Ways to Avoid a Self-Obsessed Marketing Strategy

by Graeme Newell

gnewell@602communications.com
http://www.602communications.com

Highlights:

-Many times the primary motivation behind a brand preference has nothing to do with the product and its direct effects.

-Most marketers study the customer’s passion for their product, not the more motivating passions of how customers feel about themselves.

-Never underestimate the prowess of the average consumer. Most of them are masters at sniffing out disingenuous advertising. Your commitment to your customers must be real, or you should just go home.

If you want to build a deeply passionate emotional marketing campaign, it is important that you build the brand backwards. That means stripping away the cool product features, the unique selling proposition, and all other product attributes. Great emotional marketing begins with a simple question: How do you want your customer to feel about themselves after they experience your product? Is it powerful, rebellious, safe, attractive, smart, or some other emotion?

The clever marketers at Pedigree started their emotional marketing campaign by putting aside their own agenda about dog food. They were obsessed with the feelings of their customers; and for dog lovers, pets are family. This Pedigree ad uses the powerful feeling of familial love to open up the mind and the heart. The product feature can then be subtly attached to that feeling. This Pedigree Jumbones ad doesn’t start with a product pitch. Instead, they boldly proclaim their love for dogs and show that Jumbones are a physical manifestation of that passionate love.

Many marketers make the mistake of building their marketing the other way. Because they love their own product so much, they want to make that product the foundation of the marketing. They are so proud of their new baby that they can’t imagine that the rest of the world won’t find it equally spellbinding. Notice how this ad for Prudential is one long company brag fest that completely ignores the customer.

Don’t Let the Features Distract You

Exemplary product features can still be a vital component of your marketing, but don’t let them crowd out the customer’s connection with your ad – their own personal identification. By building from the emotion up and not the features down, you’ll give those features heart and purpose. This Nationwide Insurance ad sells the paperwork of insurance, not the emotional connection that comes with peace-of-mind and safety. Nationwide was so proud of its new product feature that it skipped the critical step of giving the marketing heart.

This financial services ad does an admirable job of explaining the company’s product features, but you will notice that it is self-obsessed. The marketers forgot that their customers care about themselves, not TIAA Cref. This ad fails because it tried to connect with a laundry list of product features and facts. This Edward Jones ad begins with a clear emotional vantage point – contempt and anger. The ad still gets all its product features in there, but the emotion gives those features an edge that cuts through the blah, blah, blah of typical financial services company messages.

Motherhood Branding

You don’t love your mother just because she cooks you soup when you’re sick. Instead, love is the foundation of your relationship with your mother. She demonstrates that love by cooking soup. The brand of “mother” is not dependent on the physical product of soup. This Excedrin ad isn’t about headaches; it’s about motherhood guilt. The tacit message: when you don’t cure your headache with Excedrin, you’re damaging your child. Good mothers take care of themselves so they can take care of their children.

So next time Mom is at the grocery store she inexplicably finds herself reaching for a bottle of Excedrin instead of Tylenol. She’s not exactly sure why she did it, but it just somehow feels right. She probably doesn’t even remember watching that ad, but deep inside her brain the makers of Excedrin have hit one of her most powerful motivators – her own pride at being the ultra mom. They have planted a little maternal bomb that will go off next time she thinks about buying pain relievers. They have essentially elevated the entire subject of pain relievers. Sure they cure pain, but now they are also a catalyst for one of the most important priorities of her life – her own ego-defining feelings of motherhood.

The real power of this ad is its light touch. All it did was plant a suggestion. Excedrin would never be so brazen as to brand itself as the “pain reliever for busy mothers” because overt marketing like this would be quickly identified as a manipulative ploy and dismissed. While it appears this the ad is all about relieving pain, the more powerful motivator of guilt is subtly woven into the message.

Use a Light Touch

This subtlety is what many advertisers miss. They will make a clumsy frontal assault at winning emotional attachment. In so doing, they underestimate the prowess of the average consumer. Most of us are masters at identifying disingenuous advertising. This Greenpeace ad cranks up the guilt meter to eleven, so much that it simply makes people feel bad. Any emotional marketing, especially those relying on negative emotions, is best handled with a light touch. Clumsy marketers will be quickly dismissed as irrelevant manipulators.

This Advil ad took the opposite track by going with a positive approach. Advil attached motherhood to their brand by showing mom at the beach having fun with her child in a joyful maternal moment, but this rather generic happy message lacks punch for me. My hunch is that Excedrin’s use of the negative emotion of guilt was probably more effective.

So if I asked you to define Excedrin’s brand in a sentence, you might be tempted to answer, “They provide speedy relief so pain doesn’t slow you down.” But that would be a vast oversimplification of their marketing strategy. Sure, every ad they do mentions the “fast relief” selling proposition, but it goes much deeper. They drill down on a specific emotional motivator that speaks directly to the most treasured ego priorities of each psychographic group. They center on the consequences and mental anguish of what slowing down means to each group in its customer base.

Now look at how they frame their message for men. This Excedrin ad is all about vitality. Excedrin builds the ego of aging weekend athletes by reinforcing their own skewed view of themselves as active, fun-loving running backs. It is no coincidence that the sport showcased is the manly, rough-and-tumble game of football. The message is that popping an Excedrin releases the customer’s lively and vital essence. This marketing speaks directly to their fears of aging. “Don’t worry, you’re still young and vibrant.”

As for overachievers? This Excedrin ad does a great job of selling a new product with new features, but Excedrin gave the message emotional resonance by presenting it as a solution custom built for achievers. This man is downright proud of his busyness. These customers like to see themselves as so important and capable that they don’t have time for a headache. “Don’t let a headache interfere with your awesomeness.”

Things to Remember

Many times the primary motivation behind a brand preference has nothing to do with the product and its direct effects. Smart marketers will start their search for an emotional marketing connection with a careful analysis of their customer’s deepest passions. That means putting the company’s own product agenda on a shelf and developing an intimate understanding of every part of their customer’s lives. The researchers find the passions that deeply motivate customers, then they find a way to build a bridge to those passions.

I’m willing to bet that the marketers at Excedrin begin their marketing research by sitting down with mothers and talking about everything in their lives – job, family, frustrations, hopes, dreams, and worries. The researchers are smart enough not to assume that customers care that much about pain relievers. They don’t define their customers as “mothers who use pain relievers.” Instead, they define their customers as “mothers who are driven to do the best for their families.” Then, they find a way to build a bridge to that powerful motivator. They build a story about how pain relievers can help mothers achieve their most treasured goal.

Never let your own preoccupation with your product distract you from the singular goal of all marketing efforts – making your customers’ dreams come true.