer on Britain’s Got Talent
into a global phenomenon overnight can literally happen only
one way: via Word of Mouth.

The Word of Mouth Machines

See the smartphone in your hand and every other hand
on the planet? All these are are 21st-century Word of Mouth
Machines. They give us the power to broadcast our own content,
not just over the backyard fence but around the world, in sec-
onds. Smartphones and Facebook have simply made caveman
communications scale!

But that still doesn’t explain why the ancient medium is

suddenly the killer app all over again, so here’s why:
First of all, it never went away. It was just interrupted for
a few decades by version 1.0 of electronic mass media—radio
and tv—which could broadcast only one way: company to
consumer. Now, our two-way phone technology has let us return
to Word of Mouth.

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The 4½ Big Rules

But the biggest reason is that Word of Mouth takes the

most important success factor in communication and flips it
on its head. wom has changed the source and the sequence
for building…

Trust.

Because with one-way media, the message comes first; then

there’s product trial; then, if it works, trust follows after a long
sequence—a cumulative result.
The problem is that, too often, people believed the marketing
and got burned. They felt abused and humiliated. And customers
hate when that happens. Too many companies made customers
cynical by over-marketing and under-delivering in the last century.
So, who do consumers trust?
They trust other members of their own group—their friends,
family, and their own eyes—all based on the primitive instinct
to side with your own tribe or clan.
Word of Mouth solves the problem by delivering the trust
up front—a personal endorsement from someone I know before
the transaction. With wom, either trust comes first, or there
won’t be a relationship or trial or anything. Trust takes out our
innate fear of buying and making a mistake.
And just to get philosophical for a second—wom is so
fundamental to human communications that it shouldn’t be
considered “just a tactic.” Word of Mouth for your product has
to be earned as a result of honest behavior and real performance.
Like trust, achieving wom must be a strategic objective for any
marketer or communicator.

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The Micro-Script Rules

The good news is that if you do perform and do deserve

trust, wom can be facilitated—made easier and more predict-
able by our Micro-Script Rules.
So, if it’s true that it’s not what people hear, it’s what they
repeat, and it has to work via Word of Mouth Machines, then we
must ask: what do all people love to hear, remember, and repeat?
It begins with an “S”…

Big Rule 3:
Story:
It isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.

By now you’ve probably heard in a hundred places that

stories matter a lot in communications. But how important
are they, really?
Well, this is how the guy who first told me about the power
of story, my boss at Ted Bates Advertising New York, a genuine
Brand Titan from Madison Avenue—one of the real, original
Mad Men, said it to me.
He said, “Schley:

“You can spend two hours telling a man every mar-

velous fact, feature, and statement about your prod-
uct—and he’ll forget 99% of it in the next 10 minutes.
But just tell him a story… and twenty years later,
he’ll come back and repeat it to you, word for word.”

Now this was at Ted Bates—the world-famous tagline agency

that came up with Melts in your mouth, not in your hand. Get
a Piece of the Rock. Rolaids spells relief. But my boss didn’t say,

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The 4½ Big Rules

“Write me a tagline.” He said, “Tell me a story.” And as junior

copywriters at what was then one of the world’s greatest agen-
cies, the first little Rule of Thumb they taught us was: “Show
me a picture. Tell me a story.”
How come? I think intuitively you already know.
Because from time immemorial, storytelling is the most pow-
erful way to penetrate and stick a message in the human mind.
Something hypnotizes us when we hear 6 little words: “Let me tell
you a story…” Our unconscious cannot resist letting it in. And
we don’t just like telling them—we crave them; we pay staggering
amounts to consume them—movies, books, tv, magazines, news
reports every global day. It’s not just entertainment. It’s a basic
human need like air and water, say the psychologists.*
And if you need more proof, an article recently published
in the New York Times said scientists have discovered that sto-
rytelling was crucial in teaching cooperative behavior, care of
others, and critical learning for primitive hunter-gatherers, so
that the tribes with more skilled storytellers actually had the
highest rates of survival.**
Thus, it follows that, if you’ve got something really important
to say—like, “Why I should buy from you?” or “What differenti-
ates your non-profit?”—well, Tell me a story.
But not just any kind of story. And here’s the twist that
leads to Big Rule #4:
Today, you’ve got to be able to tell your story… in about a
sentence or less.

* Robert McKee started his epic book on screen writing called Story with this
opening concept and examples.
** Why Our Stories Matter, Stephen Greenblatt, New York Times, December 21, 2017

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The Micro-Script Rules

Big Rule 4:
Give ’Em a Micro-Script .

Our hyper-connected world comes with a problem. There

are 500 billion messages going by per minute, while our atten-
tion spans have shrunken to about 5 seconds—an all-time low.
So, for any brand, political, sales, or personal message to
break through and stick in the human mind (which craves
“simple”), we have to tell stories so simple that they can liter-
ally work in about a sentence or less. Stories that combine the
essence of the Rules One, Two, and Three that we just covered.
Any phrase that works like that is a Micro-Script.
But don’t worry—it’s done by communicators in every
medium, every day. It’s the skill we’re going to teach you—as
soon as we finish our fundamentals.
Now here’s our official Micro-Script definition:

A Micro-Script is a short phrase—almost always

a Rule of Thumb or key idea—that people like
to repeat word-for-word to inform, persuade,
or remind themselves and others. It uses vivid,
descriptive metaphors and rhyme or rhythmic
language to trigger a story in the mind. All in
all, Micro-Scripts are Brain-Speak.

Micro-Scripts give you just enough information in the least

number of words to form an opinion, change a mind, or cause

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The 4½ Big Rules

to act. They nearly always use metaphors and colorful, descrip-

tive imagery to do it.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Stop, drop, and roll.
If you see something, say something!
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
The Bridge to Nowhere.
Speed kills.
Save the Whales.
Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires.
K.I.S.S. (Keep it Simple, Stupid).
The Quicker Picker Upper.
The Ultimate Driving Machine.
Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.
What would Jesus do?

We begin by teaching them to our little children as their

first lessons in life. And we continue using them ever after to
guide us in the direst of situations, in battle or in crisis. They
are literally the “Self-Talk” we use as the number-one way to
control our primitive brain’s automatic fear center (known as
the Amygdala), so we can act quickly in the face of uncertainty
or disaster.

Micro-Scripts can be as short as a one-word name or title

(The Godfather. Invisible Fence.) or a full sentence (Friends don’t
let friends drive drunk). How many of us have slyly winked when

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The Micro-Script Rules

someone told us they were traveling to Las Vegas and added,

“Hey: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”? Micro-Scripts work
instantly and have spread like wildfire by Word of Mouth since
the beginning of time. A time when, believe it or not, there
was no social media…
All roads lead to Rome.
Hail Mary, Full of Grace.
A government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Micro-Scripts are especially good for all the little prescrip-
tions we commit to memory to do anything important or skilled,
like flying a plane, driving a car, or hitting a tennis ball.
They are the little Rules of Thumb that guide us everywhere.
They operate consciously and unconsciously at all times. That’s
why the greatest advertising tagline writers and the greatest
political speakers instinctively use them. And you will, too.

A Very Important Word on Metaphors

A metaphor is simply describing one thing by likening it to
another. Love is blind. That dude’s a rock. All the world’s a stage.
She’s a loose cannon.
Basic as it is, it is our most powerful thought and language
tool, which makes it the core of what we’ll call “Micro-Script
language,” i.e., rich with metaphor, vivid images, rhythmic pat-
terns, descriptive, and specific—the enemy of vague, generic,
and dull.
Linguists and psychologists have long known that metaphors
are the way humans think, persuade, remember, and organize
thoughts. They are literally the building blocks of stories.

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The 4½ Big Rules

That’s because metaphors cause the right brain to form

hypnotic visualizations that go way beyond the metaphor
itself, stimulating whole sets of personal associations, caus-
ing our story-loving brains to fill in the imaginary blanks. It’s
not uncommon to utter a metaphor to someone and have it
spontaneously trigger a whole monologue. Walk up to a group
of women at a singles bar and ask anyone to respond to these
three words: “Men are wolves.” Each will be able to construct
whole stories or complex opinions on the spot.
You don’t have to be an English major to use metaphors.
All of us are already experts. We all use them effortlessly
in every conversation, every day, for instant color, context, and
comparison. This is why they’re at the core of so many effective
Micro-Scripts.

Rule 4½: Our Last Biggie.

This is a half-rule only because it’s a corollary for making
a certain kind of Micro-Script that’s especially important for
our audience. Anyone who wants to sell something—a brand,
a product, service, a political candidacy—has to know this one
other immutable rule before we depart:

Big Rule 4½
If You Want a Brand That Sells,
Build Your Micro-Script on a Dominant Selling Idea.

It’s time to ask, “What should a Micro-Script be about?”

It can’t just come out of thin air. Random, amusing phrases by
themselves don’t tell or sell anything—even if they’re fun to

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repeat—unless there’s a real tangible benefit or lesson behind

them. Remember that t v commercial “Wassss Upppp?”
Everybody said it to me, but I had no idea what the product
was, and I cared even less. I just wanted my kids to stop waking
me up at 7 in the morning screaming Wassss Uppppp?
And I hate to say it to all the “Dilly-Dilly” fans out there:
It’s cute, but I swear it won’t make Miller drinkers switch to
Bud. Awareness and page views alone are not your objective,
as so many self-styled brand experts want you to believe.
Awareness is just half the battle. It gets you to look. The other
half is getting you to part with your hard-earned money, take
a risk, and buy.
So, if your Micro-Script is for selling something, you have
to build it on a special kind of idea—a Dominant Selling Idea.
Your Dominant Selling Idea is the one most important
difference that sets you apart. The difference you stand for
that no one else does. It is always a superlative about a unique
advantage that others can’t claim:

The safest car. Fastest human. The only shoes that breathe.
The most durable make-up. The longest-lasting light bulb. The
most popular sit-com.

Implicit in every Dominant Selling Idea is the most funda-

mental sales proposition of all:

Buy this product, get this benefit.*

* Rosser Reeves, Reality in Advertising

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You have to decide on this difference before you create

your brand’s Micro-Scripts. For example, you have to know you
are the world’s toughest watch, before you can come up with a
Micro-Script like: Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’. Until you
know you’re the new jet airliner that sits 10 across and holds
500 people, you can’t come up with a Micro-Script like “It’s
the first Jumbo Jet.” You have to have the idea that guns are not
intrinsically bad before you can come up with “Guns don’t kill
people. People do.”
Get your difference first. Then your story. Then make your
story into Micro-Scripts. Then broadcast it to 10 million people
on a social network.

Your “Positioning” and Your “Dominant Selling Idea”

Are One and the Same.
For those of you who are familiar with the word “Positioning”
when it comes to branding, positioning and your Dominant Selling
Idea are the same. They both mean “to own a distinctive piece
of real estate in the prospect’s mind” that no one else owns.
There’s room in the mind for only one superlative, such as safest
car, or most durable battery. Each are a distinct positioning and,
by definition, a Dominant Selling Idea (dsi).
How to find your Dominant Selling Idea, a.k.a. your
Positioning, will be the whole subject of Chapter 8 in Part II.

If You Only Remember One Thing

Folks—if you don’t read another page of this book, when
someone asks you why Micro-Scripts matter, you can tell them
it’s because…

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If your message doesn’t work by Word

of Mouth, it doesn’t work.

Think about that for a second if you’re sitting in a board-

room at a big corporation trying to strengthen your brand. Set
your mind and your sights on making your messages work “over
the backyard fence” or in today’s one-floor elevator pitch. Unless
they can pass the Word of Mouth test, they’re just not simple
or focused enough. But the discipline will be worth it because
it’s the ultimate high-yield marketing concept.
Start with the 4½ Big Rules, and go from there.

Remember: The 4½ Biggest Micro-Script Rules Rules Are:

1. It’s not what people hear, it’s what they Repeat.

2. Every Screen’s a Word of Mouth Machine.

3. Story is the key to communication. Period.

4. Micro-Scripts are Brain-Speak. They compress

stories so people can remember and repeat.

4½. Your Dominant Selling Idea—Micro-Scripts for

marketing and selling must be built on dsi s.

And remember: Get your message to work by Word

of Mouth, because…
If it works at Word of Mouth,
it works everywhere.

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chapter 3

Now Wait One

Darn Minute!
(A Brief Q & A)

 
Let’s pause to answer the five questions readers ask most:

Q1: But isn’t a Micro-Script just a sound bite?

A: Sure—but it’s a very special kind of sound bite.

It’s a story bite.

It nearly always tells a whole story or a piece of a story, or it

triggers one already running in your brain. That’s what makes
them so unforgettable and repeatable. When you hear one, it
turns on a little movie in your head.
For example:
A diamond is forever. Behind a rolling ball comes a running
child. If it feels wrong, it is wrong. Loose lips sink ships.

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Q2: Aren’t you just describing a Tagline?

A: Sure. That’s why the great taglines that we remember
for decades are all written as Micro-Scripts. We get
a kick out of remembering and saying them, so we
spread the brand message whenever we do.

Great names can be Micro-Scripts, too. There’s no shortness

limit. It just needs to be so descriptive that it launches a story
in your head: Diehard Batteries, Head and Shoulders Shampoo,
Invisible Fence. Evel Knievel.

Now here’s the most common question…

Q3: My product is too complex. I can’t reduce it

down to a few words. Not everybody can do
this… can they?
A: Well, we’re going to tell you that you can. Here’s
why there are no excuses…

A friend of mine gave this example she’d heard in an English

course that she could never forget…
According to legend, Ernest Hemingway took a bet once
to write a novel in six words. He thought about it and then
came up with a six-word story that he claimed was the best
he’d ever written:

For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never worn.

Think about that for a minute. It may not be a great rhyme

or word play. Just a story. But it instantly triggers a much bigger

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Now Wait One Darn Minute!

story in most people who hear it. It turns on the imagination.

A sum much greater than its parts.
And if you still don’t believe stories can be told in just a
phrase or two, how about this one:
A great Talmudic scholar once was asked if he could
explain the Bible. And he said, “I can give you the whole
Bible in one sentence. Do unto others as you’d have others do to
you. All the rest is commentary.”
The Gettysburg address was just a few Micro-Scripts strung
together, on half a page…
Now, if the whole Bible can be told in so few words, or a
Hemingway novel, well, there’s a pretty good chance we should
be able to communicate things like our product or service idea
or organization mission statement, don’t you think?

Hold everything!! The Organization’s Mission state-

ments?? Bill!! Now you’ve gone too far. Surely you jest. We all
assume that corporate mission statements have to be a page
long of happy-talk and contain every fuzzy, happy-assed adjec-
tive ever invented by man. No wonder they get put away and
never looked at.
But they don’t have to be. The great mission statements are
about a sentence or two, tops. Here’s one I’ve always liked—from
a tv Infomercial for a back supporter you put on your chair.
The ceo said: “Everyone at our company knows our one-
line mission statement”:
“We’re going to fix the way the world sits.” I believe him. That’s
a great mission statement in 9 words.

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Rackspace, a startup in San Antonio that was eventually

acquired for more than $4 billion, built itself on a two-word
mission statement that all 6,000 Rackers would tell you in an
instant if you asked: “We’re here every day to deliver Fanatical
Support.”
Their Chairman told me one day that each of those words
was worth a billion dollars to that company. So, they really are
like magic words.
Here are a couple more:

We’re going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade!

We’re going to put a computer on every desk in America!

We’re going to turn a cell phone into a computer.

Q4: Aren’t you talking about evil propaganda—

using language to manipulate?
A: No, this truth has nothing to do with value judg-
ments. It’s about finding the most effective human
communication. These principles can be used for
good or evil, so any communicator today must be
sure to understand them.

Today’s digital planet makes it more imperative than ever.

If the opposition uses these weapons against you, you must arm
yourself in kind—and use Micro-Scripts for truth, justice, and
the righteous cause. Ask Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy,
or Winston Churchill if you doubt this. And when they are
wielded by untruthful or immoral people, your only option is to
fight fire with fire. You must either turn the same Micro-Scripts

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Now Wait One Darn Minute!

back on them or invent new and better ones to hurl back at

them. It is the only way—and we will address it more specifi-
cally in Chapter 5 (Section: What to Do When Micro-Scripts
Are Used Against You).

Q5: How will I know if my phrase is a Micro-Script?

A: It’s actually quite easy. Say it out loud in a conversa-
tion or in written form. If it’s a Micro-Script, people
will almost immediately pick it up and say it back to
you in the conversation. You may be the cleverest
copywriter in the world. But the words and phrases
people say back—those are your Micro-Scripts, and,
frankly, it’s the only acid test. No one who comes
up with one ever really knows until they hear them
working.

Here’s a perfect example. The word we coined—Micro-

Script—is in fact a Micro-Script.
It actually happened when I was on a radio show during an
election year, talking about why the Democrats never seemed
to get their messages across and make them stick the way the
Republicans did. The Republicans were like tagline machines
with classics like the Death Tax. Don’t let ’em pull the plug on
Grandma! Are you better off today than you were four years ago?
He’s a Flip-Flopper. Tax-and-Spend Liberal, and so many more.
The radio host and I both realized: “Hey, they’re giving
their voters these little scripts! Micro-scripts.” So that now, any
bubba (or bubbette) at the bar can remember and repeat his
point of view to someone sitting next to him. Makes him feel

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smart and important to say: “I’m not voting for a Flip-Flopper

for President. That guy’s gonna pull the plug on Grandma!!”
It galvanizes the position in the voter’s head and lets them
spread it around. The Democrats give you a whole essay on
policy. It might appeal to intellectuals. But it’s not how everyday
people talk.
I started telling people my theory of Micro-Scripts in casual
conversations, and, lo and behold, if I was talking to a group of
four or five people, everyone would start using the word back to
me in the conversation. They’d talk about their Micro-Scripts
or others’ Micro-Scripts or needing Micro-Scripts or hearing
one that day. It simply worked, and, once communicators were
exposed to it, they never seemed to forget it.

Bonus Question:
Q6: Aren’t Micro-Scripts the same as “Memes”?
A: They’re much different. A meme, by general defini-
tion, is an image, idea, or video that goes viral for any
reason on social media and therefore enters the culture.
That means “Dilly Dilly” from the beer commercial
and the image of a Navy seal in scuba gear hold-
ing a gun would be memes.

Here’s the difference:

1. Memes don’t have to mean anything, and a Micro-

Script does. Remember, Micro-Scripts trigger an
important story that’s used to persuade, inform, or
impress.

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2. Micro-Scripts are always articulated with words. They

are very specific and tangible by nature.

So, Micro-Scripts can be memes if they go viral—like “fake

news” or the notion that “Oprah gives away cars.” But all memes
definitely do not qualify as Micro-Scripts.

Short Recap
We’re about to talk in detail about how Micro-Scripts affect
branding, how they change politics, and more. So here are a
few pointers to remember:
• Micro-Scripts must be written in brain-speak: simple,
quick, and easy; short as a word or phrase.
• They must support your Dominant Selling Idea, if
you want them be marketing Micro-Scripts.
• They are always a “story bite” because they either tell
a story or trigger one already in the brain.

The dna in Micro-Scripts comes from our heuristic wir-

ing. It’s built to give the heuristic brain what it wants when
it comes to hearing, absorbing, storing, retrieving and pass-
ing information along. And we always want to give the brain
what it wants.

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chapter 4

Branding:
Why Micro-Scripts Are Your
Ultimate Branding Machine.

 
Just a few little words can change your world. They do this
because the following Micro-Script is truer than ever:

There’s nothing more powerful than an idea

whose time has come.

And there’s no faster, surer way to install an idea in peoples’

brains and make it super-easy for them to remember it and tell
others than with Micro-Scripts.
What does this have to do with branding?
Everything.

The Real Definition of Branding

You may have heard in business school or a ted talk that
“branding” is all about logos, color psychology, and personas.
You may have also heard that a brand is an amalgamation of

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emotions that a person experiences in a long-term relationship

with her deodorant spray. Or even this New Age concept: why
the employees of a company are inspired to make the product
is more important to a brand than what it does. In other words,
if a restaurant’s food stinks—but you know the employees are
really passionate about supporting local farmers—you’ll go out
to eat there from now on.

No, we don’t think so.

Before a brand can be any of the above, it must stand for a

difference—something it does better—an idea that the product
will fix a problem or fill a desire for a customer that others don’t.
And because our ancient, heuristic brains automatically
shrink important ideas down to bite-size chunks for instant
storage and retrieval, it comes down to this truth:

A brand is an idea attached to a name.

You heard it here, folks. That’s the Micro-Script for what a
brand is at its center. That’s what Micro-Script theory proves
to those of us who’ve had “10,000 throws” at making them.

A Good Name and DSI Trigger the Larger Brand Story:

The Story Only You Can Tell
When I say the name of a familiar brand, the first thing your
heuristic brain gives you is a flash of meaning, a moment of recall
that tells you, “This is good” or “This is bad,” for a specific reason.
If the brand is for selling, you want that flash to be a Dominant
Selling Idea (dsi)—the most Superlative, Important, Believable,
Measurable, and Own-able idea you can find.

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Your name plus your Dominant Selling Idea are the flag and
the shorthand for the larger, more personal story that covers
all the experiences we have with the brand. We call that the
Brand Story—the unique, problem/solution story only your
brand can tell.
A product like a Mercedes Benz or your Patagonia fleece
jacket has dozens of attributes and fond memories attached that
make up this Brand Story. But that story is launched only when
we hear or see the name attached to its difference.
The psychology works like this: 1-2-3:

1. We hear or think the brand’s name.

2. In a flash, the name sparks the one main idea that
we’ve attached to that name—either from their brand
communications or our personal experience.
3. That idea launches the longer, personal Brand Story
we have in our heads.

