Are you memorable? | Christof Appel | TEDxPenticton

what makes something or someone memorable maybe I should tell you a bit of a story so one of my really good friends showed up one day at my house and he said I need to get into the world's most competitive medical school and my marks are really bad now quite frankly I wouldn't even let this guy debone a chicken breast so he wasn't going to be a surgeon but eventually he had tears in his eyes and he convinced me that this is what he was meant to do with his life so I'm quite a resourceful guy and I started putting my mind towards this concept in this idea of getting him accepted and I created research folders and every single person on the admissions board I found out everything about them I knew what their hobbies were when their birthdays were how old they were if they had any other interests any nonprofits or any sort of events that they contributed to and then we started finding ways for Jared my friend to infiltrate their lives so we one of the guys played golf so we had golf balls printed that said have a great round from Jared and we found a way to sneak them into his golf bag all of the single ladies on the admission board recieved Valentine's Day flowers and cards with love from Jared people were sent books and notes and every single time a handwritten note that said all the best Jared and all of these people had the same reaction who on earth is Jared so our final masterpiece was a shoe box that had his application essay in it and we sent it off to the the head of the admissions board and he was apparently quite an eccentric guy and inside the shoe box we had a plastic Ken Barbie doll and we had cut away the chest and the stomach and Jared had taken the time to create little pieces of plastic that resembled organs and he put them in a little ziploc bag with a challenge can you put Jared back together so once they started reading his application essay he started telling them about how since he could remember he told his parents he wanted to be a doctor he wanted to do something meaningful in the world and help people and if they noticed that the Ken Barbie doll was missing his heart because his hearts already enrolled in medical school and please could they let his body join it so this head of the admissions board takes the shoebox with him to the final meeting where every single person on that board and he says there's this kid he's a bit strange his name is Jared and everyone was like Jared he's coming to our school and apparently everyone had tears in the eyes and Jared's been a successful surgeon for three years now so in my work in the last last sort of decade I've been really fascinated by this concept of what creates something memorable what separates one idea events company product from the rest why does something stand out and it's actually quite simple you can look at it on a scale so for something to be really memorable it needs to be intellectually confounding or challenging right and it also has to target your emotions on a very very extreme level so you need to feel something you either need to feel happy or sad or surprise some level of emotion and the higher you can get something to register on that scale the better but it has to happen on both the same time let me give an example crewmembers losing their virginity okay so why why do you remember that well you had this brand-new unique intellectual concept that got planted in your brain you were never going to be the same again and you also felt a lot of emotions maybe you were happy maybe you excited maybe you were embarrassed guys but the reality is that it was a unique concept something was going to change in you as a person so what my my challenges is sort of saying okay well where does this happen in other places in our lives he remembers 9/11 a unique concept someone took a plane and flew it into the side of a building in Manhattan it was so unique and so astounding in jarring intellectually that we even questioned whether what we were seeing was real and that was before we started feeling extremely high emotions of anger sadness fear depression see the reality is that for something to be truly memorable it has to register on both these scales quite highly let me give an example of why some things aren't memorable here's Wikipedia I read something really interesting but there's no emotional connection so I forget it within a few days here's your SPCA commercial mice nonprofits really I feel just so hurt while I'm watching this ad but once it's over I move on with my life so the secret is can you get something to register on both scales at the same time as highly as possible that's really going to create the difference between whether something is memorable or not memorable so where else do we see this example because this happens all over the world in in even in pop culture so if we take a look at some of the highest-grossing films over the last few decades so in the 70s we had jaws unique intellectual concept do you like swimming there's a shock that hunts people okay so there's also during a movie high stress high anxiety fear triumphs when they finally kill the bastard so then we look at the 80s the big highest-grossing film the 80s was et unique intellectual concept there are aliens they come to earth there's one in the shed don't worry he's quite nice and while this movie plays out you're feeling various emotions first you start with fear then you start stressing then you somehow develop empathy for this little thing and then you go over to kindness and friendship so always registering on high high skills in the 90s the highest-grossing movie was Titanic and they borrowed a concept that's been used before but was still quite effective the hero and the heroine will not end up together borrowed from other memorable movies like Casablanca and Gone with the Wind one of the things that really puzzled me in that movie was the fact that this old crazy lady threw this diamond the back of the boat at the end of the forum so if we look at 2000 it was the movie Avatar again aliens feature unique intellectual concept aliens exists this time we go to their planet and mess it up so then what about music we already know that we feel something when we listen to