Marketing that makes you feel good
By John R. Graham
Experienced marketers shake their heads in
amazement. “How could a first-class company run an ad
like that?” That refers to an ad that is 100 percent
focused on them. It’s all about who they are and what
they do.
Whether it’s an ad, a proposal, a
newsletter, an e-mail bulletin, a brochure or a web site, the
story is the same. It’s all about them.
As soon as we turn the page and see such
an ad or click into a web site that’s filled to
overflowing with the “it’s all about us”
message, we’re gone.
Yet it happens every day. “Seeing
potential requires vision” states the headline for a
large financial institution in a national daily newspaper. And
guess who has the vision? Flip the page in the same newspaper
and a major microchip manufacturer gets it right. This company
“has an urgent message for the wired world:
unwire.” That resonates.
Both ads required hefty budgets. One made
the advertiser feel good; the other got through to the
customer.
In another section of the same newspaper,
a full-page ad got it wrong. The headline stated that the
company “extends its CRM leadership.” Everyone
inside that company feels proud. But that doesn’t make
sales.
Turn the page and Lexus hits the target
with a customer-capturing headline: “Think cloud nine.
With a silver lining.” That pulls the customer in. We all
want a silver lining.
How does it happen that some hit the mark
and others can’t find the target? It’s certainly
easy to sell a self-serving ad to a client.
There’s a more accurate explanation,
however. Marketer Harry Beckwith notes, “I cannot walk
into most companies without being aware of their walls. The
walls seem to do more than keep the cold air out. They seem to
block out a clear vision of the world.” He goes on to
suggest that there is nothing devious about such behavior.
“It’s just that people talk about what they know,
and what people know is their company.”
There’s the rub, as Shakespeare
would say. The major problem with most marketing is that
it’s all about the wrong people. The focus is on what we
know best –– our company, our products, our service
–– ourselves. And somehow or other, we expect the
customer to make the right connection and say, “Ah, ha.
That’s exactly what we need.”
Absorbing the self-absorption problem
Self-absorption is no minor problem.
It’s perhaps the major impediment to effective marketing.
Its impact is extensive. Here are a few examples:
• A prospective client asks a
marketing firm executive if he had done some work for a
particular company. “I hope you didn’t do their
brochure. It was full of the “we” word.
Fortunately, he hadn’t. It was written and designed in
house and was all about “us” instead of
“them,” the customer.
• Most business letters are all about
“us,” too. They are about what “we”
sell and what a good deal “we” give our customers,
and that we are a leader in “our” industry. On and
on it goes. This is no small matter, either.
One recent letter contained the words
“we’re excited” three times as the writer, a
marketer, no less, described internal changes in the company.
Who cares if they’re excited? Does it really make any
difference to the customer? And does it not send a powerful,
unavoidable message that the company’s primary concern is
with itself?
Oh, yes, this is the same company that
seems to delight in using such terms as “strategic
alliance” and “strategic partner.” The
underlying mindset, however, betrays the truth.
• Pick up a press release at random
and what are the first words you see? Chances are it’s
the name of the company. As any good PR intern knows, the
opening paragraph should be the hook to grab the reader,
particularly an editor.
• Quite often, top management are the
worst offenders. They want their “truth.” A
marketing agency had worked for months with the marketing
director of a well-established regional insurance broker to
develop a new capabilities brochure.
What emerged was an eye-catching,
customer-focused marketing piece. Having received approval to
go to print, the marketing firm had the brochure on the press
when the marketing director called and said, “Don’t
go any further. The president wants some changes.”
It didn’t take much imagination to
figure what “changes” were going to be made. To
start with, large full color photographs of the chairman, CEO,
and president, not surprisingly, father, oldest son and
youngest son, in that order, were featured in the new version,
along with a detailed history of the company.
One president expressed it this way:
“If I’m paying for it, I want it my way.” As
any seasoned marketer will tell you, “That’s more
common than pumpkins at Halloween.”
• The end result of such
“it’s all about us” arrogance is epitomized
by the telephone call that we all get every day. It almost
always goes something like this: “We sent you a letter
with some information about our company a couple of weeks ago.
I hope it was of interest to you.”
Can the callers be serious? Perhaps they
are because the tone is such that I feel guilty if I
don’t remember the mailing.
The missing message
What all this adds up to is “A Case
of the Missing Message.” What is it that we want
customers, prospects, editors, investors, competitors or anyone
else to think when they encounter our company, products and
services? What picture do we want in their heads? What feeling
do we want invoked?
Unfortunately, these questions generally
go begging. Everyone is so focused on selling something that
the customer is all but forgotten. We are so self-absorbed that
we fail at the task of separating ourselves from our
competitors.
If you ask executives what sets their
company apart from others, the answers are pathetically
predictable. After looking at each other in stunned silence,
they mumble something about “our people” or
“our service.”
When thinking about these companies,
there’s no confusion. The image is crystal clear:
• Sony (innovation and design)
• Volvo (safety)
• Southwestern Airlines (low fares)
• Pepperidge Farms (quality)
• Godiva (great chocolate)
• Mont Blanc (superb writing
instruments)
• Wal-Mart (low prices)
• Starbucks (enjoyable experience)
• Maytag (quality)
But what about these companies? What do we
think about when we think about them and their products or
services? Are the images impeccable and crystal clear when you
think of these brands?
• General Motors
• Mr. Coffee
• Kodak
• K-Mart
• Cadillac
Even when we boldly announce the benefits
of doing business with us, self-absorption may color our
thinking. Value-added, for example, comes out of what we decide
is valuable, not what customers really want. What does the
customer value? Isn’t that the only important question?
The “price is too high”
problem may be another indication of self-absorption. Although
salespeople pass along the message to management that a
customer is going with the competitor because “our price
is too high,” there’s reason to doubt that price is
actually the bullet that shoots down a sale.
More often than not, the customer is
sending a totally different message: low perceived value.
It’s simply tied with a pretty “the price is too
high” ribbon.
No company is deliberately self-absorbed.
It happens because we’re captured by the ideas, culture,
opinions, perceptions and history that surround and encapsulate
us. We are captured and don’t know it.
Every type of business has its own
language. Even companies possess parochial vocabularies to make
communication easier. Without even realizing it, we are always
talking to ourselves. We are literally fish out of water, when
we encounter new vocabularies, ideas, histories and cultures.
Again, without being conscious that
it’s happening, we assume that others think like we do,
and we have difficulty understanding how anyone could possibly
hold a position contrary to our own.
We get our business information from our
peers. It’s normal –– we talk to people like
ourselves. Is it any wonder that we have trouble telling the
story so that it makes sense to customers, prospects and anyone
else?
The Versailles Peace Conference that
followed World War I was held in the great Hall of Mirrors.
Years later, someone noted the failure at Versailles might have
been avoided if it had taken place in a hall of windows, where
the delegates could have looked out at the needs of the world
instead of being preoccupied with themselves.
Getting it right
The marketing task is one of raising the
blinds and throwing open the windows to let in the lights,
smells, images, problems, news, and everything else so that we
become one with the real world and it becomes part of us.
The answers to effective marketing are out
there.
John R. Graham is president of Graham
Communications, a marketing services and sales consulting firm.
He is an author of several books, writes for a variety of
publications and speaks at and association meetings. He can be
contacted by phone at (617) 328-0069 or by e-mail at
j_graham@grahamcomm.com). The company’s web site is
www.grahamcomm.com.
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