Based on the above, it’s no surprise that your brand’s name

is the first and most critical branding property you can have.
That’s why we devote our whole Chapter 6 to Naming!

“You Have to Make It Famous”

—Anonymous Brand Titan

But nothing matters unless you make your brand famous

in your town, your region, or wherever you sell. Because the
best product in the world means zilch if nobody knows about it.
And that brings us back to Micro-Scripts.

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People have to remember your name attached to your

selling idea and want to repeat it for this whole process to
get going.
The great Brand Titans of Madison Avenue who gave us
the brands that have lasted for generations knew the irresistible,
penetrating power of stories—condensed into dsi s—turbo-
charged by Micro-Scripts.
So, here’s how they did it: they just reverse-engineered the
psychological brand process above. They made up a story with
specific facts that only they could tell—a Brand Story.
Then, they locked that story into our brains by shrinking
it into a dsi and encasing it in a Micro-Script.
We’ll cover the steps in detail in Chapter 8, Part II.
You’ll see the results on display in their world-famous taglines
and headlines that created billions in sales for their clients. In
all of these, you can see a Dominant Selling Idea delivered by
a Micro-Script:

“They laughed when I sat down at the piano.”

(But then I started to play…)
Wheaties, Breakfast of Champions.
Chunky Soup: The soup that eats like a meal.
It’s Not tv, It’s hbo.
Crest—The Toothpaste More Dentists Recommend.
Timex takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’!
The Milk Chocolate That Melts in Your Mouth, Not
in Your Hand.

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At Sixty Miles Per Hour, The Loudest Thing You’ll

Hear is the Ticking of the Clock (Rolls Royce).
Get Halls Mentholyptus with Vapor Action!
The Ultimate Driving Machine.
You’re in Good Hands with Allstate.
What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas.
Is It True That Blondes Have More Fun?
Softens Hands While You Do Dishes!
A Diamond is Forever.

Mini-Case Histories
Remember—if somebody loves your product, they love to
tell others about it for all kinds of reasons. Look at how efficient
a tool you’re giving people who love your artificial sweetener
when you pop them this Micro-Script:

It’s made from sugar so it tastes like sugar…

Think about the immensity of the story contained in those
eight little words: “it’s safe and natural, not chemical, it has the
least artificial taste, it’s better for cooking and recipes, I can
feel good, not guilty, about giving it to my family. I can remove
sugar from my life without suffering, with less stigma.”
There are probably a billion personal stories that come into
play with those eight little words. The underlying metaphor is:
Splenda is sugar.
The eight words were so compelling that Splenda used them
as their tagline. They were smart enough to add it all up for me

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with that sweet little Micro-Script tagline that was endlessly

say-able by me to all my low-carb-I-hate-fake-sugar friends.
Splenda, as we know, rocketed to about a 50% share of the
market within three years or so of being introduced. Years later,
they changed their tagline after a competitor’s lawsuit.
But the original Micro-Script will never leave my head. It’s
the gift that keeps on giving.*

“They Call It a Journey”

Jewelers are amazing at Micro-Scripted stories—I think
because they have to be. Most people can’t really describe one
piece of jewelry vs. another. So, the jewelers help them by giving
them a story. Here’s an all-time favorite:
Have you seen those diamond necklaces that are just one
long, wavy line of six or seven stones that hang vertically from
a simple chain—the diamonds get larger toward the bottom?
I used to see them everywhere. The young lady who cuts my
hair had one. I said, “That’s nice. I’ve seen those.” She stopped,

* Here’s the rest of the story: Splenda’s desperate competitors launched and won
a lawsuit that claimed false advertising, since “made from sugar” turned out to be a
technicality of the manufacturing process. The scientist who accidently discovered
Splenda was trying to invent a new insecticide—no kidding. But that wouldn’t
have been that good a Micro-Script to use. Since Splenda had some derivation
of a sugar molecule in its manufacturing process, voilà! The advertisers made the
now-famous claim. The courts eventually made them modify the explicit “made
from sugar” language. But by then, the Splenda Micro-Scripts had done their magic.
Splenda switched to the line: “Just What’s Good.” That’s not a Micro-Script. It’s
just a slogan that implies the original story. But by then, the idea that Splenda was
like sugar was un-erasable.

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touched it, and said dreamily: “My boyfriend bought it for me.
He called it…(sigh) a ‘Journey…’”
A Journey, huh? I know that her boyfriend, Anthony, who
works construction, didn’t make that up.
He used this one-word Micro-Script when he handed it
to her—a romantic reference to the winding road of love. It
made him sound eloquent and attuned to the stirrings of the
feminine heart. The smart jewelers furnished it for him, and he
was more than happy to pass it on. It imbued the piece with a
deeper, unforgettable meaning.
The journey took him straight to her heart.
These days there’s one called “Best Friends.” Another
called the “Open Heart,” where a sterling silver heart is kind of
cracked open. Another company puts a secret tiny ruby inside
each ring and necklace and says it’s a tiny, secret gift of love
from the designer. The Egyptians believed that, when a ruby
touched a woman’s skin, it would bring her love and happiness.
Great little story for the salesperson to tell the customer to tell
his beloved when he gets it home, huh?

“Pork Is the Other White Meat”

What a great selling line. I know because the waiter used it
on me one time to close me on the pork-cutlet special instead
of the fish or chicken. I told him, “I bet it’s good, but I’m trying
to eat lean.” And he said, “Yeah, but it is lean. Don’t you know:
Pork is the other white meat.
“It’s leaner than you think. It’s the bacon you gotta stay
away from.”

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Of course, I’d heard it before, too, but his little reminder

was the permission I needed at that moment to buy what I
really wanted.
Now here’s the rest of the story…
As you may know, a new marketing executive convinced
the Pork Board a few years ago to change their legendary
Micro-Script to—are you ready, Micro-Script readers—Pork.
Be inspired. You know, I almost want to quit writing the book
here and open a dry-cleaning shop in Botswana.
Substitute any word in the language for “pork” in this
line. How ’bout, “Plumbing. Be Inspired.”? Anyway, it fails
every branding test that we could ever come up with. Big
corporations and their agencies seem to come up with more
and more of this kind of thing every day. I guess that’s why I
must keep writing.

“Enterprise Picks You Up”

Again, it’s a full-fledged Micro-Script if it’s repeated by
people—and that includes you, recommending it to all your
friends when they need a rental car. If I ask nearly anyone
whether they like Enterprise, they’ll repeat: “Well, they do pick
you up.”
That’s not important at the airport, but it sure is when my
car’s in the shop, and I need a rental for a couple of days.
You have to give the company credit for sticking with this
Dominant Selling Idea turned into a simple Micro-Script.
They have said it every time they pick up the phone, in their
advertising copy, and on their website for more than thirty
years now. It’s all the information you need to remember that

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a difference separates them whenever you’re not at the airport

and you need a car.
By the way—on the strength of this dsi -based Micro-
Script and the non-airport-distribution strategy that went with
it—Enterprise’s revenues got to the point where they actually
exceeded Hertz.

But It’s Not Just for Giant Companies—Little Guys Do

Branding Even Better!
You don’t have to be a global company with a giant ad
budget like Bank of America. In fact, giant companies have so
many committees and managers to satisfy that their millions
spent on branding often comes out like mealy-mouthed mush.
If you don’t believe us, guess what global giant this gem (jk) of
a tagline comes from:

A Passion for Possible

a) a car maker, b) a bank, c) a tech firm, d) a plumber, e) a

strip club, f) all of the above.
Answer: f
Remember—a great Micro-Script works on one person
at a time as well as it works on a million. So, like the famous
tagline of Ted Bates Advertising: Think locally to act globally.
Here are some real-life small-biz examples:

An ATM in Every Home

There was no greater Micro-Script lesson for me personally
than this one. I was lucky enough to help start a company that
built a real product and prospered before the dot.com bubble

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collapse of 2001. (Of course, we didn’t call them Micro-Scripts

then.)
We were building the first easy-to-use software for banking
at home on your pc . All our competitors—Quicken, Microsoft
Money, and, at the time, visa —were saying their products
were easy. But to most people who don’t even balance their
checkbooks in real life, they were complex, hard to learn, and
intimidating. In fact, bought with all the right intentions, half
of these products never made it out of the shrink wrap. Not a
recipe for mass uptake. The banks wanted “easy.”
Ours was easy. But we found out quickly that big banks
weren’t excited about doing business with or even listening to
five-person companies like ours.
Until we found a metaphor and turned it into a couple of
Micro-Scripts that were simply…irresistible. Not only to buyers
but to the trade press, which helped a lot.
We said, “Our software is called Home atm . It looks just
like your bank’s branded atm on their home computer. In fact
it’s so simple: if you know how to use an atm, you know how
to do home banking. It doesn’t even need a manual!”

–– It’s called Home atm .

–– It’s like having your bank’s atm in every home.
–– If you can use an atm , you already know how to use it.
–– It’s so simple, it doesn’t even have a manual!

These are four Micro-Scripts (including the name) that

changed the lives of everyone in that company, because from

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then on, we were never turned down for a meeting. Buyers

got it, they remembered it, they were intrigued by it, and they
wanted to see it. They told others about it in conferences.
Because they could talk about it: “Have you seen that product
that works like an atm?”
In three years, we had more than 150 employees and sold
the brand to a New York Stock Exchange company.

McMenamy’s Fish Market

Unbelievable. I just Googled McMenamy’s Seafood as I
was writing this, and there it is still! But McMenamy’s is way
bigger now than when I was a kid. All fish markets have the
word “fresh” on their signs. All of them, always. So the word
has become invisible for most fish markets. But McMenamy’s
was famous far and wide (in the Boston area) for a unique
slogan—a Micro-Script, indeed, because anyone who’d ever
been there never failed to remind you of it with a grin.
I’m copying this off the Internet now, but I heard it first
from my friend John Powers before personal computers were
invented…

At McMenamy’s…The fish you buy today,

swam last night in Buzzard’s Bay!

Even today, if someone asked me to mention the name of

a fish market or a seafood place, one always comes to mind
first. McMenamy’s keeps reminding me they have the freshest
fish—and they don’t even say the word “fresh”! They do it
with a story bite—eleven words with specific, colorful imagery,

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a little attitude, and a little rhythm that people like to repeat.

And that sets them apart.

How to Brand Like a Micro-Script Master

In the end, Micro-Script thinking is derived from the
Universal Theory of Everything, which says that finding the
center gives us the ultimate simplicity, truth, and understand-
ing. That’s what we’re doing when seeking the core difference
of our brand.
Here is a quick summary of the 5-step process we use today
to find a brand’s “positioning”—once again, the same as the
dsi in any product from aircraft to air conditioning. It was all
derived from Micro-Script theory and thinking. We’ll detail
these steps in Chapter 8 as well.

1. Category is king. Frame it, Name it, and Claim it!

The first step to branding anything is to define the business
category where you can be #1. Your category is simply what
business you are in: a supermarket, a walk-in clinic, or a machine
shop. The shortest way to extreme differentiation is to own a
category. Sounds hard, but it’s done every day in branding.

2. Set the Binary Frame. This means name and frame what
you do and what they do. This creates extra contrast between
you and your competitors and helps you control the story. Cola
vs. The Un-Cola, 7-up, is a famous example.

3. Show “The Facts of the Difference.” All stories are built

on a string of facts knit together. Selling brands uses objective

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facts that add up to a dramatic difference. The Rule is: Facts

first, feelings follow.

4. Write a One-Page Story Only You Can Tell. Paint a

picture of “Before & After”; then put the customer in it.

5. Collect a Set of Micro-Scripts—one will be your tagline.

But there will be many more supporting Micro-Scripts you can
use in messaging, sales presentations, etc.

6. Try Them Out on Real Customers. The words and

phrases they repeat back to you are your Micro-Scripts.

7. Total Consistent Alignment (tca). Run your Dominant

Selling Idea and your Micro-Scripts through every aspect of
your business.

That’s it.

Micro-Scripts for Salespeople

Paint a picture; then put your prospect inside it.
—Famous sales advice told in a Micro-Script, Anon.

All “star” sales communicators tell stories. And the key

selling points in their stories are packaged for easy takeaway in
Micro-Scripts. Some do it naturally because they have a gift. But
most aren’t natural wordsmiths. They listen to the Micro-Scripts
of other superstars or the vivid phrases of their customers and
use those. The buyer doesn’t care where it comes from.
Here’s what recently happened to me.

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I’d been talking for two years about buying a convertible.

I like Volvos, as perhaps you can already tell from all my refer-
ences to the dsi “Safe Car.” I was at the dealer’s one day, waiting
for a repair on my Volvo wagon, when there it was… the new
C70 hardtop convertible! It was gorgeous. The hardtop solved
the few convertible objections I had, like bad visibility when
the top’s down and not wanting to drive a rag-top around all
winter. I wanted a year-round car.
So, I asked the salesman to show me how the top went up
and down. It was nifty—but then, Pop!—my caution flags went
up. It seemed like it had a million little moving parts! Springs
and levers and bearings and hatches that had to open and close.
As a pilot and a skydiver, it’s kinda drilled into me to beware of
moving parts because every one is an opportunity to malfunc-
tion. Less is definitely more when it comes to moving parts.
So I said to this salesman: “Looks like a lotta things that can
break.” And he said, “Hey, toys always cost more…heh, heh.”
Pffffhhhhttt! (air going out of a balloon): Buying impulse
dead. Just like that.

But I always had my eye on that car. I kinda hoped some-

one would change my mind. And then a year later, at another
dealership, I met Sam. And here’s what Sam said when I said,
“Looks like a lotta moving parts, huh?”
He said, “Yes, you’d think so, but actually the technology
hasn’t changed.

“It’s the same mechanics as a rag-top with

three hard pieces.” (Micro-Script #1)

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I said, “Rea-l-l-l-l-y?” And then he said: “Volvo really tested

this…

“They cycled it more than a million times.”

(Micro-Script #2)

“If you cycled it twice a day, it’d take you a

thousand years!” (Micro-Script #3)

No kiddin’.
Those simple scripts—put together in a quick Micro-
Pitch—were as lovely to me as that car. I went home and
happily repeated them to my neighbor. I mentioned them to my
brother. They cycled in my brain more than a million times.
I was sold. And I would have bought it, too, if only I hadn’t
mentioned it to my wife.
The interesting thing is that Sam didn’t make them up. He
picked them up from another seller. Any salesperson could’ve
used those Micro-Scripts as convincingly as Sam and sold me
that car. Those things are portable and scalable!
If I was the sales manager with fifty salespeople, I’d give
those Micro-Scripts to all fifty and watch them make more sales.
Here’s the best Micro-Script about good salesmanship I
ever heard. The top insurance salesperson for New York Life
told me this:

If all it takes to make the sale is to say,

“Boo,” don’t say, “Boo Boo.”

He said it. I laughed and never forgot it. The lesson is: Shut
up when the buyer says “Yes.” Novices keep talking anyway and

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un-sell the sale. I’ve told it to everyone I’ve ever presented with,
so much so that they’ll remind me when I go on too long. When
I hear my colleague start “coughing” (“Boo Boo, Boo Boo”) and
kicking me under the table, I know I’m doing “Boo Boo.” It’s a
Rule of Thumb, packed in a fun little Micro-Script.

The Salesperson’s Greatest Advantage

People who do live selling have some remarkable leverage
that marketers and copywriters don’t. They’re in a dynamic
Micro-Script laboratory on every sales call. They not only get to
custom-fit their Dominant Selling Idea and thus their scripts in
real-time on the spot, based on the buyer’s personality, interests,
wants, and needs, but they can also pick up an arsenal of super
persuasion from other great salespeople as well. They use stories
summed up in Micro-Scripts for answering objections, closing,
anything. Because they work.
This is anything but rote behavior. It’s a tool kit of the
sales professional. In fact, they free you up to be more creative,
not less.
Perhaps the most famous and successful sales training pro-
gram in American history is the Dale Carnegie course. Every
beginning student was given this single, magic Micro-Scripted
“approach,” proven over decades, to persuade reluctant, busy,
uninterested prospects to do the impossible: give you a min-
ute’s attention to hear your pitch. It was a script that a rational
person couldn’t say “No” to. Instead, they pretty much had to
respond, “What is it?”

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If there was a way to lower your monthly costs by

40% without buying a single piece of new equipment,
you’d want to know about it, wouldn’t you?

It was just that simple. It was a scripted gift that you knew
would instantly turn you into a salesperson who actually had
a chance. You used it happily the first time you could. I know
master salespeople who’ve used nothing more than variations
on this approach for their entire careers.
Hand out dsi Micro-Scripts like the Volvo convertible or
the ones for Home atm, and it’ll go in a progression through
the whole organization—from the buyers and associates to
bosses and decision-makers.
And readers in the marketing department, please take heed:
since all of us must remember that our #1 job is to support and
advance sales, this section, especially the preceding paragraph,
absolutely applies to you, too.

Words of Wisdom for the Micro-Script Brander

1. The Brand Is Not What’s in Your Head—It’s What’s in
Their Heads.
The only thing that matters in branding is what your cus-
tomer thinks the brand is, not what you think it is.
For instance, Whole Foods spent a fortune branding itself
as the supermarket for healthy food. But it was too expensive for
too many consumers. So, those people branded it for themselves
and their peers as “Whole Paycheck.” For millions of people,
that’s what they were famous for, and that was the real brand.

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I know an entrepreneur who built weight-lifting machines

with a video attachment that tracked your workout. He told
us his brand was “elite, high-tech exercise systems for the
world’s best gyms.” Then we asked him to go out and ask
his target market how they described it. They told him his
brand was “Over-priced gadgets that break.” That was the
real brand, not what his ads said. He was humbled and made
some major changes.

2. Better Product Performance Is the Best Brand Investment

You Can Make.
Product Performance is the #1 maker or breaker of all
brands. When we perform as promised, customers will love
taking our big idea and our Micro-Scripts and re-telling our
story to everyone they know. But if we don’t keep our promise
to perform, customers will create their own story to tell, and we
guarantee you won’t like how it ends.
Never forget that the brand does not happen when you
show a customer your advertising. That’s just an invitation.
The brand happens when a customer tastes it, drives it, wears
it, or sleeps on it. It happens when his headache goes away or
her feet stay dry after hiking in the rain.
Performance as promised is 90% of what your brand will
stand for in customers’ heads.

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Never forget this Micro-Script that I learned from one of

the great Brand Titans:

Nothing kills a brand faster than good

advertising for a bad product.

Pop Quiz
Q: What’s a one-sentence formula for your great brand?
A:
A story only you can tell, distilled into
a Micro-Script they can’t forget.

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chapter 5

Politics:
Use Micro-Scripts or Die.

 
“The Democrats give you a paragraph.
The Republicans give you a tagline.”
—Famous TV Producer

An election is a one-day sale for 100% market share.

(So, you better get good at Micro-Scripts).
—Mark Walsh

Please Note: There are no value judgments or

partisan viewpoints intended here. The exam-
ples are used for illustration—because they
worked.

At the time of this writing, Republicans control both houses

of Congress, the presidency, and most governorships and state
houses in the 50 states.

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Yet the majority of Americans over the last fifty years

identify themselves as Democrats. One current poll has it at
about 45% to 38%. The Republicans are consistently in the
minority; yet they still win.
How come?
There is certainly more than one reason, but none bigger
than this:
Politics is about selling. Selling is about persuading someone
to buy a product. You may have the greatest product, but unless
you make it famous—unless you get millions of people to see a
difference, remember it, and buy it with their votes, your product
might as well be that “tree that falls in the woods but nobody
ever hears it.” A great product that is unsold is worthless.
After decades of observing how Republicans communicate
with voters compared with Democrats, I can tell you one thing
that shouldn’t be surprising to anyone:
The Republicans have made themselves very, very good at
Micro-Scripts. They know the power of Brain-Speak.
The Democrats seem to know everything but.
Democrats give constituents long-winded paragraphs with
logical consistency and analysis that make the political pundits
swoon.
Nobody remembers what they said.
The Republicans, on the other hand, package the idea and
the memory device for you. They name it, frame it, and claim
it in the simplest visual and repeatable language.
No one forgets it, and they can easily repeat it.
Then the Democrats cry foul! They splutter and sputter
that Republican claims omit the full picture. Their candidate

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Politics

argues back with damning accusations like: It’s misogynistic,

xenophobic, and it strains credulity!!
The voters don’t even know what the words mean. I’m not
gonna lie: I went to an Ivy League college, and I don’t even
know what those words mean.
Meanwhile the Republicans just smile and say:

“They’re gonna pull the plug on Grandma.”

For some reason, not since the Kennedys, who knew how
to play hardball better than anyone back in the 1960s, the
Democrats have forgotten the basics of great communication,
and we don’t know why.
In almost every presidential election since then, their
party raises millions in campaign funds, hires expensive
consultants, reads best-selling books about power language
by experts like Frank Luntz and George Lackoff, and Micro-
Script mavens like me say, “Maybe they’ve finally got it
figured out—right?”
Let’s see. Why don’t we just ask…

Crooked Hillary
Mrs. Clinton went into the 2016 campaign as arguably the
most famous woman in the world and a sure thing if there ever
was one. If you’d predicted she’d lose to Donald J. Trump, a
casino developer with three marriages, you’d have been given
a ticket to the funny farm.
Of course, she lost.

