From: whscad1!kqb (Kevin Q Brown +1 201 386 7344) Subject: CRYONICS MADison Avenue Meets Cryonics? If a *little* knowledge can be a dangerous thing, then I probably am dangerous now. The book "Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind" by Al Ries and Jack Trout (1986, Warner Books, paperback, $4.99) has been giving me ideas about marketing cryonics. That, by itself, is dangerous, since, in a very real sense, we don't even have a product to promote; nobody has ever gotten frozen and walked away from it. But even if someone had, cryonics probably would remain enormously unpopular until some marketing genius figured out how to position it in such a way to make it sell. Hard to believe? Bear this in mind then; cryonics is such an unpopular topic that by our interest in cryonics alone, every one of us is demonstrably way off at the fringes of the Bell curve. What seems logical and natural to us could easily be wholly alien to almost everyone else. Whether or not we *want* to attract any of the other 99.99999% of the population is another matter. I will assume, however, that we want to attract enough people to give us clout in this world because otherwise we likely all will fail, and thus die. So what is so interesting about these marketing ideas that anyone would want to read any further? Here are some conclusions I have reached: (1) our perception of cryonics is vastly different from the man-in-the-street perception of cryonics, (2) we do not know how to express what business we are in, (3) most of us do not even know who our competitors are, and (4) the word "cryonics" is so unappealing that we should use more appealing terminology for our organizations and services. I also have several suggestions for why cryonics sells so poorly and how we might improve our situation, but bear in mind how dangerous a *little* knowledge is. The most crucial notion in the book "Positioning" is that what affects sales the most is what is in the mind of the customer, not what is in the mind of the seller. Not very profound. But then consider what an enormous number of messages bombard us each year and how few of them we can retain. Only the simplest messages make it through, into the minds of people. Photocopies = Xerox. Facial tissues = Kleenex. Rental Cars = Hertz, Avis, and National, in that order. The "position" is where the company fits in that short list for whatever category the company gets pegged into. (Most companies don't even make the list.) Now what about cryonics? Where does it fit into people's minds? Bizarre mortuary practices = mummification, freezing, peeling flesh off the bones (Tibet), vulture food (Parsees in India), etc. Yes, I know that the press has been getting better the last few years. But look at the pictures accompanying the description of the cryonic suspension contest in the Jan. 1993 issue of OMNI magazine. What do they say to you? The logic is one thing. The image is another. People remember the image. That is where we are. Where do we want to be? Exactly what business are cryonicists in, anyway? What is the competition? What images do we want to evoke in the minds of the prospects? How do we get there? There is no single right answer to these questions. The answers may be different for each market segment. In particular, what is profoundly important for one person may be irrelevant to another. (The Myers Briggs personality type indicator gives some intriguing suggestions about that.) The following represents, of course, my bias and my interests. Your mileage may differ. Exactly what business are cryonicists in? Are we in the people freezing business? No, that is just part of the mechanics. Nobody really *wants* to be frozen. (As the old saying goes, it is the *second* worst thing that could happen to you.) Some people on CryoNet suggested that we are in the immortality business, and then were chastised immediately for being so brazen and politically incorrect. ("It's too hubristic. Nobody will like you if you say that.") The notion of immortality also has some technical difficulties. ("Are you really *immune* to death, no matter what?") Personally, my only problem with immortality is that it will take forever for me to prove that I have achieved it [Neural Tweaker #1]. But if that is the business we are in, then it will take forever to succeed, won't it? Maybe we're in the "life preservation" business or the "stay healthy a really long time" business or even the "galactic tourist" business. Maybe. But those alternatives do not have the wonderful simplicity and emotional power of something like "immortality". Ries and Trout suggested that the answers, when you get them, are obvious. Getting to the obvious is not always simple, though. What else could be as simple as "immortality" and still carry the same emotional punch? My suggestion, and you may disagree, is that the "root meme" for cryonics is "outrage against death, with a grim determination to defeat it by one's own hand". What? That doesn't sound simple! Look