As we raced upstairs and entered his brother Pete's room, there was a small crowd of our buddies from school. Mike, Bret, and now me and Dieter...all pressed against the glass of a small terrarium. And there it was. A tiger snake coiled up about to attack a fresh white mouse.
Okay, some of you are horrified, but how else does someone feed a pet snake?
Yes pet stores frown on this practice, but snake owners rotate stores as to not become suspect. Now back to my story....
With lightening speed, the snake leaped forward biting the terrified mouse. It squeaked and died under the comparatively massive jowls of the Tiger Snake. Slowly, the snake unhinged its jaw, and began to devour the carcass until it was nothing more than a bulge in the body of an orange colored snake.
This digestive action is called peristalsis. You can look it up online but it basically means digestion without teeth. Pure muscular movement of the esophagus, along with digestive juices...well you get the picture. This is how a python can digest a large pig. Over time, the entire pig is digested. It is also why some snakes only feed once a month.
But the concept of this peristaltic movement, The Pig & The Python - is also a marketing term.
I awaited in anticipation to see the remakes of The Green Hornet, True Grit and The Mechanic, I am always reminded of the Pig & The Python by David Cork. Who is ready for The Avengers: Age of Ultron?
As a marketing term, The Pig & The Python is an attempt to take a brand that Baby Boomers grew up with - think Batman, Speed Racer, and Battlestar Galactica - and repackage it with special effects, a story rewrite and a few sequels - and resell it. But here is the peristaltic part: refeed a group of people with something they already know and love, just update it.
But more importantly, get a new generation
hooked on the brand as well.
Boomers drag their kids to these movies...or more importantly, tell stories from the glory days of their childhood. This gets another generation hooked on the same brand. Over and over again. thirty years from now, be on the lookout for a remake of The Transformers, Harry Potter and Pokemon movies.
When trying to find a target audience, keep in mind, a built in audience and the Pig & The Python.
Why do you think they have remade Batman, Superman (and tried to match the Christopher Reeve's version) The Manchurian Candidate, Star Trek, Arthur, Speed Racer, Alice in Wonderland, The Addams Family, etc...or even more amazing is the landslide of all the comic book heroes being reimagined...Iron Man, Spider-Man, Green Lantern and Avengers 3:Age of Ultron.
All of these remakes are an attempt to bring back the glory days of the Baby Boomer and the brands they grew up with.
Now some of these remakes bomb miserably, like movie remake of the British TV Series also entitled The Avengers. Or The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp. Did you see any Speed Racer cartoons out when the Speed Racer movie was about to be released? Or The Avengers TV series with Diana Rigg, or the original Lone Ranger episodes on TV Land? No...The reason is, no one primed the pump to get Boomers excited again to go see the remake. Yet executives at the top wonder why it didn't do so well. Duh.
Try building our anticipation folks.
The Pig & The Python. Keep feeding a brand over and over until it is completely digested.
Cool huh?
Thanks for reading,
Brad Szollose
Bridging The Generational Divide: Multigenerational management expert, award-winning author, business consultant and keynote speaker
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But this is not based on management theory: With a 30 year career as an entrepreneur he knows firsthand what it’s like to grow a company from a simple idea in a coffee shop to an internationally recognized brand.
Brad is a former C-Level Internet Executive who went from entrepreneur to IPO in 3 yrs—co-founding K2 Design, the very first Dot Com Agency to go public on NASDAQ. His company experienced 425% hyper-growth for 5 straight years, expanded from 2 business partners to 4 with 60+ employees and offices worldwide. At its height, K2 was valuated at over $26 million. His results only management model (ROWE) was applied to the first wave of young Generation Y workers producing great results—winning K2 the Arthur Andersen NY Enterprise Award for Best Practices in Fostering Innovation.
Brad Szollose is also the *award-winning author of Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia which explores the subject of new leadership styles – mainly how to get the tech-savvy Generation Y and analog driven Baby Boomers working together. ISBN-13: 978-1608320554
Known for his humorous and thought-provoking presentations, Szollose received the highest testimonial of his career from a C-Level audience member: "I just had my mind blown." Brad’s keynotes and workshops are highly interactive, heart-warming, humorous, and filled with high-content information that challenge assumptions and help leaders and managers create a better work environment for innovation to thrive.
Today, Brad helps businesses close the Digital Divide by understanding it as a Cultural Divide – created by the new tech-savvy worker...and customer.
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