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Articles filed in: Marketing
Don’t Sell A Man A Saw, Teach A Man To Build
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Mike works at our local ‘big box’ hardware store, alongside people who cut wood, motion directions and stack paint cans. Each weekend Mike sees a steady stream of ‘have a go’ DIY enthusiasts, the kind of guys who were too busy on their way to becoming accountants and lawyers in their teens, to learn how to cut wood, drill holes or make things. Mike’s colleagues help them to pay for the things they say they want, and to load their cars with the things they’ve paid for.
Mike does things differently.
He never asks the customer what he wants, instead he asks,
“What do you want to do?”
Which is code for….
“What do you want to be?”
Then, and only then, does Mike help the guy to understand what he needs for the job, and why.
“Measure twice, cut once, take your time with it, and come back to me if you get stuck,” he says.
Mike doesn’t sell wood and saws, he makes each man the hero of his own story.
If you sell a man a saw, you’ve got the profit from one sale, when you make him a hero, you have a customer for life.
Image by Rachel Andrew.
The Purpose Of Innovation In A ‘Needless’ Economy
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
For the most part in the West we have everything we need. Roofs over our heads, food in the fridge and a lot more besides. Even in the developing world where more people have mobile phones than have access to toilets, it seems that sometimes ‘wants’ trump real needs.
So, if we have everything we need and it’s mostly ‘good enough’, what’s the purpose of of innovation?
As an innovator, or bringer of ideas to the world you need to make things that add meaning to peoples’ lives. Things that change how people feel first, which in turn changes what they do, and what they come to expect and embrace.
In the year 2000 all earphones were functional and black. When Apple simply changed them from black to white in 2001 earbuds became a symbol of belonging to the iPod tribe. White earbuds were not a commodity. They were a status symbol. The product had barely been altered, and yet the story had changed entirely.
In the ‘needless’ economy the job of innovation isn’t to make something new, it’s to make something that matters.
Image by Lauren.
The Elephant In The Marketing Room
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
“Although many of us may think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, biologically we are feeling creatures that think”
—Jill Bolte Taylor
I was raised in Dublin, the storytelling capital of the world. There is no place on earth that is more hardwired for story than Ireland, home of Guinness and oversize teapots.
Wikipedia will tell you that the Irish are some of the biggest consumers of tea. What Wikipedia won’t tell you is that in Ireland, tea (like Guinness), isn’t just a drink—it’s a lubricator of story.
When I was five or six and there was nothing to do on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, my dad would drive my little brother and me down to Hector Grey’s Sunday market on his Honda 50. One of us would ride on the front, the other on the back—which I’m guessing wasn’t strictly legal.
Hector Grey was a sliver haired, silver tongued shop owner. Watching him was the closest I’d come to witnessing theatre. He erected a small platform outside The Woolen Mills, (his stage) and beckoned people to come closer so they could hear, but actually I suspect so they could feel the heightened emotion and sense of expectation in each other. Hector sold imported hardware and trinkets. He never once described what a product would do, he painted a picture of what it would feel like to have.
Nobody knew what might be in the boxes on any given Sunday, or how many were in stock. Hector told stories about gold plated tea sets shipped from exotic Hong Kong, and of Mandarin scented soaps from Taiwan, places most people there would never see, even on a map. He framed the scarcity of everything he sold. There was always limited stock and there wasn’t much of an opportunity to see the products up close. When Hector finally finished by tapping on the box like a magician about to produce a rabbit from a hat, he explained the bargain he was prepared to give to the first hands that inevitably shot up.
Many of the things we bought on those Sundays were used once, or became a memory at the back of some glass cabinet, or at the bottom of the kitchen drawer.
Some might say that Hector was what they would call in Dublin, ‘a gangster’ and that we were idiots for falling for his spiel, when in fact we were all characters, playing a part in the same story. We wanted to be taken on a journey. Hector took us there. He didn’t try to convince us, he changed how we felt. And like people waiting in lines outside Apple stores at iPhone launches, we weren’t there for the box we would take home at the end of the day, we were there for the story.
So if people buy the story, the fortune not the cookie, the comparison not the raw ingredients. Why do many marketers feel that working on the story is not a very noble pursuit?
