Tapping into emotions requires more than goods and services. It requires a concept. It takes wonder.
Remember the first time you mastered the bicycle. Learned how to drive. Fell in love. Remember the rush. The sense of elation and power. That is wonder. You didn’t need to know everything at once, you only needed to know that what you had was great, and you wanted more. This is the essence of advertising. The single most effective way to deliver your message. An emotional, memorable experience that leaves you wanting more.
Prices, technology, product benefits, and cold hard facts may be very important in defining a product to an already interested buyer, but they don’t create a brand. Take cars for example. There are a substantial number of people who take great pride in their knowledge of cars: engine displacement, gear ratios, carbs, lifters and such. However, the car is marketed for what else it can do for you… not transportation, but rather how it makes you feel. Cars are exhilarating, soothing, muscular, economical, life saving and more. And since dedicated car aficionados are also human, they also respond to that appeal.
Your target audience is always composed of current customers and potential customers. Product benefit analysis will bore current customers, who are already convinced, and is not likely to convince your potential ones, who quite frankly don’t care. Differentiation must be established and delivered directly into the human need for comfort, convenience, wonder and magic. That is where your audiences lives, breathes, loves and learns. That is where they can be reached.
Romance them with wonder. Once you’ve got their attention, reinforce your message in store, in print, and on line with the facts, features and benefits. Deeply interested potential customers will certainly demand this depth of information. Clients on the verge of buying will scrutinize your information as fastidiously as any aficionado. But to get them to that point, you have to capture their attention when they’re not in the market. If you can get them thinking about you before they’re ready to buy, when they finally are, they look for you. For your information. Because they feel they know you. What makes them feel that way is the wonder. The emotional appeal. Your brand.
Tapping into emotions requires more than goods and services. It requires a concept. It takes wonder.
Remember the first time you mastered the bicycle. Learned how to drive. Fell in love. Remember the rush. The sense of elation and power. That is wonder. You didn’t need to know everything at once, you only needed to know that what you had was great, and you wanted more. This is the essence of advertising. The single most effective way to deliver your message. An emotional, memorable experience that leaves you wanting more.
Prices, technology, product benefits, and cold hard facts may be very important in defining a product to an already interested buyer, but they don’t create a brand. Take cars for example. There are a substantial number of people who take great pride in their knowledge of cars: engine displacement, gear ratios, carbs, lifters and such. However, the car is marketed for what else it can do for you… not transportation, but rather how it makes you feel. Cars are exhilarating, soothing, muscular, economical, life saving and more. And since dedicated car aficionados are also human, they also respond to that appeal.
Your target audience is always composed of current customers and potential customers. Product benefit analysis will bore current customers, who are already convinced, and is not likely to convince your potential ones, who quite frankly don’t care. Differentiation must be established and delivered directly into the human need for comfort, convenience, wonder and magic. That is where your audiences lives, breathes, loves and learns. That is where they can be reached.
Romance them with wonder. Once you’ve got their attention, reinforce your message in store, in print, and on line with the facts, features and benefits. Deeply interested potential customers will certainly demand this depth of information. Clients on the verge of buying will scrutinize your information as fastidiously as any aficionado. But to get them to that point, you have to capture their attention when they’re not in the market. If you can get them thinking about you before they’re ready to buy, when they finally are, they look for you. For your information. Because they feel they know you. What makes them feel that way is the wonder. The emotional appeal. Your brand.