at how many words it took to describe it! True, but what image does it evoke? Imagine a person, thousands of years ago, standing next to a fallen friend, shaking his fist in rage at the Gods, determined to defeat their ugly game. Picture Gilgamesh travelling throughout the known world in search of a way to conquer death. That is the sort of primal image that drives us. And cryonics is, for now, our best resolution for it. The other 99.99999% of the world's people have other resolutions in place. For cryonicists to reach them, we first need to find what those competing resolutions are and then find how we can position cryonics in their minds as a solution for what they want. What is the competition? Too many times I have seen cryonicists compare the various cryonics organizations as if our main competition is each other. Ha! Ha! Ha! Keith Henson has suggested that cryonics occupies the same memetic niche (ie. marketing position) as religion. I think that he is much closer to being right. What kinds of religious resolutions for that primal image have people found throughout history? Certainly several religions have offered promises of immortality (Christian heaven, Norse Valhalla, etc.). Other religions or philosophies offer different kinds of resolutions, such as dissolving the rage and determination that is vexing us, along with ourselves (Buddhism). Some even more common resolutions, though, have nothing to do with religion at all: Denial & Self-Deception. Follow-the-crowd. Until recently, these strategies actually made good sense. Why spend one's life fretting over something that you cannot do anything about anyway? You would be better off just forgetting about it and getting on with your life (and death). People who did exactly that produced a world full of people like them. Cryonicists are the misfits. How do we take market share from our competitors? This is where a lot of strategy and street-smarts comes in handy. I certainly have no monopology on that, so while reading this, let your imagination run wild. Maybe you will create a gem or two. Here is the list of competitors: (1) Religious Promises of Immortality, (2) Religious Promises of Annihilation, (3) Denial & Self-Deception, and (4) Follow-the-Crowd. By the way, I neglected to list "life is terrible and I want out now!" because I doubt that any such person will last long enough to be a serious prospect. These competitors are all well-established. Before expending time and energy on clever schemes for unseating them, heed the caution from page 210 of "Positioning": "... you can't compete head-on against a company that has a strong, established position. You can go around, under or over, but never head to head." For example, we won't be able to tell Mr. Denial to "Wake Up! Cryonics is Here!". As we have seen, in the almost 30-year history of cryonics, the other competitors haven't budged any, either. The good news, though, is that: "Often, to create a viable position, you must reposition another brand or even an entire category of product. As Tylenol did to aspirin, for example." What did Tylenol do to aspirin (besides giving it a headache)? The initial Tylenol ad campaign pointed out the many ways in which aspirin products could not accomplish what people really wanted (due mainly to induced gastro-intestinal bleeding). And then it offered Tylenol as a solution. This worked because what people really wanted wasn't aspirin: it was a safe pain reliever. For a cryonics promotion to work, it has to offer people what they really want. But their minds will not be open to that until they understand clearly that what they have now is not what they really want. Now I will jump into my asbestos suit and outline my thoughts on taking market share from our competitors. (1) Religious Promises of Immortality For someone who already has religious promises of immortality, what does cryonics have to offer? As I pointed out in message #72, "The traditional scenario for survival through reanimation from cryonic suspension ... sounds like heaven; when you first re-awake you will be surrounded by your friends and loved ones (who have come back before you) and these people will all be young, healthy, wise, incredibly wealthy and powerful by today's standards, and, of course, in immortal bliss." That makes cryonics just a me-too offering, though, and promoting it that way will only be competing head to head with a well-established competitor, which does not work. Perhaps we could "Tylenol" those religious promises and leave those people eagerly looking for something to replace their lost faith? Give me a break! We are not in the business of changing people's religion and quite enough misery has been inflicated upon this world already by people's misguided attempts to do just that. For these competitors, I suggest that we cannot go head-to-head, and we cannot reasonably expect to reposition (i.e. "Tylenol") them either. We can only go around, under, or over them. So what does cryonics have to