In the backend we create products and services and in the market we sell emotions.
No matter what business you are in, you are always selling emotions(hope, desire, dream, love, happiness, fear, pride etc) either internally to your team, investors, colleagues or in the market to consumers.
Allow me to start it with a famous anecdote which you must have heard or read somewhere already, When macbook was launched in 1980’s it was taking about 70 seconds to boot and Steve Jobs challenged engineers to reduce it’s boot time by 10 seconds and the reply was we can barely reduce it by more than a few seconds not more than that, but you know what happened then. The time was reduced by 30 seconds. Because Jobs realized that this is not a small technical problem, he calculated that saving 10 seconds of boot time per user, multiplied by millions of users, would save hundreds of lives over a year. He realized to the team that by reducing its boot time we can save hundreds of livestime which created a sense of urgency and a feeling of pride in engineers that they are contributing something to the world.
Humans instinctively want a meaning in life and for everyone it can be different and we have to look for that meaning that sense of fulfillment and associate that as the core emotion with our product or service or whatever we are selling (events, property, idea, personal brand, virtual assets etc).
Yes, we understand its importance, but the challenge is how do we communicate a certain emotion with what we make and make it synonymous to that emotion? Before we move forward in our journey of finding the solution, I want you to ask you a few questions assuming that most of the readers are from India and familiar to these brands I’m going to ask about.
Q.1 Feeling when you buy an Apple product or have a coffee at Starbucks?
Q.2 Which is your favorite soft drink Pepsi, Cola, Dew? Which emotional element of it’s advertisement inspired you?
Q.3 What emotion rises when you hear it’s a TATA product or launched by TATA?
Q.4 How would you feel when you ride your favorite bike and why?
Q.5 You are hungry at midnight. What is the first thing that will come to your mind to cook?
Q.6 What’s the sweet thing you think girls love most to eat? Which one? Why?
Q.7 Which toothpaste do you use and why?
I guess these are enough of the questions which vary from emotions of feeling cool, modern, classy, happy, chill, courage, trust, adventurous and tech savvy etc and you got an insight why you love and prefer certain brands more than others because of their communication and values they trigger from their marketing materials. You can definitely argue me that we don’t buy things solely on emotions but you know what it plays more 80% role. Let’s see an interesting case study.
Once a team of researchers performed an experiment on 100 college students asking them which is their favorite drink and surprisingly most of those who said Cola when blindfolded and asked to taste both of the drinks they loved taste of Pepsi more than cola. Surprising n? I know you want more, only for you.
Give me a moment and Imagine with me that you are walking in a shopping mart and passed by a noodles section, then saw a few perfumes, face wash and skincare items moving towards confectionary items like biscuits, chocolates, chips, soft drinks and went to cash counter now what brand items are in you basket? First pause and think of a quick answer. Do you know about Baba Shiv?
He’s a professor at California university and was curious how we make decisions. After day in and day out observations Baba Shiv conducted a study and found that when people shop based on their gut feeling they feel satisfied afterwards whereas on shopping while relying on logic brings more regret later. He concluded that we buy things emotionally but justify them rationally. Interesting thing is that we don’t know how our gut takes decisions in flash of seconds, to learn more about this I would recommend a you a book Blink:The art of thinking without thinking in which author Malcolm Gladwell makes his point on snap judgments and how are they actually right in most of the cases and can err if influenced by biases. Now think of the items which are in your cart, why did you buy them instead of other alternatives?
Here’s the key takeaway: for making any purchase or investment, it must appeal to us emotionally before it makes a logical sense to persuade us in that direction. As business owner or marketer this is a powerful insight as customers don’t actually know what they need and they don’t actually mean to serve what they ask for only. Before moving directly to decode the secret sauce of communicating the right emotion I want you to read “Sales Is The Lifeblood Of Your Business And How To Keep It Flowing“ this blog gives simple yet powerful insights on the needs and wants of a customer to keep the sales flowing.
So let’s start decoding it, what does a customer mean when it ask for a inexpensive mobile phone? Don’t be smart to think of course, an affordable phone. This is only the Stated need of the customer. Okay!
What’s the real need? (To get a smartphone where she/he can entertain, click good pictures, strong and durable, good to use for day to day tasks.)
What’s the unstated need? (It must have a warranty and nearby service center.)
What’s a delight need? (If the distributor can provide free accessories with purchase or no cost emi option with it.)
What’s a secret need? (It must have a good camera and must look good so his friends see her/him as a tech savvy person.)
Combining all this with the concepts we learnt in the recommended blog above, we get to a point that the secret needs combined with stated needs are our weapon for marketing communication.
As Secret needs triggers the right emotion of the buyer and stated need is what’s one thing that can affect his behavior. Let’s see both of these with another example, One consumer states to buy high quality and designer clothes, what’s the secret need here? Mail me at kreatiwittylabs@gmail.com with Subject : Secret need and your answer, there’s a surprise waiting for you.
Now there are n numbers of messages to communicate this message carrying forward the example of affordable smartphone for better clarity like billboard with preferable celebrity endorsements, tech influencers unboxing and highlighting camera and looks, comparison with similar and slightly higher budget phones to make it a best option etc.
All the remaining need in b/w can be specified on web pages and the partner sites where it is sold. Some cool things that a brand might consider to on it’s official page is making a documentary style ad displaying how a person’s life changed by buying this smartphone (themes education, becoming next viral influencer etc), showing it’s durability test (felt from a height and still safe) or highlighting looks subtle in different environment settings where user is using that device (these can be done as UGC-User generated content ads).
You can think of your products, for reference one of the UGC concepts can be friends showing pictures of trips and a user flipped phone to see the company and look in a short video concept created around it of multiple scenes.
We hope you enjoyed reading this and wish it helped you.
Thanks for Spending your valuable time with us.
Team Kreatiwitty Labs
