Thanks to Brian Peddle for the link: Atlas: Cookie Deletion Figures Exaggerated Wildly by Self-Reported Data � MarketingVOX.
I took a lot of heat from Jupiter and others when I said that the cookie deletion numbers were way off base.
It turns out that people aren’t always entirely truthful with themselves and those that do surveys.
Nice to hear my gut is right every once in a (long) while.
Here’s the original post:
Do I really want an airport barber giving me a massage?
If I do, do I want to pay by the minute (sounds stressful)
and if I do, is this what he should be wearing?
Seen in the north Bronx of New York.
A sign that does not give me confidence in the owners or the patrons.
Vacuum cleaners are funny. The act of vacuuming is at least as important as the dust removal itself. A freshly vacuumed rug looks different… but in the short run, there’s really not a lot of visible difference between a rug vacuumed with a really expensive machine and one that was poorly vacuumed.
As a result, the worldview of the buyer matters a great deal. If you see yourself manhandling some big loud device, then only a big loud device is going to make you feel as though you did what you were supposed to do.
We’ve done the Dyson story to death, so I won’t go into that here. But I got this ad from Francesco Rovati in Italy, and it made me think about the alternatives. Francesco confesses that while this was the most popular vacuum in Italy, it was no better and no cheaper than the alternatives. Clearly, it was the story the ads tell that made the thing sell.
The reason that vacuum cleaner makers tell us lies like this is that we demand it. If they just told us the truth (weight and horsepower) they’d be doing nothing at all to make us feel good while we vacuum. And feeling good is why people spend their hard-earned money on things that they don’t actually need.
(PS the ad with Tarzan losing his loincloth was too racy for this family-friendly blog).
This is what it looks like as you walk through the parking lot to my Home Depot in Yonkers, New York.
No, it’s not a nightclub. It’s a hardware store.
Home Depot has a challenge. They’re not growing the way they want to. Huge discounts were enough to completely disrupt the local market, wiping out many mom and pop competitors. But low prices all by themselves aren’t enough to get a certain part of the population to show up, especially for just one or two (high margin) items like doorknobs, or even worse, stuff like a whole new kitchen.
Walk into the store and you can see which worldview the story is tailored to. It’s not for the homemaker or the occasional do it yourselfer. No, the store is clearly designed by, stocked for and organized around people who buy in volume and, even more than that, hardware geeks.
Take a look at this picture and tell me the truth: is it exciting to you? Does it fill you with anticipation to make your way down this aisle, looking at each item and finding an amazing deal? If so, you’ve got a worldview that matches the story Home Depot tells.
Many people, though, see nothing but dread here. They see a store with no helpful salespeople, a jumble of product, none just quite right, a very very long checkout line and fear. The fear of screwing up. The fear of having to come back and return something. The fear (very real) of something big falling from the top of one of these shelves and squashing them like a bug.
Home Depot is working hard to get new customers. They can’t… not as long as they continue to tell a story that only appeals to just one worldview.
Your organization may be just like the Home Depot. You may be good at one story, you may have grown into that story, but now that story can’t get you to an audience that doesn’t have the same worldview as your existing customers. The common solution is to yell. To yell louder, or more cleverly, or in more targeted media. To insist that you have the solution to this group’s problems, that you have proof that you are better, and why oh why won’t they switch.
Save your breath. Tell a different story instead.
The sky’s the limit.
Thanks to Damian for the link: Worth1000.com | Photoshop Contests | Are you Worthy™ | contest.
Market leaders make up the rules. They establish the systems and the covenants and the benchmarks that a market plays by.
(and yes, a market leader can be a church, a political party or a non-profit)
If you play by those rules, you will almost certainly lose.
After all, that’s why market leaders make rules. They establish a game that they can win, over and over again, against smaller or newer competitors.
The alternative is both obvious and scary: Change the rules.
Newcomers and underdogs can only benefit when the rules change. The safe thing to do feels risky, because it involves playing by a fundamentally different set of assumptions. But in fact, dramatically changing the game is the safest thing you can do (if you want to grow).
At the end of this post is a site that analyzes the marketing rollout for All Marketers are Liars.
My goal for my last few books is to take my own medicine, so while I’ll argue with the headline, I was delighted to see that others are picking up the steps I’m trying to follow.
Missing from the post, though, is any mention of my "get a nose, get on my blog" offer (Seth’s Blog: You too can be famous!) C’mon guys, I’ve got more than 100 of these noses, just waiting for you to order one.
Anyway, here’s the link:
Celebrity endorsements go back to the days of the early British Monarchy, and they still work. People still pay extra for perfume with Paris Hilton’s name on it (she’s making more than $10 million a year endorsing stuff). Why? Obviously, the perfume isn’t any better. Worse, no one else even knows that you’re wearing this particular scent (it’s not as obvious as, say, Ralph Lauren’s polo pony.)
We’d like to believe that we’re not swayed by such obvious nonsense. “No, I buy Polo jeans because they fit me better.” While it’s true that not everyone is easily seduced by Paris, most consumers (including the indigent and extremely poor) can’t help themselves when confronted with just the right endorsement–they pay extra for the story.
One of my favorite silly endorsements is Pierce Brosnan endorsing Omega. They’re not paying Pierce because they care about Pierce’s opinion (or that you care about his opinion). They’re paying him because he embodies a fictional character, invented fifty years ago by a now-dead author.
So, otherwise rational and intelligent men spend hundreds or thousands of dollars extra to buy a watch endorsed by a fictional character controlled by anonymous film producers and embodied by an actor. Because it makes them feel good. They buy the story.
Lying to consumers is great fun to talk about, but it’s far more challenging and more effective to lie to fellow business people.
This is the headquarters for the CAA, one of the heavyweights in Hollywood. (They represent folks like Pierce Brosnan–yes, him again–and dozens of other big names).
The last time I visited their headquarters, I was stunned by the 57 foot tall atrium lobby, and most especially by the invisible doorman–someone standing across the room with a remote control to let the good folks in and keep the riffraff out.
I mean, just for a second, let’s remember what these guys do. They charge millions of dollars to make phone calls, negotiate contracts and have lunch. They could just as easily do their jobs in some trailer park.
If you don’t think tone of voice and storytelling matters when selling to business, take a second to check out their entire website (it won’t take long): CreativeArtistsAgency.