offer that people with a religious promise of immortality do not have already? Something very practical: health preservation. To get there, though, we need to reposition cryonics in their minds from "bizarre mortuary practice" to something much better. Brian Wowk's classic repositioning of cryonics was titled "The Death of Death in Cryonics". (See message #50 for a review of that article.) He makes the crucial point that cryonics is *not* about freezing dead bodies and eventually magically bringing them back from the dead. Instead, cryonics stabilizes terminal ill people *so that they do not die*. We thus have cryonics patients, not frozen bodies. No longer do we need to explain where people's souls go or worry about other religious conundrums or Frankenstein-like fears, because cryonics patients have not died. This repositioning of cryonics makes possible a mind game that you can play on Catholics, should you be so inclined. Here is my version of an idea I saw in an early version of Cryonics : Reaching For Tomorrow: (A) Suicide is a mortal sin. (B) Refusing medical treatment that would prevent your death is suicide. (C) Therefore, opting for burial or cremation when conventional medicine gives up on you, rather than being suspended, is a mortal sin. Saying that may shut someone up but don't expect any signups out of it. For people with religious promises of immortality, cryonics is just a health-maintenance option. Some will buy it. But, as we have seen, most will not. So why aren't people lining up to buy our Super Extraordinary Health Preservation Service? Probably because, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, we don't have a product; nobody has ever gotten frozen and walked away from it. There may also be a dose of denial, self-deception, or follow-the-crowd involved, too. One thing that we might do, rather than just give up on this competitor, is to choose a better name for what we offer than "cryonics". Yes, a better name. But that completely ignores all the important issues, doesn't it? Well, consider this. Procter & Gamble has several laundry detergent products, each targetted for a different niche: Tide - gets your laundry white, Cheer - gets your laundry whiter than white, and Bold - gets your laundry bright. Silly sounding isn't it? Procter & Gamble laughs all the way to the bank. Each of those names, along with its promotional support, attracts a targetted segment of the laundry detergent buying population. Successfully. As Ries and Trout stress throughout the book, getting the right name is *important*. Now who would be attracted to the name "cryonics"? At first mention, and that is probably all the further you will get, what does it sound like? "CRY - ONICS. Technology to make you cry? It's something really sad to be sure, probably tragic. I don't want to have anything to do with it!" But ... But ... It's so logical! You see, the Greek root "cryo" means "cold" and you certainly have heard about "cryobiology" and "cryogenics", established sciences. Yes, we are talking about science! "Yeah. Yeah. And I bet you're going to tell me that 'cryptography' isn't about taking pictures of graves. Get lost, you krypto-kryo-kook!" See what trouble a bad name can cause? :-) Seriously, though, I would like to see a more inviting name. Unfortunately, since the word "cryonics" is so well-established, I don't believe that we should attempt to create a competitor word to go head-to-head against it. (As Ries and Trout point out, that strategy doesn't work.) We can, however, make certain that we use inviting names for our organizations, our products, and our services. Any organization with "cryonics" in its name is starting with an unnecessary handicap. Thus, the "American Cryonics Society", "Cryonics Institute", "International Cryonics Foundation", and "Canadian Cryonics Society" are suffering from this handicap whereas the "Alcor Life Extension Foundation" and "Trans Time" are not. (The "Immortalist Society" does not use "cryonics" but it does use the dreaded "I" word.) What words, or phrases, would be better? What do you suppose will be the name of the top suspension organization once the big guys and Madison Avenue get in the act? "Biostasis" sounds like some kind of biological static cling technology, but at least it isn't as bad as "cryonics". How about "BioHaven" offering its "Door To Tomorrow" service? Or maybe "Escape Hatch" with its "Beat The Reaper" special? Perhaps "Safety Net" will catch you when you fall? Or "Sanctuary" will keep you in a "holding pattern" until they can make you well? (2) Religious Promises of Annihilation People who want to be annihilated (perhaps after several rounds of reincarnation) have a fundamental difference in values from cryonicists. But what cryonics offers and what they want still have some common ground because reanimation from cryonic suspension is kind of like reincarnation. Promoting cryonics just like that, though, is competing head to head against established competition, which