The method

The customer is not rational and fears being wrong more than they want to buy. Every business is a bet on human behaviour: if I do this, for these people, with this promise, will they want it enough to act?

Your customer's desire exists before you arrive. Your job is not to create it but to channel it. And execution is the strategy: a plan that does not come down to one concrete first action is a wish with slides.

The seven questions

These come before touching a product, a price or a campaign. Answering them badly costs more than not answering them.

1. 01

   What do they deeply want? Not what they buy: what they want to be, to have, or to avoid.

2. 02

   What is the biggest obstacle between them and that desire? That is the enemy your product defeats.

3. 03

   What level of awareness are they at? Talking price to someone who does not yet know they have the problem is money thrown away.

4. 04

   What job are they hiring you to do? People do not buy products: they hire them for a task.

5. 05

   What word do I want to own in their mind? One word.

6. 06

   What is the first emotional trigger that opens the conversation?

7. 07

   Why must they act now and not in thirty days?

How it is applied: the five acts

Five acts. One uncomfortable truth. One concrete proof.

1. I · Body

   What it sells, how it operates, and what it believes it's solving.

2. II · Cause

   The structural limitation behind the visible symptom.

3. III · Enemy

   The alternative, habit, or indifference that's truly competing.

4. IV · Latent desire

   The emotional and economic role no one occupies yet.

5. V · Resurrection

   An architecture of meaning turned into a measurable pilot.

The private autopsy adds interviews, internal data, economics, risks, an executive session, and the design of the ninety-day pilot.

The panel of eight

Before publishing copy, launching an offer or moving a position, the work goes past eight imaginary judges. None of them is enough alone; the combination produces something none achieves separately.

• 01 · money

  Dan Kennedy

  Marketing is selling at scale. Without measurable response it is worthless. One next action per piece, real urgency, and price as positioning.

• 02 · the slide

  Joseph Sugarman

  The only purpose of the first sentence is to make you read the second. You open with the emotional trigger, not with features.

• 03 · positioning

  Jack Trout

  Better to be first in the mind than first in the market. If the space is taken, you reposition or create a new category.

• 04 · disruption

  Clayton Christensen

  Disruption starts out worse, not better: it serves ignored customers with something simpler. The question is what job the customer is hiring for.

• 05 · desire

  Eugene Schwartz

  The prospect's mind is not a blank slate. Five levels of awareness, and the costliest mistake is speaking at level five to someone at level one.

• 06 · resonance

  Roy H. Williams

  Predictability is the enemy of attention. Every headline that matters violates an expectation, and specificity persuades more than adjectives.

• 07 · seduction

  Asia Gregg

  Humour is high-performance persuasion, not decoration. An ad that cannot offend anyone cannot persuade anyone either.

• 08 · brand

  David Ogilvy

  The consumer is not a moron. Every touchpoint either reinforces or destroys the brand: there is no neutral. A brand is a promise plus the consistency of keeping it.

The Architect is the what; the references are the how. Schwartz sets where the message enters, Christensen the central promise, Trout the territory, Kennedy the offer, Sugarman the ramp, Williams the hook, Gregg the tone, Ogilvy the consistency.