🍱 Lessons from Haters; Chocolates for Justice; Hacking Behaviour
A summer of great ideas
Hello and welcome back to The Marketing Kable, where I'm taking you along on my journey to discover ideas, voices and campaigns that can inspire us.
something to read
up for a challenge? what if you had to rewrite the legendary 'Favourite Things' song from Sound of Music to include all your favourite products? Or, change the lyrics to talk about your least favourite things?
While these sound like delightful drinking games for us marketers, they can also be tools to get valuable insights from the people who use our products and services. Michael Blanding shows us how, in his article, Pay Attention to your Extreme Customers.
Studying extreme consumers can help create awesome innovations. Basically, the usual way of doing things in market research is to focus on the average consumer and ignore the outliers. But, by looking at the people at the extremes, you can find some real game-changing ideas.
These outliers can give us insights into hidden opportunities that we might not have thought of otherwise. And, even though they might seem a bit weird, their thoughts and behaviours are actually a reflection of what all consumers want.
So, if you're designing a product or devising a strategy, it's a good idea to talk to the super fans and the haters. By finding out what extreme fans love about your product, you can highlight those features for everyone. And, by talking to the haters, you can figure out what needs to be improved.
something to watch
life is like a box of chocolates. What happens when three journalists discover that the world’s largest chocolate manufacturers buy cocoa from plantations that use illegal child labour and modern slavery?
The obvious answer is they tell the world about it.
But the founders of Tony's Chocolonely took it one step further (or several).
They founded an "impact company that makes chocolate, not a chocolate company that makes an impact".
Key Brands make a real impact by
creating awareness
leading by example
inspiring others to act
Everything about the brand reinforces the company's mission, from the unequally divided segments representing the disparity of profit sharing to the brand's manifesto on the inside of the wrappers.
Nicola Matthews, the head of marketing, says that the brand has grown rapidly in the last few years without spending on paid marketing, relying heavily on an earned and owned media strategy.
They're a shining example of standing for what you believe in.
something to listen to
Perchance to sleep. Two evenings ago, I made the mistake of having a Vanilla Latte at around 9 pm. It was creamy and sweet, enticing me with its ability to combat the fire the accompanying Dakgangjeong had set on my tongue. Consequentially, I was still up at 5 am, struggling to fall asleep.
After rounds of futile peace talks with the voices (and vices) in my head, I knocked on Spotify's door. In the wee hours of the morning, I spent a whole hour skipping from one podcast to another, hoping to find something that would either be so boring it would put me to sleep or so dynamic that it would help shed my sleepless grogginess.
Two podcasts matched the latter criteria: BBC Radio 4's You're Dead to Me and The Marketing Millennials by Daniel Murray. Luckily, neither of them was the boring kind.
The first one brings historians and comedians together to explore fascinating events from the past (we even wrote about it on Just One Thing), and the second one brings top marketers on board and picks their brains.
The particular episode I chanced upon was '5 Psychological Biases to Use in Your Marketing Today, With Nancy Harhut'. Nancy Harhut, a behavioural science expert, is the Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at HBT Marketing. In this episode, she outlines 5 shortcuts or default thinking patterns that the human brain uses to make decisions.
I'll tell you about two of these principles, and you can listen to the rest before going to bed tonight:
I owe you: Harhut talked about the reciprocity principle, which refers to how we feel obligated to someone who gives us something for free (even if we don't know them), and how this can be an effective way to initiate an interaction with someone who could possibly benefit from your product. Starting a travel agency? Give people a free guide to the most offbeat museums in a chosen location. Opening a flower shop? Distribute a bunch of free bouquets around the neighbourhood. You get the drift.
I do my thing: This one is called the 'Autonomy bias': give people choices and let THEM choose. Make them feel like they're in control of their purchasing decision (The key here is not to give them too many choices because then they go into analysis paralysis). Us humans love power, and anyone that makes us feel powerless when we're about to buy something is likely to turn us off.
That's it for this edition of The Marketing Kable. If you received this newsletter as a forward, do consider signing up. It's forever free and just for you.
 | A guest post by
|