doesn't work. Even worse, at first glance which is all you'll get, cryonics looks clearly inferior to reincarnation. Why would someone want our crude, unreliable, expensive, messy, *man-made* reincarnation system when they can stay with their automated, high-tech, free, *divine* reincarnation system? If there is such a thing as a technophilic believer in reincarnation, then we may have an opening. As I see it, the greatest weakness of their system is the total (or, to be charitable, near total) amnesia one suffers from one incarnation to the next. That surely would greatly inhibit one's progress toward learning the lessons needed to achieve ultimate extinction, wouldn't it? If so, then we may position cryonics as an improved method of practicing their religion, after repositioning their current practice as inefficient: Attention Fellow Buddhists, Hindus, and New Age Dudes For your next incarnation on the earthly plane, be sure to use our new Samadhi (TM) soul recovery system. Our patented personality restoration technique has at least 1000 times the fidelity of old-fashioned Buddha technology! You'll learn life's vital lessons in far fewer incarnations when you go the Samadhi way! Note that this does not attempt to change their religion; it only promotes changing their practice of it. Also, for better or (likely) for worse, note that it still promotes cryonics as a bizarre mortuary practice, a position we established long ago, rather than attempting to reposition it as a life-saving medical technology. (3) Denial and Self-Deception The book "Vital Lies, Simple Truths (The Psychology of Self-Deception)" by Daniel Goleman (Simon & Schuster, 1985) proposes that one of our main methods of reducing pain is to dim our awareness of that painful thing. This is a pain/attention tradeoff that applies to a lot more than just the general public's lack of attention to rational means for indefinitely postponing death (such as cryonics). The book quotes the Indian epic, the Mahabharatta: "What is the greatest wonder of the world?" The answer is: "That no one, though he sees others dying all around, believes he himself will die." If that is true, though, then how do life insurance agents ever sell life insurance? Could it be in the name? After all, they are really selling death insurance and calling it life insurance. But cryonics is the only kind of life insurance that lives up to THAT name. Since the name "life insurance" is taken, though, what do we call cryonics? Keep On Truckin' insurance? Maybe some life (death) insurance agents have more insight into this. Perhaps what they are really selling is Peace Of Mind: "Yes, sir, I agree that you aren't really going to die, but, just in case, wouldn't you like to know that your wife and kids will be well taken care of?" If so, then what kind of Peace Of Mind can cryonics offer? Perhaps that can be explored more thoroughly in the next section. (4) Follow-The-Crowd The title "Follow-The-Crowd" is somewhat too restrictive. This competition for cryonics is not just social conformity, but also any memetic system that defines oneself in terms of the status quo. (The rebel needs a society to rebel against. The snob needs someone to snub.) As long as one is immersed in our culture's petty games, it is easy to forget that it's small stuff. This section is a pot pourri of Distractions and how cryonics perhaps can be sold to even the most distracted of souls. Basic Macho Man: For young, insecure men, one of those "muscle cars", jacked-up high with extra floodlights and roll bars, is the perfect penis extender. For these people, organizations such as Hard Dick, Inc. will keep their members *very* hard for a *very* long time. That, by itself, is not very exciting. But the flip side is that any guy who is NOT signed up with Hard Dick is just a "Short Term Weenie". And that is *bad* news because, as every Basic Macho Man knows, luscious, horny women have *no* interest in a "Short Term Weenie." Enhanced Macho Man - One of the most important lessons little boys learn in the school yard is that, no matter how bad it gets, it's not OK to quit. ("Joey's a sissy!") As for the Basic Macho Man, the strategy here is to reposition business-as-usual as something clearly unmasculine. In this case, we reposition death as "a wimp's easy way out" and offer our "Never Say Die" service as a solution. Thus, Mr. Macho, after being pumped full of lead during a masculine altercation, can not only tell his opponents "I'm no quitter!" but also utter the famous words of "Terminator" Arnold Schwarzeneggar: "I'll be back!" Women: As with men, women are told that they have little personal worth unless they follow their assigned social prescription. The repositioning strategy for women is not the same as for the macho men, though. Instead, some personal reassurance of their self-worth seems best: You mean a lot to us and we don't want to lose you. A Perma Care (TM) bracelet says "I love you" in the most authentic way possible today. This positions