Yesterday I talked about wanting what we can’t have, and how it can drive consumer behaviors. Nothing like a good shortage to drive demand, after all! A friend reminded me that more than once, customers have begged, rioted, and even thrown eggs in protest for the privilege of buying Apple products…. Chinese customers being the latest to succumb to wanton desire for something that is being tantalizingly withheld….
There’s the overselling that happens when marketing goes overboard (see yesterday’s post), and then there’s the opposite – creating demand by holding back. I was chatting with a friend and her husband the other night, and they were telling me about their recent purchase of an incredibly expensive Lab puppy from a breeder. The breeder put them through quite the process, starting with a phone interview and an essay they had to submit explaining why they would be a good home for one of his puppies. If that wasn’t enough, the first time through, they were rejected. The breeder called and said “I don’t like the sound of you I don’t think it will be a good fit, no puppy for you.” My friend’s husband’s eyes lit up as he told the story – “at that point,” he said, “I knew I had to have one of those puppies, no matter what it took.” And eventually, several essays, road trips, and phone calls later, they got their puppy, who is now happily chewing his way through puppyhood in their house.
That was all it took to make the sale – a little resistance from the seller. Generally in business we aren’t quite bold enough to take that kind of stand, but what if we were? What if the customer had to convince you to sell to them? How exactly do you position a product in that way on a regular, scaleable basis? It makes me wonder.
Here’s my not so expensive Lab, pondering the question from a mountain top.
Many thanks to Steven Colbert for recently reminding us all of the dangers of overthinking marketing for a pretty straightforward product. I’ve been in marketing departments and product campaign development, I’ve built personas and messages ‘tuned’ for them, and delivered other quite fantastic pieces of work – it is easy in the moment to think that every word is precious in describing a mind-blowing product like…. wheat thins. But when we take a step back and read the copy, it really can be a little silly. Check it out – a good reminder not to take it all too far:
I’m up in the mountains in the town of Breckenridge. It is bustling on a Friday night, full of tourists bundled up, some practically and some completely outfitted for apres ski. Cars creep through downtown in search of a place to land and expel occupants onto the snowy sidewalks, while pedestrians meander along, window shopping, huddling around cafe heaters, and swapping slope stories. Like a good fishing story, they grow as the night moves along – jumps get higher, falls more epic, speed cranks up notch by notch.
Our inherent desire to to share experiences by telling stories starts young and we do it naturally in our lives. And yet, we often don’t value this more in our professional / business environment – prefering instead to “get to the point”, or keep communication strictly “factual” and to not “waste time”. I remember very little of the tactical communication I get, but I rarely forget a good story. So in the end, which is more useful, efficient, and productive?