Whether we are marketers, consumers, or both it can be uncomfortable to realise that we are less rational than we think. This disturbs us on several levels. As consumers should we feel like fools because we pay for story and context if that’s what really matters to us? Should Howard Schultz feel bad because he recognised the opportunity in selling coffee by the cup, rather than beans by the pound, as Starbucks did in the old days? Is it wrong to give people what they want wrapped in a story, if the value of what they want is subjective and intangible?
The genius of Hector Grey, Steve Jobs and Howard Schultz was in two things. They knew that we were there for the story, AND they were not afraid to sell it to us. Perhaps it’s time to get comfortable with the fact that if we want to change the world, then we need to stop being afraid to tell better true stories and simply let people buy into them.
Image by Cody Simms.
Value And The Macaron Effect
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Let’s face it, a macaron isn’t even a bite. It’s gone before you know it and although your brain knows you’ve had one, your stomach could beg to differ. Macarons have been around for centuries, but I don’t remember seeing the dainty, coloured, every flavoured, sandwiched confections that are ubiquitous now, even a few years ago. And they’re expensive for what they are in any language, doesn’t matter if it’s $3 or €3.
A lot of people don’t ‘get’ macarons.
“This is the single most overpriced thing in the history of capitalism. It’s a single, stupid little macaroon.”
—Rory Sutherland
Macarons are not designed for Rory, they are marketed to a sensibility and dare I say it, to women. Their value is highly subjective. The thing about a macaron is that much of its value is perceived.
The real value is psychological and therefore intangible.
It’s a sweet ‘treat’ with damage limitation built in.
A macaron is mostly almonds and egg white, low in fat, gluten free (two things we’ve come to care about), and so tiny the sugar can hardly count….right? When you’re rationalising about how many minutes on the treadmill it’s going to take to work it off, a macaron feels like a bargain compared to the other available choices in the cake cabinet.
One man’s rip-off, is another woman’s indulgence.
It turns out that like most things we buy, or value when we have everything we need, macarons are not a product, they are a story we tell ourselves.
Image by Katie.
A Better Business In 5 Minutes And 3 Easy Steps
I promised three steps and here they are:
1. Grab a drink, a blank sheet of paper and a pen. Switch off your phone and shut your laptop.
2. Now answer this question.
“What will your customer say to her friend tomorrow to recommend you, or your products and services?”
Don’t respond to anyone else’s emergency until you’ve answered this question and written it down.
3. Then go do what you have to do to make her say that.
*Bonus*—If you need a helping hand the audiobook of ‘The Fortune Cookie Principle’ is now available on Audible, Amazon and iTunes for less than the price of a coffee.
Image by Matt.
People Don’t Buy Features, They Buy Promises
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Every day another product, tool or app comes to market. One more shortcut to this or that.
Want to save lists, share something, buy, sell, store, capture, talk, listen, watch, wake up or waste time? There’s definitely a feature filled app that can help you do that.
As marketers we often get bogged down in the features and benefits of what it is we have to offer. We get stuck at the telling people what it does part.
But here’s the thing, deep down most people don’t care about what the features enable them to do.
Because people don’t want to ‘do’ they want to ‘be’. They want to be less busy and more productive, less alone and more connected, less fearful and feel more safe.
People don’t buy features, they buy promises.
So, don’t tell me what you do. Make me a promise you can keep.
Image by Walt Jabsco.
What Story Are You Selling?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
It feels risky to put the words story and selling side by side in the same sentence. ‘Selling’ someone on something has had a bad rap since the days of snake oil salesmen with their bogus claims, snappy taglines and half truths designed to make people buy more of the average this or that. Although ‘selling’ is often seen as manipulating people into doing something they don’t want to do, the truth is that it doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, as soon as you get out of the shower every morning, you’re selling a story.
All markets, industries, tribes, leaders and individuals sell stories. We have to.
We don’t have a choice, because stories are how humans read each other.
My husband has been a doctor for over 25 years. He was a medical student when we met. We’ve had many a long walk punctuated by a conversation about what makes people tick. He’s told me stories of examining babies and the way they look deep into your eyes, searching, as you press the cool metal of the stethoscope on their chest. Already looking to make sense of the story. And in that moment they create an association between the stethoscope and the person who has earned the right to wear one. It turns out that we are more likely to trust a man wearing a stethoscope, than one who doesn’t. Doctors sell trust by getting the grades to go to medical school in the first place, by doing the time and then behaving in a way that reinforces our worldview.