a gift of a cryonic suspension as a sincere expression of appreciation of a woman's self-worth. It may be even better than a diamond ring. In our culture it's politically correct to say that you want to "live your allotted time" but not politically correct to say that you want to die, even though that logically follows "your allotted time". This inconsistency is an opportunity to reposition the status quo as the *irrational* alternative, thus making room in people's minds for cryonics to be the sensible approach: Q: Why do you want to live so long? A: Why do you want to die? The July 1986 issue of Cryonics magazine included an article by Mike Darwin titled "A World Gone Wrong" which suggested that many non-cryonicists lack sufficient self-esteem to think that they should have a longer life. Curing their poor self-esteem is not our business, but perhaps a little repositioning still can make them a cryonics customer. My optimism comes from the traditional success of Christianity in offering eternal life to the downtrodden and thereby making them "customers" of Christianity. The crucial message seems to be this: If you buy the program, you deserve what it promises. If you do not, you do not. It's your choice. The Christians word it more eloquently: "For he who believeth in me shall have eternal life." (The equally important flip side is that he who does not believe will go to hell.) Cryonics works like that, too. I remember the "two Bob's" described in the June 1988 Cryonics magazine, Robert A. Heinlein and Bob the TV repairman. Guess which one got suspended? Guess which one *deserved* to be suspended? In the case of cryonics, the test is not belief, but rather *vision* and willingness to act on that vision. Remember: "Where there is no vision a people perish." Social Snobs: Signing up for cryonic suspension can be a status symbol, too. In repositioning a greatly extended lifetime (via cryonics) as an option for the rich and famous, a high price is an *advantage*. (Just don't be too public about how easy it is to finance with life insurance.) Remember: Anyone can die. But are you just anyone? Here is a variant for the Intellectual Snobs. Signing up with Brain Trust shows how intelligent you are: Brain Trust - The Smart Choice Advertisements will picture people of the future looking back at how people of the 20th century died stupidly. For space activists, who really want to personally explore space, yet are becoming resigned to leaving that for future generations, use a straightforward repositioning of cryonics as a solution for their professed long-term goals. Imagine the following poster displayed prominently at the next big space conference: --------------------------------------------------- | | | | picture of | picture of | | a gravestone | rocket ships, | | or a rotting | space colonies, | | corpse | and you | | | | --------------------------------------------------- | Which is YOUR Long Term Goal? | --------------------------------------------------- One of the often-voiced concerns people have about cryonics is that they are afraid that at the other end they will be alone in an incomprehensively strange world where they do not belong. The repositioning strategy is to (1) picture a future world with their friends and family in it and (2) show the sadness they will cause their friends and family if they do NOT sign up for suspension: Your friends will miss you ... and wonder why you didn't save yourself. Don't forget the celebrity endorsements. Imagine George Burns saying: "Even though I play God in the movies, in real life I put my faith in two things, this cigar and BioHaven." If the celebrity = God likes it, it *must* be good! As you can see, the Follow-The-Crowd competition breaks down into quite a crowd of market segments. I don't know which are most worth pursuing, so rather than outlining positioning strategies for "Escape Hatch", "Time Travel Tourism, Ltd", etc., I'll just leave the rest to you. Before spending a lot of time, money, and effort on this, though, consider the following two points: (1) Many, if not most, cryonics signups are from personal acquaintance with someone who signed up. Your personal example is the most powerful statement you can make. (2) Beware of trying to capture all market segments with the same brand, because you will lose your brand name identification that way. Use a different name for each market segment. For example, Disney makes a lot of money on R-rated movies, but not under the name "Disney," which stands for "wholesome family entertainment." Instead, Disney markets its R-rated movies under the name "Touchstone Pictures." Finally, all this hype would be a lot more successful if we actually had a product to sell. We need all the good research we can get so that "The Prospect of Immortality" becomes the reality of revival to an unbounded future. Kevin Q. Brown INTERNET kqb@whscad1.att.com or kevin_q_brown@att.com "Does 'cryonics' just leave you cold? How about 'Fry-onics' or 'Worm-onics'?"