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Months after the election, Hillary came out with a book

aptly titled What Happened. She did the usual week of t v
interviews to promote it. This is the clip I saw that said it all:
A famous reporter asked her about the tv debate where
Trump left the podium and was following her around the stage,
right after the Access Hollywood tape about grabbing women by
their #@%%. He kept looming closer. It was odd.
When the reporter asked Hillary how it felt, she had to
pause. She had to compose herself. You could see the emotion
welling up. And finally, she blurted out:
It was…discombobulating.
Uhhh, that’s the word you have for the American people,
Hillary? Dis-com-bob-ul-at-ing?? A six-syllable vocabulary word
from the Kaplan sat prep course?
Any normal person would have shot back: it was creepy.
If she’d turned around even once, looked him in the eye,
and said: Back off! This isn’t the Billy Bush bus! she probably
would’ve won in November.

So, Trump Kept Having Himself a Micro-Script Buffet

How could the Democrats not pick up on what Trump was
doing and at least mount a Micro-Script counter-offensive? It’s
not like they didn’t see it coming. Let’s just look at the gourmet
feast Trump served up in 2016:

Trump:
Crooked Hillary
Liddle Marco
Lyin’ Ted

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Low-Energy Jeb
Pocahontas
Make America Great Again
We’re going to build a wall
… And Mexico’s going to pay for it!
Fake News
The Election Is Rigged (Unless I win)
Drain the Swamp
Deep State
Lock Her Up!
We’ll win so much you’ll be sick of winning.
Bring back the stolen jobs!
I’m a businessman.
… and many, many more.

Clinton:
They’re the “Deplorables.”*
*which the Micro-Script master gleefully turned around and used against her
to devastating effect while her advisors just sat there.

For Clinton, over an entire two-year campaign, her Micro-

Scripts added up to zero. The only explanation has to be that
liberals lack the stomach to mix it up in this kind of combat,
which they consider undignified and distasteful. They want to
think politics is loftier.
But—this is important: we’re not telling anyone to be
manipulative or crass. Kennedy and Lincoln and Churchill and
FDR were not crass. They were amazingly effective because
they knew and accepted that leadership must follow the laws

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of sales persuasion. Leaders must articulate to motivate. And

that means speaking plainly and colorfully with stories and
Micro-Scripts. And that reality has remained unchanged since
ancient times, when Cato the Elder used this line to complete
every one of his speeches in imperial Rome:

carthage must be destroyed!

Here are a few more from the “Non-Discombobulated”

leaders:
–– Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date that will live in infamy.
–– A nation of the people, by the people, and for the people.
–– Ask not what your country can do for you.
–– We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields
and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never
surrender.

More Great Moments from the Hall of Fame

When Lyndon Johnson ran against Republican Barry
Goldwater in 1964, the Cold War was raging. The Democrats
thought Goldwater would be a nuclear loose cannon. Goldwater’s
slogan was: In your heart, you know he’s right. The Democrats,
who knew how to do it in those days, simply turned it around
to: In your guts, you know he’s nuts!
In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan was in a toss-up with
incumbent Jimmy Carter. Until “The Great Communicator”
looked straight into the camera in the final debate and said:
“My fellow Americans, you simply need to ask yourselves:

Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

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Historians say he won the election with that Micro-Script

in that moment. His polls climbed. Democrats never had a
response.
Then came Dukakis.

Everything Was Great Until “He Furloughed

the Murderer”
In the summer of 1988, Democrat Mike Dukakis had a big
lead over Vice President George H. W. Bush, a bland candidate
who seemed forever cast as the perennial runner-up. Dukakis
had a superior technical grasp of the issues. He talked like this:
“We need bilateral cooperation to circumvent nato’s unilateralist
tendencies, while avoiding the obstructionist dilemma.”

Bush had a guy named Lee Atwater. Atwater wanted his

gentlemanly boss to unleash him to use the opposite kind
of language—the kind that an average Joe would be able to
use—when someone asked, “Why in the world are you for that
wimp Bush?”
As the campaign went into the home stretch, Bush let
Atwater loose.
Suddenly a t v ad appeared. The mug shot of a con-
vict named Willie Horton who happened to be paroled in
Massachusetts while Dukakis was governor. Willie Horton
had walked out of state prison, gone straight to Florida, and
murdered a child. The Micro-Script that went along with
the ad was:

Dukakis—He furloughed the murderer.

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If you were worried about violent crime in America, as many

were at the time, if you were on the fence about whether Dukakis
might be an out-of-touch, uber-liberal ideologue who’d make
cock-eyed lefty decisions in the White House as the Republicans
claimed he would, well, you weren’t on the fence after seeing
Willy Horton glaring at you on your tv ten times a day.
I’m from Massachusetts, too, and, back then, Dukakis was
our governor. I can’t remember a single word or phrase Dukakis
said in that campaign. But more than twenty years later, I still
remember people coming up to me and saying: “You know, he
furloughed that murderer, Willie Horton.”
Thanks to Lee Atwater, all Bubba in Biloxi had to remember
if he wanted to defend his position or impress a friend was four
words—
He furloughed the murderer. He’s a liberal fool.
Bush beat Dukakis. Fair or not, those Micro-Scripts were
magic words.

We Can’t Go Without Mentioning…The Flip-flopper

After the temporary phenomenon of master politician Bill
Clinton (It’s the economy, stupid), the Democrats proceeded
immediately, once more, to forget everything they might have
learned about communication while the Republicans went back
to creating Micro-Script works of art. They saved the best for
John Kerry in 2004. Kerry was channeling the best of Mike
Dukakis with applause lines like: “A bold, progressive interna-
tionalism stands in stark contrast to the too often belligerent and
myopic unilateralism of the Bush administration.”

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And then one day, Kerry bestowed the gop with a gift-
wrapped Christmas present of fairytale proportions when he
was asked about the Iraq War. He said: “I was for it before I was
against it.” The Republicans were giddy. They took this gem and
knighted Kerry as: The flip-flopper!
It was a Micro-Script game changer. Kerry was boxed and
wrapped. The news media grabbed it, and it entered the lan-
guage within hours—and, by the way, that was before texting
and universal high-speed Internet. From Kennebunkport, to
Ketchikan, folks who might never have been able to quote you
a single political fact, could suddenly tell you in response to
anything: “Well, I don’t want a President who’s a flip-flopper.”
“Flip-flopper” was actually fun to say. It had rhythm and
alliteration. It triggered the age-old “fake politician” story
and pinned it on Kerry’s forehead. It was a Hall of Fame
Micro-Script.
That year, I got tickets to the Republican National
Convention in New York City. Every time a speaker would get
around to Kerry’s record, the place would erupt spontaneously
with “flip-flopper , flip-flopper!” and take several minutes
to quiet down. They’d wave pink plastic beach flip-flops. The
podium would bang the gavel to no avail.
Kerry lost by one percentage point. Micro-Script savvy made
a notable difference. The Republicans had used magic words.

People Think Obama Was a Great Orator. He Was Not.

Obama was certainly a charismatic campaigner and an
American phenomenon. Indeed, he was a Democrat who won.

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But by our standards, once he became President and had

to govern, he was a failure as a communicator. In fact, his
legacy turned out to be so weak and non-rooted that Trump
could simply hit “flush” and whole achievements, initiatives,
and progressive accomplishments simply vanished down the
hopper and out of sight.
Why? We’ll give you a one-question test:

Q: Where are Obama’s great words?

Can you remember any? The ones teachers will someday

quote to kids in school? We all know the ones from Presidents
like Kennedy and Roosevelt. Even Johnson had The Great
Society and The War Against Poverty. Eisenhower coined The
Military Industrial Complex. Truman said: The Buck Stops Here.
Some suggest it may have been Obama’s campaign tagline:
“Yes We Can!” Not by our reckoning. According to Micro-
Script Rules, that’s a generic slogan for a nice aspiration, kept
alive by millions of dollars of campaign advertising—forgot-
ten immediately after the election. Not an unforgettable
Micro-Script.
For four years, Obama had the world’s largest pulpit all
to himself to paint a clear, simple picture about why his big
accomplishment, the Affordable Healthcare Act, would be great
for America—and how he had saved us from going off the cliff
into a Great Depression after the banking crisis.
He never did.
To understand the healthcare law, you had to have a Ph.D.
in public health from Harvard. Nobody could.

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And so of course, the Republican opposition had a field day.

They dubbed it ObamaCare. The talked about Death Panels and
stolen freedom. They called it the worst law ever passed in U.S.
history, and they never quit.
Obama kept up his personal preference for law-professor-style
speaking (the level of violence is reprehensible). He said that he
disdained “salesmanship” as beneath the dignity of his office.
But, any of the great leaders he admired would have told
him he was arrogant and woefully misguided in that attitude
about selling. They knew that the number-one job of a great
leader is to persuade and inspire, that is—to sell.

Finally, at the Democratic National convention in 2011 for

his second term, it took the master, Bill Clinton, to do it for him.
Clinton explained in 4 minutes the economic accomplishments
that Obama hadn’t explained in 4 years.
I’m going to paraphrase it from memory:

1. He inherited an economy in free fall—bleeding 700,000

jobs a month.

2. First, he stopped the bleeding—he put a strong floor

under the crash. He saved the patient’s life.

3. He laid the foundation for a modern economy that

will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new
businesses, and lots of new wealth for innovators.

4. Now we’ve had 30 straight months of job growth, and

it’s still going.

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5. We’re not all the way back to where we were yet—no

president, not me, not any one—could’ve dug us out
of that hole in just 4 years.

6. But it’s working! With policies that will make sure it never
happens again.

Wow. I just went back and looked at video of that speech,

and I had it pretty darn close. I boldfaced the Micro-Scripts
I thought I remembered in that speech. That’s how it works,
folks.
All of you would-be politicians, reformers, communicators,
and leaders, take heed: This is how you speak. This is how you
tell your story. This is the stuff of Micro-Scripts.

STOP THE PRESSES—THIS JUST IN:

I just heard this and called my editor. She said she could
insert this page before our press deadline, if I would promise to
stop being so dramatic and climb down off the ledge.
President Donald Trump made good today on his campaign
promise to pull the u.s. out of the Iran Nuclear deal. This was
a historic reversal that snuffed out what Democrats considered
Obama’s biggest diplomatic achievement. For Democrats, it was
a horrific moment.
But that’s not what got me. It was Obama’s signature
response, a call to arms heard round the world:

“…The consistent flouting of agreements that

our country is a party to, risks eroding America’s
credibility…”

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Nothing’s changed.

Can anyone imagine what Franklin Roosevelt or Truman

or Kennedy would have come back with? Can you see them
attempting to lead the nation in crisis with such bland, blood-
less drivel?
When fdr was viciously attacked by Wall Street Barons
during the Great Depression as he tried to pass banking laws
to prevent the next greed-induced crisis, he glared down from
his podium and told the nation:

“The dark forces of Wall Street loath me.

And I welcome their loathing!”

If the Democrats think they are maintaining some higher

calling to probity, so be it. But it will be at the expense of
inspiring voters. And they will continue to lose elections and
have no one to blame but themselves.

The History Changers

Let’s go beyond politicians now and talk about a central
tenet at the beginning of the book—that “six words are what
change history.” There’s no doubt that six or so Micro-Scripted
words have done it for centuries. It almost always relates to
politics in one form or another. So here are a few examples to
demonstrate the power of such words to change events and
human lives.
When I visited Vietnam recently, I went to the war museums
there. Exhibits are often illustrated with magazine and news-
paper clippings of the time, so I was constantly reminded of a

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phrase which turned out to be one of history’s most tragically

successful Micro-Scripts:

The Domino Theory

For those too young to recall, “The Domino Theory” was

a Micro-Script that explained an entire foreign policy in three
words. During the Cold War, it was the reigning metaphor used
to justify military action, huge defense budgets, and an entire
war in Southeast Asia costing millions of lives. It persuaded us
that the communists were a giant conspiracy, so that once one
nation fell, the nations next to it would fall one after another—
just like falling dominos. All the way to Ohio.
Pretty much any American from sixth-graders to adults could
understand and repeat the words “Domino Theory.” What a
Micro-Script! Say-able, metaphorical, logical, memorable, with
a clear point of view.
When the u.s. decided to go to full-scale war to stop the
dominos in Vietnam, the nation was psychologically ready. The
phrase was magic.
Except it wasn’t true.
Because for thousands of years, the Vietnamese had thought
of themselves as a distinct nation, no more likely to be a com-
munist “domino” than a French or American one.
The Domino Theory wasn’t true in Europe, either, during
the Cold War. In fact, the reverse Domino was true. As one coun-
try after another kicked out the communists in the ’80s, they
all went back to being their own independent national selves
again. No nation ever wanted to be someone else’s domino. But

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Politics

that amazing Micro-Script, running in our collective Cold War

brains, gave us the logic and the permission to make one of the
greatest foreign-policy mistakes in history. The image was just
too powerful to resist.
There are too many of these history changers to count, but
here are a few more while we’re at it:

We love death more than you love life—the chilling reminder

of the Islamic terrorists that helped us understand the nature
of the new enemy we were dealing with.

Hear O Israel, The Lord Our God the Lord is One—the

one-sentence prayer that changed all of Western civilization
with the notion of one God.

The banks are dinosaurs—quote from Bill Gates that caused

the entire banking industry to panic in the 1990s and start a
financial-technology revolution.

Why would anyone jump out of a perfectly good airplane!—Okay,

this one didn’t change history, but it gave every human on the
planet an excuse to berate me whenever they found out I was a
skydiver. I believe it is the most famous Micro-Script ever invented
because I have had everyone from a nun to an eight-year-old
offer this as constructive advice about my inferior intelligence.

Defending Against Evil Forces: What to Do When

Micro-Scripts Are Used Against You.

“You can’t take a knife to a gunfight.”

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Any powerful tool can be used for negative purposes unless

those of us on the good side counter with the positive. If you
don’t believe me, look at social media and the Internet.
As we’ve seen from all our examples, in the era of negative
campaigning, Micro-Scripts are used to define and frame the
opposition (Lyin’ Ted, Crooked Hillary, The Flip Flopper) as much
as the candidates themselves. Probably more.
So how should we react when they’re being used against us?
The short answer—never by arguing, complaining, or whining
that it’s not true or hiding and hoping it goes away.
When faced with scurrilous scripts, the only tactic is to use
Micro-Scripts in return.
There are two ways:

1. Pick up the hand grenade, and throw it back:

When George Bush’s campaign first labeled John Kerry the
Flip-Flopper, the truth was that Bush had “flip-flopped” more
glaringly in his career than Kerry ever had, and they knew it.
Instead of whining “No I’m not,” Kerry needed to say:
“Thanks for bringing this up. Sure, I’ve learned new
things in my life and changed my position when I saw there
was a better way. And I’m proud of it. But no one’s ever flip-
flopped more than George Bush!” Then Kerry needed to give
examples and start calling Bush the Flip-Flopper back!! If he
had done that, the Bush campaign would’ve stopped using it
in two days, and it would’ve never been heard again. Instead,
the Bush people used it for the rest of the campaign and beat
Kerry with it.

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2. Find another, more powerful Micro-Script to deflect

and counter with:
Instead of whining about unfairness, Kerry could’ve said:
“Sure I’ve changed my mind. I’m open to new facts, and
I’m not afraid to use new facts to improve my position when
needed. All leaders must be willing to accept better facts and
ideas. Because as Winston Churchill once said:

Those who never change their minds never change anything.”

The cardinal rule is—you are reinforcing your opponent’s

message when you make complaints and denials like “No it’s
not!” “They’re not telling you the truth!” “They’re distorting
the facts!” You can’t refute them with an essay, either.
Instead, you must use the only weapons powerful enough
to match theirs. You must fight fire with fire. Always use Micro-
Scripts to defend against Micro-Scripts.

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chapter 6

Naming:
How to Make Names
That Have Superpowers.

 
Dale Carnegie once said that there’s no sweeter sound to
a person’s ear than his own name. There’s no more important
sound for your brand, either.
Imagine if Clint Eastwood had been named Dick Trickle,
or if a Rose was called a Schnitzel Weed, or if a Sea Bass was
called a Bolivian Mud Fish. Names matter, alright.
Try even thinking about a brand without a name. You can’t.
It’s literally the first thought we have in the mental sequencing
that constitutes a brand idea, and the handle we remember.
That’s why a great, descriptive, memorable name is the most
fortuitous way to launch your Dominant Selling Idea at the
first instant your customer even thinks about your product,
your political program, or whatever you sell.
Names can absolutely be your very best Micro-Scripts if they
launch a story, are memorable and easy to say, and customers

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like to repeat them. The great brands invariably had names that
were Micro-Scripts. Say the name and deliver your elevator pitch
at the same time! What could be sweeter than that?

Diehard Batteries. Invisible Fence. Five-Hour Energy.

Head and Shoulders Shampoo. Huggies Diapers. LinkedIn.
The Cheesecake Factory. Or one of my all-time favorites:
Gentle Dental.

Every one was created by an A+ brand maker. But before we

go into details, we need to warn you about all the fake naming
traps that are out there—the ones you should avoid at all costs.

The Stupid Hall of Fame

There is a statue out in front of the Stupid Hall of Fame that
greets all visitors to the shrine, located behind Miracle Cleaners
in Athol, Massachusetts. (Yes, Athol is the real name of a town).
It marks a seminal branding event that was too profound to be
marked by a simple plaque in the hall: It commemorates The
Stupidest Corporate Naming Decision of All Time.
This naming occurred a few years ago now, but we still
haven’t found anything to top it, so here it is.
We heard it was actually conceived with the help of one
of New York’s top brand-identity firms, which was paid hand-
somely in u.s. dollars.
The company was an executive-jet-charter firm that pro-
vided a first-rate service and had satisfied customers. It was
originally called eBizJets—not a bad name, considering it was

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about jets, business customers, and booking charters cheaper

online because the company could search thousands of affili-
ated charter operators to find you a plane at the right place
and time. eBizJets was a leader in a unique new specialty called
“aggregated charter” and was competing with the “fractional
ownership” jet companies like NetJets, who were much more
expensive. The business was growing.
Then came a problem. Someone claimed prior ownership
of the eBizJets trademark, challenged, and won. The company
began a name search. They looked at thousands of logical
possibilities. And after careful consideration. They chose their
new name:
“Sentient.”

Not Sentient Airlines. Not even Sentient Rent-a-Jet. Just…

Sentient.

Why on earth would you volunteer to do that to yourself?

Why would a company with an elite, sexy product, building
awareness in a viciously competitive market, seek the honor
of meaning absolutely zero from the get-go? In fact, it meant
less than zero. A name like that starts your brand in a huge
hole. You’re not even in a category! While your competitors
are instantly id’d and already off selling, you’re still at square
one, trying to explain that you’re not a burglar-alarm company.
Now imagine a senior-executive team, a board of directors, and
a reputable brand-identity firm all voting “Yes” to this, and you
can see how they got a statue in Athol, Massachusetts.

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Maybe the ceo thought it sounded like an important, big-

company name—since so many companies by that time were
going public with concoctions like Agilent, Altria, Squatanex,
Trivergis, and Flatulent. Maybe they would get a pass if they
were a former cigarette company that was trying to hide.
But not a company that rents jet planes.

The I.N.I.T.I.A.L. Jockeys

After Sentient, honorable mention goes to all those who
deliberately choose initials instead of words to name companies.
This disease has been rampant for a while as well. They’d have
a statue, too, but there are just too many of them:

CVX, GDW, TYC, AGT, CYA, ORD, RKD.

The last two are also airport codes. The same critique for
Sentient can be used here. These are a license for your com-
pany and brand to mean zero, forcing every other part of your
message to start by climbing out of a hole and then needing to
work a whole lot harder.

IBM, GE, and FedEx

Yes, we know these are famous and successful. But remem-
ber—they didn’t start out that way. It took them decades of suc-
cess before they allowed themselves to be abbreviated—mainly
because their customers had been nicknaming them for years,
and they were already household names. And they had literally
billions of dollars to advertise with. You don’t.

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Great Name Ingredients

Instead, give your brand that gift of a great name. It doesn’t
cost you any more. And it needs only four all-natural ingredients
to be delicious—like a good French omelet. Great names are:
1. A direct statement of, or highly supportive of, your dsi
2. Descriptive, evocative, or colorful in some way
3. Own-able by you
4. Easy or pleasing to repeat

In other words, they follow the Micro-Script Rules.

Here are some more great ones:

EZ Pass, Egg Beaters, Rainex, Ringling Brothers

Barnum and Bailey Circus, Stealth Bomber,
The Oreck 8 Pound Hotel Vac, Honey Baked
Ham, Butterball Turkey, Godzilla, Frankenstein,
SuperBowl, TGI Fridays, RollerBlade, Chain Link
Fence, ZIP Code, No Fat-Low Fat Restaurant, Sam
Adams Beer, Hefty Trash Bags, Ziploc Sandwich
Bags, Instant Breakfast, Facebook, Salesforce,
QuickBooks…

Nearly every one has a complete dsi built right into it. You
can’t separate one from the other. How incredibly efficient.
Ringling Brothers Circus may sound like an exception, but
it’s not. It’s six words long—but it is so colorful, ticklish to the
senses, and downright fun to say—it is an own-able, unforget-
table circus of words that tell you “big, exciting, entertaining

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circus.” It had a pretty good tagline to go with it, we might

add—The Greatest Show on Earth. It’s a whole elevator pitch
in a name and tagline. Brand Titan stuff.

When You’re Not Able to Use a Descriptive Name

Like all things in branding, there are exceptions: names like
Diehard and ez Pass are not always possible to do for practical
reasons. It’s easy to name a new fruit candy that squirts when
you bite into it: Gushers. It’s harder when you’re dealing with an
industrial process or a high-tech software product, for example.
And sometimes, all the descriptive words in your specialty have
simply been taken.
But you should always keep the descriptive goal in mind
and always strive to connect your name and your dsi .

