What do you do when you have something truly ground-breaking in your hands?
What do you do when you have something that is literally, ‘Too Good to be True”?
Take it to market? Yes – but if it’s ‘Too Good to be True” – the biggest hurdle you have to jump is actually getting people to believe you.
It’s only natural to ask “What’s the catch?”, and even more natural to treat the answer with suspicion.
One method is to use the ‘A Factor’, you wont have heard of this before because I’ve only just coined the phase. The ‘A’ stands for ‘Attenborough’.
A small group of scientists used the ‘A Factor’ to great effect tonight when they launched their new discovery to market on BBC1 – ‘Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link’.
They claim to have found a fossil of the ‘Missing Link’ in our evolution.
The Holy Grail in the study of evolution, finally unveiling herself some 130 years after the death of Charles Darwin.
Now imagine, if you had this discovery in your hands, how many people would believe you?
To make matters worse, they did not actually unearth the fossil themselves – they acquired it via an ‘under-the-table’ deal at a ‘fossil fair’ (a car boot sale targeted at palaeontologists)! Apparently, the fossil was unearthed (no one knows by who) some 25 years earlier in Germany – this in itself is bizarre because as anyone who regularly digs up ancient man knows; East Africa is where ‘it’s at’.
Now can you see the hurdle they faced?
Not with the ‘A Factor’!
They guy who took their discovery to market was non other than David Attenborough himself. Sir David is the ‘Granddaddy’ of documentaries, a bridge for science to the masses, and someone whose reputation is impeccable.
Because of his reputation and the relationship he has built with us over the years, we would never dream of not believing him, because we trust him 100%.
By using the ‘A factor’ the ‘Missing Link’ guys have instantly removed the biggest obstacle between their discovery and it’s credibility.
The lesson to take from this (especially if your new service/product is “Too Good to be True) is to make sure you recruit your own ‘A Factor’ – to make things easier, ‘A’ can also stand for ‘Association’ (should you be struggling to get Sir David to endorse you with an hour long BBC documentary).
People will always take notice of whom you’re associated with, quite often much more so than in what you actually have to say yourself.
If you missed the programme, you can catch a repeat 2nd June at 1:40