Tag: Feelings

How is your brand performing in the economy of feelings?

 

 

Ever since I can remember, marketing has focused on the USP, the unique selling proposition, and the product’s/service’s features and benefits. This is a traditional theory and applies to a rational, analytical view of value. In an oversupplied market with more, and often conflicting information, rational decision making becomes a myth.

 

Instead, start paying attention to what people do (which is the best indication of how they feel), not so much to what they say.

 

The more choices there are and the more complex life becomes, the more people make decisions that “feel” right to them, and NOT on an objective truth.

 

So, how is your brand performing in the economy of feelings?

 

Changing behavior is a herculean task- ask any newspaper brand or cigarette brand or an Operating System brand..

 

You would have heard of this brand called Betty Crocker fabled for their Cake Mixes– when they launched, it was launched as a plug & play product, get the mix into the oven and voila, the cake is ready! Guess what? The brand bombed in the market.

 

They went back into the market wherein they gave only a 70% ready product and got the customer to participate and work on the remaining 30%- now guess what?? Betty Crocker was a roaring success.

 

Same thing applied to Ben & Jerry when they launched their Lavender flavor- it bombed..comeback kid was twinned with a more familiar to the audience Vanilla flavour and presto..

 

Creative pursuits that aim at changing consumer behavior should be hinged on layering the novel on the already familiar.

 

Caution: The value of marketing is not where you have been told it is.

 

Analytics inform , emotions compel.

 

In an era of quantum marketing with 5G, IOT, AI, VR, AR, MR, Meta etc, connecting hearts and minds is a great opportunity.

 

So, Marketing 101 would somewhat go like this:

-Identify which audience you want to be serving

-Examine what they need or want but don’t have

-If you can help people get to where they seek to go, when they’re ready to get there, the stuff called marketing gets significantly easier

-Be happy with serving a MVA(Minimum Viable Audience) rather than try to be all things to all people. Delight the daylights of your MVA

-Instead of finding customers for your product or service, find a product or service for your audience

 

As I conclude, may I direct you to this article from BrandKnew on how marketing has changed over the last half a century

 

ENDS

 

 

 

Curiosity Skilled The Cat!

Curiosity is that strange human trait that got us out of the cave, across the globe, and onto the moon. A trait that has led to communication and collaboration.

It is why children ask: ” why?”

And as we get older and life becomes more complicated, many of us forget to keep asking that question.

” Why?” requires work and critical thought. It requires the openness to learning answers that don’t fit into our existing world views. The brain is hardwired to be lazy. So default meets comfort zone where there is no room for ” why?”.

And sure, if we need to ask ” why?” every time we get a push notification on our phones, it will mercilessly take over our lives.

But ” why?” is also the most significant tool in combatting disinformation. And decoding the true intention of certain governments, organisations, brands.

Curiosity might help us better understand the others.

Their intentions.

Their feelings and fears.

Curiosity might help us understand ourselves.

Our intentions.

Our feelings and fears.

Certain meditation techniques encourage us to approach our emotions with curiosity. We cannot control when and how those emotions arise within us, but we can control how we react to them.

The ancient principle of Occam’s razor invites us to – when presented with competing hypothesis about the same problem– select the one that requires the fewest possible assumptions.

This might benefit us in our external and internal lives. The truth is we need to cultivate curiosity.

Curiosity will help us disregard ‘ human pollutants ‘ like opinion, agenda, power and greed. These pollutants are present at nearly every turn of capitalist transactions, sticking to us like grease from an oil spill.

We need more stories of compassion , and fewer stories of conflict. What’s extraordinary about our story is that it is never complete. It is never finished. It is being written and rewritten every moment in every corner of the world.

For example, it is up to us to confine conflict to our books and films. Because for THE GREAT STORY to succeed, we need to course-correct away from conflict toward compassion and cooperation.

We need to start shaping new stories for ourselves and future generations. And that narrative, in its most basic and simple form might be this..

Human(therefore)kind.

It seems pretty simple: We have to accept our insignificance. Which is significant.

Disinformation has always been part of the political and corporate playbook. However, algorithms, feedback loops, and political polarization have dusted off that book  and put it on the main display next to the gummy bears and ChapStick.

This is complex stuff, and only a few people in the world seem to truly comprehend the scientific underpinnings of the madness we’ve left ourselves be swallowed up in.

If the medium is the message and the medium is a giant tangled ball of fiber-optic cables, doesn’t that make the message, well, a giant tangled mess of messaging?

Now, ” why?” did I write this? Curiosity is getting the better of me. And I like it.

BEGINS