Coined or Made-up Names

Even made-up names can be inspired when you keep the
great-name criteria in mind. Compaq computers, the first por-
table pc s, was a perfect example. You couldn’t miss the sound
of their unique, superlative attribute, could you? Compact.
The drug companies make up amazing alliterative names
that hint their way to descriptive meaning. Viagra and Levitra
are two. Viagra has “virile” and “aggressive” in it. Levitra
has “levitate” (they’re both drugs for erectile dysfunction, of
course). If you are naming a new male-performance enhancer,
think of a list of descriptors like “virile” and “aggressive” and
“levitate,” or maybe “Debby” and “Dallas.” Stay away from
words like “wilt.” Then mix and match until you come up
with the next Viagra.

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When You Start With A Given—Like a Family Name:

When we already have an established corporate or family
name—like Oreck or Halls or Johnson & Johnson—we can
often attach “descriptor” words that become fused onto it.
It’s then said in the same breath, becoming part of our name.
Look at the amazing amount of useful selling information in
the name-descriptor combo: Oreck 8 Pound Hotel Vac. Halls
lozenges attached “Mentholyptus,” making their product Halls
Mentholyptus. The shampoo from Johnson & Johnson that
doesn’t cause tears is fused together as Johnson Baby Shampoo.

The Naming Tour

We always recommend going on a naming tour to ponder
the names that are swirling all around us. All you need to do
is turn on your tv or take a drive through town. Ask yourself,
“What makes each name great or not great?”

Take Movies and TV Shows

No industry is better at coming up with great names than
Hollywood. Smart Hollywood execs always ask for the name
before you get a chance to pitch because they know the power
Animal House or The Godfather has to instantly evoke antici-
pation in the hearer and be remembered by a word-of-mouth
promoter. If you’ll notice, the following all fit at least one of the
criteria for great names. They’re amazing:

Rambo, Heaven Can Wait, Rocky, Fatal Attraction,

Casablanca, Diehard, Tarzan of the Apes, Twilight
Zone, The Wizard of Oz, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,

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The Day the Earth Stood Still, Psycho, Ben Hur,

The Gladiator, Titanic, Moonstruck, Bachelor Party,
Scarface, Debby Does Dallas, The Parent Trap, The
Omen, Field of Dreams, Star Wars, Queer Eye for
the Straight Guy, and on and on.

They are all specific, descriptive, emotive, tantalizing,

frightening, metaphorical, unique-sounding, idea launchers.
Tongue ticklers, never tongue teasers.
tv-show namers are masters at this because they have to
be. There’s no $25 million ad budget and very little lead time
to advertise a show—especially a one-time shot like a mini-
series or a made-for-tv movie. So there’s no messing around
with subtlety or poetic inspiration. The title has to tell the
audience everything it needs to know in five seconds, e.g., “This
is a violent domestic drama, with sex, crime, and a twist to
make it different from the 200 others you just watched. With
shows like Temptation Island and Desperate Housewives, the
tv guys are just gettin’ warmed up. How about: The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre. My Cat from Hell. Beverly Hills Grandma:
Profile of a Hooker.
As Alan King once said on the nbc Tonight Show: “If
Shakespeare pitched Hamlet to the networks, they would’ve
changed the title to Murray and the Ghost.” These guys know
what they’re doing. They may be crude sometimes—but they’re
genius namers.
Now, of course, there are thousands of really bad movie
names out there, too, for you to analyze on your naming tour.

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Names that are empty, flat, and invisible. Scroll through Netflix,
and you’ll see about a thousand of these in ten minutes:

It’s My Turn, She’s All That, Talk to Me, Moment

by Moment, Time and Again, Someday Soon.

Ugh, we’re tired already. Not all the bad titles are flops. It’s
just that good ones give you tons more horsepower.

When and When Not to Name

Just because names are important, don’t start over-naming.
We had a client recently with 36 different trademarked names
for service features attached to the main product. This torrent
of names was jumble of junk that confused customers. We
eventually packaged the 36 names into about 6 names. There
was a sigh of relief inside and outside the company.
Rule of Thumb: name only what is proprietary and pivotal
to your overall brand. That usually means your company, key
products, and one or two specialty attributes. Audi, the first
all-wheel-drive luxury car, named its unique traction system
Quattro because it was at the heart of its engineering and
driving difference. Mirage parachute containers came up with
Alien Technology, the unique harness system that conforms
to your body, giving you more flying control than any other
parachute-container system.
Intel was smart enough do the thinking for its customer
partners ahead of time. It named its penultimate computer chip
Pentium, created the famous “Intel Inside” seal, and then gave it
to manufacturers so that they could highlight this ingredient
as a symbol of #1 quality by saying “Intel Inside.”

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Last but Not Least—Beware the “Richard Dick” Trap

Don’t pick a name if you don’t like the nickname it comes
with! After a while, everybody will try to expend .0001 calories
less by abbreviating it with initials or a nickname. This isn’t
bad once your brand is firmly established as a household name.
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing didn’t mind being called
3M. But it would’ve been bad if their initials had spelled out
some unfortunate term, such as the First Unitarian Church of
Kennebunkport, ME.
Don’t name yourself “Richard” if you don’t want anyone
to call you “Dick.” And don’t name your insurance division
Premier Insurance Group, either.

Congratulations on finishing Part I.

We hope you see the power you can have

with these magical sets of words.

Now in Part II, we’ll show you how to make your own.

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Part II

How to Make
Your Own
Micro-Scripts
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chapter 7

Basic Anatomy:
How They’re Put Together,
So You Can Be a Micro-Script Expert.

 
We’re now going to take a fascinating look under the hood.
Micro-Scripts help us “audiate”—that is, unconsciously complete
phrases in our heads before we even finish saying them. It’s what
happens when I say, “If the glove doesn’t fit…” and your brain
finishes: “you must acquit!” Your brain “hears” the rest of the
sentence as clearly as if I’d spoken it. “Audiation” is a term from
music theory I learned recently from Donna Volpitta, a Ph.D.
in childhood education who told me it’s also the process babies
use when learning to speak. Audiation helps babies mimic and
repeat the scripts they hear from their mothers until they’ve
internalized the language. That’s what our brains like and what
Micro-Scripts do.
Micro-Scripts use metaphors, vivid imagery, rhythmic
cadences, and rhymes because that’s how we learned language
to begin with.

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That’s why anyone who can speak the language can create
Micro-Scripts. I’ve seen fifth-graders come up with great ones.

Learning by Example
Look at enough of these, and you’ll start seeing a familiar
structure.

Classic Clichés
A cliché is just a Micro-Script invented sometime in history
that was such a hit that it became a platitude for everyone.
Who cares if some snob calls it a “cliché”? He’s just jealous
because he couldn’t think of it. A lot were invented by wise
men like Ben Franklin, William Shakespeare, and the writ-
ers of the Bible. Most are verbalized Rules of Thumb to help
cope with everyday living. Parents teach them to us to instill
conventional wisdom. I find myself saying these to myself all
the time…
Better safe than sorry.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Live and
let live.
You only go around once. No pain, no gain.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. The early
bird gets the worm.
Honesty is the best policy. Better late than never.
Life is too short for….
Hindsight is 20/20.
You snooze, you lose. Practice makes perfect.

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There’s no “I” in team. Coulda, shoulda, woulda.

It’s not whether you win or lose—it’s how you play
the game.
Beauty is as beauty does. Let sleeping dogs lie.
Look before you leap.
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Curiosity killed the cat.
Laughter is the best medicine.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
What goes around comes around.

…And the golden rule—a Micro-Script that some religious

teachers believe sums up the Bible in a single sentence:

Do unto others as you’d have others do unto you.

One thing we just proved is that they are short and concise,
indeed. Average length is about 5.2 words. But let’s look at the
patterns they reveal. Micro-Scripts are almost always constructed
on one or a combination of the following four templates, plus
a few supporting parts.

Template 1. The A/B Equation

The pattern you see most often is a two-part logic equa-
tion—a kind of balance where value A is related to B to form
a complete idea.
• Problem A has Solution B
• If A, then B
• A causes B

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• A vs. B
• A prevents B
• A is B

For instance, A and B are underlined in the following:

Honesty is the best policy. (A is B)
If guns are outlawed, only outlaws (If A, then B)
will have guns.
What goes around, comes around. (If A, then B)
You snooze, you lose. (If A, then B)
No pain, no gain. (A causes B)
Better safe than sorry. (A saves B)

It’s more subtle but nonetheless present in others like:

What doesn’t kill you makes (A causes B)
you stronger.
(Problem: A/
If at first you don’t succeed, try… 
Solution: B)
Look before you leap. (A prevents B)

“Problem/solution” and “If/then” are the most fundamental

selling tactics a junior copywriter used to be taught when start-
ing out at the ad agency. They’re also the universal dynamics
of the face-to-face sales interaction.
If persuasion means getting one person to change a value,
to move from one position to another, you can see that these

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Micro-Scripts present a microcosm of that change—from truth

to consequence.

A Is B: The Single, Big Metaphor

The single, big metaphor Micro-Script where A is B is one
of the most universal and powerful of the A/B equations. When
we see that “something is like something else,” often in a new
or startling way, we re-frame and re-align—in fact, we actually
hypnotize ourselves with the new image.
In the clichés—virtually all contain metaphors that are
implied. Don’t rock the boat isn’t about boating safety. The “boat”
is a metaphor for any delicate situation in life that shouldn’t be
upset. Some more explicit A is B examples are:

Hindsight is 20/20.

Beauty is as beauty does. Love is blind.

Laughter is (the best) medicine.

Meth is death.

Failure is learning.

Again, some of history’s greatest Micro-Scripts use the A is

B equation. For instance, the Domino theory: Countries are
dominos. De Beers Diamonds: A diamond is forever.

Template 2. The Stark Reminder

The Stark Reminder doesn’t waste time. It says: “Do this”
or “Don’t do that.” Period. It has a rhythm or word sequence

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that make us stand up and pay attention. From the clichés, we

see examples like:

Never talk to strangers.

Life is too short for _________

Let sleeping dogs lie.

Live and let live.

And from modern Micro-Scripts, we’ll see:

Just do it!

Stop, drop, and roll (fire safety).

Keep on truckin’.

Save the whales.

Kill the bill!

Just say no!

Template 3. Unique Wordplay

The third most common pattern in Micro-Script construc-
tion is simply a unique, entertaining word construction that
lends itself to memory and speech. These almost always contain
a rhyme or rhythm that appeals to the ear:

Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

mmmm , mmmm, good.

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Snap, Crackle, and Pop!

I came, I saw, I conquered.

Template 4. The Whole Micro-Story

Nothing is more powerful than this. Remember back in
the Micro-Script definitions and Q&A when we said that a
Micro-Script is a story bite—it either tells a story, provides a
story piece, or links to a story already running in the brain?
Well, some of the most amazing Micro-Scripts are built
completely on their exposition of a whole story—more than
rhythm, an A/B equation, or anything else. It’s actually quite
amazing how much of a story can be told in a sentence or less
by an accomplished Micro-Script maker.
And you don’t have to be Ernest Hemingway to do this.
I’ve since discovered, there’s a whole movement of folks and
websites and “webzines” which have spawned book compila-
tions devoted to telling stories in six words or less—duplicating
the challenge put in earnest to good old Ernest (in Chapter 3).
Smith Magazine (www.smithmag.net), a blog/website dedi-
cated to storytelling, launched a writing contest for “six-word
memoirs”—that is, entire life stories told in six words or less.
That’s a tall order. But they got enough responses to publish
Not Quite What I Was Planning, a 200-page book of them! Here
are a few six-word life stories I found just from flipping through
the pages of that book:

Alaska hippie kid. Escaped via Ph.D. Melanie Brewer

Never should have bought that ring. Paul Bellows

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Took scenic route. Got in late. Will Blythe

Study mathematics, marry slut. Sum bad. Dan
Robinson

Found true love. Married someone else. Bjorn

Stromberg

Being a monk stunk. Better gay. Bob Redman

Afraid of everything. Did it anyway. Ayse Erginer

The car accident changed my life. Kristin Stanefski

Atheist alcoholic gets sober through God. Bob Todd

Hard to write poems from prison. Ellen Goldstein

Detergent girl: Bold, Tide. Cheer. All. Martha

Clarkson

Aspiring lady pirate, disillusioned, sells boat. Diana

White

Long-lost girl, recently found, unharmed. Tracy Bishop

After reading some of those marvelous six-worders, the

point is obvious, don’t you think? We prove yet again that we
can say an amazing amount in six words. If you can describe a
life in six words, or a novel or a movie, you’ve got to be able to
make a communications point. You’ve got to be able to describe
what your product or company does. The point of this book is
that you must.

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In that context, look again at the stories triggered by:

They’re building a bridge to nowhere.

He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.

Or from some of the greatest ad copywriting in history:

They laughed when I sat down at the piano, but then I started
to play… considered by many the greatest headline ever writ-
ten. And others like:

Always a bridesmaid but never a bride.

Only her hairdresser knows for sure.

The man in the Hathaway shirt*

The people who write tv and movie titles are some of the
best in the world at creating story-imbued Micro-Scripts for
those titles. Maybe it’s because they’re professional storytellers.
The point is, you can get an amazing amount of information
and story suggestion in memorable titles like:

Raise the Titanic!

Desperate Housewives

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

* He was the dapper guy with the eye patch in the ads a few years ago—a com-
bination visual Micro-Script and verbal. The visual said there’s something exotic
and romantic about this guy. He probably just had a bad case of conjunctivitis,
but who’s asking? He made Hathaway the #1 dress shirt brand for men for
decades.

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and of course, that favorite of millions:

Beverly Hills Grandma: Profile of a Hooker

Don’t ever forget the locomotive power of story on the

human brain. And the power of Micro-Scripts to compress those
stories into six-word packages—perfect for communicating in
our hyper-media world.

Combinations
Very few Micro-Scripts are 100% one template or the
other. Combinations are the norm. For example, You snooze,
you lose uses 1) the A/B Equation, and 2) the Stark Reminder.
It also contains key ingredients like Rhyme, Alliteration,
and a Repetitive Sequence—special components we’ll talk
about next.

Key Ingredients:
1.  Word Patterns, Rhythms, and Rhymes
It should be obvious by now that Mrs. Goodworthy, your
eighth-grade English teacher who was trying so hard to teach
you the mechanics of poetry—rhyming structure, alliteration,
consonance, assonance, and repetitive word sequences—while
you sat there looking out the window—was merely trying to
show you how to make millions of dollars or get elected President
by mastering the phonetic secrets of Micro-Scripts.

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Rhymes, rhythms, and such are what make Micro-Scripts

say-able, play-able, like-able, stick-able, and just plain interesting.
Here are some others mixed in with the clichés:
When in doubt, throw it out. Simple Rhyme
No pain, no gain. Simple Rhyme
Practice makes perfect. Alliteration
An apple a day keeps the
doctor away. Complex Rhyme
Don’t ask, don’t tell. Repetitive Sequence
Think globally, act locally. 
Assonance, Complex
Rhyme
When the going gets tough, Complex Repetitive
the tough get going. Sequence
Quicker, thicker, picker-upper. Complex Rhyme
Curiosity killed the cat. Alliteration
Click it or ticket. Complex Rhyme
Stop, drop, and roll. Rhyme and Assonance
The family that prays together, Rhyme, Assonance,
stays together. Repetitive Sequence

But even when a rhyme or matching vowels isn’t obvious,

there’s virtually always strong meter—a cadence or a simple
beat like a drum that helps it out. Imagine beating a drum as
you say these:

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Don’t rock the boat. (Say: Bmp, bmp, ba-bmp)

No place like home.

The early bird gets the worm.

Buy low, sell high!

2.  Vivid, Colorful Language

Birds, worms, boats, cats, shoulda, snooze, squeaky wheels,
pain, apples, and doctors—good Micro-Scripts employ color-
ful, strong, evocative words whenever they can. Even in the
clichés, which are rather old and dowdy compared to what’s
new, this type of language is preferred by successful Micro-
Script makers.
We want words that show, not tell. That’s why words like
passion, quality, commitment, dedication, excellence, difference,
and deliver find their way into lots of corporate mission state-
ments—but not into Micro-Scripts. In fact, most employees
(including senior management) couldn’t repeat the company
mission statement if they tried.
Just don’t forget—your number-one priority in a Micro-Script
is the idea or the value you’re putting forth—not language for its
own sake. It’s the wisdom plus rhythmic phrasing put together
that makes What goes around comes around, and Practice makes
perfect timeless, not the individual words by themselves.

3.  Simple Metaphors

By now you know this is last but not least when it comes
to Micro-Scripting. Metaphors not only make the audience

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imbue your premise with their own emotional experience,

they automatically assure you of using vivid, colorful language
because they are by definition specific, concrete, physical, and
visual in order to work.

Life is like a box of chocolates.

In that phrase, an infinitely large and mysterious thing is

likened to the smallest, most familiar thing. A box of chocolates.
I can taste it, I can smell it, and I can remember all the times
I bit into one as a child and didn’t know what I was gonna get.
(So I ate the whole box).

Finally—There’s a DSI in Every Successful Brand

Remember our Rule 4½? A marketing Micro-Script must
be built on a Dominant Selling Idea. There’s a lesson, a moral,
a value, or a central idea implied in every one. Without a point
of view, a Micro-Script has no worth to anyone, and it won’t
be passed along.
No pain, no gain: dsi : Achievement is earned.
We only go around once: dsi : Don’t waste opportunity.
What doesn’t kill you dsi :
Adversity builds
makes you stronger: character.
Look before you leap: dsi : Beware of foolish impulses.
If at first you don’t dsi : Don’t be a quitter.
succeed, try, try again:
Beauty is as beauty does: dsi :
It’s what’s inside that
counts.

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Bridge to nowhere: dsi :Government spending

is wasteful and corrupt.

Let’s Sum It Up
Even the oldest, most-well-worn Micro-Scripts use the A/B
Equation, the Stark Reminder, the Unique Wordplay, or all of
them.
Now let’s see if they continue in more modern Micro-Scripts.

Social Micro-Scripts—Modern Lessons

Some of the following are so famous, we use them to flavor
speech, influence behavior, and win arguments that give us
everyday wisdom.

The (boyfriend, mother-in-law, dog) from hell.

Hey, ________ (dogs, mother-in-laws, dentists) are

people too!

Hate is not a family value.

The family that prays together, stays together.

Only you can prevent forest fires.

Don’t be a litterbug.

What would Jesus do?

Black is beautiful.

You are what you eat.

Think outside the box.

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If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the

problem.

He’s just not that into you.

A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.

Be kind, rewind.

Okay, what patterns do we see? They rarely run over six

words. Most are metaphor-based.
Incidentally—What would Jesus do implies metaphorically
that “You are Jesus.”
One of the greatest, most effective Micro-Scripts of all time
came from World War II, to remind citizens to keep secrets,
secret:

Loose lips sink ships.

Marketing, Selling, and Branding Micro-Scripts

As I’ve mentioned, advertising writers used to be really, really
good at this. They created the language for mass-market selling
that everybody used when it came to the great brands—usually
set in taglines that became part of the American lexicon. This
was true especially during the heyday of advertising—what
some have called the American century.
Why don’t we see scripts as clever and succinct as Melts in
your mouth, not in your hand, or Good to the last drop anymore?
Well, in fact we do—when marketing people remember that
their job is to sell and put people in motion, not just to amuse
them and win an award.

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The ones who aren’t fooling around—the ones who have a

candidate to sell or else, or who understand that going viral with
a Dominant Selling Idea attached vs. just going viral can be the
difference between moving markets or just moving Likes on
Facebook—they will be the business winners. You have a choice.
You get to choose whether you have a Made from sugar so
it tastes like sugar, Shoes that breathe or Shirts made to be worn
untucked, vs. a generic slogan like Now that’s eating. I can
remember that line only because I thought it was so bad. Sitting
here, without looking back at my notes, I can’t tell you which
pizza chain it represented. I can tell you that when I’m scarfing
down a Twinkie, I also think that’s eating.
Here’s a representative sample of some more of the great
ones, again for convenient placement here in our anatomy les-
son. Look at all the patterns and components that keep many
of these working perfectly after twenty, thirty, eighty years.

Tastes great, less filling.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

I’m going to Disney World!

I shoulda had a V-8.

The few, the proud, the Marines.

Join the Navy and see the world.

Fair and balanced news.

Guinness is good for you!

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You deserve a break today.

Carnival are the fun ships.

Fly the friendly skies.

Softens hands while you do dishes.

Got milk?

Pork is the other white meat.

Nothing gets between me and my Calvins.

Snap, Crackle, and Pop!

It’s good to the last drop.

Crest is the one dentists recommend.

Wheaties…

M&Ms…

Allstate…

Micro-Scripts for Teaching and Instruction of

Modern Tasks
Lastly, I want to mention another crucial application—cre-
ating Micro-Scripts not just in cliches for living but in some
of our most complex tasks. When we face situations that are
dangerous, difficult, or dire—high-speed situations in particu-
lar—we’ve learned to go to the fastest, surest, easiest way to
remember. Hint: It begins with an M.

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For these, we use our templates and our key components—

just like any great Micro-Script.

Take Landing a Jet…

When you’re landing, there’s a set of runway lights on the
side that tell you if you’re high, low, or on the safe glide slope. In
the final seconds, pilots need a fast, fail-safe Rule of Thumb to
remind them what the light code means without consulting a
manual. Two white lights, one over the other, means you’re high.
Two red lights means you’re low. But because of the machine’s
optics, the safe glide slope is red over white, the opposite of what
you’d think. You can’t afford to forget this fact, even once. So,
pilots use a Micro-Script:

Red over white, you’re all right. Red over red, you’re dead.

I’ve used it, and it works.

Or take sailing on a windy day.

