“You don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.”
Of all the wise life lessons ever imparted to me, conveyed in the utterance of a sole sentence, this particular phrase has been without a doubt the most everlasting.
As well, of all the one-line, throwaway maxims the half-assed parental figures in my life have ever tried to educate or shut me up with, this has continued to have the farthest situational and personal reach to the cyclical nonsense that keeps arising in my life over time, whenever people are involved.
I learned the phrase from a veteran of the entertainment industry. A voice actor. It’s an advertising quip, see.
In all honesty, I didn’t quite understand what it meant at first. And I guess still kind of don’t. The man who coined the phrase, marketing maven Elmer Wheeler, simply states that the sizzle “is the BIGGEST selling point in your proposition,” whatever it may be, wherever it’s being served. To boot, more than one ‘sizzle’ can often be ascertained from a single product or proposition, depending on how clever you are.
Frankly, I see more to the phrase than just a reminder for copywriters, actors and salespeople of the best ways to trick people into buying crap they don’t want. Or maybe that’s exactly what I see. I feel, though, that it has a far greater (and more powerful) reach than just into the worlds of product marketing and conventional consumerism.
It applies to social dynamics, as well. The phrase is relevant to so much of the short-and-long-term successes demanded from the energy put into human interaction that, well, such a reason was good enough for me to bring it up here. Whether you’re at a job interview, just started dating, been married for 40 years, just started high school, college, giving a presentation, selling the sizzle not only breaks the ice or defrosts hostile or chilly relations, but gets you lumped into the likeable/interesting/sexy/side of the data pool, and gets (mostly) everyone present happy you did. Sizzled, that is. While you sold it.
So, what does it mean?
I feel like I can describe it best with an analogy.
Say there are five people lined up someplace. On a boardwalk, say. An oceanfront boardwalk. And they’re all trying to sell you something. Themselves, let’s say. One of the hardest things to sell to a person, right? Unless you’re at a slave auction. Not to make light of slave auctions. Or a Bangkok brothel. Not to make light of that, either. Unless there’s a karaoke bar there and some Filipino jackass gets shitfaced and tries to sing “Wooly Bully” in a combination of Tagalog, Cebuano and English. Tagaluanglish.
At the brothel, I mean. Not the slave auction.
Or maybe both.
But this is neither, and just say, hypothetically, each person there is trying to sell themselves. And you’re there to exchange money for the services they offer. Which, in this case, say, is their prolonged, indefinite companionship. (Don’t laugh—real thing. Sort of.)
But you got five people, and you go down the line, listening to their pitches. The first one starts out saying, “I like to stay active, I’m a foodie, I like the beach, I like to watch Netflix on a Friday night, but also go dancing, or hang out with friends, or cook a big meal at home.”
And then the next one: “I believe in personal growth, in holding space to allow for personal growth, in discovering a soul connection, decalcified pineal glands, empathy, to connect with people in an authentic way.”
And the next one says: “I love my family and friends, can’t live without my iPhone, I love sunsets and to go for a hike, riding horses (both kinds haha), I love to get dirty but also know how to get dressed up and go out on the town.”
Number 4 says: “Do not even attempt to interact with me if you’re not paying in cash. I am not here to deal with sheeple who are vaxxed or support the current regime, no soy boys, beta cucks, green-haired goons, vegans, not here to play games, don’t waste my precious time and don’t even talk to me if you do not own a car or have a full-time job.”
But then you get to number 5, and they say, “What am I doing? Why are we here? Who are you people? I’d rather have Crohn’s Disease. Hey, what’s that smell? Where’s that smell coming from? Do you smell that? I’m not having a stroke, am I? I got this thing on my ankle and it’s, like, kind of painful? but also kind of fun to itch? It’s not a stroke symptom, is it? I can recite the Gettysburg Address in the voice of Peter Lorre with puberphonia while skipping double Dutch over a tank of basking sharks. You know, in case you were wondering. Learned that at clown college before I realized they just weren’t teaching me the skills I needed to succeed. Hey, kid! Is that a kabab? Where’d you get that kabab? Is there a kabab stand around here? Is that a kabab? Kabab? Still don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I’m just gonna roll with it because I was pretty bored otherwise and had nothing else going on today.”
And you can’t take your eyes off of them. Maybe the other four were more appealing. Maybe they were generally more socially acceptable. Maybe, superficially, they were more of what you were looking for. But there’s just something about number 5 that makes the others momentarily disappear.
Why? Because Numbers 1 – 4 held out a plate and said, “This is a steak. Would you like some steak? I’ve tried it. It’s very good.” And you looked at it. And it was a piece of properly cooked meat, sure enough, and a piece of properly cooked meat is what you came for (with maybe a dash of arsenic on #4, there). But all you really had was four dishes of the same piece of meat, more or less cooked exactly the same, with some slight variance in shape, size, marbling, and color.
But number 5 was like, “This meat is gonna taste like Meat-mageddon. Like the Steak-opalypse. See these juices? They’re a love potion. Aphrosteaksiac! Look at that fat, baby. It’s gonna chew like a pack of meaty Hubba Bubba—it’s never gonna lose its flavor, never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and hurt you, it’s gonna slide over your tongue like two slugs mating, leaving a trail of sexy steak juice in its wake. It’s gonna massage your tongue, it’s gonna inject you with steak endorphins, tumble down your esophagus, slapping high-fives all the way—it’s gonna open the Appian Way, but for steak! That steak’s gonna trailblaze flavor you’ve never seen before, it’s gonna be the Sir Edmund Hillary of steaks, it’s gonna open up the steak Studio 54 and the entire original lineup of KC & the Sunshine Band is not only playing, but you have the one and only all-access flavor pass to the VIP room after the show! Do a little dance, steak a little love, get down tonight!”
Number 5 sold you the sizzle.
But why is being offered a steak so bad? You’re looking for a steak, after all.
Because, whether they realize it or not, everybody likes to go outside. Everybody loves to eat. Everybody enjoys making connections with people. Everyone likes to have fun, and get muddy in the process. Or get dressed up. In the end, everyone is just pretty much bored with their adult lives.
In the end, steak is just food. It serves the same purpose as every other food in the world. In that regard, it’s nothing original. It’s like engaging in the simplest of human social activities. Being handed a steak is a regurgitation of the mundane. You’ve had it (food) before, and, deep down, you know the purpose it ultimately serves.
I mean, you may be really starving, and if Number 5 didn’t exist in that moment, Numbers 1 or 3 might be looking pretty delicious.
But Number 5 is there. And as long as it’s there, it wafts, shimmers and draws the eye like nothing else.
It’s the difference between gathering information from a book, and learning how to do the same thing by working with your hands. Or being watched while you read a book, and then ogled while you turn a wrench or screwdriver. Or ogled while you do the ‘Jumping Jacked Rabbit’ or ‘Cock Sock Helicopter’, if the book happened to be about male stripper moves.
Being sold the sizzle is making a human connection. Conversely, it’s inviting someone to relate to you on a fundamental level.
But there’s more. It’s not saying, “I love to connect to people on a fundamental level,” it’s showing, “This is how I connect to people on a fundamental level, the same way you connect to people on a fundamental level, the same way we all connect to people on a fundamental level.” It’s tearing down the barriers that separate us—the artifice, the constructs, the affectation, the masks, the half-truths people erect to hide behind—and saying: “This is me.” Or: “This is what this really is.”
And this is what nearly all of us seek, to understand people for who they are. And maybe, in the process, understand ourselves a little better, too.
