I just finished a fascinating book by Bernadette Jiwa, entitled the Fortune Cookie Principle. In this powerful little tome, the author suggests that in marketing, “It’s not how good you are. It’s how well you tell your story. ” She uses the analogy of a Fortune Cookie. It’s not much on the outside, but it contains a powerful little story on the inside.
I like the concept.
As a long time Toastmaster, I’ve learned the power of stories. They work well.
So after reading Bernadette’s book, I asked the question… If I put three cookies on a plate; a chocolate chip, a peanut butter, and a fortune cookie, which one would you take?
As much as I agreed with Bernadette’s premise about story, I had a little trouble with this question.
You see, I don’t like fortune cookies very much. They taste rather bland at best, and sometimes they are downright awful. If I was hungry at all, I would take one of the other cookies in a heartbeat. My hunger would outweigh my curiosity for the fortune.
Good would outweigh story.
So then I got to thinking. I put my design hat on. How about putting a fortune in a chocolate chip cookie?
The result was an utter mess, with the chocolate chips melting on the fortune.
The same think happened with the peanut butter.
Nice idea, but an abject failure.
I was just getting ready to kiss the idea off when..
I thought of the lowly Hershey’s kiss, a delicious foil rapped chocolate miracle.
Now we were getting somewhere.
I could wrap the fortune around the outside of a chocolate chip cookie.
At first, my ideas didn’t work. A foil wrapped cookie didn’t look delicious at all. The foil hid all the goodness inside. It was bland and plain. Then I though of what type of package I could wrap it in. I thought of Steve Jobs at Apple, with their amazing packaging used to enhance the experience of unwrapping almost all of their products. This brought ideas of gift wrap and ribbon. Now the idea of a wrapped cookie was more appealing.
Beautiful outside, but what about the inside? A regular fortune certainly wouldn’t do. It had to be a story. A good story.
Actually for you, this needs to be an incredible story.
So here is what I came up with… Put the best cookie on earth in great gift wrap and include a card inside with an amazing story or quote.
Some people on Pinterest have the right idea…
The Doodlecraft blog has a great idea here
Picky Palate has these…
But these from One Charming Party might be the closest to my idea yet…
Imagine a Fortune like this quote from Wilferd Peterson
“Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it…”
