A couple weeks ago, I wrote this post about trying to distill the idea of the Drama Farm into a few sentences, in the hopes of explaining what we’re doing without talking our listeners’ ears off for 20 minutes. I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the last few weeks, and with Erin (my newfound partner in crime - more on that soon!) we managed to come up with a pretty good one-paragraph description that hits on the really important points. It’s still a work in progress, though, and several things that I’ve encountered in the last few days have given me some more ideas on what direction to go with it.

What makes us unique?

Chris Garrett, who writes a great blog about internet marketing, wrote a really interesting article about defining your uniqueness - figuring out how you’re different, and what sets you apart from the crowd. His focus is on how to use this to market yourself and make yourself stand out from your competitors, but he asks some good quesions that apply here as well:

• What are our core values?
• What’s our philosophy?
• What makes us uniquely us, and how does that benefit the people we’re talking to?

All extremely important things to think about, and to be able to define for people when we’re talking to them about the project.

Start with the basics

Then yesterday I had tea with the fabulous Mark Jackson, who told me about the application process he went through for his fellowship from the Humboldt Foundation. The written application started by asking him to describe his project in 5 words. After that, he was asked to describe it in 2 or 3 sentences, then a paragraph, and so on and so on, until finally he had to write a 4-page description of the project and all its details. Mark said that going through that process forced him to really focus on what the core elements of the project were, so that he could find the right five words to describe it. He then expanded from those five words, bit by bit, and by the time he got to the 4-page description, he knew exactly what he was doing and why he was doing it.

Think of the bunnies

Finally, I’m reading an inspiring book called The Imagineering Way, which is a collection of essays on creativity written by Disney’s Imagineers. I’m only partway through the book, but one that really struck me is by Bruce Gordon, one of the Creative Project Directors. He talks about how selling an idea is like coaxing a bunny rabbit out from hiding in the bushes:

You want that bunny rabbit to feast on your idea, but first you have to coax him out from under the bushes and convince him it’s safe to take a little nibble.

So think of your idea as a sweet, crunchy carrot.

The bunny rabbit needs to perceive a safe, non-threatening environment, as well as a reward that will justify the risk it’s taking by poking its head out.

Remember that any sudden movement or loud noise is going to scare the bunny away. And don’t hold out a carrot that’s too big. In fact, you might think of the carrot as just a portion of your idea, rather than the entire concept.

It’s a carrot topping to a whole salad of ideas.

When a concept is revolutionary and changes the current thinking or status quo (no matter how much you know in your heart it’s the right thing to do), a big change can be a scary thing for someone to try to take in all at once. If you were trying to coax the bunny out so it could feast on an entire salad, you wouldn’t dump the whole salad on the ground at one time. The bunny would disappear back into its office - er, rabbit hole - before the last piece of lettuce floated to the ground.

Just coax it out gently with a tasty sample of what’s to come, then carefully introduce the benefits of the big picture: your salad.

This has been my biggest problem so far - I start with the Big Idea, rather than a bite-sized portion of it, and it’s just too much for people to chew on all at once. Reading about the bunny, and thinking about Mark’s experience in formulating his concept, have given me a pretty clear idea of where I need to go from here.

So, what’s the plan?

First, I’m going to go through a process much like Mark’s fellowship application, while keeping in mind Chris’ questions about uniqueness and standing out:

1. Find 5 words that describe the Drama Farm’s core concepts and values.
2. Describe the idea briefly, in 2 or 3 sentences, making sure to include what makes the program unique.
3. In 2 or 3 paragraphs, give an overview of the program, with detail about the philosophy behind it and benefits of it.
4. In 2 or 3 pages, describe exactly what we plan to do, why we’re doing it, and how we plan to do it.

That’ll give us a pretty good foundation of written materials to include on the website, in publicity, and in materials we send to potential donors. The next step is to figure out how to talk about it, without sounding like a canned speech. So, we take those four written descriptions, and we turn them into:

1. a 15-second pitch
2. a 30-second pitch
3. a 1-minute pitch
4. a 5-minute pitch

Once we’ve accomplished that, we’ll have a definitive language for talking to people about the idea, hopefully reeling them in (or coaxing them out), just like the bunny rabbit.

What do you think? I think it sounds like a good exercise for anyone embarking on a big project like this. It’ll help us distill our ideas and focus on the core values, which we sometimes lose sight of while thinking about the more mundane aspects, like funding and legal issues… I’ll post the pieces here as I finish them, and we’ll see how it goes - now, I’m off to start writing!