You have no doubt seen the adverts for the Microsoft Surface Pro3….the tablet that’s a laptop.

Microsoft goes ‘head to head’ with Apple again in this campaign and that’s the problem.
Once you start asking the competition’s customers to rationalise choosing your product over theirs, you’ve misunderstood why people buy. Time and again advertising tries to convince rather than move us, to give us reasons to choose rather than a desire to belong.

Notice how the Mac owner in the advert keeps referring to “my Mac” while Surface dude goes on about the device having a this and a that. Deep down even Microsoft’s marketing department understands the Apple advantage, the sense of connection with the product and belonging to the brand that Mac users have. How do you out-rationalise that?

We buy with our hearts not with our heads. From a cup of coffee to a penthouse suite, what’s more important than what the product does, is how it makes us feel.

The products that we feel an emotional connection to, the services we recommend to friends and the brands that make us feel better for having experienced them have one thing in common. They feel like they are beyond compare.

The answer to increasing sales isn’t to work harder to convince people of your advantages, it’s to help them to understand who they could become in the presence of your product.

Image by Ed Yourdon.