Tuning in the tuned out consumer
One of the
biggest problems facing businesses today is consumers’
resistance to marketing. Consumers are busier than ever. There
is a constant barrage of marketing messages from everywhere
around them. They have stopped paying attention.
This major problem can also be viewed as
a major opportunity. Because of consumer resistance to
marketing, there has never been a better time to win record
levels of consumer loyalty and commitment.
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Shell shocked!
The average consumer is targeted by an
astounding 3,000 to 5,000 advertisements a day, in every place
from public restrooms to bus stops, from shopping carts to
pop-ups on their cell phones. No wonder people are doing
everything they can to tune out marketing messages.
Within the first two hours of the opening
of the federal “do-not-call” registry, a quarter of
a million phone numbers were registered. The website was being
hit 1,000 times a second. By the end of four days, that number
grew to more than 62 million.
Consumers are engaged in a high-tech race
against marketing that includes the latest high-tech weapons,
such as spam killers to filter out unwanted e-mail messages,
pop-up blockers to prevent ads from opening windows on their
computer screens when they visit websites, caller ID to screen
phone calls from telemarketers, and video recorders, like Tivo,
that filter out television commercials.
The clutter is growing not only in
marketing, but also in the products and services that are being
marketing. New and different types of businesses are
everywhere, and their shelves are loaded with merchandise.
Surrounded by so much, people find it
more and more difficult to see differences between businesses
that sell the same products or services.
The hierarchy of needs
A recent survey found that 60 percent of
respondents said they didn’t need any more material
possessions. Instead, they’re looking for meaning and
purpose in the material glut.
Additionally, the percentage of Americans
who believe in spiritualism rose from 12 percent in 1976 to 52
percent in 1998.
This doesn’t mean that people want
to give up material things. They’re not going to stop
buying. But they want the intangibles along with the tangible.
They want balance between materialism and spiritual fulfillment
in their lives.
The MasterCard “Priceless”
campaign is the best example of advertising that reflects this
shift in priorities. It successfully shifted the
products’ emphasis away from the stuff the card can buy
and toward the emotional rewards it can bring.
Car companies are moving away from
glamorous shots of cars and towards images of intimate family
scenes with the car in the background.
About 50 years ago, psychologist Abraham
Maslow developed a hierarchy of needs. At the bottom are basic
survival needs, such as food and clothing.
At the next level are security and
safety. Higher still are social needs — community and
family.
And at the top, after all those other
needs are met, come needs related to ego and esteem.
In other words, once all the basic
tangible needs are met, the top priority becomes intangibles.
And the entire marketplace has now reached the top of that
pyramid. Everyone at every level of income just presumes the
tangibles are there. Luxury is the norm.
As a result, intangibles have come to
dominate consumers’ desires. That means the benefits that
drycleaners used to sell, such as good cleaning (stain removal)
and good pressing, no longer sell — they’re taken
for granted.
A question of time management
But this situation provides a great
opportunity for drycleaners. Branding your business for easy
identification by the consumer allows them to choose you over
competitors without having to make a new decision each time
they’re in need of garment care services.
As people feel more and more time
pressure, they are developing strategies for time management.
For example, they speed up, rushing
through activities, like hurrying through a store or
fast-forwarding past the trailers at the beginning of a DVD.
They’re zipping past the marketing messages.
In this environment, marketing must
deliver instantaneous value. It must respect people’s
time, reward people’s time, enrich people’s time,
and give people more time. You need to do this because people
feel they have no time anymore.
Other surveys have found that year after
year, more and more people say they never have enough time. If
offered more money or more vacation, they chose vacation time
by a two-to-one margin.
John Robinson, a professor of sociology
at the University of Maryland, has been studying how people use
their time since 1965. He says that in 1998, for the first time
ever, more people said they were more pressed for time than for
money! That trend is continuing.
Trust
Trust in businesses of all sorts has
declined due to everything from corporate and government
scandals, to sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, to the
terrorist attacks here at home.
The overwhelming majority of people worry
that businesses are too focused on profits to be trusted to
take care of their other responsibilities. And 70 percent feel
that businesses will take advantage of the public if they think
their actions are not likely to be discovered.
Nearly 94 percent say they spend an
average of 87 percent less money with companies they
don’t trust.
When people don’t trust businesses,
they go looking for other ways to get what they need.
Often they look to themselves, like
wearing more casual clothes and washing them at home. This is
where building your business as a solid brand can make the
difference.
Customer evangelism
The flip side of this powerful movement
of consumer resistance is what happens when people get excited
about something positive in the marketplace: they talk about
it.
Word of mouth is probably the single most
powerful sales tool in existence. The problem marketers have is
that no one has successfully figured out how to harness this
natural force.
The most fundamental problem is having
something worth talking about. And, as research has shown,
people talk about what they don’t like more than what
they do like.
Your business “brand” must
have a charisma that stirs people’s passions and
motivates them to tell their friends. Your company must show
that it cares more about its customers than about itself.
The reciprocity principle
You can build a tremendous amount of
trust simply by offering guarantees that actually mean
something, no questions asked.
For example, Hampton Inns promises that
if a customer is dissatisfied in any way, the night’s
stay is free. Circuit City allows customers to return
merchandise without a receipt, which sends a powerful message:
we trust you. This encourages customers, in turn, to trust
Circuit City. And that’s a process called reciprocity.
A classic example of this principle, used
in direct mail, is how the Disabled American Veterans increased
response to their appeals by giving away personalized address
labels.
Initially, they offered to send the
address labels to anyone who made a donation first.
This standard appeal was pulling an 18
percent response. When the address labels were given away, the
response rose to 35 percent.
The lesson? Be generous. Give something
to your customers. It will come back to you a hundred fold.
People want less clutter and more free
time. Branding gives them the trust that your business will
fulfill their needs.
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