In a small boat, a big gust can capsize you in seconds. And
sometimes when it’s really blowing, things just start getting out
of hand. The proper action is to let out the sails immediately.
It’s like stepping on the brake in your car.
The Micro-Script you’re taught in sailing school is:

When in doubt, let it out.

When bringing a boat into a tight channel, if the helmsman

forgets what side of the buoy to stay on, the boat hits the rocks.
Heading into the harbor, red buoys are always on the right side
of the channel, green on the left.

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So, the famous Micro-Script sea captains use is:

Red, right, returning.

I’ve been going in and out of harbors for forty years, and I
swear, I repeat that Micro-Scripted Rule of Thumb in my head
every single time.
We have them for driving—steer in the direction of the skid.
We have them for sports, work, or in my case, spelling. I can’t
spell the word “recieve” unless I say to myself: “I before E except
after C.” See—it was supposed to be “receive.”
Here’s one final one that everybody in the world seems to
know. A nautical/meteorological one:

Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

Red sky at night, sailors delight.

It’s such a nifty little phrase, people say it and repeat it all
around the world, especially when they’re down by the coast
at sunset.
(But I don’t think anyone in the world ever had a clue what
this one meant.)

Now that you’re a certified Micro-Script mechanic,

it’s time for a quick deep dive on your DSI—the idea,
moral, or important theme that great Micro-Scripts are
built upon…

Remember What Micro-Scripts Are Made Of

1. The Four Templates:

i) A/B Equation:

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mm Problem A has Solution B

mm If A, then B
mm A causes B
mm A vs. B
mm A saves B
mm A is B
mm A mirrors B
ii) The Stark Reminder
iii) Unique Wordplay
iv) A Whole Micro-Story

2. Key Ingredients
mm Word Patterns, Rhythms, and Rhymes
mm Vivid, Colorful Language
mm Simple Metaphors

3. There must be a dsi —an idea, a moral, or a

theme—inside.

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chapter 8

Your Dominant Selling Idea

(a.k.a. Brand Positioning).
How to Find It.

 
If you have something important to say, sell, or champion
with your Micro-Scripts, this chapter is for you. It’s a quick-start
guide for finding your Dominant Selling Idea—also known as
your Brand Positioning—so you can build your Micro-Scripts
on a rock foundation. That means I’m going to summarize my
entire 263-page book on the Dominant Selling Idea (dsi)—Why
Johnny Can’t Brand: Rediscovering the Lost Art of the Big Idea—in
one chapter right now.
We start with this question:

How Many Hearts Do You Have?

Conventional wisdom says that we have one.
How many hearts can your brand or your idea have if you
want it to break through in this world? The answer is:

One.

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Finding and securing this heart is the key. Whether you’re

communicating en masse or face-to-face, the most successful
brands have a dsi heart beating at the center.
So, you must ask yourself: Do I have a strong dsi , a weak
one, or none at all?

Let’s find out.

Dominant Selling Idea 101

Great value propositions have one thing in common: One
Thing. A single, big promise that is the big takeaway—the
difference that sets you apart from all others.
This is never a “laundry list” of eighteen features just
because the marketing team can’t make up their minds. It’s
one attribute, one advantage that’s important to the customer
that you do best:
Safest tire. Fastest human. The longest-lasting light bulbs, the
only shoes that breathe. That kind of thing.
In fact, perhaps the two most important words in all of
marketing are: “Only from…”

The One Item of Carry-On Rule

Why is this true? It’s because of a dsi Rule of Thumb we
call the One Item of Carry-on Rule. It simply says that in a world
where we are bombarded by a trillion messages a day, people
remember one key thing about your product or brand—if you’re
lucky enough that they remember anything at all.
No matter how much info you dump on them, they’ll simply
pick out the one idea that’s most important for reasons entirely

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up to them and then file it in their “overhead bin.” All the rest
gets left at the curb, thanks to our simple-loving, heuristic brains
that we learned about in Chapter One. Our brains default to
simple in order to make snap decisions on the least amount of
data when needed. They do this without thinking.
So, as communicators, naturally, we want to hand our
customers the one most unique, important, and own-able idea
we’ve got—our most important difference—so it will be the
one they remember.
That would be our dsi . It says: buy this one vs. that one
because we give you something more, something better, or
something only.
Indeed, the only reason brands exist is to offer something
that makes a customer’s life better. How you get them to choose
your brand is to prove in word and deed that, compared to the
others, you’re not just better—you are best.

Everyone Goes for the Top Draft Choice

No one ever set out to purchase the second-, third-, or
fourth-best solution to any problem. We all want the best in
the category that we can afford at the time. That best can
be for any particular attribute as long as it is important to the
customer, i.e.,
the fastest,
the healthiest,
the safest,
the smartest,

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the most popular,

the most durable,
the most experienced,
the most attractive,
the most sexy,
the most prestigious,
the largest,
the strongest,
the lightest,
the best priced,
the most energy efficient,
the most authentic,
the softest,
the hardest.
—anything that matters.
So, in a world with endless choices and hyper-communi-
cation, our first order of business is to find the one unique,
important, and own-able “best” that sets us apart.

That will be your Dominant Selling Idea.

As we’ll see, the great Positioning Paradox is that, if we

tried to stand for everything on the above list, we’d stand for
nothing at all. It’s another reason that it’s critical to close your
eyes, hold your breath, and do the hardest thing in marketing:
choose one thing to stand for.

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The Five Ingredients of Your DSI

Five ingredients enable your proposition to be a Dominant
Selling Idea. It tells people you are:

1. Superlative. “The best at.” It says you are number

one at something—the best choice for a specific need.
The best __________. The only one with __________.
The most __________, etc.

2. Important. What you’re #1 in has to be something

that matters—something I really want or would want
if I knew about it.

3. Believable. There has to be a unique, plausible reason

why you claim the above that makes logical sense.
It’s nothing if it’s not credible.

4. Measurable. It must be specific and obvious in your

performance. It must be real in the walk, not just the
talk—totally aligned and consistent with all your
claims. Your performance must prove it.

5. Own-able. Not already taken by somebody else. It

must be uniquely available so you can stand for it.

Without a dsi at the heart, you end up with empty, impotent,

self-serving communication with vague slogans like “A Passion
for Excellence” or “You’ll Notice the Difference”—or an invisible
corporate name like cqt Solutions. The differentiating power
you get by using a dsi such as “The 20,000-mile Oil Change”
is rather obvious, don’t you think?

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7 Rules of Thumb That Guide DSIs

1. The Number One is Holy.
This is the principle that led us to the “One Item of
Carry-on Rule.” As humans, we have a love affair with the
number one—with anything that comes in first, the leader,
the best—and very little that comes after. That’s why we can
remember the tallest mountain in the world, the first man
on the moon, our first kiss—but almost never the second.
And third or fourth? Fuggedaboudit. We have one God, one
President, and we seek to be “at one” with ourselves. We
reward winners out of all proportion to their talent over the
second-place finisher—even when they win by .0001 second,
as they often do in the Olympics.
Thus, there is only one position to have in any category
that’s worth a damn: We must be #1, the best, the gold-medal
winner in whatever category we choose to inhabit. Because no
one ever went out shopping to buy the second- or third-best
thing. And if we’re not currently #1 in our category because
some competitor already holds that position in people’s minds,
we must invent a new category to be #1 in.
Don’t worry—it’s done every day. For example, if there
are already three regular dentists in town, then become The
Children’s Dentist, and you’ll be instantly set apart. More on
this at the end of the Chapter.

2. Test for Five Ingredients in Your DSI.

Test to see if it’s a Dominant Selling Idea by checking off
the five ingredients. Your selling proposition is a dsi only if it is:

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1. Superlative.

2. Important.

3. Believable.

4. Measurable.

5. Own-able.

3. The Positioning Paradox

Most marketers throw a barrage of features at customers
hoping something will stick. But a barrage can’t penetrate the
heuristic human mind. Only an arrow with a sharp idea at the
tip can. If you try to stand for a whole list of features, you stand
for nothing at all.
The Positioning Paradox states: in all communications, the
narrower you focus, the wider and farther your message goes.
The fewer things you say in a speech, the more you are heard.
You get more general recognition by being the most specific. So
those who can make the choice to pick a specialty are far more
effective at achieving fame and recognition than those who don’t.
Plus, being number one in safety, like Volvo, brings with it
reams of other positive associations—about quality construc-
tion, superior technology, corporate caring and responsibility,
and so on.

4. Simple Always Wins

Simple beats difficult. Simple beats complicated—in prac-
tice and perception. Simple can be remembered, repeated,

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recommended, and replicated. Simple means obvious. Simple

means easy. Easy never lost to hard. The simple message wins.

5. Specific Is Terrific
It’s the difference between “low prices” and Everything 50%
Off! The difference between “good athlete” and High School All
American. It’s why the makers of Ivory say it is 99 and 44/100%
pure. Specificity is the metaphor writer’s trick, the color added,
the truth that supercharges ideas in the brain.

6. The 3 Rs: Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

There is no fame for your great dsi without repetition and
reinforcement. That means it has to be repeated not only by
you but, even more importantly, by others. You can’t just force
this. People have to want to. Inside the organization, they
have to understand, believe it, like it, be proud of it. Outside,
it has to be important enough and easy enough to say for your
customers to want to tell others.

7. Other People’s Heads Are All That Counts

A prospective dsi is just a strategy. When we turn it into
a Micro-Script and advertise it, it’s an invitation to outsiders to
think of our product the way we’d like them to.
But for it to work, we have to lodge it in other people’s
heads, or it’s useless. The only way to accomplish this and
have it not be just superficial, is with honest, un-inflated
performance. Ignore this reality of the Word of Mouth world
at your peril. Some organizations go around assuming their
Dominant Selling Idea stands for one thing, when even the

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simplest research would show it stands for a whole different

experience in the consumer’s mind. (I became leery of Nieman
Marcus ever since I started hearing so many people jokingly
call it “Needless Mark-up”).
So, to establish a dsi in other people’s heads, you can’t just
say it. You have to do what you say. Just Do It!
Hmmm, I wonder if that tagline is taken?

After Your DSI, You Can Have All the Supporting

Features You Want
You can have a plethora of other attractive features and
benefits that support the sale. All good products do. But they
become great and famous brands only when they first have a
true dsi .

Seeing the DSIs All Around Us

The best way to get good at dsi s is to practice. Just go out
and look around. They’re everywhere. At the same time, you’ll
start seeing ads and packaging where the dsi is conspicuous by
its absence. In the days when tv and radio were king, advertis-
ers were brilliant at culling out and expressing the Dominant
Selling Idea, many of which have lasted for generations. We all
know these classics. The dsi is underlined:

M&Ms…The little chocolate pellets that come

with a shiny shell in pretty colors so the chocolate
doesn’t rub off and make a mess…

Wheaties… cereal so nutritious, it makes you a

winning athlete…

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Halls Throat Lozenges…the ones with unique,

nose-clearing menthol fumes…

Timex Watches—the most durable watches…

Whoooops—quick time out.

We need to interject something right here to make a very

important point…
Wasn’t your mind interrupting and tugging at you just now
when you read the dsi s for those great brands? After M&Ms,
wasn’t your mind shouting, “Hey, it’s Melts in your mouth not in
your hand.” Didn’t it go, “Wheaties: Breakfast of Champions”? And
come onnnnn, everyone knows that “Timex takes a lickin’ and
keeps on tickin’!” Because that’s the way your mind remembers
them and loves hearing them.
Your brain was dying to say the great Micro-Scripts that
were created to express those Dominant Selling Ideas written
as taglines by Micro-Script craftsmen more than sixty years
ago. They wrote Micro-Scripts like Breakfast of Champions to
install their value propositions as our one item of carry-on.
And it worked so well we couldn’t uninstall them now, even
if we tried. The dsi for Allstate Insurance might’ve been a
bland superlative like “the insurance company you trust most
to protect you.” But the Micro-Script for it was You’re in good
hands with Allstate.
Don’t forget that a dsi is the objective advantage itself,
stated declaratively and factually. The Micro-Script is its cre-
ative, verbal expression—done in the vivid, descriptive way that
makes it easy to remember and repeat to others.

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The Smartest Marketers Are Doing It Still

Many criticize the modern purveyors of substance-less
marketing communication—but there are still superstars who
emerge with excellent, clear dsi s and have the growth and
marketshare to show for it.
Splenda—the non-artificial-tasting low-calorie
sweetener.
Geox Shoes—The first shoes that have ventilation
in the soles.
Kashi Products—The unique whole-grain blend in
every product.
Untuckit Shirts—The shirts that are made to be
worn un-tucked.
Yeti Coolers—The coolers built stronger to hold ice
longer.
Geico—the car insurance that’s 15% cheaper.
Flowers.com—the flowers that come directly from
the field so they’re fresher.

Brand marketers such as these also furnish the Micro-

Scripted language they deserve:
Splenda—it’s made from sugar so it tastes like sugar
Geox—the shoes that breathe
Kashi—7 whole grains on a mission

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Geico—15 minutes saves you 15%

Untuckit—The shirts that are made to be worn untucked.

Yeti—Built Stronger to Keep Ice Longer.

There’s an amazing amount of selling information contained

in every one.

Now of course, you can do this, too. Here are a few other
dsi s I spotted just by driving down Route 1:
The fastest outboard engine, the real New York-style bagel
place (in Bangor, Maine), the unbreakable line of laptops, the
highest-mileage hybrid, the online dating website for lawyers, the
all-organic local farmer’s market, and the Shoreline’s shoulder
surgery specialty group.
I hope you’re seeing that it’s not brain surgery. It’s brain
singularity.

And Don’t Forget to Spot the DSIs in Names

They’re so powerful because you practically get a whole
elevator pitch just by saying the name!

The Dyson Airblade—The only blade-shaped,

high-speed commercial hand dryer

Focus Factor—The pills that focus your memory

Destroyed in Seconds!—The reality tv program

that shows great stuff blowing up

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Princeton Longevity Center—The health clinic with

checkups that prolong your life

Seattle’s Best Coffee—The coffee city’s standard

of excellence

Bare Naked Foods—The granola with the most

natural, whole ingredients

Sometimes the DSI Comes From the Performance

Alone—No Words Needed
Not all successful products boast a great name or tagline.
But every one must deliver consistent, observable performance
that proves a difference you see and feel.
Volvo is the safe car. I’ve been saying it for years, but
now, Volvo’s become kind of newsworthy again because even
though it hasn’t advertised with a “safe” tagline for decades,
in a recent survey, the century-old company was still named
by 70% of consumers as the world’s safest car. The Dominant
Selling Idea is kept going by people and mechanics, who
talk about the famous “steel safety cage.” Or the fact that
Volvo has unilaterally been responsible for nearly all the big
personal-safety inventions in cars since its inception—from
the three-point seat belt to anti-lock brakes. And I just read
they’re keeping the legend alive by announcing a company-
wide mission to build an injury-proof car by 2013. That’s a
100-year-old heart that’s still beating, folks. Toyota, by the same
token, is “the car that doesn’t break.” Not a bad Dominant
Selling Idea. I’ve never seen that in their tagline. I couldn’t

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remember any of their taglines. But after polling all 17 of the

Toyota owners I know and talking with my town’s three local
mechanics and hearing everyone lead with a version of the
same idea—“they never come in for repairs,” “They easily go
300,000 miles,” “They don’t break,” “Only Hondas even come
close in reliability”—I’ve got the best built, most durable dsi in
my head, and I happily pass it on to others in my own words.
And Starbucks—the brand so many Gurus (used to) love to
talk about, had neither a tagline nor advertising at all during
its historic rise. They simply showed up in your neighborhood
on every street corner, in malls, and in bookstores. They served
consistently good coffee with consistently comfortable chairs
and couches to sit on for hours without you being asked to
leave and go get a job, and that was it.

A DSI in Every Product

And finally—we’ve been telling clients for years: if advertisers
had the chutzpah to brand water, air, sand, or marriage—there’s
a dsi in waiting for every company or product if you know
where to look. It takes no marketing budget, no national ad
campaign, no nothing but honest customer knowledge, belief
in your product, and the courage to make the choice to pick
one big idea to be yours. Some of the greatest in existence are
found every day in small-town usa . In my own little town, we
have the Madison Art Cinema, Café Grounded—a coffee shop
in an airplane hangar—and R.J. Julia, who became America’s
preeminent independent bookseller.

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The 6 Steps to Position Your Brand: What Micro-

Scripts Have Taught Us.
We had been coming up with Dominant Selling ideas and
turning them into brands for years before we started thinking
about Micro-Scripts around 2010. But since then, Micro-Script
thinking has had a profound influence on everything we do. It
has made our processes faster and more direct as we’ve come up
with new Rules of Thumb that get us to the core of problems
and articulate solutions faster than ever.
This is especially true when it comes to the most vital
step in branding—the foundation of it all. It’s the process of
“positioning”—finding that one piece of real estate in the
customer’s mind that’s yours and yours alone. “Positioning” is
the term made common in the early 1970s as far as we know.
It’s a term we still use all the time, even though, as we’ve
shown, your Dominant Selling Idea and your Positioning are
one and the same.
The reason we coined the term “Dominant Selling Idea”
when we were teaching about brands was because it implied a
mechanical process that made it easier to break down Positioning
into five core elements: Superlative, Important, Believeable,
Measurable, and Own-able.

So, to conclude this primer on the dsi /Positioning—we are

going to outline the steps for coming up with one.

Here’s the Micro-Script we use to define what a dsi /

Positioning is and does:

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Positioning Puts You in a Category of One.

So, Category is where we start.

1. Category is king.
When people have a need and want to buy something to
fix it, they don’t think about a brand. The first thing they think
about is a category: Which group of businesses specialize in
solving this particular area of need? If a customer needs food
to cook, they first think: I need a supermarket. If they want to
fix a broken sink, they think: I need a hardware store. Or I need
a plumbing service. If they want higher education, they think:
I need a college. All are categories. Only then does a customer
ask the next mental question: What’s the best brand to choose
in that category?
From your point of view as a business, your category is
literally what business you are in. And before you can position
yourself, you must be able to name and define your master
category. Are you a grocery store or a restaurant?
Believe it or not, many companies are muddy on this ques-
tion. But until you answer it, you don’t really know who your
competitors are, you don’t know your rank in your category, and
you don’t know how to position yourself within it or against it.
If your category is “car,” then you can position yourself as
best in an attribute—like durability, utility, or speed.
But here’s a big shortcut we use: the shortest way to extreme
differentiation is when you can create and claim a new category
to be #1 in.

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In other words, you say in effect: All those other competi-

tors are just versions of the same thing—but we’re “a whole
new animal.”
You want a heavy-duty car that’s easier to carry things in when
you’re doing work? Well, we built a vehicle from the ground-up, just
for that purpose. It’s called a truck!
Back in 1898 or so, that’s exactly what someone did.
In the early days of Cable tv, hbo came along and told the
world: You think you know what tv is, but we’re a new animal.
We have no commercials! We can say any word we want and
show anything we want without censorship. You can watch
first-run movies uncut for the first time. Their Micro-Scripted
tagline was simply: It’s not tv, It’s hbo.
When Chunky Soup came out, they said: See this canned
soup that has big huge chunks and comes in a bigger can? It’s
the only soup we make. It’s a different category of soup. Soup
especially for big appetites. They then created a Micro-Scripted
name (Chunky Soup) and a Micro-Scripted tagline:
The Soup that Eats like a Meal. With a new category, they
are saying: we have no competitors. We’re the only choice if
you want a soup for big appetites.
Every day, great brands are positioned this way. They
understand the great positioning rule which says:

If you’re not #1 in Your Category, Invent

a New Category, and be #1 in That!

All they’re doing is adhering to the fact that you need

to be perceived as #1 in something to have a dsi —a.k.a. a

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Position. So if you think someone else is already in posses-

sion of the #1 spot in your category, move a little to the left
or to the right, and declare your new category. If every one
in town sells New York Style Pizza, sell Chicago Style Pizza.
If there are 5 regular bakeries in town, do what a friend of
mine did: Open the Gluten-Free Bakery! People swear their
bread even tastes better.
So, this is what we do when we set out to position any
brand—we first “look for the hole in the category” because we
just assume there’s always “a category problem.” Those are the
exact words we use. It’s our way of saying that there’s usually
an un-met customer need that, once we frame it and name it,
we can claim it! A new category.

2. Set the Binary Frame. This means name and frame

what you do, then name and frame what they do to make the
difference between you and your competitor twice as dramatic.
What you’re doing is framing your competitor’s story before your
competitor can and—most importantly—giving your customers
Micro-Scripts to talk about that difference.
Two of the greatest examples are when 7-Up advertised
themselves as The Un-Cola vs. all the other Colas, and when
Boeing first built the giant 747 airliner. They named their
new category the “Jumbo Jet.” Then they dubbed all the other
airliners “narrow bodies.” No one had ever labeled regular jets
(which were pretty damn big already) “narrow bodies” before. It
made the distinction crystal clear. The press picked it up, and
soon everybody was making comparisons every time they flew.

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Politicians Have Used This Tactic Forever

In the new era of negative campaigning, you see political
campaigns using the Binary Frame every chance they get. They
often face an opponent who isn’t that well known or who hasn’t
done a good job of branding themselves early on. So politician
A attempts to label politician B, to “control the story” before
politician B gets a chance. “He furloughed the murderer,” “She’s
soft on crime,” “He’s a flip-flopper,” “She will take away your
guns.” And history will long remember:
“Low-energy Jeb, Li’l Marco, and Crooked Hillary.”

