My daughter is pretty cute. Before you dismiss this information, I acknowledge that I cannot accurately access her cuteness based on my own observation. Fatherhood disqualifies me from objectivity on the subject. But I have some good reasons to believe that she’s cute, just based on the way strangers react when they see her. It’s like hanging out with an A List celebrity. Everybody stops and stares. I don’t really like going places like the mall or the grocery store, because I know I’m going to have to get into a discussion with someone about what beautiful blue eyes she has, that will always ends with the doom and gloom prediction that she will “grow up way too fast.”
This raises an interesting question: What’s so bad about grown ups? Let’s explore, shall we? Grown ups have opinions. Worst of all, they believe their opinions are right. Then they have egos. They have health problems, and they like to tell you about them. If they don’t use deodorant, they get B.O. The bottom line is they just aren’t cute. Cute only works with adults in the honeymoon period of a relationship. After that, it’s just obnoxious.
Babies (not just my baby) have the ability to be cute. They don’t behave any better than adults; they just look different. They are rude, entirely self-serving, and excrete on themselves. But we forgive them their trespasses because they generally look like miniature versions of Winston Churchill and mispronounce words with in a charming pitch. Somehow, our Creator designed us to have a place in our hearts that receives these creatures as cute and lovable. Functionally, they are no different than an elderly person in the final stages of dementia. They just happen to be cuter. And that’s why we take care of babies and put the elderly in nursing homes and “assisted living communities”.
How does that relate to sales, advertising, and getting people to trust you? If you are a salesperson, or and advertiser competing for the ears of a people who are numb to sales messages, you are like an Alzheimer’s patient whose body is shutting down. People are tired of hearing you repeat the same things over and over again. They don’t want to start another relationship that will leave them cleaning up your excrement. You have to become cute. When my daughter gives me a kiss, there is nothing I won’t give her. The only way for you to have this effect on your prospective client or customer is discover where they have pain in their lives and find a way to eliminate it. This is the new cute. Can you dig it?
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