Out to lunch at LA2M
I have been
an Art Director at MOVE Communications for almost a year now, but this is the
first time I was asked to attend a lunch event and write a corresponding blog. Fun… right? Well, if you are a visually
creative person like myself, the thought of sitting in one spot and paying attention
for an hour, or writing something someone else may want to read, is a bit of a brain fry.
WE are our target audience
Not to say
that Ross Johnson, of 3.7 Designs, did not give a very interesting and
thought-provoking talk, only that my notebook is four pages full of scribbles
(or future masterpieces, whichever way you like to look at it). My mind is also swimming with ideas about turning
everything I have been doing in marketing upside down.
The Lunch Ann Arbor Marketing (LA2M) talk was titled, “Your Customers
Are Crazy...” The room was polite and attentive as Johnson
talked through some interesting, yet basic ideas of marketing. For instance, understand
your target audience. This one we all know. Right? But, do we really implement
it?
After all, WE are our target
audience. As Johnson points out, unless we’re marketing to animals, WE are all
marketing to humans, WE are the market, and WE are everyone else. So, are WE
being realistic with ourselves and using the thoughts that go through OUR heads
the moment WE make a purchase, to market another product?
Marketing can be emotional and
irrational
If we’re
honest about how WE ourselves purchase and buy, it is all based on emotion. We
may use logic and reason to explain it afterwards, but that moment you decide
to buy something, you say…'I must have it!’ If people buy things to create that
small surge of impulse and happiness, then emotions make the decision. Irrational behavior is our target audience.
So how do you grab the attention of irrational behavior? The answer may not be
completely clear, but it would be a pretty good guess that anything involving
logic and rational thinking will not do the job.
As a creative
thinking person and one who does not like to be confined to process and
structure, I think… HOORAY! Here is what I was waiting for.They are giving me
a way to justify throwing out all of the rational thinking.
There are numerous
studies to show that we only notice the abnormal.Things that seem similar and
familiar are processed so quickly by our brain that we piece the information
together before we are even finished seeing it. The more common something is, the more likely
we are to overlook it. We overlook our keys that are sitting in front of our
faces as we tear the house apart looking for them, or banner ads that pop up
and look just like the banner ad that popped up yesterday.
Be different and connect emotionally
Things that
our brain remembers are different from everything else.To be a good marketer,
DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT! How different? Really different! Our brain
unconsciously notices everything and shapes what we create based off of it.
Johnson
gave an example that I think illustrates this effect nicely. A room full of
people at an auction were asked to bid on a bottle of wine.The bottle was not
labeled and nothing alluded to its price. Each person had only a piece of paper
and a pencil. Before writing down a bid they were asked to write the last two
digits of their social security numbers in the upper right corner of the paper
for identification, and nothing else. The people who had high numbers for those
digits bid a higher price on the wine. And likewise lower for the low digits.
These two little numbers written on the page influenced, at a subconscious
level, the price of the bid. Johnson calls these baseline influences “anchors.”
Everything is influenced by these subconscious anchors. Everything
we do, from research to process to benchmarking, dictates how we market a
product. Intentionally or not, we will
generally market it just like the brand or product before, and we may miss an
opportunity to present it as unique, or differentiate it enough to stand out
and be bought by the emotional buyer.
Let creative seep into our reason
If we could
design and market based on the fact that we are irrational and crazy beings,
then maybe marketers wouldn’t fail. It would be so different and out-there,
that the response would be consumer attention and ultimately sales.
Keep in mind
that there are large chunks of this lunch meeting when I scribbled pears on
paper and played with my straw and lime to make a boat in my ranch sauce. Just
in case someone at the meeting is saying, “That’s not what the presentation was
about!”
Now, I do
think that as companies and places of business, we can’t just throw out all
reason and logic. I am not expecting my boss to end all meetings and toss the
process book out the window. But the idea of it is exciting!
If we could
incorporate just 1% of this thinking into all of our scheduled and systematic
days, maybe we can start creating new ideas, not just regurgitate the old ones.
If we could all zone out in the meeting and scribble on our notepads, go to the
place where you get out of your own way, and the creative brain seeps in and
says, ‘Hey! I know something fun we can do!’ then maybe
we could start producing new and exciting brands and marketing that would grab
the emotional buyer’s attention.
And this is
probably why you should be careful when you send your company creative to
marketing meetings!