3. Give ’em the Facts of the Difference: All stories are built
on a string of unassailable facts that are knit together—facts
that anyone would agree with:

There was a little girl in a yellow dress. Fact

The dress was old and worn. Fact

She had no shoes. Fact

She was all alone, in a vast, empty, place. Fact

A tall, rusting object was a short distance away. Fact

It was a rocket ship. Fact

These facts come together to tell a story. There’s no reason

to dispute any of them because none are opinions or claims.
We tell the problem/solution story of our brands the same way,
by setting up this arc of objective facts.

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“If you wanted to rent a video, it used to be that you had to

go down to the Blockbuster Video in your town. You could go any
time you wanted. The only thing was, they always seemed to be
out of the latest feature films by the time you got there, and if you
were late returning anything, you had to pay late fees.
“But now there’s a new way to rent your videos. Not videos
from the store, videos in the mail. You order videos online. They
take a couple days to come, but, because we have big warehouses,
we always have the latest features you want. And we never have
late fees! Keep the videos as long as you want. When you’re done,
just pop them in the self-addressed envelope and send them back
free. That’s the difference between videos from the store and videos
in the mail. It’s called Netflix.”

It’s all just a set of facts that add up to a crystal-clear, easy-

to-remember difference. It worked for pretty well for Netflix.
Blockbuster has been gone for years now.
The best part is you don’t even have to knock your com-
petition or twist anyone’s arm to buy. You don’t even have to
claim one’s better. Just different. Then your customer simply
chooses. Remember:

Facts First, Feelings Follow.

Then string those facts into a story, like this…

4. Brand Story—a One-Page Story Only You Can Tell.

Write a story about “Before and After” that goes like this: “Once
the world was like this. But there was a problem. So, a company
came along to fix it. They did this, this, and this. And now the world

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is better and customers are happy.” Make your Dominant Selling

Idea the star—the big solution. Make the story fit on one page.
A great marketer I once knew said it like this: Paint a picture,
and put the customer in it. Such a story must always support
1) your big promise—your Dominant Selling Idea a.k.a. your
Position, and 2) your unique Reason to Believe (rtb), which
is a special attribute, an ingredient, or a capability you have
that others don’t.
In Chapter 9, we have actual examples of One Page Brand
Stories for your reading pleasure.

5. Collect a Set of Micro-Scripts—One will be your tagline.

See the rest of this book.

6. Try Your Micro-Scripts Out on Real Customers. Listen

and adjust. The ones they repeat back to you in conversation
are your Micro-Scripts. If you listen, you’ll be amazed at some
of the new language that customers will give you—and that
will include new Micro-Scripts that will be golden.

One Last Tip on Positioning

We call it simply Total Consistent Alignment (tca).
Run your Dominant Selling Idea and your Micro-Scripted
messages through every aspect of your business—your product
design, your marketing, and sales presentations. Demonstrate
your brand difference at every customer touchpoint, in every
feature and product innovation. When you say you’re a new
category, you’d better perform like one. The On-Time Plumber

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had better be on time. And hbo had better have real first-run
movies and never show a commercial.
You must be relentless to keep it on track because tca is
where most companies fail but all great brands succeed.

Pop Quiz
Okay, here’s the end-of-chapter quiz. If this had been a
presentation and I said, “So—what’s one big takeaway that you
could repeat tomorrow?” you’d say:
The dsi commandment: We have to find our heart, our…
A. Super Bowl commercial
B. Clever tagline
C. Really hot spokesmodel
D. Dominant Selling Idea

Since we’re on the honor system, the answer is D.

In the next chapter, we’ll show you our most practical,

everyday steps for turning your big ideas into Micro-Scripts…

Remember these Rules About DSIs

1. The dsi is your difference that makes all the dif-
ference. It meets 5 tests:
a) Superlative. It’s what you are #1 at
b) Believeable. People think you can perform it
c) Important. It’s a must-have, not just a nice-to-
have

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d) Measurable. Customers can see proof

e) Own-able. Someone else doesn’t already own it

2. The Positioning Paradox:

The narrower your idea,

the wider and farther it goes.

3. The Micro-Script for “Positioning” is:

Positioning puts your product in

a category of one.

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chapter 9

More Practical Tips for Making

Your Own Micro-Scripts
 
“What’s an iPod? It’s 10,000 songs in your pocket.”

Here’s a short set of practical steps that can produce a solid

set of Micro-Scripts for just about anyone who has something
to sell. It took us years of trial and error, not only to figure this
out but to figure out how to explain it. The old adage is still
true: “The best way to learn something is to teach it.”

Make it About Something Specific: Something You

Can See or Touch
You need to know what your product is and be able to
explain it to turn it into a sharp little Micro-Script like 10,000
songs in your pocket.
For example:
–– You’re a palm-sized computer, custom made to hold thou-
sands of music files you can listen to

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–– You’re the first synthetic fiber fabric that’s warmer than

down

–– You’re the German luxury car that’s engineered for the best
driving

–– You’re the first tire built with Kevlar

–– You’re the candidate who sticks to your principles while your

rudderless opponent’s values shift with the wind.

Of course, the above phrases aren’t Micro-Scripts yet; they

are Dominant Selling Ideas that say your competitive advantage.
In the German-car example, the Micro-Script that came from
it was The Ultimate Driving Machine. The politician’s wavering
opponent became the flip-flopper. But to come up with such
great verbalizations, someone had to know and articulate their
dsi first.

We Start at Square Two

For Micro-Scripts, we start after we know our dsi . We’ve
already figured out that our bake shop (Category) is going to be
differentiated as the 100% Gluten-Free Shop vs. the Luscious,
Lascivious Cupcake Shop.

Here’s the Process

1. Hypothesize: It’s all about the questions you ask.
2. Memorialize: Write a one-page story.
3. Synthesize: Collect your Micro-Scripts.
4. Revise: Keep listening and learning.

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In the hypothesize stage, we gather up all our raw materials

and then pan for Micro-Script gold by asking lots of questions.
In the memorialize stage, we’ll actually take our gathered
gold and write out a very short brand story—a no-more-
than-one-page narrative about the problem and the solution
we uniquely provide. It’s a crucial step because the physical
process of writing it out puts the brain in story mode and
warms it up for Micro-Scripts. It doesn’t matter if you’re a
good writer or not.
In the synthesize stage, we take the best phrases and lan-
guage from our story and peel them off into an initial set of
Micro-Scripts that we can launch in the market.
From then on, we use our ears and eyes to revise—we
listen, we observe, and we have conversations with our audi-
ence to see which get repeated and which ones we need to
fix or discard altogether.

Step 1. Hypothesize—
Pose Simple Questions

This part is basic, yet it’s the key. You’re going to ask
people inside and outside your organization to tell you all
about your big idea. Success is a matter of asking questions
until the other person inevitably puts the answers in the
palm of your hand, or as those of us in sales like to say,
“they give you the keys to the safe.” Have a whiteboard in
the room, or carry a note pad. You want their stories, their
metaphors, their experiences, and their descriptions in their
words through their filters.

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Who Should You Talk To?

Your stakeholders, top to bottom. And I’m not exaggerat-
ing—the lowest on the ladder can be more prescient sometimes
than the most senior executive. Remember: “Out of the mouths
of babes comes wisdom.”
So, if it’s for a business, talk to employees from the mail
room up to the management floor, to actual customers, pros-
pects, people who saw your product but didn’t buy, competitors’
employees or former employees, and maybe an analyst or two.
Reserve a special time slot for salespeople—they’re the ones
already putting your idea into words each day and living by
them. People will tell you amazing, illuminating things about
how they need to be sold. They’ll articulate what your big idea
really is—what they and others think you stand for. They’ll tell
you about your competitors’ strengths and vulnerabilities. They
will provide you with vivid selling language, colorful metaphors,
and examples, for free.
When you go through this step, I promise…
• You will always be surprised by something.
• You will be amazed at the likelihood that someone
you never expected lays a great Micro-Script idea
in your lap. Sometimes, you’ll even walk away with
a killer tagline or a new name that somebody just
hands you.

Master Aligning Questions (MAQs). What to Ask

Great branding people will tell you that the right questions
are everything. They help align everyone’s thinking. That’s why
we call them Master Aligning Questions. Always ask “open

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questions”—what sales trainers used to call the “six honest

serving men” that force a thoughtful reply vs. a dead-end “yes”
or “no”:

“I have six honest serving men, they tell me all I know.

Their names are what and why and who and when
and where and how.”

Here’s an example of the maq s we’d ask:

1. What is your Category? What part of the industry

do you specialize in? Does this category have a name?

2. Who are your main competitors in this category?

What are they famous for, if anything? Are you #1
in your category, or is a competitor?

3. What are your onlies? What do you do that no one

else does? How important is it to customers? Do you
stand for this in the customer’s mind? Does anybody?

4. What do you want to be famous for? What would

customers say you stand for now?

5. Say your value proposition: (Fill in the blanks):

“We’re the #1 choice for” or “We’re the best
at _______. That’s because we’re the only ones who
give you ________.”

6. Is there an unfilled need—“a hole in the category”

that customers are waiting to have filled? Could you
fill it? How important would that be?

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7. What would be the best value proposition anyone

could have in your category?

8. Why will you win against your toughest competition,

and why could you lose in the future?

9. What does the world need you to do—that only

you can do?

You’re using these questions to have a conversation; it’s not

an interrogation or a news conference. When you hear some-
thing interesting, go ahead, veer away from your formal set of
questions. Just keep using the six honest serving men (what,
why, who, when, where, how) until you hit pay dirt.
You never know where the conversation’s going to lead…

Q: Okay, so believe you’re #1 in “environmentally

friendly house paint.” Great.
Now, is that what the market would say you’re
famous for?
A: Yes, until the trade press writes that article about
our secret formula.

Q: And how will you be affected by that?

A: Well, our respected family tradition might be
affected, because we still add a tiny smidgen of
lead.

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Q: Hmmmnnn. And what do you mean by a “tiny”

smidgen?
A: 85%.

Q: I see. And why are you concerned about that?

A: Because they won’t see all the good we do as
a company. The little league team we sponsor.
They’ll look only at the 30% who get poisoned.

Q: So, what should the market know you really

stand for?
A: Uhhhh, Good Old-Fashioned Paint Flavor?

Some Real-World Examples of Golden-Nugget Mining

Keep listening and you will find some 18kt. gold.
The iPod example of 10,000 songs in your pocket was an
original tagline in the early ads. It actually started as 1,000
songs in your pocket from a question like this in a conversation:

Q: “What comes into your mind when you think of

that little device in your pocket?”
A: “I go, ‘Wow! I’ve got a thousand songs in there.
A thousand songs in my pocket!’”

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Another example was given to us in our seventeenth inter-

view at a global insurance brokerage firm. A district manager
said:
I was trained as a cpa . I look at risk like any other financial
opportunity because, by definition, to be in business, all companies
assume risk. I think of my clients as “ships on this sea of risk”—and
the more I help them navigate, the more they save, the more liability
they avoid, the more competitive advantage they have. That’s a very
positive thing. The whole world just thinks of risk as negative, as
mitigating loss. I think of risk as a positive.”
Suddenly, we saw a whole new frame for what this company
did. Risk was an asset to manage for financial gain. The idea
that a company could actually “re-position” risk from negative to
positive, backed by proprietary technology, gave this multi-billion-
dollar insurance firm a clearer articulation of its Dominant
Selling Idea along with the Micro-Script:
They give you a Return on Risk.

You Don’t Have to Make Anything Up! Borrow the

Proven from the Already Great.
Dr. Donald Moine, a famous sales researcher and trainer,
was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by large companies to
do one thing: follow the company’s sales superstars around and
transcribe the exact words they would use when approaching
a prospect, presenting key points, answering objections, and
closing the sale.
Don’s academic research showed that these superstars—the
top 1%, the ones who sold a hundred times more than their col-
leagues—had a natural tendency along with good work habits.

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They used a kind of mesmerizing speech, mostly because they

told a lot of stories and metaphors. They painted word pictures
with vivid language. In short, they were naturally using Micro-
Script language.
It meant that sales managers didn’t need to guess or invent—
they needed only to take out a note pad and jot down the
Micro-Scripts the most successful folks were already saying.
Don would put them all into what he called a Mastermind
script book for the rest of the sales force to repeat for them-
selves. He claimed that, in some organizations, sales jumped
40–50% within weeks of unleashing these books on the sales
force. And some companies found them so valuable, they
would number each book, collect them at the end of the day,
and lock them up in the safe so competitors couldn’t steal
their magic words.
Just listen, and you’ll hear great salespeople repeating Micro-
Scripts everywhere you go…

My Arc’Teryx Jacket
Over the holidays when I was writing the original edition
of this book, I walked into our local action-sports store to buy
a winter jacket called a Down Sweater by Patagonia, the great
outdoor-clothing company. I was there to buy that Down Sweater
and a Down Sweater only because this total stranger I’d met
at another store had already told me about his. That guy was
so proud of his own jacket, he introduced himself and said, “I
couldn’t help overhearing that you’re looking for a good jacket:
here, try this on.” He took the jacket off his back and handed it
to me. He said, “Isn’t it light? Isn’t it warm? It’s the best jacket

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I’ve ever owned!! It’s all I wear. It’s the ‘Down Sweater’ from
Patagonia!”
Needless to say, I was floored by this incredible Word of
Mouth fireworks display, captured in the wild. I determined I
was going get one for Christmas, and I kept on thinking about
it for three straight days until I finally had time to get to my
local Trail Blazer store. I strode in as a committed brand buyer,
loaded for Down.
I came up to Kevin, the floor assistant, and said, “Do you
have a Down Sweater by Patagonia?” And that’s when I heard
the Micro-Scripts.
He replied: “It’s a great item, and we have it. But it’s not
the jacket. For the same price, try the one I just bought for myself.
The Arc’teryx Atom.” Then he said:

1. “This is lighter and warmer because it’s made of

‘Coreloft,’ their newest synthetic fiber.

2. Unlike Down, Coreloft stays warm even when it’s

wet. But here’s the amazing thing:

3. Coreloft actually transfers the heat around inside

the jacket from the warmer parts to the colder parts
to evenly warm up your body:

Wanna see it? I’ll prove it to you.”

Kevin then ran into the back and came out a minute later
with this square of white material that looked like fiberglass
insulation. “Hold out both palms,” he said.

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4. “Feel your palm getting hot? It actually stores the

heat from your body. Now flip it over onto your other
palm. Feel the heat immediately? It’s transferring!
5. It’s like wearing an electric mitten!”

“Wow!” I said. “I can feel it.”

He said, “You can buy the Down Sweater. But this is the
jacket!”
I bought two. One for my wife and one for me. I wore it to
bed I liked it so much. I wore it in the shower.
In fact, it’s about eight years since this happened. The thing
is still in my closet, and it’s still my favorite jacket.
And look at what I’m doing! I’m doing a whole unsolicited
elevator pitch to you right now, my readers! By heart, by the way.
So what happened back there in that store?
Kevin was a superstar salesperson. He had a complete Micro-
Pitch (Micro-Scripts strung together into a complete elevator pitch)
all ready for me that was so quick and convincing, it was irresistible.
Why did I know they were Micro-Scripts? Because I went
home, and I repeated them to the whole family three times
during the gift exchange on Christmas Eve, that’s why. I trans-
ferred the pitch via Word of Mouth using Kevin’s content. I said
“Honey: I was walking into Trail Blazer, all sold on the Down
Sweater. Until I tried out the jacket. The one the guy at Trail
Blazer owns. It’s made of Coreloft, their newest synthetic fiber. It
not only keeps you warm when it’s wet, it transfers the heat around
inside the coat to evenly warm up your body. Like wearing an electric
mitten! It’s amazing. Down can’t do that! He put a sample of the
Coreloft stuff in my hands to prove it!”

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If I was the wholesale rep for Arc’teryx, I’d put those six little
scripts on a piece of paper, hand them to every store manager
in my territory, and watch them sell jackets.
In other words, I’d plagiarize the words of a mesmerizing
Micro-Pitch given by a top salesperson and sell happily ever
after. You see, you don’t have to invent great Micro-Scripts if
you just listen and pass them on. So don’t let great Micro-Scripts
evade your eyes. Go ahead and Plagiarize!6
It’s what “repeating” is all about.

Summary of Tips on How to Mine the Masters

1. Ask the best salespeople you know to tell you. Listen
to their stories and solutions.
2. Follow your superstars on sales calls, and note word
for word how they deal with every situation.
3. Watch and listen at conferences.
4. Note the most compelling words and phrases in your
industry’s best ads.

Step 2. Memorialize—
Jot Down a One-Page Brand Story

Journalists and advertising writers learn on day one that

there’s nothing more important or challenging to write than a
great headline. In a sentence or less, sometimes a couple of words,
the headline has to stop a busy consumer, attract, spark interest,
and suggest a promise, all at the same time. Otherwise, the page
gets skipped, the copy never gets read, or the magazine never gets

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bought. That’s a lot of work for five or six words. Indeed, while
not all headlines qualify as Micro-Scripts unless they are actually
repeated by consumers, they must always be story bites. They’ve
got the same dna as any Micro-Script.
Any great tagline is essentially your brand’s permanent
headline, so it’s really important to get it right.
One of the best techniques—the one we use—is to write
out your problem/solution story that leads up to your Dominant
Selling Idea on a single page. You make it as specific as you
can, imagining you are telling it for the first time to someone
who really needs your product.
In the process of doing this, a lot of good things happen.
You are writing out a problem and solution for those in need
of the answer that only your product can provide. The mental
process of writing out any story activates the mind to think in
metaphors, scenarios, examples, vivid words, and word pictures.
It warms up the brain’s expressive machinery. And out come
those nuggets, this time from your keypad—the gems that are
interesting, memorable, powerful, compelling, succinct, relat-
able, and, very likely, repeatable, too.
The writing lays bare parts and pieces you might not have
seen before. Micro-Scripts you hadn’t thought of will find their
way onto the page. Often, the really big idea spotlights itself.

“The Best Headline’s Always in the Copy”

We didn’t invent this rule. It’s one of the very few lessons
they taught us at the advertising agency in New York when I
started—Ted Bates, Inc., the original Mad Men agency. It was
the agency famous for its taglines.

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Bates’s Chairman, the legendary Rosser Reeves, invented

the concept called the usp (Unique Selling Proposition)* and
used it to create Micro-Scripted taglines that have lived on
for decades. Gems like Melts in your mouth, not in your hand,
Rolaids spells R-E-L-I-E-F, Wonder Bread builds strong bodies
twelve ways, Hefty bags are tough enough to overstuff and Halls
has vapor action. Our creative director wrote Get a piece of the
rock for Prudential, a breakthrough phrase for an insurance
company in those days. Bates’s writing also invented household
terms like acid indigestion. It wasn’t doctors, folks, it was ad guys
who invented Micro-Scripts like that!
Bates’s own tagline was: Think globally, act locally. Their
Dominant Selling Idea (a.k.a. Positioning) was simply, “The
usp Agency.”
Here was the little copywriter’s secret for writing headlines
and taglines, just as they told it to us:

The headline’s always in the copy.

Here’s what they meant:

Good ad writers start by coming up with the headline first
because they know it’s worth 85% of the ad. That’s because
85% of the audience will probably never read the copy. So, the
headline has to be a complete selling tool all by itself, just to get
the reader not to skip the page. The headline is the foundation
from which all else grows.

*The USP was Ted Bates Chairman Rosser Reeves’s term for what we later called
our Dominant Selling Idea (DSI). We changed the wording so we could dissect it
differently when teaching it. But USP is the original.

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And here’s what happened nearly every time:

The creative director would read our copy, underline a buried

phrase or two in it, and say, “Here’s your real headline or your
tagline. Put that at the top now, and see how much better this
is.” And it always was.
Your Micro-Scripts and taglines will often “out” themselves
this way when you’re writing your one-page brand story.

I’ll tell you: To this day, when I see ads from most copy-
writers—even experienced ones—I spot what ought to be the
headlines and taglines buried all through the body copy if there’s
much copy at all. I hear it in the dialogue in the commercials.
A recent example:
In the Ortho lawn commercials, there was this great central
selling idea that the smart wife would tell the dumb husband:

Our magic formula kills the weeds, not the grass!

What an amazing, specific proposition for anyone worried

about their lawn. What a great potential Micro-Script tagline!

I was positive I’d see that line at the bottom of the com-
mercial. If this was Ted Bates, there wouldn’t have been any
question.
But instead, the onscreen tagline was:

Defend what’s yours.

As usual (which is why my wife won’t watch the news with

me anymore), I started yelling at the tv, “What the hell kind

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of promise was that? That could be for burglar alarms, or exercise

programs for skinny guys. I’m supposed to remember and repeat that
to the Home Depot guy when I ask for the weed killer? ‘Hi, I’d like
a product to defend what’s mine?’ I wanna kill some weeeeeds!”
Memo to big ad agency guys getting paid millions by Ortho:
The headline’s in the body copy!!!

Another One…
The us Postal Service is doing a lot better in their adver-
tising these days. I love the Micro-Script in the body of their
current ads:

If it fits, it ships. (For one flat rate.)

I think it. I say it. It answers my questions without having

to call!
Their tagline is: A simpler way to ship.
It’s okay because it states their overall value proposition
and dsi for a wide range of products. They want you to think
the Post Office actually makes it simpler and cheaper than
FedEx. But that nifty little nugget of a Micro-Script, “If it fits,
it ships,” is what their customers will go around repeating and
remembering. The Micro-Script works as a great headline and
campaign tagline for this one particular product. It pays off in
an overall dsi about “simple” and “shipping” that they want the
wider Org to stand for. Good. Unlike “Defend What’s Yours,”
which is a payoff in nothing.
The point is that the headline and your Micro-Scripts are
very often in the brand story or ad copy you write.

