A Reservoir of Ideas

Scene: A conversation between MBM Marketing Lead Leo Sideway and a customer named Patrick. The scene should be somewhere interesting—like the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas or a minigolf course in Myrtle Beach.

Leo: Imagine you’re somewhere interesting. It should be more interesting than your apartment or a Starbucks. We need to picture a place that hints of inspiration.

Patrick: Like a bakery?

Leo: Like the beach.

Patrick: I live in Colorado. We have reservoir beaches, but that’s…

Leo: Start there.

Patrick: As I sloshed through the brown water of the Boulder Reservoir, I tried to ignore the beer cans that hit my feet every few seconds. They were thrown in the reservoir during a frat party that started sometime in the 1970s and never stopped.

Leo: What are you doing?

Patrick: What you told me to do.

Leo: This story isn’t interesting.

Patrick: You just said to start somewhere interesting.

Leo: Well, I was hoping for a fight scene or a car chase.

Patrick: To market my website?

Leo: We’ll get to the website. Start somewhere interesting. I’m going to pretend that I’m you. France, 1933. Despite the great depression back home, my great-great-grandfather found himself in a mystery. He was staying with a writer named Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was working on a book, but the manuscript disappeared. The only person who could possibly track it down was my great-great-grandfather.

Patrick: There’s absolutely no way that any of my relatives were in Paris. They lived in the Midwest.

Leo: Oh, you should have said that. Chicago is a perfect spot. Would you prefer we tackle a World’s Fair or a Fire?

Patrick: What does this have to do with my website?

Leo: You start with a story! One that really hooks people. Then, you connect that to a website. Like, my uncle saw Edison’s first light bulb in Chicago. Then, he became a cartoonist who created the idea for a lightbulb lighting up over a character’s head when they had an idea. Well, we have an idea! And that’s the website! Then you’d explain the origins of the website and lay out the story of how you got here.

Patrick: Okay, let me try. I hired MBM Marketing to help with marketing because I’m trying to convince people to visit my website. Then MBM Marketing made up a bunch of stuff about distant relatives. You should visit my website and hire me or subscribe to my newsletter anyway, even though you can’t trust me.

Leo: Why would you begin by lying and then try to tell the truth?

Patrick: There’s someone out there who knows the truth or who can find out that my uncle didn’t see Edison’s lightbulb, wasn’t a cartoonist and had nothing to do with my website.

Leo: Okay, but we could put a nice bow on it. We could make a lightbulb your logo.

Patrick: No.

Leo: Okay… Okay… New idea. Do you have enough money for a Super Bowl ad?