~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Perry Marshall Marketing e-letter
(C) 2002 Perry S. Marshall & Associates
March 28, 2002
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm always on the lookout for people outside of
the industrial world that I can learn from.

Here's a BRILLIANT example of the power of
emotion in marketing, from a wildly successful
entrepreneur in China. He's taken the whole
country by storm with a pricey language
course called "Crazy English." Quite a challenge,
since learning English is a very tough assignment
that involves LOTS of hard work and commitment
over a period of YEARS.

My brother Bryan has been an English instructor in
Southern China for two years now, and he sent me this
story. Compare Stone Lee's "Crazy English" to
whatever foreign language class and textbook you
had in high school... I think you'll see why this guy
is more popular than your Spanish teacher probably
was :^)

***

If you travel around China and happen
to stop into any bookstore, you'll
probably see ads on the wall featuring
a spirited-looking Chinese man screaming
madly into a mike in front of a crowd of
thousands. 'Crazy English' the poster says.
It's an ad for a comprehensive English
program administered by a well-traveled
Chinese man named Li Yang, or Stone Lee as
he's known to westerners.

'Crazy English' is an immensely popular
English course that you can take. It's
primarily self-taught, but involves the
purchase of literally hundreds of dollars
worth of materials if you're really
serious about it - flash cards, books,
tapes, a monthly magazine, videos,
everything. The course is usually kicked
off by attending one of Stone Lee's huge
rallies where he dances and struts and
makes you laugh and cry and gets your
whole self involved in a fun kickoff to
learning (or perfecting) your English.

Everyone in China knows about this guy;
his picture is everywhere and his ads
show up in magazines and on billboards
all over the country.

The program itself is genius, and I
frankly wish the same thing were available
to westerners for learning Chinese: you
can get a subscription where every month
they'll send you a set of tapes and a
mini-magazine that takes passages from
recent news events and entertainment and
prints them out AND puts them on tape for
you to hear, replete with footnotes and
translations of difficult expressions and
everything. So for example, you can hear a
selection from Bush's State of the Union
address, or hear and read a 5-minute
dialogue from the new Harry Potter movie,
etc. and have it explained to you.

Folks will pay as much as 7000 RMB
for a full purchase of all the materials
and subscription to the magazine/tape service.
That's $850, which is about six months'
income for the average Chinese worker.
Not cheap!

Stone Lee is, frankly, not as much a
teacher as he is a brilliant marketer.

My very first week in China, I ate
lunch with him. Yes, he actually came
to the Guanfang Hotel and gave a 45-minute
presentation of his program here. It
furnished a nice kickoff to my arrival
as their new teacher, which I much
appreciated. And he had with him his
girlfriend, a young 30-something from
Miami who says she'd take teaching in
China over teaching in the US any day,
simply because the Chinese are so hungry
to learn, whereas American kids are
arrogantly blase about education.

***

Just a few quick observations:

1) This guy is in technical sales. What
could be more technical than learning
a new language?

2) This guy understands how people
really learn! People don't learn much
sitting in front of a book. People learn
by involving their entire self in the process.

3) He's taking a very tedious subject
and making it fun. You should do the
exact same thing with your area of
expertise! If what you do seems boring,
MAKE IT FUN.

4) Remember that Stone Lee has to
convince his audience that learning
English is fun and worthwhile not just
once, but EVERY SINGLE DAY. He
has to be relentless.

Once I asked a friend, who was a
manufacturer's rep, what was the best
"company training" meeting that he'd
ever been to. He thought for awhile and
replied that it was the time that, at the
end of a 2-day training session, they had
a well-executed "game show" where the
contestants (the reps) had to compete for
prizes based on how well they had learned
the answers to important questions.

It works on reps and it'll work on customers,
too!

In my "21 Secrets" audiobook (free for
the asking if you don't already have a
copy, just send me an email), I talk about
the importance of emotion in marketing.
This is a prime example!

Got stuff you wanna discuss in the next
newsletter? Email me: news@...
and we'll tackle your questions.

Sincerely,

Perry

P.S. Invite others to subscribe! Feel free to
forward this newsletter to a friend.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Perry S. Marshall & Associates
Marketing & Lead Generation Systems
for Technical Sales People
(708)788-4461
(708)788-4599 fax
www.perrymarshall.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~