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3. Synthesize—Mine Your Brand

Story for Those Micro-Scripts

This is the easiest part once you’ve made the effort to actu-
ally write out a story. Now you just look at your story and pull
out the Micro-Script possibilities that appear in the narrative.
They’re just candidates, of course, until you find they are being
repeated in some conversation other than you talking to your cat.
But wait, I’ll take that back. The classic, Meow Mix: Cats
ask for it by name! commercial probably came from someone
talking to their cat—so don’t count out cats.
You’re looking for five or six stand-alone Micro-Scripts.
Often they can also be snapped together to form a whole Micro-
Pitch—our new word for “elevator speech.” Most organizations
don’t really have a scripted-out Micro-Pitch, but they all should.
We’ll give some tips on Micro-Pitches in the next chapter.

Some Real Brand Stories and Their Micro-Scripts

Brand Story for the MV-1:
The World’s First Car for People in Wheelchairs

It was the end of 2008, and the automobile business America-

wide was on the verge of croaking like road kill on Route 66.
Into this economy, a bunch of visionary investors decided to
start a new car company. But, not just any kind of car company.
vpg autos was going to build “purpose-driven” cars from the
ground up—starting with the first car designed from scratch
for people in wheelchairs.

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Until then, the only cars mobility-challenged people could

buy were standard vans or suvs—which then had to be chopped
in half and rebuilt. What you got was a retro-fit, “conversion”
vehicle that cost twice as much but lasted half as long as a regular
car and didn’t even meet minimum crash-test standards!
The new company asked us to position and name the car.
We asked questions from the inventors and potential custom-
ers; we copied great language; then we wrote the following
Brand Story.
(The underlines are the lines that we thought would be
Micro-Script material):

The First Car Built Especially

for People with Disabilities

For persons with disabilities, buying a car has always been

a costly compromise. Your only choice was to buy an “after-
market” converted vehicle—a factory van whose frame was
cut in half and its interior rebuilt by another shop to become
accessible and ADA compliant. This conversion process not
only doubles the cost, it leaves the frame weaker, heavier,
less durable, and worse riding, and even voids the original
factory warranties!
What if you could eliminate the compromises and design
a better car—a “Mobility Vehicle” (MV) especially for persons
with disabilities—while costing thousands less than a converted
vehicle? We asked engineers, car owners, caregivers and advo-
cates, and here’s what they told us…

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First, there’d be no more conversions. You’d build it from the

ground up for its purpose—not an aftermarket “afterthought”
vehicle. That means you’d make it tough as a truck, but drive
like a car. You’d design it with the help of the people who’ll
depend on it—so it would be more spacious, easier to maneuver
inside, easier to carry cargo in the trunk, better to drive, and
simpler to enter and exit with wider doors and ramps. You’d
make it more durable and reliable—with proven parts systems
and a stronger body so it would last years longer, spend less time
in the repair shop and cost less to maintain. This would make
it safer, too. In fact, it would keep its original factory warranties
and safety ratings because its frame wouldn’t be destroyed and
rebuilt before its first mile.
You’d even change the experience of owning it. You’d pick
up customers to come to the showroom and pick the car up
when it needed service.
Simply put—you’d take out the compromises.
That’s why a new automotive company was formed to build
this very vehicle—the first factory-original vehicle especially for
persons with disabilities. The mv-1. A vehicle that’s improved in
every way, yet costs less than most aftermarket mvs available today.
The first car that’s built from the ground up for people like us.
Now, here’s the first set of Micro-Script candidates we took
out:

1. If you’re disabled, there’s a special new car for you.

2. The first car for people in wheelchairs, built from

the ground up.

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3. No more conversion means no more compromise—

it’s better in every way:
–– Built tough as a truck, ’cause its frame’s never cut.
–– But drives as easy as a regular car.
–– So roomy and safe, keeps all warranties in place.
–– Yet costs thousands less than any conversion!

4. Say goodbye to “aftermarket, afterthought.”

5. Your time has come for the “mv-1.”

6. The first real “Mobility Vehicle.”

7. Built from the ground up for people like us.

Here’s another example:

The Brand Story for MapleMama:

“The First Sparkling Beverage 100%

Sweetened by Mother Earth.”
(…Imagine a Sweetener that’s good for you!)

MapleMama is one I happen to love, not just because I wrote

it but because it’s as far from technology as you can get, to prove
that the great selling principles work with any category, from
Cloud software to hubcaps. The basic proposition must always
be in there, no matter what the product: “Buy this product, get
this benefit.”
So, this guy in Western Massachusetts decided to concoct
a soft drink flavored by the maple he used to tap from the trees

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in his backyard. Full disclosure, he’s my brother-in-law, Joe Laur.

He and my sister Sara were very much into feeding their young
kids real, organic food with honest-to-goodness nutrition.
Joe used to always tell us that maple syrup is really good
for you, but I never believed him until we did some research
and discovered, “Wow, the Indians, who’ve tapped the trees
for 400 years, really knew something.”
People started drinking Joe’s drink and wanting more, so,
lo and behold, a start-up was born, and I resolved to help.
We knew that the story of maple would be dramatic and
important. And because the maple sap comes from deep down
in Mother Earth and it’s the only sweetener in the drink, we
called it “MapleMama.”
Here’s the Brand Story and the Micro-Scripts that turned
up inside of it:

MapleMama

Until we created MapleMama—there was no soft drink or

spritzer or soda that was 100% sweetened by maple—mother
earth’s very own sweetener. With 7 vitamins and minerals and
more than 54 anti-oxidants—it’s like no other sweetener on
earth. Because nothing comes to us like maple does. It’s from
the life-giving sap that rises up from the deep forest soil, filtered
by thousands of tiny rootlets, literally the stuff that makes the
great forests burst open with life every spring! It’s as organic as
the deepest soils in the great Northern forests, never touched
by chemicals, sustainably farmed since the first people on the
continent discovered it hundreds of years ago. We think of it

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as the sweetener that’s Superfood. Artificial sweeteners and

cane sugar could never say that!
The founders of MapleMama used to tap their own maple
trees in their yard in Western Massachusetts to make homemade
maple syrup for their family. But as their little kids began grow-
ing up, they didn’t want to feed them chemical drinks like diet
sodas or sugary pop. They wondered why they couldn’t make
a drink with their own maple. After all, the indigenous people
of the area had been flavoring with maple for centuries. And
maple had amazing nutritional properties. It’s even used as a
key ingredient in “detox cleansing” programs. So, the family
started concocting recipes on the kitchen stove with sparkling
water and other natural flavors. And the kids loved it. And the
neighbors loved it. And their friends started asking for it. And
that’s how MapleMama was born.
One of our slogans is “Imagine a Sweetener that’s good for you.”
Well, now you don’t have to. You’re holding it in your hands.

MapleMama. 100% Sweetened by Mother Earth.

4. Revise:
Keep Listening and Learning

From here on, the process is a matter of trying out your

scripts in every different channel and venue—sales conversa-
tions, collateral material, in advertising, on your website, the
blogs—and listening for what comes back. Some will be repeated
outright. You’ll know they’ve got the right stuff. Some come
back with modifications by consumers and stakeholders that

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make them better. You’ll hear some new ones you hadn’t thought
of. And some won’t come back at all. Those you can discard.

Make Listening a Core Strategy

In fact, make listening a strategy, taking Micro-Scripts in,
listening for adjustments, and sending them back out to lever-
age two things:

1. The genius of language that consumers will offer back

2. The engine of trust because consumers will feel listened-to

and more in control.

We must use all the new media tools to set up a perpetual

feedback loop—the links, the social network connections,
and all the other online mechanics that make it easier to talk.
Think of it as your Micro-Script power grid.
Airborne cold supplements, the famous over-the-counter
product that was invented by a second-grade teacher, got one
of its greatest Micro-Scripts from customers who told them
you take it before you get on a plane to keep from getting a cold.
That went into their advertising and onto their packaging and
contributed greatly to their legend. They weren’t even think-
ing about air travel at the beginning. The founders originally
named it “Airborne” because of all the germs that are airborne
in second-grade classrooms. It was their frenzied fans who
jumped to the conclusion that Airborne must have something
to do with protecting you when you’re flying, too, since airliner
cabins are universally considered the ultimate germ-breeding
swamp. People said that airplanes are the “torture test” for

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whether this works. We have proof: Flight attendants take it

before they get on the plane!
The company just listened.

The Term “Micro-Scripts” Was Proof Itself

When we first started thinking about Micro-Scripts, I was
looking for a memorable term to express it. “Micro-Scripts”
turned out to be the one term that, when I’d say it, everyone
would repeat it back in our conversations.
And as I talked about it with people, new language and
phrases came up that others were especially prone to repeat.
How did I know? People would casually recycle these phrases
in conversation—like they were already familiar.
Phrases like: It’s not what they hear, it’s what they repeat;
tell a story in a sentence and Every screen’s a Word of Mouth
Machine made the cut. “Six words are more powerful than six
thousand” was a phrase I got from someone else describing
Micro-Scripts. I re-used it, and people kept repeating it. There
it was. A Micro-Script.

Your Go-to-Market Content

From here, you’ve got the basis for an entire go-to-market
communications program. You can assemble a tagline, names
in some cases, website content, sales decks, key pr zingers—and
that elevator “Micro-Pitch” you can tell to anyone, even if your
conversation lasts only a couple of floors.
Micro-Scripts are the great focuser and aligner.

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In the final chapters, we’ll show how easy it is to make

Micro-Pitches, Micro-Mission Statements, taglines, and other
core communications out of your Micro-Scripts.

Remember the Micro-Script-Making Process

1. Hypothesize—Ask a lot of questions, even if you

think you know the answers.

2. Memorialize—write out a simple, short story—

“The headline’s always in the copy.”

3. Synthesize—Peel off the initial Micro-Scripts, and

then combine with other nuggets you’ve collected.

4. Revise—keep listening, and you’ll keep receiving

new gifts.

When it comes to Micro-Scripts,

the customer is always right!

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chapter 10

Micro-Messaging
Micro-Pitches, Testimonials, Mission
Statements and More—Living the
Micro-Script Life.

 
Every Key Communication Needs to Go Micro
It’s that simple. If it’s a core piece of communications mate-
rial, an elevator speech, a corporate mission statement, a pr key
point—it needs to be able to work in Micro form if you want
to make it work—that is, get share of screen in today’s Word
of Mouth world.
Call it Micro-Messaging.

Start With Your “Micro-Pitch”: An Elevator Pitch That

Works in About a Floor.
Everybody in business knows the advantage of having a crisp,
compelling elevator pitch. But very few have one that would
actually work in the few seconds of an actual elevator ride so
a prospect might say: “Wow, can you call me? Here’s my card.”

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Most of the time, you ask twenty people in a company what

the elevator pitch is, and you’ll get ten different stories and ten
blank stares. Think of all the wasted sales opportunities for
millions of organizations.
We’ve renamed this all-important selling tool the Micro-
Pitch for a few good reasons:
• It’s automatically generated by connecting your
Micro-Scripts.
• It forces you to keep it short, sharp, and focused.
• It has Micro-Script dna, so it’s even more memorable.
• It basically works in a couple of floors!

The wonderful fact is, once you’ve pulled five or six Micro-
Script candidates out of your brand story, your Micro-Pitch is
done. All you have to do is add a few connection words and voila!
I’ll go back to the mv-1 automobile scripts from the previ-
ous chapter to show you.
Here are the initial scripts we got after the Brand Story:

1. If you’re disabled, there’s this special new car.

2. The first car for people in wheelchairs, built from

the ground up.

3. No more conversion means no more compromise—

it’s better in every way:
–– Built tough as a truck, ’cause its frame’s never
cut.
–– But drives as easy as a regular car.

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–– So roomy and safe, keeps all warranties in place!

–– Yet costs thousands less than any conversion!

4. Say goodbye to “aftermarket, afterthought.”

5. Your time has come for the “mv-1.”

6. The world’s first “Mobility Vehicle.”

7. Built from the ground up for people like us.

Now you just string ’em together, backward or forward, into

a Micro-Pitch. You don’t have to use every word, just enough
to tell the story:

The 59-Word Micro-Pitch for the MV-1

We make the first car built from the ground up for people in
wheelchairs
–– It’s tough as a truck, ’cause its frame’s never cut.
–– It’s so roomy and safe, it keeps all its warranties in place.
–– But costs thousands less than any conversion vehicle!

No more compromises for disabled people!

The time has come for the “mv-1.”

Look how easy it is to get a Micro-Pitch out of the story,

because it’s already written. You just add the connecting words
here and there between phrases if you need them.
The one above takes less than thirty seconds to say. You
can subtract some of the scripts if you don’t have time. Or stick
new ones in if you find something better.

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The One-Line Micro-Pitch: Going All the Way!

Okay, let’s put our money where our mouth is.
Ultimately, as we’ve said all along, a Micro-Pitch can be as
short as a single sentence. After all, Splenda did it with Made
from sugar so it tastes like sugar.
That’s enough to sell me in eight words.
And here’s an all-time favorite of mine in a name: The Oreck
8-lb. Hotel Vac. A six-word “name/tag combo” (see below) that
tells me in specific terms that it’s incredibly light, incredibly
durable because it undergoes the hotel torture test, and incred-
ibly effective for the same reasons.
They are such superb taglines and headlines, they are
one-line Micro-Pitches all by themselves. Imagine doing an
entire presentation just by saying one sentence. Or, as we saw
in Chapter 7, an entire memoir in six words.
So, can it always be done? No.
Some highly technical products really are just too complex
to do justice in exactly one line. But you can generally trigger
their value proposition. To get down to a one-sentence Micro-
Pitch for your company like the mv-1, you’d need a little trial
and error to prove your value was coming across. But the effort
is worth it.
For the mv-1, if I were a disabled mv-1 driver, talking to
another prospect, I’d volunteer a one-liner like:

It’s the first car that’s built from the ground up,
for people like us.

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The “Name/Tag Combo” Solution for Your

One-Line Pitch
Remember how important a Micro-Scripted name can be
for your company? Well, it really comes in handy when you want
to create the one-line Micro-Pitch. The name plus the tagline
working together give you just enough to get you there. I have
never been able to come up with a more elegant name for this.
I just keep coming back to “the name/tag combo”:

Diehard Batteries. Never get stuck again.

See what we mean? The name tells you their great own-able
attribute: the battery that won’t go dead. The tag adds a visual
image of a benefit that goes with it. Every buyer has had that
terrible dead-battery experience. This product prevents that
pain. This combo is your whole value proposition attached to
your name.

Kashi Cereal. 7 Whole Grains on a Mission.

The Boeing 707 Jet. Twice as fast means half the time.

I just made that Boeing one up. But you can see how they
work.

Shocking True Fact! “Testimonials” Are Dead.

Unless You Shorten Them to Micro-Scripts.
The classic customer testimonial, basically a Word of Mouth
endorsement that you share with prospects, is still the strongest
potential human selling tool ever invented.

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Except, for this problem:

No one reads them anymore, and no one cares anymore
when they see a paragraph of long-winded, chirpy kudos to your
company. That’s because, like all things “marketing” these days,
the world is too saturated with them; they pop up in expected
places on a website or a sell-sheet, always accompanied by the
smiling mug shot of the person who supposedly gave it:

“Hooli company has been really great for our

business. They’re always friendly, and their support
people always take the time to listen to us. It’s like
having an extension of our team. Lorem Ipsum
Valium on and on and on…”
Sheldon Shapiro
vp of Cute Trendy Job Titles

To the customer who sees and immediately ignores them,

the impression is this:
“Okay, they have one customer who they got to give them
a compliment. Everybody can find one.”
I don’t blame the readers, and I’m not gonna lie: I pre-ignore
these standard offerings for all the same reasons.

Here is the instant cure:

Take your testimonial, and shrink it down to a Micro-Script

phrase or sentence that has the speed and punch of a good head-
line. That means it must be specific and eye-catchingly important.
When you do, it works so fast, customers automatically read
it, and their brains automatically react before they can ignore it!!

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There are two types:

1. The instant big benefit:

We got 50% more calls the first day!

2. The irresistible story bite that makes you want to

read more:
At 350 mph, these sunglasses saved my life.

See what we mean?

If you want to add a sentence or two after your punchy
Micro-Script, okay, because now they’re far more likely to read
the rest of it. Take the testimonial, and reduce it to its dramatic
essence like you would with any Micro-Script.
And here’s a last big tip: No testimonial giver ever cared if
you take his exact, verbatim words and shrink them down to
their essence and put them into a Micro-Script, as long as you
keep the intended meaning.
If it makes you feel better to ask the person if it’s okay before
you do, go right ahead. I promise that 99.99999% of the time,
it will be fine.

Mission and Vision Statements in Micro

Companies seem to love to write mission and vision state-
ments. Employees love to ignore and completely forget them.
Corporations do not love to spend millions on consultants to
write them, just to have employees ignore them, but that’s what
happens nearly every time.
Why?

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Because too many companies—large and small—write

them like this:

Guided by relentless focus on our five imperatives, we

will constantly strive to implement the critical initia-
tives required to achieve our vision. In doing this, we
will deliver operational excellence in every corner of
the company and meet or exceed our commitments
to the many constituencies we serve. All of our long-
term strategies and short-term actions will be molded
by a set of core values that are shared by each and
every associate.

Q: Guess what business they’re in?

A: Who cares?

Another Fortune 500 company probably spent a year and

$500k for consultants to write this:
We are a market-focused, process-centered organiza-
tion that develops and delivers innovative solutions
to our customers, consistently outperforms our peers,
produces predictable earnings for our shareholders,
and provides a dynamic and challenging environment
for our employees.

Q: Guess what business they’re in?

A: The first is a famous supermarket chain.
The second is a big oil company. Or Vice Versa.

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Mission statements are supposed to be created to give

employees a rallying cry, a place to focus, an inspirational driver.
But even if I tried to memorize those two above, I’d forget in five
minutes. And I wouldn’t understand them anyway. No wonder
employees look clueless when you ask, “Are you guided by your
mission statement?”
By this point in our book, the solution shouldn’t be that
hard to figure out. If you want people who are bombarded by
messaging daily to internalize yours, then follow the Micro-
Script rules:

Write them a Mission Statement in Micro-Script.

I like the following example. It was in a tv infomercial

where the ceo came on for a product called “BackJoy,” an
orthotic you put on your chair to help you relieve back stress
from sitting all day.
The ceo said: “I’m going to tell you our mission statement
in nine words. And so can every person who comes to work at
our company each day:

“We’re going to fix the way the world sits.”

I thought, You just reminded me to tell the readers that we

need to fix the way the world writes mission statements by using
Micro-Scripts that employees can actually use as a daily mantra.
Here’s another one. Frank Kelleher, the ceo of legendary
brand Southwest Airlines, said back in the airline’s early days:
“Every employee knows exactly how to run our airline and how
to make the right decisions. All they have to do is remember
our mission statement:

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We’re the low-cost airline.”

Folks, hear this:

If you can’t say your mission statement

in one or two lines, you can’t say it.

Here are a few mission statements that can:

“We’re going to put a man on the moon by the end

of the decade.”

“We’re going to open the city’s finest Italian restaurant.”

“We are going to provide ‘Fanatical Support’ to our

customers in an industry that provides none!”

“We are going to make electric cars America’s most

popular cars.”

So I say unto you—

If you believe enough in your mission statement or any
statement to want others to hear it and follow it—if you want it
to inspire and inform—make it one that people can remember
and repeat. Make it short, swift, singular, and sage. Use the
power of Micro-Scripts.

Twitter, Too
Just because it’s short doesn’t make any message a Micro-
Script. For that, it has to contain Micro-Script parts like story
pieces, vivid language, and rhythmic construction if you want
it to be more than noise.

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Micro-Messaging

A Tweet like this is not a Micro-Script:

Say LOL at bit.ly/85gq5W/m5tyq.

We know the vast majority of these messages are not intended

to be great oratory. They’re simply alerts and idle chatter for
your friends.
But there are millions of folks who are attempting to broad-
cast meaningful messages about news, professional issues,
opportunities, lives, and careers.
To all of you we say: Apply the Micro-Script rules if you
want your Tweets to be more than worldwide static.
If memoirs can be written in six words, then you can write
me a Tweet with an idea in it. You may have to think about
it for longer than 6 seconds when you write it, but people will
thank you.

Same for Your Google Results Lines

While at a marketing conference in India, a very savvy
Internet ceo told me that research shows “More than 50% of
the Google subject lines—those blue headers that appear on the
results page—actually dissuade readers, rather than persuade them
to stop and click.”
I haven’t been able to independently check this assertion.
But experience tells me it’s probably true. Every Google header
is a headline, competing for a click on a page with ten compet-
ing appeals. It stands to reason that, if you took a Micro-Script/
Micro-Pitch approach to the construction of these instant
pickup lines, your stop-and-click percentage would go way up.

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When I happen to see a clear one—an actual compelling

promise—it gets my click.
According to my webmaster friends, you can control those
critical headers, and thus you should.
And since at this moment my it lady’s not answering her
phone, you’re going to have to ask your it lady exactly how to
go into Google and do it.
Indeed, I’m preaching here, and I hope by now you’re the
choir. We all agree that the social media and Internet portals
are game-changers of historic proportions.
But what you say is still at least as important as how you
set up your new media channels to say it.
Only an idea of differentiating value, installed in other
people’s minds, puts them in motion. And that takes us to the
final chapter…

Remember the Rules for Communicating Everything:

Make Micro-Messaging Your Default—for sales
pitches, testimonials, mission statements, taglines,
websites, social media posting—anything you want
to say that’s worth remembering.

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chapter 11

Survival of the Simplest.

