Take Your Brand Beyond False Promises
In a saturated consumerist world overstocked with variety and choice, there is still something hugely important that is is not yet on the market. This is something that can be offered by any lifestyle brand to kick-start a new, explosive growth trend that will last for decades.
Most people believe that nothing truly new is on the horizon in the world of branding. There is a sense that the book of marketing has already been written and every trick has already been used. I am here to tell you about a new frontier that has yet to be tapped.
For decades, marketers have played a trick on us that has worked so well precisely because we are not consciously aware of it. They know that most consumers lead lives that are (to put it gently) not exactly in alignment with our dreams and fantasies. Advertisers have discovered, long ago, that if they tease us with powerful images and suggestive promises of a life that looks a lot less dull than the lives we actually lead, then we will buy the stuff they are selling. Brands project images of adventure along with subtle promises of bliss or social connection. Marketers know that, if they can get us to associate their brand to an experience or feeling we deeply desire, then we will buy their products in a desperate attempt to reach for that which we desire so deeply and subconsciously.
While marketers continue to use the same tricks from the same playbook, returns are diminishing. Today's consumer is different. Today we are far more aware, more experienced, and simply more intelligent than consumers were decades ago. Under intense pressure to grow, brands have responded by making significant strides toward improving all aspects of the customer experience through all touch-points. With the boom in eCommerce, retailers and consumer products manufacturer brands have discovered that one way to grow is to improve the customer relationship. This is important, but there is something much more profound that has yet to be done. On this blog, I will tell you about it.
Let's take an honest look at today's basic approach to branding:
1) Through the power of suggestion, brands present consumers with images and messages that is the stuff of dreams and fantasy.
2) Consumers are expected to understand, on a rational level, that the promise isn't real. Yet, at a deeper, perhaps even desperate subconscious level, many consumers go out and by the product anyway.
3) After the purchase, consumers realize that their lives have not changed and that the promise of the advertiser was essentially false (in truth, this was understood from the very beginning).
Is this really the best we can do? Ask yourself this: how well does it work, in the other areas of your life, to make promises you fail to deliver? If you do this too much, people will tune you out and fail to take anything you say seriously. Is there any wonder why there is such a huge backlash to advertising?
There is a new approach. It is my mission to lead brands into a future where they deliver, in reality, the lifestyle they promise the consumer. This is going to be fun. Join me!
