Tag: consumer

Story-telling for a Price

Ever since we were kids, fairy-tales seemed to be our only refuge and escape from reality.  We used to constantly read and listen to stories. To say the least, stories have played a crucial role in our lives since our childhood. Till this very day, stories still affect us tremendously, and this resulted in many companies using them across their various touch points. Marketers seem to have found the best way to exploit and to use them in their marketing efforts.

Based on several studies, stories showed the tendency to resonate with consumers the most. When listening to a story, several parts of the brain are activated. This leads the customers to visualise what they’re being told.

 This has led many advertisers to resort to story-telling in ads and when trying to talk about their products with the customers. Stories are used as an attention-grabbing method since it happens to have a high impact on the consumers. Instead of using a traditional method, advertisers resort to storytelling for consumers tend to relate to it and remember it the most.

Storytelling has also made its way in sales. Sales-people started to talk to the customers about their products in the form of a story. In sales, it’s all about solving the people’s problem and making the customers the heroes of their own stories. To demonstrate this, the salesperson might act up as a sage who offers help to the hero aka the customer in order to solve their problem.

Through stories, marketers have been able to captivate and grab the customers’ attention. They also managed to motivate them and to drive them to take actions and pay a higher premium.

Some customers are willing to pay more for a cup of coffee from Starbucks than for a regular one. However, they would not be paying for the coffee’s quality or the product’s features; but rather, they’re paying for its story. A story which Starbucks constantly communicates whether about its products, its cosy place that feels like home, or about what it should symbolise to you. Such stories of value have merely made products become an extension of our own identity.

Stories help build a special bond and relationship with the customers. They tend to resonate with them the most. By putting a high emphasis on storytelling, it certainly allows for further communication of value.

At the end of the day, are we actually paying for the actual price of the item or for its story?

Teaching the World a Lesson, One Burger at a Time

(The ad can be found in this link; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erSgUag9F_4 )

To answer the question in my previous post, let’s have a look at how a brand managed to teach its customers a lesson and to increase the people’s awareness in the society.

As a method to criticise some regulations that were going on concerning Net Neutrality, Burger King created an ad aiming to teach its customers about this concept. This social experiment by Burger King was done to criticise the repeal of Net Neutrality regulations and to showcase to the people the impact of such regulations on their lives.   

To those who are not familiar with the concept, Net Neutrality refers to having equal access to the Internet. Without it, the internet service providers will have the sole power to charge people more for higher speed and to control the content shown on their web pages.

As an opposition to the repeal of Net Neutrality, Burger King created the “Whopper Neutrality”. Burger King stated that “the brand believes the Internet should be like the Whopper sandwich; the same for everyone.”

This creative method by Burger King to explain the effect of an event going on in the society made a strong impact on the consumers. Such usage of the brand’s products helped to increase its customers’ awareness as well as to attract many people’s attention to the brand’s efforts.

By making use of on-going events in the society, brands can help stir up change and create social movements. When doing so, it certainly helps in creating a long lasting impact in the consumer’s lives and in developing a positive relationship with them.  

Can’t Get “it” Out of My Head

“I’d like to buy the world a Coke & keep it company.”

Have you ever heard a tune or a jingle in an ad and it was so catchy that you just couldn’t get it out of your head? Well, as it turns out, it was designed for such purpose.

Many brands work on writing original jingles or certain tunes in order to create links and to associate them with their brands.

Jingles are a form of sound branding. It can be a slogan, a phone number, a name, or even a benefit of a product or a brand.

Jingles tend to have a lot of advantages. It increases brand awareness, it allows the brand’s message to stick in the consumer’s memory, as well as it makes the brand recall much easier. 

Most importantly, jingles tend to have a long term effect on the consumers. Many people are able to recognise the brands immediately and to remember their names as soon as they hear their jingle.

Also, jingles can help the brand’s ads to go viral. By adding it to an ad or a commercial, it will certainly cut through the ads noise and grab the customers’ attention. This would increase the consumer’s tendency to share it and thus, allow the ad to go viral and to catch on between the consumers worldwide.

So, did any jingle come across your mind when reading this post? (besides the one for Coca-Cola! )

Grabbing Attention from Within

After having discussed the meaning that lies behind every colour, it is time to explore how one of those brands managed to exploit it to achieve its goals.

Have you guessed it yet?

Gatorade is one of the most iconic sports drinks which uses a lot of approaches to promote its brand. It uses an integrated marketing strategy which includes transmitting its message on billboards, print ads, and creative point on sales displays.  

Gatorade occupies a special positioning in the minds of the consumers; it is positioned as the sports drink for winners. Gatorade is also linked to endurance and enhancement in athletic performances; it aims to quench the thirst of athletes and to provide them with their nutritional needs while keeping them energised and active.