 
Call it an obsession, but once you start thinking about the
heuristic-loving human brain, how it thrives on simplicity and
speed, you start seeing Micro-Script traces everywhere you look.
You also notice the Universal Theory of Everything,
appearing in front, in back, and around every corner in work,
relationships, and life in general.
We spoke at the beginning about how the ancient God of
the Hebrews, yhw h Him/Herself, used them for the original
Ten Commandments, so that even the most bedraggled, illiter-
ate slaves could memorize them on the fingers of both hands.
All ten had to be available on demand since He/She had not
brought forth text messaging yet.
But then I found out that Thomas Cahill, the literary and
biblical scholar, explained in The Gifts of the Jews that what we
call “The Ten Commandments” was originally even simpler! It
was written so tersely—to be memorable and repeatable—that,
in the early Hebrew, it was called the Ten Words. “Thou shalt

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not bear false witness” originally appeared as “no-lie.” The Ten

Words came out as: no-kill, no-adulter, no-steal, and so on.
So, I guess you don’t have to take my word for it after all,
because even God used Micro-Scripts! And She made them as
simple as humanly possible when She did.

A Few Concluding Thoughts and Themes

I’d planned to continue our discussion for another five
hundred pages or so, until I realized that it might get awkward
for a book about “six words beating 6,000” to go on too long.
So here are a few big themes I hope you’ll take with you
from here on.
The title of this chapter says it all, really. As the world of
everything gets more complex, simplicity and those who know
how to make it so will be the ones who win in any almost any
arena. They will be heard, and they will be harkened to. They
will provide ever-greater relief to the minions mired in the merde.
Their products, their companies, their words and solutions
will be sought after, not because they superficialize, but because
they prioritize.
They, the Simplifiers, will be the ones who get us to truth—
guided by one of the most essential truths.
To be successful and happy, we must learn to:

Focus on a much smaller set of much

more important things.

And not just the material things that fill up the garage. It’s
every bit as critical for ideas, words, and relationships.

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Micro-Scripts are one of the Simplifier’s primary tools.

Also, please remember:

Be a Crusader for True Content…

Not the cheap, throwaway, commodity kind of “content”
that’s blithely sold in bulk and dismissed by pundits who just
want you to “join the conversation.” I mean the original kind.
Formerly called substance.
Our parents and teachers used to remind us that you speak
and write when you have something to say, not just for an algo-
rithm to create links in an electronic talk-o-sphere.
Content was about the idea, the invention, the art being
conveyed, not the chatter itself. The medium may have great
significance—tv and the Internet have changed the world—
but the medium can never replace the message. The medium
doesn’t give us e=mc 2, the cure for aids , or the verses of
Hamlet. That’s content. That’s what the message makers do.
As for the idiot savants saying things like “Strategy is dead,”
or relegating content to anonymous filler, like the air that fills a
balloon, my belief is that they either hope to profit from selling
the data, or they don’t understand the difference between the
air and the balloon.
They’re offering you a Tupperware party without the
Tupperware. Medium without the message.
Micro-Scripts give you the intel inside of this media mael-
strom—they’re ideas and substance incarnate—so you can
communicate and above all differentiate with unique impact
in a saturated, superficial world.

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Remember That Micro-Messaging Is for Everyone…

If, by chance, you are a lawyer delivering a closing argu-
ment that you want the jury to absorb and take back to
the jury room, then I’d advise you to remember: If the glove
doesn’t fit, you must acquit, the absence of gloves in your case
notwithstanding.
I had a doctor friend tell me that the situation is the same
when you’re trying to teach medical students who have been
up 24 hours straight, trying to get them to absorb the bottom
line in the emergency room. Here’s a Micro-Script he’d tell
students when it came to strokes: Time loss is brain loss. He told
me the best medical professors were always coming up with
simple ones like that.

Because the Brain Always Gets Its Way…

Today, it’s the only way. The more stress and chaos, the
more our brains switch to auto-pilot. They think less and less
about what they are thinking about. They rely on heuristic
Rules of Thumb more than ever. They love what they under-
stand, and they love the person who helps them understand
it. They love it fast, short, and simple. They love it in story
form. They love the heart of the matter when you show it to
them. They love truth and value. They love a success and
survival advantage.
These are our instincts. Our chemistry. No technology or
media advance will ever change it one iota.
And that’s why we apply the Micro-Script Rules.

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Survival of the Simplest.

The Reason to Jump Out of a Perfectly Good

Airplane…
In the final, final analysis, for anyone with a story to tell
or a point to make, what this is all about is the magic of focus.
Focus gives you the power, persistence, and creativity you never
thought you had to concentrate on the heart of the matter. And
that’s critical to every area of decision-making in life—not just
marketing.
How do you focus, if you’re focus-challenged like most of
us in this world? To focus, the main thing you need to do is …
choose and commit.
I don’t recommend the following method to everyone, but
I’ll tell you how I found out this little secret:
I became a skydiver because I couldn’t hit a golf ball straight.
Nowadays, when you skydive the first time, you do what’s
called a tandem jump, where you’re actually strapped onto the
instructor. Your tandem lesson is an all-of-five-minute course.
The instructor tells you that when you’re up at 14,000 feet and
standing at the door, he’s going to shout you one final question:

Are you ready to skydive?

Because it has to be of your own free will. But with all the
noise and commotion, he suggests that no often sounds just like
go and I don’t wanna go sounds like Geronimo!
What he’s telling you is, once the plane’s off the ground,
you’re pretty much going to do this. You stand in that door. You
take one little step. And just like that…there’s a million-mile
gulf between the metal threshold where you just were and the

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place out in space where you suddenly are. You’re committed.

Boy, are you committed. But the most amazing thing happens.
You are more focused than you’ve ever been in your life on one
big idea. Not sweating the small stuff, believe me. Everything’s
clear.
Committing to that one big thing and clearing away all
those tempting secondary things in any critical endeavor can
be almost as hard as jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. It
takes guts to commit. In fact, fear of making that one choice and
committing to it is the main reason why so many good companies
fail when it comes to branding. But when you do choose and com-
mit, it’s liberating. It unleashes creativity. It spurs confidence. It
energizes you and your people. It guides your toughest decisions.
It gets the job done.
In all of human communication, Micro-Scripts commit
you, empower you, and focus you as surely as that little step you
take from the door into infinity on your first skydive. When
it comes to focus, Micro-Scripts are as guaranteed as gravity.
Find your Micro-Scripts. Build them on your Dominant
Selling Idea. And you’ll have a new power to change your world.

the end

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About the Author

 
Bill Schley is an award-winning
branding expert, author, speaker, and a
lifelong entrepreneur. He is co-founder of
the strategic branding firm BrandTeamSix,
known for creating the Dominant Selling
Idea and Micro-Scripts at some of the
world’s most successful companies. He
began his career as a writer at legend-
ary Ted Bates Advertising Agency—the
original Mad Men agency in New York—where he won an
Effie Award for sales-effective advertising. In addition to The
Micro-Script Rules, Bill is the author with Graham Weston of
The UnStoppables (Wiley), a New York Times Best Seller; Why
Johnny Can’t Brand (Penguin Hardcover), which won the award
for “Top 5 Marketing Books of the Year” by Strategy+Business
Magazine, and best-seller The Power-of-Ten (HarperCollins).
He has appeared on cnbc ’s Street Signs, cnn’s Money Online,
and numerous syndicated radio programs. He is an avid sailor,
skydiver, and a graduate of Harvard University.

Visit his site at www.brandteamsix.com

Listen to: The Brand Brothers—his Nobel Prize-winning

podcast with Lorenzo Gomez www.brandbrothersshow.com

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Acknowledgments

 
I’m not just saying this to be nice. They are saints: every
teacher who had me for English and didn’t give up and move
to Fiji. Starting with Mr. Y and Ms. Garabedian, and later but
not least, Mr. Charlie Thomas and Mr. Roger F. Duncan, the
Captain, who taught me about compound sentences. And later
still, when it got to selling something, the real “Brand Titans” Bob
Froelich, and Mark Schwatka at Ted Bates on 1515 Broadway,
New York, who tried to teach me how to make stories fit in 70
words and how to write an execution. From here we go all the
way to Leonard “The Lion” Schley, my father, author of the
“Granite Pages,” whose natural Micro-Scripting brain came up
with classic after classic when we were kids, without even real-
izing it—but we did. His talent for cutting to the heart of any
matter in pico-seconds is un-exceeded to this day. His talent
for driving Harriet crazy didn’t keep her from calmly, patiently
proofing and improving every paper or birthday poem I ever
wrote. Also Chico “Mike” Chvany who at first could only sing
but later became…instrumental, and who collaborated through
the most formative creative adventures. Next there are the
people who were instrumental in bringing The Micro-Script
Rules to fruition. Mark Walsh for inviting me onto his radio
show and seeding the conversation that made the first light bulb
go off—a Micro-Script legend himself. There is the unfailing

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The Micro-Script Rules

encouragement of Donna Volpitta, Ed.D, who had wonderful

ideas and smart suggestions from start to finish, giving of her
time pro bono, way beyond the call of duty.

Moving onward into the Second Edition, no one did more

to augment and forward Micro-Script theory and practice than
the entrepreneurial legend himself, Graham Weston. No one
gave me more opportunities in my life to keep learning, testing,
growing, and expanding professionally and personally.
And Lorenzo “Brand Brother from Another Mother”
Gomez—what can I say? No, I mean it—what can I say? You
were supposed to send me the blurb about yourself, and you’re
out promoting your own best-selling book. Oh, well—at least
you wrote me a Foreword.
Finally, there are Martha, Daniel, and Sara, always support-
ing; Emily and Brooke, who said they liked it, and Alec—who
was a great help in editing the earliest versions. And lastly
Annie, to whom the book is dedicated along with my Dad,
Leonard the Lion, who just passed. He is the one who made up
so many great and funny Micro-Scripts while we were growing
up, we had to invent the “Granite Pages” so we had a place to
put them all. Annie is the princess who picked the one frog to
kiss who…well, remained one—and thereby had to put up daily
with every escapade, self-indulgent mood, and literary project,
for lo, these many years.
Honestly—you should buy this book, at full cover price,
for her sake.
WLS

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Endnotes
 
1. Gigerenzer, Gerd. Gut Feelings, The Intelligence of the
Unconscious, Penguin Group USA, 2007, p. 18
2. Ibid., p. 11
3. Quotation by Steven Quartz in Op Ed Article by David
Brooks, New York Times; April 7, 2009
4. Gigerenzer, p. 16
5. Ibid., p. 173
6. From the song Lobachevsky by Tom Lehrer

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Index
 

Numbers Boeing 707, 161

“3Rs: Repeat, Repeat, Repeat,” 114 Boeing 747, 124
7-Up, 48, 124 Brain-Speak, 12–13, 22, 28, 35, 58
brand stories, 39–41, 127, 133,
A 147–152, 158–159
A is B metaphor, 91 branding
A/B Equation template, 89–91, brand in customer’s head and,
100, 105–106 53–54
advertising brand stories and, 38–41
branding versus, 54 case histories of, 41–45
micro-scripts for, 101–103 defined, 37–38
Affordable Care Act, 66 dominant selling idea and, 38
Arc’Teryx jacket, Patagonia, five-step process for, 48–49
139–142 micro-scripts for, 101–103
Atwater, Lee, 63–64 product performance and,
Audi Quattro, 83 54–55
audiation, effective micro-scripts small business and, 45–48
and, 87–88 Bush, G.W., 64–65, 72
Bush, H.W., 63–64
B
BackJoy, 165 C
Big Rules, 16–28 Cahill, Thomas, 169–170
binary framing, 48, 124 Carnegie, Dale, 75
Blockbuster, 126 Carter, Jimmy, 62–63

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categories, positioning and, sales and, 52–53

122–124, 129, 135 seven Rules of Thumb for,
Chunky Soup, 123 112–115
Churchill, Winston, 73 six steps to brand positioning
cliches, 88–89, 91–92 and, 121–127, 129
Clinton, Bill, 64, 67 supporting features vs. one
Clinton, Hillary, 59–61 idea and, 115
Cochran, Johnny, 10–11 Total Consistent Alignment
commitment, focus and, 173–174 and, 49, 127–128
Compaq, 80 well-known examples of,
competitors, identifying, 135 115–118
complex tasks, micro-scripts for, “Domino Theory,” 70
103–105 Dukakis, Michael, 63–64
complexity, product, 30–31
content, substantial, 171 E
Eastwood, Clint, 75
D eBizJets, 76
Dale Carnegie sales course, 52–53 elevator pitches, 157–158
Diehard Batteries, 161 Every Screen A Word of Mouth
differentiation, product, 48 Machine, 17–20, 28
dominant selling ideas
brand names and, 38–40, 75, F
79–80 facts, branding and, 48–49
branding and, 38–40, 75, family names, brand names and,
79–80, 102 81
five ingredients of, 111–113, “flip-flopper,” 64–65
128 focus, importance of, 173–174
micro-script writing and, 132, fundamentals, importance of, 15
138, 143–144
micro-scripts and, 173–174 G
micro-scripts built on, 25–28, Gates, Bill, 71
35, 44, 99–100, 105–106 Gaze Heuristic, 11
names and, 118–119 Gigerenzer, Gerd, 11, 14
“One Thing to Stand For,” Give ’Em a Micro-Script, 22–25, 28
107–110 Gladwell, Malcolm, 14
positioning and, 27–28 Goldwater, Barry, 62
product performance and, Google results lines, micro-scripts
119–120 and, 167–168

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Index

H Lee, Bruce, 15
Halls Mentholyptus, 81 Levitra, 80
HBO, 123 listening, writing micro-scripts
“Headline’s always in the copy,” and, 152–154
143–144 Luntz, Frank, 16
heart of the matter, 6, 9–10,
172–173 M
Hemingway, Ernest, 30–31, 93 MapleMama, brand story of,
heuristics (Rules of Thumb), 9–15, 150–152
24, 35, 38, 88, 109, 113–115, marketing micro-scripts, 101–103
121, 169, 172, 187–188 master-aligning questions
home ATMs, branding and, (MAQs), 134–137
45–47, 53 Mastermind script books, 139
Horton, Willy, 63–64 McKee, Robert, 21
hypothesize stage, 132–142, 155 McMenamy’s Fish Market,
branding and, 47–48
I memes, micro-scripts vs., 34–35
initials, as brand names, 78 memorialize stage, 132–133,
Intel Pentium, 83 142–146, 155
iPods, micro-scripts for, 131 metaphors, 24–25, 98–99, 106
It’s Not What People Hear, It’s What micro-pitches, 157–161, 167
They Repeat, 16–17, 28 micro-scripts, defined, 22
micro-scripts, used against
J micro-scripts, 32–33, 71–73
jewelry retailers, micro-scripts and, Mirage Alien Technology, 83
42–43 mission statements, organization,
Johnson, Lyndon, 62 31–32, 163–166
Johnson Baby Shampoo, 81 Moine, Donald, 138–139
movie, TV show names, 81–83
K MV-1, 147–150, 158–161
Kashi Cereal, 161
Kelleher, Frank, 165 N
Kerry, John, 64–65, 72 names, brand; effective, 75–84,
King, Alan, 82 118
Klein, Gary, 14 naming, branding and, 38–41
Netflix, 126
L NetJets, 77
Laur, Joe, 151 nicknames, brand names and, 84

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Nieman Marcus, 115 Polya, George, 14

“Number One Is Holy” rule, 112 “Pork is the other white meat,”
43–44
O positioning, brand, 121–127, 129
Obama, Barack, 65–69 Positioning Paradox, 113
“One Item of Carry-On” rule, Powers, John, 47
108–109, 112 product performance, brand and,
“onlies,” 135–136 54–55, 119–120
Oreck 8 Pound Hotel Vac, 81, 160 propaganda, micro-scripts versus,
Ortho tagline, 145–146 32
“Other People’s Heads Are All
That Count,” 114–115 R
Rackspace, 32
P Reagan, Ronald, 62–63
Patagonia, 139–142 real customers, micro-scripts tried
phrases, becoming micro-scripts,
out on, 127
33–34
Reason to Believe (RTB), 127
politics
Reeves, Rosser, 5–6, 144
binary framing and, 125
revise stage, 132–133, 152–155
Carter vs. Reagan and, 62–63
Ringling Brothers Circus, 79–80
Dukakis vs. H.W. Bush and,
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 69
63–64
Hillary Clinton 2016 Rules of Thumb. see heuristics
campaign and, 59–62 (Rules of Thumb)
historic micro-scripts and,
69–71 S
Johnson vs. Goldwater and, salespeople, micro-scripts for,
62 49–53
Kerry vs. G.W. Bush and, Sentient, 76–78
64–65, 72 Simon, Herbert A., 14
micro-scripts used against “Simple Always Wins,” 113–114
micro-scripts and, 32–33, simplicity, importance of, 170–172
71–73 Smith Magazine, 93
Obama presidency and, social micro-scripts, 100–101
65–69 sound bites, micro-scripts vs., 29
Republicans vs. Democrats’ Southwest Airlines, 165–166
use of, 33–34, 57–59 “Specific Is Terrific,” 114

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Index

specificity, micro-scripts and, U

131–132 unfilled needs, 135
Splenda, micro-scripts and, 41–42, unique selling proposition (USP),
117, 160 144
Starbucks, 120 Unique Wordplay template, 92–93,
Stark Reminder template, 91–92, 100, 106
100, 106 Universal Theory of Everything,
stories, brand, 126–127 7–8, 13–14, 48, 169
stories, importance of, 20–25, 35 UnStoppables, The, 7–8
stories, one-page, 126–127 US Postal Service tagline, 146–147
Story: It isn’t everything. It’s the only
thing, 20–21 V
story-bites, micro-scripts as, 29, 35, value propositions, 135–136
47, 93–95, 143, 163 Viagra, 80
synthesize stage, 132–133, 147–152, vision statements, 163–166.
155 see also mission statements,
organization
T vivid, colorful language, 98, 106
taglines, micro-scripts and, 30, Volpitta, Donna, 87
143–144 Volvo, 119
Ted Bates (advertising firm), 6, 20,
45, 143 W
templates, micro-script, 89–96 Walsh, Mark, 57
Ten Commandments, 13, 169–170 Whole Foods, branding and,
testimonials, 161–163 53–54
total consistent alignment (TCA), Whole Micro-Script template,
49, 127–128 93–96, 106
Toyota, 119–120 Wilson, Timothy, 14
Trump, Donald, 6, 59–61, 68 word of mouth, 17–20, 28
trust, word of mouth and, 17–20 word patterns, rhythms, rhymes,
Twitter, micro-scripts and, 96–98, 106
166–167

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Pr eface from the First Edition

The Secret Email

I got a secret forwarded email at the start of the Great
Recession of 2008, right after the collapse of Wall Street mega-
firms like Bear Stearns, aig , and Lehman Brothers. It was
designed to scare the bejeezus out of me and the 97 million
others they knew would see it—the notes from an emergency
meeting of all 100 ceo s at Sequoia Capital, the legendary
Silicon Valley venture capital firm:

Forget about getting ahead, we’re talking survive.

Do it right, and you may be able to capitalize
on this downturn and live…Nail your marketing
message, now. Measure everything, and cut what’s
not working.

A key takeaway: You can’t quit marketing and selling and

stay in business. But if you keep spending fantasy bucks and
don’t deliver an roi , you’re toast.
Needing to advise our marketing clients amidst this mayhem,
I started thinking and reading about how humans focus and
succeed in times of great stress. It led me to the cognitive science
of heuristics—the Rules of Thumb that drive our gut feelings,

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The Micro-Script Rules

influencing just about everything we do. And after twenty-five

years in the persuasion business, it was an epiphany—not just
for marketers and brand people but for anyone with a vital
message to tell—which is the basis of this unadorned little
book. Herein lies the secret of communicating your ideas with
the most simple, penetrating, and yes, viral power—in a world
that, from now on, will demand nothing less.

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COMPLETELY REVISED AND UPDATED EDITION!

It’s not what people hear. It’s what they repeat!

The #1 communication secret is here in

The Micro-Script Rules

How to tell your story (and differentiate your brand)
in a sentence…or less.
Survival of the simplest! That’s the bottom line for branders, political candidates,
teachers, advertisers—anyone who communicates in today’s world. Because
with 500 billion messages going by per second, we can’t win by delivering
more data. Our brains crave less. They want help to make snap judgments on
the least info. They want us to package it for them—in very special, short sets
of words called Micro-Scripts. That’s why:
• A new product seizes 50% of the market in 2 years using 7 perfect words.
• A lawyer won the murder trial of the century with 8 simple words.
• Ernest Hemingway thought his greatest story ever was 6 words long.
• The fate of millions was changed by a war, based on a 2 word policy.
• A presidential election turned on a 4 word phrase.
Imagine what magic words like these can do for your brand, your career, your
website or your business plan. They’ve been used by great communicators for
1,000 years. Now they’re yours in this smart and entertaining book.
Advance Praise…
“The Micro-Script Rules is dead on—it’s how to verbalize your point of differ-
ence—the most important point of all.”
—JACK TROUT, co-author of the legendary Positioning: the battle for your mind
“The Micro-Script Rules should be required reading for every candidate and cam-
paign consultant.”
—JIM KITCHENS, PH. D., President of the Kitchens Group
“WOW, one of the most important books you will read in your lifetime!”
JASON JENNINGS, bestselling author, Think BIG-Act Small
“Too many CEO’s forget it’s their job to differentiate their company. Micro-
Scripts make the difference clear, repeatable and unforgettable.”
—GRAHAM WESTON, co founder and ex-Chairman of Rackspace NYSE:RAX
“This is simply the best marketing book I’ve
read in the past 30 years.”
—M. MARTIN MORAWSKI, Managing Account
Director, Ted Bates Advertising, NY

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