When customers can see themselves in the advertising, they have reason to pay attention...
And sometimes, they do the advertising for you. This missive is born of surprise. When confronted with a spontaneous marketing juggernaut, it’s best to roll with it. The Fabulous Honey Parker and I have a new and untested product. And customers are lining up on social media to share photos and talk about it. They’ve also never been asked to promote the product, nor have they been incentivized to do so. These customers have nothing obvious to gain. And they’re helping compensate for marketing that’s been handled upside down and backwards. As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Honey has released her debut novel. When marketing a book, you’re supposed to start six months before you release it. But six months ago, this book wasn’t even an idea. It was a spontaneous conception resulting from current circumstances. A book publishing veteran we know said, “Great idea. But it has to be on the market by October. No traditional publisher can do that. You have to self-publish.” So it was written at lightspeed and put onto the market. And, go figure, the fans are promoting it. Why are people around the country sharing photos of themselves with this book? I have a theory. But then, you already knew that. The Honey Parker brand is very strong. The woman likes to make friends and is happy to be social. Moreover, she has created a fiction brand that the customer wants to be a part of. People want to be in this club. The club is rallying around a book called, Carefulish: A Ridiculous Romp Through COVID-Living As Seen Through The Eyes Of Ridiculous People. The customer needs a laugh--and gets much more. The book is a comedy, but goes deeper than just cheap laughs. The book is also topical, touching the zeitgeist without ever getting political. And the book’s cover is very graphic, designed to pop from the page when it’s seen on Amazon. The cover image is a black COVID mask with a martini glass on it. The brand is Careful-ish and people want to play. Would this have happened if the book had been called, Laugh, It’s A Pandemic? Would it have worked if the cover image were a bland photo of a discarded disposable mask? Would people be flocking to it and sharing it if it was unremarkable? We can’t say for sure. But a safe guess is: No. What my wife has done is brought clarity of thought to the ONE way she wants her CORE CUSTOMER to FEEL about this brand. Her core customer is Smart, Sassy Woman. What's the one way she wants Smart, Sassy Woman to feel? That it's OK to laugh about living through a pandemic. And it’s working. Smart Sassy Woman is jumping onboard the Careful-ish train and going for the ride. She’s enjoying it. And she’s telling her friends. Honey Parker has entered into a conversation her customer is already having. And she’s done it using masks and martinis. This is where we turn back to the broken ads I solicited a couple of weeks ago. (No, I haven’t forgotten about y’all.) What’s happening in the broken ads is a lot of writing that’s caught up in selling. Not much of it is caught up in joining the customer. (Some of it is trying, of course. It's all born of honest effort.) And yes, it IS harder to create a club around something that seems mundane, like floor covering. But that’s our job as marketers. We must take the mundane fruit we’ve been handed and squeeze out the sweetest possible juice. Does your advertising make the customer feel like joining the club is a good thing? As proposed last week, if you can’t see the customer in your advertising, it isn’t advertising yet. When the customer sees themselves in the advertising, they have reason to pay attention. When the customer feels the right way about the brand, they can care about the sell, and care about joining the club. Are you feeling the customer’s pain? Are you feeling good about the relief you’re providing? Not every advertiser seems remarkable. But inside, when you dig deep enough, something remarkable will be there--even if it’s just an obsession with something mundane and very necessary. Find the remarkable, and you’re on your way to finding gold. To find out more about Careful-ish, you can click here to be taken to Amazon. LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!) Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City
0 Comments
Where's Waldo, and can you feel him? He's gotta be in there somewhere...
