Caddyshack is one of my all-time favorite movies—it’s probably second only to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Within Caddyshack, one of my favorite scenes is when Ty Webb (Chevy Chase) is trying to help Danny (Michael O'Keefe) learn how to focus when putting. "Be the ball,” Ty says. “Be the ball, Danny.” Ty is being the embodiment of noise. Danny knows he needs to focus—he wants to focus—but Ty’s incessant talking is drowning out his intended signal of encouraging Danny to zone in on the ball.
We Can’t Control Noise, But We Don’t Have to Create It
Noise is everywhere in our lives. It comes from apps. From devices. From cats. A lot of it even comes from or is driven by our industry of marketing. In a world where clicks mean everything to the bean counters, everything is vying for our attention. The initial, and seemingly most logical approach to rising above the din is to just be louder, shinier, and or flashier. This may work in the short term, but when everybody goes down this route, the din as a whole just gets louder. This way madness lies.
The long-term solution is not to rise above the crowd, but to separate yourself from it. Prevent burnout and strengthen your brand by leveraging your unique value proposition.
Logic and Reason
An organization’s unique value proposition isn’t always going to be based on customer service. When dealing with commodity products, or products sold through separate retail companies, you might not have the profit margin or opportunity to flex those soft skills.
For example, let’s say you’re a cheesemaker looking to build brand recognition to boost sales of your artisan cheeses (I’m partial to brie if you’re wondering). A logic-based approach to marketing might lead you down the path of price- or value-based marketing to gain traction and start moving units. Your ads may simply feature a pleasing image of your product, the price, and where you can buy it. Logically, fiscally minded people should be driven to buy your product because it gets them the most cheese for their buck.
The downside to this is that it usually requires you to cut your selling cost down to near the bottom of the market, meaning you have less profit or an inferior product. You’re also likely to attract customers who make purchasing decisions based on price—as soon as you start to raise your price to drive more profit from each unit, they’re likely to move to the new cheapest brand.
Credibility and Ethics
Let’s take another look at that cheese. Before deciding to go down the route of “buy our cheese because it is the most affordable,” you could flip the script to add context to the higher price seen at the shop.
“Austin’s freshest cheese—puns gratis.”
We’re starting to educate potential customers about why they want your product and why they should value it at the price you’re selling it at. By adding context to your product beyond the basics of what it is, we’re also starting to build a brand identity.
Emotions and Feelings
Picture this: a wrap on the side of a bus, with a photo of a person blissfully enjoying cheese on a cracker. You want to be that happy, right? Is this cheese actually that good? There’s only one way to find out, so you buy the cheese.
This approach capitalizes on your emotions, specifically happiness and joyfulness, but other ads may play off of fear or frustration to position their product as a problem-solver.
Why pick just one?
Well, the good news is that you don’t have to. In the early 2000s, the California Milk Advisory Board ran an ad campaign asserting that “great cheese comes from happy cows.” This campaign struck a balance between credibility (great cheese) and feelings (feeling good about supporting ranchers that raise cows in a happy manner).
You could also bridge a connection between credibility and logic by saying “the go-anywhere, do-anything gizmo that won’t break the bank.”
There is no reason to limit yourself to one deliverable or creative concept, though. With Apple’s later generations of iPhones, they’ve created separate ads that target logic/reason and emotions/feelings. If your project has the budget, this allows you to maximize your impact by tailoring each piece to hit one specific mark, increasing your effectiveness with the demographic groups that respond stronger to that persuasive technique.
What's next?
If you haven’t defined your brand with a strong unique value proposition, then the next step is to go through some exercises to try to identify what the UVP might be. The good news is that I have can help guide your work through the process.
If you already have a great UVP that you’re operating with, then your next step is to reach out to me so that we can kick off your next marketing project.