Gatorade has managed to grab the people’s attention using a lot of elements to stand out. Their billboards are designed in a creative and a simple way. Their simple ads only present the picture of a Gatorade bottle or the logo of Gatorade with the campaign’s tagline on a strong-coloured background. Gatorade also used to place huge ads on buildings in order to grab people’s attention. Another method of advertising Gatorade uses is print ads. Their print ads are usually creative and innovative. Some of them try to show how Gatorade fuels athletes from within.

Gatorade utilise bright and vibrant colours to show the benefits and the movements of Gatorade in the athletes’ bodies. In-store marketing is also one of the marketing strategies Gatorade employs in attempt to affect and influence the buying decisions for the consumers. Moreover, It uses creative displays that resemble the Gatorade bottle, and they use flashy product displays. Gatorade tries to communicate its messages and to associate itself with some concepts like winning and hard work on all of its different advertising channels and mediums.

In order to grab the people’s attention, most of Gatorade’s ads do not include a lot of elements. Gatorade creates different marketing stimuli to get in touch with customers. They create line series advertisement in order to get in touch with the customers and to grab their attention.

Gatorade has a lot of other competitors, so their ads need to stand out between other brands. Gatorade tries to affect the consumers’ visual perceptions using vivid colours and strong images and headlines which also show Gatorade’s effects and benefits.

Gatorade also tries to impact the consumers using intense colours like orange. It plays on the customers to affect their moods and responses. The colour orange which is frequently used in Gatorade’s ads represents energy, activity, and caution. It resonates with the messages Gatorade is trying to associate itself with and it is very likely to grab attention.

Gatorade’s ads are a form of salient stimuli. They stand out due to the colours and images used and due to their intense. Some of their ads are simplistic and vivid; they only include the bottle (the figure) of Gatorade. They use materials that are clear to the senses and not hard to comprehend.

Gatorade also tries to create associations and to evoke feelings and certain emotional responses in the customers using such colours in their ads. Some of their print ads show imagery that depicts the effect of Gatorade inside the athlete’s body. The use of such ads and different marketing mediums are some of Gatorade’s methods to avoid habituation.

The way Gatorade creates its billboard ads are affected by the absolute threshold. They try to achieve intensity by using a few elements which include big fonts and strong headlines and colours. The in-store marketing Gatorade uses allows them to achieve their goals and to influence the customers’ buying decisions.

Gatorade uses bright colours and creative models in their in-store displays to stand out amongst their competitors. The Point of sales marketing Gatorade uses alters and affects the consumer’s decision making and expectations as well.

Lastly, Gatorade has managed to merge colours with its brand identity to further communicate its message and to have a consistent and a powerful message that resonates on the long run.

If Your Personality had a Colour, What Would it be ?

Colours have become an important instrument in brands’ marketing strategies. It allows brands to express themselves and to communicate their true identity.

Each brand has managed to distinguish itself from the rest by adopting a single colour or colour palette of its own. These colours, in turn, are present throughout the integrated marketing communication campaigns for each brand.

Brands manage to include the same colours throughout their billboards, ads, POS, and much more. This is actually done in a manner which allows for more consistency for the brand to occur.  At some points, colours are used to showcase a certain effect or feelings towards the product as well as to raise specific expectations regarding it.

The importance of colour usage mainly resides in making a brand unique, coherent, and more appealing. It can increase the familiarity of the brand and its recognition especially when it is included in ads in a consistent manner.

However, choosing specific colours for a brand can have a lot of symbolic and hidden meanings. Many brands choose a colour to express itself or to arouse certain feelings in the consumers.

To explore the true meaning that lies behind the usage of colours , here’s Ogilvy’s take on colours below;

Around the World in a Wrap

“What works here, won’t necessarily work elsewhere.”


Have you ever seen a product with a different packaging across two different countries?

In the previous post, we talked about how packages can affect the consumers’ senses and their purchasing decisions. However, it is even more important to take into consideration the consumers’ cultures when designing a package. Some packages tend to work in some countries but fail miserably in others. So, what could be the reason behind this?

When designing a package, it is important to conform to the locals’ needs and preferences. This also goes to the global brands. For brands, going by a global standard poses them a lot of challenges and problems. Usually, when expanding abroad, brands customise their products’ packages according to the local tastes while keeping the brand’s identity prominent.

Thus, this suggests integrating labels or slogans that are tailored to the brand’s target markets into their global products. All of this can be summed up in the sense that brands are going “glocal” instead of global.

By adhering to the cultural norms, brands tend to add extra features to the global product’s standard. It might use the same shape of the product and logo in order to establish familiarity and increase brand’s recognition. However, it might change the language of the writing, the font style, the size, or even the colours of the product’s package to suit local tastes.

