A Study on Tension
Tension (noun) - The state of being stretched or strained.
For people, it is a state of uknown, of waiting, of something coming to a point where things cannot continue and something will happen. A good joke said with perfect timing relies on this principle. A moment between two people can suddenly turn very romantic when they feel this pull. When finishing a grueling task, there is the view of the end (of release) which pushes us forward. When the reward and release is worth it, the long the rise of tension can last.
The way to make sure the audience stays on this route however and say, procrastinates from working because an ice cream truck has just stopped outside, is to keep hold of attention with focus points. You see this a lot with dog trainers who make sure that the dog keeps their eye on the prize, lest they be completely distracted and the process has to start over again. Untrained Fido will probably eat that steak sitting on the kitchen table as soon as you turn around unless you keep his attention focused on you.
Storytelling is such a huge part of life and how we as humans process the world around us. Conflict in these stories creates tension which is what keeps us in. We are being pulled into the story, our love of the characters or the world in the tale keeping us focused, hoping for everything to turn out alright. So how do we take this principle of Tension and apply it to products we want to capture people with. How do we keep people paying attention to one single thing when there are so many billions of objects and experiences in the world?
EXAMPLE TIMEEEEE:
1) You connect with your initial user. Let’s say the product is....hmmmm......a website selling peanut butter. I am staring at a jar of it right now on my desk and it seems appropriately random. But clearly I have it there cause I love peanut butter (and what it does to bananas and apples) and you narrow that further to mothers who are buying it for their kids. This is tough since mothers are probably going to go with brands they see everyday in their supermarket. The convenience alone makes over-the-internet-peanut-butter a hard sell.
2) Identify the reward and feeling of release. What do these shoppers normally get from shopping for this product? Well in a grocery store it’s probably on a list of many other things, so the reward/release comes from knowing that the item is in the basket and soon to be in the pantry. It’s one less burden to think about - so here the Reward/Release point is the relief of unburdening, the release from responsibility.
3) Solve the Problem: How do you relieve the burden of responsibility with a single product? One solution is you can offer a subscription package! A nice package of peanut butter to come to the customer’s door so that they never need to add it to their grocery list again. Plus they will still get that reward feeling when they get the package in the mail because they have a refill in hand.
4) THE CRUCIAL STEP. Okay so there is an audience in mind with a problem and a solution has been offered. Easy peasy right? Now just to make assets to sell it and make it look pretty. Yes.....sortah. That’s about half the work. The other half is figuring out how to present those assets to create the tension to draw people in and keep them interested enough to break a habit they are used to. This is where things can get a little fun and mysterious, and where the brand really fills out its character.
You would want to show the product in all its beautiful glory to the customer first thing. They will fall in love with the look of things, like meeting an attractive person. Present the reward, but not super brusquely (ex. Said attractive person says “ I WANT TO DATE YOU”. You may say yes but damn if you didn’t raise an eyebrow in suspicion.). So not “YOU DON’T HAVE TO SHOP FOR PEANUT BUTTER EVER AGAIN!” it would be something more like “A lovely box of special peanut butter at your door with a little surprise whenever you need it”. You would capture the customers even deeper with lovely deals and offers, while also making it an extremely high priority to simplify the buying process so that this website does not feel like shopping for any other product. This is your peanut butter. Click. Click. Pay. Bam - you’re done. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. The routine of tension may be incredibly short with these customers because they are used to peanut butter shopping being almost a mindless activity. Asking them to consider too much will distract them, and make them lose Focus. And then you’ll lose their attention, thus your tension, and thus your customer.
By all means this is in no way a surefire theory, but it is a theory in progress. It does find itself aligning to many principles of storytelling and laws of attraction. It will be most interesting to keep testing this theory in my own work and life, and see what happens when experiments go down secretly.
