Thoughts: On Manufacturing Ideas

How does this all work? It may seem simple, take a soundbite and add dot com to the end of it. Or is that enough? You see examples all the time, like Now What? or Are You Ready For Now?

It’s clever and easy to remember.

Then hire some flash-savvy web designer to create a pretty site. I liken this to getting company brochures done on glossy cardstock and four-color process. Once it’s done everyone is impressed by how neat it looks then it get stuffed in a drawer or used as a makeshift bookmark in a trashy Danielle Steel novel. That’s it, people are impressed with the design but it’s not what makes them buy your product.

So what does make them buy your product? Ah, the $64k question!

My great-grandfather was an ad man. He worked for J. Walter Thompson for about 40 years (who works for a company for 40 years anymore?!?) He started the War Advertising Council, now the Ad Council, to create wartime propaganda during WWII. But what he should be most remembered by is body odor. No, Pappy didn’t stink, at least I don’t think so. He created an ad campaign entitled “Within the Curve of a Woman’s Arm“. It was the first of it’s kind. Before this ad campaign people didn’t discuss body odor. In fact, many publications, like Ladies Home Journal, refused to run the ad. It was downright scandalous.

I never really thought much about it. Then in college I was taking a graduate course on Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci pontificates on the concept of cultural hegemony which led us to a discussion on manufacturing ideas. Someone brought up how body odor was a manufactured idea. It’s not as though before that ad came out nobody stank, quite the contrary. But the ad created a need, now people needed to conceal the odor, now people needed deodorant.

So it begs the question: Why do people need your product? There are many fine examples of successful campaigns based on creating a need. There is plenty of debate on whether or not a need can be created or if what is actually being created is a want. But if a campaign is successful it creates a need out of a want so I think the debate is moot since the only true needs we have are food and water (and well, sex, to further our species of course). The line between need and want is so skewed in our modern vernacular that I’m going to take them as one for the sake of this argument.

Look at Gatorade, you need to be hydrated. Or you need Milk to keep your bones strong, right?

This of course cuts to the core of what marketing should be doing. Recently I read Augusten Burroughs’ book “Possible Side Effects” and was chuckling to myself when I read a chapter about the Junior Mints company, who believed a successful commercial would contain as many product shots as possible, “Couldn’t we just have the people stand somewhere? Maybe in a grocery store, in front of a display of Junior Mints?” As if that were all they needed to create passionate brand ambassadors.

Having been the marketing manager of a consumer products manufacturer I know there is a massive amount of pressure from above to “Show the product.” This has more to do with the fact that the president and CEO see the product as their baby and felt like it spoke for itself. And they wouldn’t be the president or CEO if they didn’t feel passionately about the product and understood every aspect of creating and developing that product. But in all their infinite wisdom, knowing the product through and through, they forgot how to sell it to someone who has never seen it, never needed it before or doesn’t understand its benefits. They forgot that we were not trying to sell them their most precious baby but we were trying create an equal passion in the consumer that satisfied a need in them. What I’m trying to say is that you need to look at your consumer, their likes and desires, and show them how this product will fill that gap for them.

For example, if you have the next greatest toy and even though you know all the quality/engineering/R&D that went into creating that toy, you’re consumer will not likely care about those details. Let’s say your target demographic is boys between the ages 6-12 and your secondary demographic is the wallet (aka Mom), (although, research has shown that children have more buying power for toy purchases over the last 10+ years.) How then will you market the product? Do you show them the product and explain how they are engineered? No, kids don’t want a toy thinly disguised as a educational product. You can market it as an educational product thinly disguised as a toy, mom will like that. But what do kids want? Kids want fun, hours and hours of fun. When you’re competing with video games and TV, it had better be fun. So now you’re no longer selling a toy, you’re selling fun. Mom wants a toy that will be a good value and keep her child’s attention for more than 10 minutes. So you tailor your ads for the appropriate audiences. But you must always remember that you are NOT selling a product, you are selling a concept.

When I look at website campaigns, I look at a number of factors. I look at how they are branding themselves and how well they know their key demographic, how they utilize technology, how many marketing avenues the campaign uses to get its message out and how well they correlated all of these factors. But what is becoming increasingly important, I look at how well they are optimizing their site for internet search engines. If you work well with the technology the technology will work for you.