In some countries, locals might have a certain preference for a colour over the other. Also, a group of people belonging to a certain age group could prefer a colour palette over the other. For example, people of old age might tend to go for a colour palette that is different from the younger group.

Likewise, in some countries, locals are more affected by informative labels put on the products. In religious countries, it might be important to add the term “Halal” to the sealing of a product. In health conscious countries, it could be adequate to add “Sugar Free” or “Fat Free” on the seal for instance.

Keeping your consumers’ and your target market’s varied cultural backgrounds at the top of your mind when expanding is essential. It is important for a brand to embrace different ideologies and perspectives as well as to demonstrate openness to its consumers.

In order to stand out, it has become necessary for brands to “glocal” and to encompass their target markets’ religion, social habits, and other social values and artefacts across their various touch points.

Inferences

If you were planning to buy new earphones, how much would you be willing to pay? Of course, this might depend on the type or the brand of the earphones you want to buy or considering whether they’re waterproof or has some extra features. Let’s say you’d pay up to $100 as an average.

Would that number still be the same had that same earphones been sold in a jewelry store or were embellished with Swarovski crystals? I guess not.

Whether you notice it or not, the amount of money you’d be willing to pay is more likely to double up.

That is the effect of inferences on the consumers. A simple alteration in the product’s placement makes a huge difference. By merely placing the product in a place that gives an impression of high value, the consumers would shift their perspectives and believe so.

That pair of earphones might serve the same function no matter where it’s located. However, the consumers’ perception of it is likely to change when such inference takes place.

If you want your product to be perceived of high value, next time, make sure it’s placed in an environment that communicates such message.

Failed Products, Why Do They Cost So Much?

There happens to be a lot of products that are launched by prestigious and very well-known brands yearly and yet, they all fail miserably. This is mostly due to a faulty marketing research which often leads to a misunderstanding of the market and results in a mixed up targeting. The faulty marketing research might also include a misunderstanding of the consumers’ habits, perceptions, motivations, spending patterns, or other dimensions as well.

Undergoing a faulty research often creates confusion in the consumers’ minds regarding the brand and its positioning.

At some point, the consumers’ existing perception towards the brand and what it stands for proves to be of a high and significant value. Tampering with it or simply choosing to distort it in any manner does more harm than good and is rather costly on the long run.

When launching a new product, the company should take a lot of things into consideration that are relevant in understanding the consumers. The company needs to always start with the consumer and not the product. The main driver should mainly revolve around the target customers and their existing perception of the brand. When trying to launch a product, the company should try to understand their customers’ needs in order to achieve them and in order to live up to or exceed their expectations.

Having an image of what the brand’s products are supposed to look like in the consumers’ minds sets the stage for the brand’s products’ development later on. Each and every detail of any product has to be coherent with the brand and what it stands for. A brand that resembles rebellion cannot simply launch a product that gives the impression of conformity.

By doing so, it might breach the sentimental contract that has been formed between them and the customer throughout the years. Such act might also create confusion in the customers’ minds which happens to be one of the most consequential things to be avoided.

 In my next blog post, I will talk about a case where a well-known brand launched a product and failed miserably due to a faulty marketing research and to misunderstanding their loyal customers.

What Affects the Consumer ?

Upon responding to a stimulus, had it been through media, ads, or through experiences generated by the society, consumers tend to form their product choices, brand choices, dealer choices, as well as their timing and the amount they’re willing to spend accordingly.

Their product choice refers to the product in which they need like a car or bike. The brand choice refers to which car they want to purchase (ex. Ford or Mercedes). This is affected by the stimuli and by the buyer’s black box that we’ve mentioned earlier. The dealer choice refers to the person or place the consumer aims to get the product from. The latter, timing and amount are specific about buying decisions.

In addition to this, there are a lot of factors that play into the consumers’ minds and affects their decision making processes.

The Black Box Theory

Are We Really Rational?

It was often presented earlier in an economic man model that consumers are rational and always trying to maximise their benefits. However, such method is deemed as too simplistic in terms of understanding the consumers and how they manage to take decisions.

According to the Black Box Model, it was implied that consumers are affected by both internal and external stimuli upon taking decisions. The external stimuli include the marketing mix presented by the company as well as the environmental factors which are present in the society that surrounds them. The internal factors are represented as the “black box” that affects consumer decisions. Such internal factors include the customer’s characteristics (values, beliefs, motivation, etc.) and their decision making process.

The Black Box Model assumes the customers are rational and take their decisions accordingly. However, marketers believe otherwise. This resulted in the belief that the customers’ purchasing behaviour is a mystery or rather a “black box” that is not easily understood by anyone, not even by the consumers themselves. Consumers are often affected by both rational and irrational factors upon taking decisions.

However, in cases like impulse buying, or in terms of choosing a brand over the other, are we actually taking such choices rationally?