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Articles filed in: Marketing
Apple’s Not-So-Secret Marketing Secret
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Why would anyone buy a 13 inch MacBook Air?
Why not buy the Pro? It’s faster, has more memory, it’s actually only 700 grams heavier and .7cm thicker (or 2.4cm ‘thin’ in Applespeak) and it costs exactly the same.
Why pay a chunk of cash for less of something?
When I asked my Twitter friends who had one they talked about needing something ultra-portable, fast, lightweight (although they weren’t sure exactly how much lighter it was). One had blogged about the Air’s “Awwwww” factor.
The 13 inch MacBook Air is a classic example of the illogical purchasing decisions we make every day. It offers less of everything for roughly the same price. Less memory and less storage. It’s slower and has a shorter battery life. But who wouldn’t want to own “The world’s thinnest notebook”?
According to Harvard marketing professor Gerald Zaltman a tiny fraction of our decisions, just 5%, are based on logic. The truth is people aren’t buying your specifications and your facts.
The path to success is littered with great ideas poorly marketed, but armed with this knowledge Apple succeeds by marketing to the whole customer. By giving us products we love as much as our cat, and making us want them by understanding our heart’s desires, then telling us that story.
Image by rando mix.
We Don’t Have To
We arrived at the restaurant right on time, because we knew they needed the table by 7pm for the next booking. The waitress forgot to smile as we pushed open the door, where the sign still read ‘closed’. “We’ll be open in three minutes!” she barked.
Oh.
The smile never made an appearance.
But that’s not what they promised on their about page.
“Our name (the restaurant), loosely translates to happy, jolly or bright which is at the heart of our philosophy. We aim to deliver the best possible eating experience in a happy and bright atmosphere without compromising the integrity of our home style food.”
What actually happened was the reverse.
The place filled up. People obviously came for the food, and not the experience. My guess is that they left feeling full, but not satisfied.
People experience average, we’ve done the minimum required type service, all day, every day. Average businesses don’t do more, because they don’t have to, (not on a steady Saturday night anyway).
And the brands and businesses we can’t live without just keep blowing us away, by doing the things they don’t have to do.
Image by Sheridan Rose.
The Story Makes The Product Better
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Storytelling
For three decades, 10% of the population of the tiny Welsh town, Cardigan, made jeans.
35,000 pairs every week.
Then one day the factory died, and the jean artisans could no longer practice their art.
They simply had no way to do the thing they did well, until Hiut Denim was founded.
Now the company’s ‘Grand Masters’ make a handful of jeans each day. Each pair has a unique number, and a ‘History Tag’ that the owner can register on the website, to begin adding the memories associated with wearing their jeans.
Hiut are telling the story of a product built to last, and they are encouraging their customers to consume less by attaching meaning to the things that they love.
“We make jeans. That’s it. Nothing else. No distractions. Nothing to steal our focus. No kidding ourselves that we can be good at everything. No trying to conquer the whole world. We just do our best to conquer our bit of it. So each day we come in and make the best jeans we know how.”
Hiut didn’t just make an average product, then try sticking a marketing story on as an after thought. They made the story part of the product, and the story makes the product better.
Image by Don Shall.
How Dollar Shave Club Succeeds With A Better Brand Story
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Storytelling
How does a startup come on to the scene, take on giant global brands like Gillette, and win?
That’s what Dollar Shave Club did, by harnessing the power of great brand storytelling. This is how they did it.
- By telling the truth, and keeping it simple.
- With an easy to remember brand name and tagline, which reinforces the brand’s value proposition.
- Presenting that clear value proposition right there on the home page.
- Educating the audience and clarifying why they are different from the competition.
- Appealing to the target demographic, with anti-status quo values, design, tone and copy.
- Giving customers plenty of calls to action. All roads on the site lead to customer conversion.
- By showing their audience that other people are excited by this product too. Using social proof; almost 5 million shares on YouTube, and thousands of tweets and Facebook likes.
- With a great affiliate program. Customer incentives are front and centre, (the photographer who took the photo above is earning free razors with an affiliate link on his Flickr!).
- By making their customers feel, enlightened and doing what the big brands were not prepared to do.
You no longer need to own the means of production, to secure a slice of the market. Big companies will try to work out how to avoid being ‘dollar shaved’.
But the truth is, that today, you don’t need $57 million to tell a better brand story.
Iage by Mitchell Bartlett.
Understanding The Problem To Solve
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Strategy
There are a million and one web hosting services on the market. It’s hardly a niche. The market is so saturated, why would you consider launching yet another one?
That’s exactly what my friend Kelly did. Her hosting business doesn’t stand out by competing on spec, or uptime. Kelly differentiates by understanding the problem to solve in a tiny niche, and going narrow and deep.
