Today, I discovered Guy Kawasaki’s blog titled “How to Change the World” after seeing it frequently mentioned as a “must read blog”, and I gained some insights from his post on evangelism, a new and unfamiliar concept. Currently the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool, previous chief evangelist of Apple, an advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google and author of a dozen books, Kawasaki explains how a product or service can be “evangelizing” if it can significantly change the world. Despite the word sounding quite religious, evangelizing is creating content and value, and relying on customers to deliver marketing messages to other potential customers by word of mouth, much like “preaching” the brand others. Evangelism marketing seems to be the delivery of value propositions with the mixture of using customer segments to further the customer channels. I never really thought of the idea of “concept marketing” like Kawasaki has at Canva, but I realize that I’ve been exposed to the elements of evangelism marketing, and have been a customer of products from this. Evangelizing marketing makes products more customer friendly, allows for consumers to absorb as much information, and then reaching decisions. According to him, evangelizing a product requires:
1. Making it great, its easier to evangelize deep (many features), integlligent, complete, empowering and elegant products.
2. Positioning your product as a cause, as “causes” change lives and position it to show how it can improve lives. “Evangelists need to seize the moral high ground and transcend the exchange of money for goods and services.”
3. Loving the cause: being an evangelist is a way of life, and you should love what youre promoting.
4. Localizing the pitch: Keep the product pitch simple and straight forward, rather than using flowery language like “paradigm shifting”.
5. Looking for agnostics, ignore atheists: if a person doesn’t “get” your products in 15 minutes, move on
6. Giving people ways to “test drive” the products and let them decide for themselves.
7. As an evangelist, one must know how to give a demonstration of the product. According to Kawasaki, demonstration should be involuntary or second nature.
8. Providing safe and easy first steps by removing all the barriers to access.
9. Ignoring titles and pedigrees, as success as an evangelist requires acceptance of everyone and respectful treatment of all. Here is one of his TEDx talks about innovation and tradition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWv-KoZnpKw
Works Referenced:
Kawasaki, Guy . “How to Change the World.” ‘How to Change the World’. N.p., 29 Apr. 2014. Web. 24 Oct. 2014. <http://blog.guykawasaki.com/#ixzz3H1ureyND>