What Liquor can Teach us about Smart Marketing Strategy

by Graeme Newell

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

Highlights:

-When most of the products in a category aren’t much different from each other, brands must transition from belaboring minuscule feature differences to building the ego of their customers.
-Companies must have the courage to honestly assess when their product category has matured, then decisively move away from feature marketing.
-Great companies have one thing in common – their products are usually not that special, but they have learned how to attach an amazing customer-obsessed brand connection to those average products.

What is the most powerfully branded product sector in world? My pick would be the alcohol sector. Decades of masterful marketing has consumers wearing their drink preference like a badge of honor. Many of us define ourselves by our liquor choices. You might be a Tanqueray man like Tony Sinclair, or a Beefeater man. Either way, you pick a side. Social sites overflow with poetic tributes to these brands. One woman proudly proclaims, “The only man I’ve ever fallen in love with is Johnnie Walker.” A bar room philosopher waxes poetic about Jack Daniels: “It’s my fighting juice.”

Alcoholic Sophistication

We wear our liquor choices like fashion accessories. This Svedka vodka ad lives the uber-cool club mogul life, while this Skyy ad shows an exotic adventurer wooing women all over the planet. Few other products inspire such loyalty. Could you imagine the same passion applied to laundry detergent?

What you will also notice is that pictures of the product and descriptions of product attributes have virtually disappeared from these commercials. Ads like this sadomasochistic thriller for Silver Tequila are a stage play wholly designed to bolster customer ego. The goal is to make the customer feel dangerous. The ad is devoid of all but a passing mention of the actual product because products like alcohol have become a virtual commodity.

You will still see a few feature-focused ads like this one for Jameson Whiskey that highlight the quality of the ingredients and the patient distilling, but this Smirnoff ad is more typical. It shows off the cleverness and cunning of the drinker, not the drink. It never mentions the taste, quality, or other feature attributes of the beverage. While it is important that these products maintain quality, the taste and consistency of the drink have ceased being differentiating factors capable of driving marketing.

The entire category of alcohol marketing has become one gigantic ego-building engine that uses emotional marketing to convince potential customers that they are more sophisticated, more attractive, and just downright cooler than everyone else. Grey Goose ads show that it’s for those who aspire to luxury and sophistication. Hennessy ads show a world of sex-soaked exotic adventure, and Jack Daniels ads are all about slow male bonding.

When You’re Not Special

Customer-ego focused advertising is the bread and butter of mature product sectors because more product-focused advertising pitches can sometimes be downright ridiculous. This ad for Touchstone Energy wraps the company in green, over-the-top Americana because power has become a commodity. Absolutely no one is plugging in an appliance and savoring the quality and consistency of the power it uses. While they will occasionally utilize feature marketing when an new feature is introduced, these brands spend most of their time mining the neuroses and aspirations of their customer’s egos

Some categories have constantly evolving products. This AT&T ad tries hard to explain a complicated new roll-over minutes plan. Mobile phone ads like this Samsung ad must stay focused on product features because this burgeoning industry is continually rolling out major improvements in hardware and service. The phone sector has not matured yet and feature marketing is vital to its success.

The body wash category is different. Sure, there are minuscule feature differences between brands, but the days of startling body wash innovation are behind us. Axe has firmly stepped into a mature-sector marketing strategy with ads like this one. Despite the fact that it is a mature category, Axe experienced record sales growth using fun commercials like this one. They ignore the features of the product and build a brand based entirely on men’s wildest fantasies.

Getting Honest with Your Brand Self

Most international brands like beer, detergent, toothpaste, grocery, cigarettes, water, and soap live in this mature space. Because their products don’t change that much, they have been forced to find a more personal emotional connection within their brand.

But herein lies the hard part – companies must have the courage to honestly assess when their product category has matured, and then decisively move away from feature marketing. Most of them hang on too long. They are so proud of their product features, so smitten with their own creation, that they refuse to believe that their features aren’t special any more.

TV news has long suffered from this inability to move on to these more powerful emotional marketing tactics. Watch a few morning news commercials and you’ll see that all the stations promise the exact same features of “news, weather, and traffic.” The power comes when the advertiser boldly steps into a customer-centric emotional marketing focus and eliminates the chatter about ubiquitous product features.

Features Sell vs Ego Sell

As new features are introduced, all mature brands will periodically dabble in feature marketing again, but they are wise enough not to abandon their emotional marketing base. Budweiser forgot this important lesson a few years ago when it launched a major new product-feature campaign, Bud Light “drinkability.” The goal was to convince beer drinkers that Bud Light had substantial product differences that made it a better food companion. However, few were convinced that Bud Light was any more drinkable than other light beers. Its many different ad campaigns never connected, the new product-feature focus was dropped, and Bud Light went back to its more familiar emotional marketing approach.

Nike has found the sweet spot between new features and emotional marketing. This Nike ad introduces a new golf ball technology, but the brand is careful not to let the minutia of the new feature overshadow its emotional marketing bedrock. Ads like this one that showcase the brand’s determination and tenacity are always their primary driver. Nike’s brand is a feeling, not a product.

Jack Daniels uses both feature marketing and emotional marketing to balance out their brand. This ad sells the quality of the ingredients, but other ads like this one always return to a place where men bond with each other.

Takeaways

Don’t let love of your product distract you from the best marketing approach.

You’re a proud mama who believes that her product is amazing. That pride is a good thing, but not if it keeps you from using the best marketing approach for the product life phase you are in. The world’s most successful companies have one thing in common – their products are usually not that amazing, but they have learned how to attach an amazing customer-obsessed brand connection to those average products.

Finding the right emotional marketing connection is very hard to do.

Most of us don’t know the real reasons why we connect with brands. Sure, we have a story we tell ourselves, but odds are that’s just rationalization talking. Finding genuine core emotional drivers takes a lot of very patient research, and listening for hours and hours to our customers in one-on-one settings.

Emotional marketing has nothing to do with reason and everything to do with irrational passion.

What we feel doesn’t usually make a lot of sense, but we feel it anyway. Your job is not to make sense of your customer’s hopes and dreams, but to simply to channel those feeling through your marketing.

In his book “The Culture Code,” Clotaire Rapaille tells a story about research he did for a liquid car wash. The researcher drove around suburban neighborhoods, found men washing their cars in their driveways, then sat in a lawn chair and talked to them about their cars. He eventually found that men believe their cars go faster when they are clean. Had he asked them this question directly, they probably would have denied it, but deep in their hearts this was the wildly irrational belief that fueled their purchase behavior. Great emotional marketing is maddeningly difficult to quantify.

Graeme Newell works for 602 Communications as a brand consultant and brand trainer. He specializes in brand building using emotional marketing. He guarantees that his marketing seminar will immediately increase audience or his workshop is free. Find out more here.