Justin Vincent

Man On a Wire Theory – The Ultimate Optimization

In this essay I will relate the concept of “narrative drive” to tight rope walking accross the World Trade Center. I will also show why my “Man on a Wire Theory” has been the single most important discovery in my career.

Inception

Man on a Wire (MOW) is a conceptual framework to help anyone optimize customer relationships, user engagement, and just about anything else.

The general idea of MOW has percolated within me since I first tried my hand at writing a short novella age 20. To create narrative drive in my novella I theorized each chapter should follow this simple recursive formula:

Chapter Formula
1) Write something interesting, shocking or beautiful
2) Answer a question posed in the previous chapter
3) Pose a question that will be answered in the next chapter

Of all the people I showed my novella to, no one could put it down. I’m not claiming my novella was good, but I AM claiming I learned I could make people to do what I want (i.e keep reading). If you re-frame the formula in terms of human motivation you can see why it works and how it taps into the most basic aspects of the human condition:

Motivational Breakdown
1) Unexpected Reward
2) Reward Curiosity
3) Trigger Curiosity

This simple formula is an unending recursive loop of unexpected reward, then triggering and rewarding curiosity. Especially powerful when you consider it hooks directly into the human reward system – with all sorts of possible goodies for our brain such as dopamine.

The Big Idea

This discovery was such a big idea for me at age 20 I’ve applied it wherever possible during my career. Some examples are software architecture, UI, user journeys, marketing campaigns, business development, to name but a few.

Here’s an example of how curiosity and reward might manifest when a user lands on a website home page:

<user lands on page>
<user thinks> Hmm. What’s this? (curiosity)
<page explains its purpose & benefit in one very large sentence> (reward)
<user thinks> I’m interested!
<user looks around page for more info> (curiosity)
<website outlines key benefits> (reward)
<user looks around page for more info> (curiosity)
<website provides “Learn More” button> (reward)
<user clicks button hoping to learn more> (curiosity)
<etc>

All websites provoke this kind of unspoken thought stream as a user browses. However, very few have been built from the ground up to purposefully guide users down specific curiosity/reward paths.

I’ve had tremendous success at boosting engagement and conversions by carefully looking at everything I create through the lens of guided curiosity/reward patterns.

What I’ve outlined so far is a great starting point, however there are two additional factors at play that are equally as important as curiosity and reward:

1) Initial engagement
2) Growth of trust

Although the curiosity/reward cycle is powerful – it means nothing unless we can find a way to grab a users attention in the first place hence initial engagement.

We should also note, the more curiosity/reward cycles a user spends with us, the more they we will give us their trust in hope of future rewards hence growth of trust.

So, what actually is Man On a Wire Theory? And how can we use it to optimize anything?

Man on a Wire – The Documentary

Man On a Wire Theory is inspired by the film “Man on a Wire”. A documentary about Philippe Petit, who in 1974 tight rope walked across New York’s twin towers on an iron cable. Most of the documentary is about how he, and a crew of three, broke into the world trade center and illegally rigged an iron cable between the two buildings. Not an easy feat.

So how did a crew of four rig a 2″ iron cable across the top of the twin towers?

The idea was simple but brilliant.

The crew split into two teams of two. One team was the sender team. The other was the receiver team. Both teams stealthily made their way to the top of the towers evading security guards as they went. The sender team went up with an assortment of threads, wires and cables – and a bow and arrow.

When they arrived at the top the teams signaled each other.

The sender team shot an arrow across the towers with a very thin thread attached. When the arrow landed on the other tower the receiver team grabbed it and pulled the thread. The sender team attached a slightly bigger piece of thread. The receiver pulled that across, and so on. It continued this way with thread turing to rope, turing to wire, and finally turning to the iron cable that Petit walked on.

Man On a Wire – The Theory

As soon as I saw the documentary I knew I’d found a way to conceptually tie initial engagement to my original narrative drive formula:

Man On a Wire Sequence
1) Fire arrow at user (initial engagement)
2) User notices & picks up arrow (curiosity)
3) Feed first wire to user (reward)
4) Attach bigger wire. Wave it in air. (curiosity)
5) Feed bigger wire to user (reward)
6) Repeat steps 4 + 5

Note how this sequence also describes growth of trust as each wire handed to the user gradually becomes larger, indicating a more valuable link between us and the user as the sequence progresses.

Real World Example

Man On a Wire Sequences can be used to optimize just about anything. The trick is to carefully craft your content/process/whatever in such a way that it adheres to the rules set out by the Man On a Wire Sequence (MOWS):

• There should only be one arrow fired
• The arrow fired should be highly relevant
• Each wire should trigger curiosity/expectation for the next wire
• Each wire should reward curiosity/expectation from the previous wire
• Each wire should naturally follow the previous

For example, my startup Pluggio’s home page is a MOWS. Let’s step through and see how it unfolds:

<user lands on home page>

<Fire arrow at user (initial engagement)>
We show a very large attention grabbing headline. “Worlds easiest Twitter for business software”. This is the first thing a users sees. If the users eyes are drawn anywhere else, then we’ve failed. There should only be one arrow.

<User notices & picks up arrow (curiosity)>
If the user does not pick up the arrow then we wrote it badly or sent the wrong user to the page.

<Feed first wire to user (reward)>
The first wire should be placed where the users eyes will naturally fall after picking up the arrow.  In this case, four bullet points outlining Pluggio benefits directly under the headline. The copy should reward and meet the expectations set by the initial engagement.

– Now you can have the impact of an entire marketing team
– Save huge amounts of time compared to other products
– Manage multiple Twitter accounts without breaking a sweat
– Maintain a 24/7 social presence AND get other work done

<Attach bigger wire. Wave it in air. (curiosity)>
Now we need to make the user aware of the next wire. Once again it should be exactly where the users eyes are at the end of the previous wire. Hopefully the user will be filled with expectation and curiosity. Is it really true? How does it work? How do I find out more? We hand them the next wire by placing a big blue button “Watch a Video” under the bullet points.

<Feed bigger wire to user (reward)>