She realised that the biggest pain point for bloggers, was the helplessness they felt when things went wrong. When their site went down, there was nobody local available to answer the phone. Sure, they could get through to a faceless overseas call centre operative, but what they really wanted, was an unscripted conversation with a real human being on the end of the phone. And how many hosting businesses have a picture of the person who answers the phone on their about page?
Kelly’s business provides hosting, but what she actually sells is peace of mind.
She succeeds not by being cheaper, or more perfect. But by understanding the problem to solve perfectly.
The same opportunity is open to you.
Image by Carlos Bussenius.
What Does The Competition Do?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
I was consulting with two financial planners this week. We were discussing what made them different, when they told me this story about working with one of their clients.
Jonathan was offered $9 million for his house, which had amazing, never to be replaced views out over the river. He was in a quandary about what to do. Most advisers, (thinking about maximising the return of a portfolio) would have told him to make hay, sell immediately, take the equity and reinvest it.
Not Mark. He sat out on the balcony with Jonathan and chatted to him about his personal and life goals. They talked about why Jonathan had chosen to live there in the first place. Mark encouraged him to imagine what life would be like with the money in the bank, but no view. Jonathan decided to walk away from the $9 million, that could never replace the feeling he got every day by just living comfortably where he was.
No surprise then that Mark and his partner don’t need to advertise, and that 95% of their business is generated by word of mouth.
Work out how you are least like the competition, then tell that story.
Image by marksjonathan.
Why Are People Ignoring You?
It’s been a while since I bought a nice glossy magazine. I usually enjoy flicking through one at my favourite cafe. I’m not sure why I was so surprised to get 32 pages into the latest edition of Vogue and still be on the adverts. The entire magazine was 208 pages, 100 of those pages were adverts.
By the time I’d leafed through the articles, (it didn’t take long), I felt more than a little cheated. That was fifteen minutes of my life I would never get back. What I wanted was to be entertained, but as I closed the back cover I couldn’t help feeling that my attention had been stolen. Impact of those 100 pages and thousands of advertising dollars. Zero.
The world is full of people like me. Remote control wielding, advert skipping, PR immune consumers. The kind of people you want to engage with. People who choose to ignore what you’re selling every day, because they can.
So instead of trying to steal their attention, captivate them. Do the thing that the big guys didn’t realise was important.
Give them something to care about.
Image by Siddharth Khajuria.
Being The Most
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Storytelling
In the 80’s Starbucks set out to be the most inspiring coffee brand on the planet. When they forgot this in the 90’s and tried becoming the most ubiquitous, they lost their way.
If you could be ‘the most’ to people what ‘most’ would you be?
Most reliable.
Most irresistible.
Most ubiquitous.
Most loved.
Most —————.
You get to choose.
Image by Steve Rhodes.
Worldviews And The Story Of Bottled Water
filed in Marketing, Strategy, Worldview
Do you remember the first time you saw bottled water for sale? For me it was back in the late 80’s when I was on holiday in Greece, where the tap water wasn’t safe to drink.
And then in the 90’s suddenly there it was. A trickle that turned into a deluge, supported by a worldview that we need to drink two litres of water a day and that bottled water is “better for you”. The global consumption rate quadrupled between 1990 and 2005.
Today the bottled water market is valued at $60 billion, and apparently the need to drink two litres of water a day is a myth.
Bottled water was not created to satisfy a need for thirsty consumers. It is a product designed to fulfil a western worldview about health. A 21st century creation that supports the story you can tell yourself about making the right choices. Like a take away Starbucks coffee cup, bottled water has become a statement as much as a product, for people with a particular worldview.
Bottled water companies didn’t create the worldview, they tapped into the beliefs at the edges of a market and created a product that supported those beliefs. More on that in this video (it’s well worth watching).
You should pay attention to the beliefs of the people you serve. Marketing and brand storytelling is about reminding people what they wanted in the first place.
Image by Dave Hoefler.
Attention Is Not The Problem
You’ve may have access to a hundred and one new channels that allow you to broadcast a message, but there are only a handful of ways to get attention for your idea.
1. Advertising
The old and expensive way to buy attention. You might be able to buy eyeballs, but you can’t guarantee you’re changing minds.
2. Sales
You can beg people for attention using a sales team, or social media. People become tired of dealing with interruptions they don’t want.
3. Public Relations
You could join the public relations lottery and keep waiting for the call from Oprah. It’s a long shot.
4. Earned
Alternatively you could just focus on solving people’s problems and creating something they value.
Build what you’re building for engagement not just attention. Beloved brands, favourite cafes and cherished products are always built to love. Attention in isolation is overrated and it’s not what makes ideas that matter.
Image by Methos04.