Have you written an advertisement? Can you see your customer in there? Can you see the customer’s problem? Can you see the solution? Can you see your customer feeling good about calling you? No? Then you haven’t written an ad yet. And, hint: making the customer feel good is not about offering a low price. That’s not an ad. It’s an announcement about an available transaction. "Come! Spend!" is not a message that wins hearts. Even Walmart knows that. At least in offering you lower prices, they promise you'll live better. But I digress. The faithful reader to the weekly screed has beard me bang the drum for Howard Gossage. A rebel ad man who died too young, Gossage was an iconoclast who knew how to engage and entertain. Gossage is also the man who gave us a famous quote… “People do not read advertising—they read what interests them, and sometimes that’s advertising.” One way to know you’ve created a good ad is that you enjoy reading it, watching it or listening to it. You don’t tire of being subjected to it. It always seems fresh. You'd be happy to show it to someone else. (Even if it's radio. A good radio commercial paints an enormous picture.) Gossage suggested that if advertising was to gain professional respect, it required that we “look at ourselves and our audiences differently. And then the audience will look at advertising differently: as a public service.” That doesn’t mean to try and be Subaru and go bragging about saving the planet. It means speaking to your customer as if you were speaking to someone you care about. Or, to be more blunt, we can quote Ogilvy… “The customer is not a moron. She’s your wife.” Ouch. Blunt, indeed. So... Are you writing an advertisement? Are you trying to see your customer in there? Are you feeling the customer’s pain? Are you feeling good about the relief you’re providing? Are you feeling good about the chances of your customer calling you? Yes, it can be difficult. But the customer matters. And too many ads don’t have any room for the customer. A spouse. A sibling. A friend. A lover. Pretend the customer is someone you know well. Write that person a letter about what is really so great that thing is that you’re trying to sell. It might not make a great ad. But it will feel better than anything else you’ve written. And it will inform what you really want your ad to say. And creating a better ad feels really good. LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!) Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City So many broken ad messages lack humanity...
Not all, mind you. Some make a sincere effort at humanity, but miss the mark a little. However, so many broken ads follow a pattern: “Jam in all these facts! Talk about them! Buy now!” There’s no recognition of the human being at the other end of the pipe, only a recognition that “I want to sell this!” “Fact! Fact! Fact! Fact! Fact! Buy now!” How am I supposed to feel about these facts? How am I supposed to feel about you, the seller? How does any of this solve my problem? And what IS my problem, anyway? Do you, Mr. Seller, even recognize that I’m here? As you know, an advertising message is like asking for a date. What if you start asking for a date by saying, “I have a good job, I make a lot of money, I’m fit and healthy, and I’m available. I would make an excellent mate. We could have lots of strong, healthy children of both genders. They will be well above average and go to the finest private learning institutions. We would live well, and retire to an upper-middle-class enclave on the west coast of Florida. Want to have dinner?” Before the end of the first sentence, the answer was "I have to stay home and wash my hair." There’s no recognition of the prospect, the prospect’s feelings, and the conversation the prospect is already having inside his or her head. A much better, self-centered way of doing it would be this: “Look at my fabulous shoes. Want to have dinner?” At least it’s an amusing non-sequitur. The date might be entertaining. Here now, a brief tale… The Fabulous Honey Parker has just written a novel. Neither of us saw this coming, but it happened. It’s a topical novel that has to get to the public yesterday. Even a friend of ours in publishing said, “This is a great idea. But it has to get out in October, and a traditional publisher can’t make that happen. You have to self-publish.” One joy of self-publishing is self-marketing. And marketing a novel is so much different than marketing anything else--yet so much the same. In the marketing, humanity matters. Nobody cares about the facts of the book. They care about the feeling of the book. The feeling they will get from it. The feeling the story will give them. This extends to the author’s story as well. What’s the feeling behind the book? How did the author feel about writing it? How does she feel about the experience? How does that feeling influence the feeling of joy, laughter, sadness, and/or pathos I’m going to get from buying that book and reading it? “Well, yeah! It’s a novel, not a home improvement product! “It’s entertainment! My rugs and window blinds are not about feeling good. They’re about getting the best deal on rugs and window blinds!” And you, my friend, have missed the boat that’s sailing into the psychology of home improvement. People who buy rugs and blinds are not buying function. They’re buying form. Form leads to a feeling. Aesthetic form makes the customer feel good about being at home. And in a time when people are locked inside more than ever, feeling good about one’s home is huge. Just like feeling good about one’s entertainment is huge. How does the customer feel now, and how will they feel after they buy? This is where the metaphorical rubber meets the road of emotions. Everyone right now is living in A Place They’ve Never Been. All stories have to understand that. Whether they’re stories about home improvement or stories about novels, the stories that sell require knowing how the customer feels. That doesn’t mean talking about the feeling. It means talking to the feeling. Identify the customer’s feeling and know how to speak to it. Master that, and you win the first date. We will be speaking more about this in coming screeds… LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!) Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City |
AuthorBlaine Parker is prone to ranting about any and all things related to brand. In many ways, he is a professional curmudgeon. While there is no known vaccine for this, the condition is also not contagious. Unless you choose it to be so. Archives
February 2022
Categories
All
|