music but what about something being intellectually confounding in music really well let's look at the highest-selling and most successful artists of each decade based on album sales ticket concert concert tickets as well as you know sort of chart toppers in the 70s we had Alton John an openly gay man who sang music that even homophobic men sang to in the 80s we had Prince the symbol the man the guy who wears makeup and marries beautiful woman nothing weird or strange there for us in the 90s we had Madonna enough said in 2000 we had wait for it a white rapper named after a candy by the name of Eminem so every single time really something unique now now where else does this happen where else do we see this in society and culture and in products in companies so TOMS shoes became really memorable when they told you that they were going to give a pair of shoes to someone in a third-world country if you buy a pair that's never been done before it was really memorable it sort of was covered in every single made major media outlet it was their marketing campaign and you know what the fact that there's a kid somewhere in a third-world country wearing a pair of shoes thanks to you makes you feel good now being memorable its interests an interesting thing because we always think it has to happen on this massively big large scale and the reality is that it doesn't I mean let's let's take a look at another company example before I tell you another story so so redbull launched one of the most successful marketing campaigns arguably the most successful marketing campaign of all time with red bull stratos project this is where Felix Baumgartner our breaking through the sound barrier something that had never be done before this was live-streamed by over 8 million people and gone on to be viewed by more than a billion people since then it was so intellectually confounding and challenging to us because this has never been done before what was going to happen to the sky when he passed through the speed of sound even some of the scientists on the project were apprehensive about filming it because we didn't know what was going to happen to this guy and when he started spinning out of control and they cut cameras away from the footage because I didn't want to show someone died on TV a lot of people started feeling fear and sadness and anger and when they finally cut back to him plunging to the ground wearing his parachute landing on the floor raising his arms up high you felt that emotion of triumph and happiness and just pure joy inhalation of the fact that we had broken through on so many levels you shared that moment with him it was probably one of the most memorable things ever so what if you're not going to start a multi-million dollar company tomorrow and what if you're not planning on plunging from space anytime soon can you still be memorable can you still have an impact and this is a question that I had for a long time until one Tuesday morning in South Africa I was living in Johannesburg and I had a maid who came and cleaned my apartment once a week and this morning this Tuesday she showed up with tears in her eyes and frankly you would too if you had to clean my apartment so she showed up and I said Sylvia what's wrong like what's the problem here you know and she said listen Jacob died and I realized I had no idea who Jacob was so after a while I'm asking her a few questions it comes about that Jacob is actually her Billy Goats you see on the side Sylvia had a little business she was an entrepreneur she had a goat breeding business on the outskirts of Johannesburg so I said don't worry I can I can buy a goat I can solve this problem for you we'll just figure it out so we went off into the outskirts of Johannesburg and I was there in my business suits in the dust chasing goats finding the right one she was pointing at them and so eventually we get this goat and I pay for it and we load it into my car that's not a common occurrence as much as you think this is Africa like that doesn't happen a lot not a lot of people driving the highway with the goat in the backseat of a BMW okay so we're driving down the highway and there's this goat sticking its head at the side of the car I have people like hooting and waving like there's a goat in your car like I didn't know so we eventually dropped this goats off it's obvious place and she gives me a big hug and and I felt really good about myself I had a lot of pride I compassionate empathy I felt like I'd made a difference and then a few years later I met Sylvia again and she told me what I'd actually done she had gone on to grow her little goat breeding business to the point where she was no longer cleaning apartments for people to the point where she was supporting her entire fireman family financially to the point where she was putting two of her boys through university the first for her community and the reason that I'm telling you the story is that you don't need to be some massive corporation with millions of dollars to make a difference in being memorable all you need to do is take an interest in the people around you see I've given you the the roadmap the intellectual idea of how to make something memorable that the concept that there amia of how to do it the question is now whether you're going to take on that journey and whether you're going to choose to be memorable in someone else's life because I think that's how we can cure obesity that's how we can revolutionize education that's how we can change our world to become something better than what it is currently and it's it's part of that idea of Joseph Campbell where he talked about the hero's journey where each of us in order to be significant has to have an amazing purpose of something in life and your amazing purpose could start at home you could be an unbelievable significant impact and memorable to your kids so whatever you do go out and be memorable

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 48,523

Rating: 4.8786731 out of 5

Keywords: Education, Canada, Marketing/Branding, TEDxTalks, Culture, ted x, English, Psychology, tedx talk, tedx, ted talks, ted, ted talk, tedx talks

Id: V7TNPf4fJis

Length: 13min 20sec (800 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 27 2014