Try to imagine Harry Potter without Voldemort.
Or Star Wars without Darth Vader and the Death Star.
Or Mean Girls without Regina George.
You can’t.
You might as well watch Jurassic Park without the dinosaurs.
A story needs a villain, because without a problem to solve, there is no action.
The hero doesn’t need to change, and nothing compels him to.
So while it’s nice to think that your marketing should be positive and optimistic and educational, it doesn’t work.
Why is the point of being positive if there is nothing negative going on?
What is there to be optimistic about if nothing is wrong?
What’s the point of educating if there’s not some lack of important knowledge?
No, the first step of telling a story, whether in movies or marketing, is clearly recognizing the problem.
That’s when an adventure can take place.
Think of any time in your own life when you’ve truly grown or took a risk that paid off or made a decision that changed your life.
I bet it was after some crisis or loss or period of deep frustration, such as losing your job, struggling with money, failing a test, breaking up with a partner, or getting fed up with your work.
Those are the moments, uncomfortable as they are at the time, when you realized things weren’t working and you found the courage and resources within yourself to finally change them.
That’s why problems exist: to force us to get better.
Your patients have a problem, whether they realize it or not, but they can’t do anything about it until they face it directly.
You have a solution, but there’s no reason to take it unless they understand the depth of the problem and no reason to trust you unless they know you understand it, too.
So don’t be afraid to lay it out for them.
It’s not about being pessimistic or manipulative.
Like in any good story, it’s simply the first step on their adventure of regeneration.