Audience, Brand
To really reach a prospect or customer, take what you have learned about sales technique, and do it backward.
The traditional method stresses the concept of being different. Specifically, find the category in which you lead, and stress those differences to the right audience. Lets take Michelin as an example. Goodyear is the most popular tire out there. Michelin recognized that and knew it had to lead a sub-category. So it stresses safety. Who can forget the image of an infant safely enjoying sitting in the protection of a Michelin tire?
So introduce your product (the tires), then explain why your offering is different (the safety USP). That is the formula for a USP driven marketing message.
Reverse marketing introduces what your company believes first. It might suggest that your family’s safety is our concern. We use the best materials and build catastrophe out of our products. We make the safest tires on the market. That appeal introduces the company as being concerned about safety first, and the tires are an outgrowth of what they believe, not a way to carve out a niche.
This emotional appeal will allow Michelin to stand out in the mind of the audience. We want to establish a single thought in the mind of our audience. One that transcends words. The emotional appeal is the best way to do that.
Audience, Brand
The tough part of visiting a prospect is that no matter how well it goes, the minute you leave, they become surrounded by the realities they postponed during your visit. Your equipment list, or quality processes are quickly forgotten. It is because you didn’t reach them on any level other than your impressive statistics. You were appealing to the wrong part of the brain.
For a marketer, the brain has sections, two of which are important. You can divide the brain into the reptilian section, the limbic brain and the neocortex.
The reptilian brain is responsible for reflexes, breathing, hearbeat and fight or flight response. It is the most primitive part of the brain and it really doesn’t concern us.
The limbic brain developed as we became mammals. It is called the emotional brain. The limbic brain is responsible for our memories and the judgement between good and bad among them. It is where loyalty and fear reside. Most importantly, all our decisions are made there. However, it has no capacity for language so you have to reach it in other ways.
The neocortex is our most advanced part of the brain. Calculations, judgement, and language reside there. It is why we can understand business. However, it simply processes this kind of data. It doesn’t make judgments on it. That is the responsibility of the limbic brain.
When Maya Angelou claimed that she had learned that people won’t remember what you said, nor what you do, they will remember how you made them feel, it is because that feeling is where you reached the limbic brain.
Marketers tend to push a company’s USP. Its unique selling proposition. Only the neocortex can process that. But to reach the limbic brain and make them feel, you have to appeal emotionally. Begin your conversation with what you believe, not what your end product is. The end product of what you produce should be the end of a story. What you believe has to drive you to your USP, then to the finished product. Otherwise they will forget what you presented the moment you leave the room.
Audience, Brand, Campaigns, Creative, Marketing
“Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan”. It is true of great creative. Great creative starts with a daring client who understands that as long as the marketing and branding goals are met, be as outrageous as you dare.
It takes a marketing plan that everyone believes in and makes realistic sense for the brand.
Finally, it takes a creative mind capable of getting into the mind of the audience, then is able to interpret the benefits of an offer, and blending it with the rules of the media used, the brand and psychology delivers an impact.
All that has to go into it for it to be good. It wasn’t just a useful brainstorming.
Brand, Campaigns, Creative, Marketing
Widget Maker: We are a new company. We have a great location, a recognizable name, a solid market that will love us, and now we need a logo.
Marketer: No you don’t.
Widget Maker: That is silly. Of course we do. We need something to put on our building, business cards and stationery.
Marketer: Why not just put up this recognizable name of yours? Why make people go through the steps of visualizing your logo just to recognize your name. Just put up the name instead.
Widget Maker: Get out. You don’t know anything about marketing.
Marketer: I know about human nature. You don’t need your name to be read aloud, you need that name to mean something. Surely one of the best ways to deliver the meaning of your brand is through a logo. People will recognize it in a snapshot, but that is only useful if they recognize the meaning of brand that logo represents at the same time. Your brand doesn’t need a logo, your brand needs meaning. Without that meaning, a logo is useless.
You will get a logo. But it is only a tool to convey the meaning we will help develop for your brand. If I were to give you a logo first, I would be providing you no service.
Audience, Brand, Campaigns, Creative, Marketing
The new year has arrived, and we celebrated the most hedonistic of holidays. Celebrate to excess on New Year’s Eve, while counting down the inevitable.Then, lounge about on New Years Day, watching parades and bowl games. The only honoree is Father Time, who appropriately changes into an infant at midnight. What symbol is more self absorbed? The only gifts given are those that are to be consumed that day.
The very idea reminds me of the most fundamental rule of advertising. To promote a product, appeal to one of the seven deadly sins. Pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth may carve your path to Hades, but suggesting that your brand will feed any of these will help make that brand successful.
How many times have you been attracted to a product that made one of these promises?
- A beer that makes you popular with women (beer teaches marketing, I always say).
- A car that makes others stop and look at you drive down the street.
- A restaurant where you feast like a king.
- A cake mix that lets you get back at the perennial baking queen by just opening a box.
- Financial services that make you wealthier.
- A home appliance that does the work for you.It works.
Plain and simple. So when you are about to find a marketing angle for your next project, be sure to ask how that product will make the user envied, sexy, rich, pretty, fat or lazy.
Brand, Marketing
Developing your brand results in a brand that is more valuable to your customer base. That additional value allows you to charge more while growing a larger and more loyal following.
Build your brand through this four step process which can be incorporated into your current marketing activities.
- Develop the category in which you, and only you are the best. You’ll be surprised to find that the category already exists. You just haven’t claimed your position atop it.
- Sell the category, not your product. Convince your audience of the fact that they need a solution to the category at which you are best.
- Introduce yourself as the solution to that category.
- Provide news about the category, excitement at introducing a solution, and directions on solving it with every audience contact to make yourself, and their path to happiness clear.
Do this with every audience contact and make their path to happiness clear.
I am happy to share this plan, because it takes a true marketer to properly implement it, to fight for it over time, and to measure every contact against this plan. After all, a pro golfer can tell you how to hit a golf ball too, but you are better off having him do if you want the best results.
What are you waiting for? Do I really have to come out and tell you to call us at (773) 253-4954,
or write so we can discuss how to implement the program into your organization?