Medicine doesn’t sell cures, it sells trust. The lottery sells hope (it might be you) and many brands sell a promise of a better version of ourselves. Tiffany sells mattering, BootsnAll sells non-conformist adventure, Facebook sells belonging and Wholefoods sells nurturing and self-love.
You are not selling coffee, concert tickets, books, lipstick, yogurt, entertainment or information.
You’re selling a story. It’s never been more important to know which one.
Image by Les Taylor.
No Second Chances
The beautiful city were I live is not known for startling customer service. Sad, but true. I think it might be the side effect of a combination of distance and isolation creating monopolies that have endured, making people complacent. When you were four hours on a plane from anywhere before the Internet there weren’t many options.
A true story from last weekend.
It was a glorious Sunday afternoon by the beach. One of the local hotels has spent millions renovating their tired building and we thought we’d check it out over a coffee while admiring the ocean view. There were about six people in the bar and one bar man who doubled as a barista.
He looked really unhappy to see us and told us just as much.
“If you’re looking for coffee it will be a long wait.
I have seven coffee orders already.
There are plenty of cafes along the strip.”
I’m not paraphrasing!
Things are changing, the Internet means we don’t always have to go to the world for what we want. Now it comes to us. Including things like half decent coffee that feels like an experience.
Order a dress for tonight’s party in the morning and it’s delivered within three hours.
When everything is a tap and swipe away second chances are becoming few and far between.
It’s up to you to behave like there were no second chances, because that’s the reality.
Image by adnamayy.
Tiny Markets Of Someone
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Mr Ryan owned a corner shop in the tiny Dublin suburb where I grew up. It supported his family and employed his children while they studied for over 20 years. He didn’t seem to worry when yet another big supermarket opened close by. Sure, he knew some of his customers would go there for special offers, but he also knew that he wasn’t after the ‘market of everyone’. He didn’t need everyone to keep going, he just needed to matter to enough people, by doing things the big guys couldn’t do.
When industry and innovation became very focused on the metric of more, we lost sight of the fact that more wasn’t always the best place to start. And then ironically the Internet, which could help us to reach everyone, made us realise that there were ‘tiny markets of someone’. As Seth Godin pointed out in a recent and brilliant (as always) talk the bell curve has melted. Not only is there no longer a mass market, but most of the successful companies, game-changing innovations and products and services we care about were designed to cater for people at the edges.
How did a tiny yogurt company compete with industry giants who had twenty times their budget and controlled two-thirds of the market? In five years, Chobani went from having almost no revenue to selling a predicted $1 billion worth of yogurt in 2013. They started at the edges, doing things the bigger brands were not prepared to do, for people that wanted difference.
Airbnb went from appealing to people at the edges (who would want to share a stranger’s apartment?), to having over 300,000 listings worldwide in 33,000 cities and booking 10 million nights in 192 countries within 5 years.
Method entered the household cleaner market which was dominated by big players like P&G, and differentiated at the edges on results, safety, sustainability, design, and scent. The company achieved over 500% growth in just 3 years.
Can you name any brand that’s gained loyalty, love and traction over the past decade that didn’t begin at the edges? Red Bull, Facebook, zipcar, TED, Kickstarter, Instagram, Spanx, Starbucks, Warby Parker, Zappos, Kindle, Innocent, PayPal, TaskRabbit, Green & Blacks, even Amazon and Apple didn’t begin by targeting the market of everyone.
The truth is that ‘the masses’ don’t want to feel like ‘the masses’. They want to discern. To choose. To be seen. To matter. Your customers don’t want to be just anyone, they want to be someone.
Image by erban.
The Best Brands Are Mirrors
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
The genius of the ‘Dove Sketches’ campaign wasn’t that it highlighted the issues women have around body image and beauty, it was that it held a mirror up to every one of us. It tapped into our collective vulnerability on a visceral level.
Brands like Dove, Instagram, Harley-Davidson, Virgin, Nike, Moleskine, Dyson, Brene Brown, Apple, Tiffany, Airbnb, Red Bull, my BodyPump instructor Duane and your local organic butcher, shift our perception about what’s possible for us. The real reason we come back to them again and again has less to do with how well they work and more to do with the way they change how we feel by degrees.
The best brands reflect our potential back to us. They resonate with us not necessarily because they sell the best products, but because they help us to see the best in ourselves.
Image by Ivana Vasilj.