If you 've been watching the UK election debates over the last couple of weeks you probably were unimpressed by the quality of the so- called elevator pitches that the three main party leaders were asked to give.
How bad were they?
Very.
Elevator pitches have become increasingly redundant over the last couple of years.
Lets face every one has their own self styled pitch. From politicians to Goldman Sachs they are all at it [ no I can't spot the difference either] which has rendered what was a fine piece of verbal dexterity in marketing ones products and company to a monosyllabic babble of self consciousness.
Its even worse for the audience, and when you are in full sales mode it can actually turn your prospective customers off.
So if we are scrapping our elevator pitch what's our substitute?
How about the one word pitch.
Yes that's right. How many of you can summarize your business in one word?
If you can you are well on your way to having a highly compelling value proposition.
Think about all the disruptive businesses that you know and that we all aspire to and get some ideas from that.
Here's some examples.
Apple?- innovation
Google?- search
Twitter?- alerts
Lego? - creativity
Going back to Twitter one of its most 'clever' inventions was only allowing a maximum of a 140 characters per tweet. It forces laser thinking without the fluff, which is critical if you are going to succeed in marketing to today's information hungry audience.
Oh I almost forgot, here's one for Wall Street - what should havebeen 'wealth' ended up as 'looting'.
So the idea works equally well both ways.
What's yours ?