Adelia, a grown women in her 50s, was eating Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes one morning for breakfast.
Her 30-year-old daughter, Mynt, observed her mother eating this “food.”
Mynt looked at her mother, then looked at ingredient label on the box. The expression on her face said it all: “You’re seriously eating this sh#t?”
“I used to eat Frosted Flakes when I was a kid,” Adelia explained, reminiscing.
Her daughter nodded. “And I used to crawl under the kitchen table and eat baby food peaches when I was 3…but I don’t do that anymore.”
They both laughed.
“I remember that! You were so cute!” her mother said.
“You’re missing the point. It would be weird if I ate baby food peaches today while crawling under the floor,” Mynt replied.
Some adults are still eating the same foods they ate as a child — and not even questioning their choices.
Or they’re still eating in the same “way” they ate as a child…gimme, gimme, gimme…more more more. Your diet isn’t a Britney Spears song.
By the time a person is 6 or 7 years old, they’ve pretty much formed most of their core viewpoints on life. They rarely, if ever change.
Fifty years later, a person can act roughly the same as how they acted as a 6-year-old.
Feeling the same insecurities they felt as a 6-year-old…
Throwing roughly the same tantrums they threw as a 6-year-old…
And yes, eating the same breakfast they ate as a 6-year-old.
This is known as “refusing to grow up.”
(Predatory marketers love preying on people who won’t grow up.)
Adelia was a grown woman eating Frosted Flakes…scarfing them down the same way her child self would have done it.
…And she was perfectly OK with that.
(Her complacency makes companies like Kellogg’s rich.)
The Takeaway: Sharing “stories” like the one above is a great way to produce memorable, thought-provoking content that motivates, educates, and inspires (MEIs) your readers!
A byproduct of this, is that you create eye-opening awareness without using the actual cliché word, “awareness.”
For example, a company that sells healthy organic cereal (is there such a thing?) might use some version of Adelia’s story above to create awareness…like, “Hey dude, you’re still eating as if you’re 6. Do you really want to be doing that?”
If you wrap your stories around a concept or theme that’s relevant to your business, product, or service…you will engage your readers in memorable ways!
It’s hard for someone to stay the same after they’ve read a thought-provoking story or metaphor. It sits with them, percolating in the back of their mind.
Michelle Lopez Boggs is a copywriter, copywriting mentor, and author of "The Anti-Marketing Manifesto: How to Sell Without Being a Sellout." She's helped her clients sell millions of dollars' worth of products and services online by using the MEI(S) principle — motivate, educate, and inspire, and sell. 