Cookies Vs. Crayons

“Oh my gosh, this reminds me of my favorite Sesame Street sketch!”

Hmm. Not something I’m used to hearing during a coaching session.

Let me back up:

My client and I had just spent almost an hour sifting through a myriad of words and ideas swirling around in her brain, to compose a clear, concise, effective letter to send to potential referral sources. It was lovely— it got her core message across, while conveying her delightful, warm personality.

As we neared the end of our time, she was flustered; she wanted to discuss how to pitch herself as a guest on podcasts, but we hadn’t had time to dig into how to craft a good pitch letter.

I reminded her that, now that she had her core message, she could tweak her marketing content for whomever she was reaching out to, or whatever medium she was using to reach potential clients. We’d already done the bulk of the work, just by crafting her core message.

This is what suddenly made her think of Sesame Street:

There’s an episode where Maria is teaching Big Bird math by adding up Crayons. Big Bird is finally getting the hang of 2 crayons + 3 crayons = 5 crayons. Then Maria throws a wrench into things by saying it’s time to use cookies instead of crayons.

Big Bird gets all flustered and upset: “I just learned how to do this with crayons and now I have to learn with cookies? I can’t add cookies!!”

But as we know, adding crayons and cookies uses the exact same mathematical principles, so Big Bird has nothing to fear.

Math is math whether you are counting cookies or crayons. You don’t have to come up with an entire new form of math just to count cookies instead of crayons.

Your message is your message no matter the method you’re using to communicate it. You don’t have to invent a brand new message each time you spread the word about your services.

Beware of over-complicating your Marketing. It doesn’t have to be hard.

As long as you know your core message and your ideal client, you can take that information and apply it to any medium.

—And as Elmo would say, “If you keep practicing, you can do anything.”

-Jane

p.s. What are 2-3 sentences that sum up your core message? Share in the comments.