N D Brown
There is an interesting marketing strategy many businesses over look.
Every business does something unique. Something competitors aren’t doing or can’t do; something allowing that business – your business – to be demonstrably different than all competitors. It should be a critical difference that can be explained in ten seconds or less. That is about all the time a prospective customer will give you to catch their attention.
But there is more.
In past articles I have discussed some of the critical things every business should know about marketing.
Staring with knowing the demographic profile of current customers and prospects. Knowing what the competition is doing to sell its products and prevent prospects from buying yours. Knowing the emotional triggers your customers and prospects use when making a purchase decision. Knowing the look of your product and if it sells the value you want customers to see. Knowing the pricing range that will demonstrate the value of your product.
There is another strategy that is often over looked.
Pre-empt the truth.
No, it is not about bending facts, or little white lies about a product, leave that to politicians. This is about using cold hard facts about your product or the process that makes it your product.
An interesting story about truth happened around the turn of the 20th century. One of advertising legends, Claude Hopkins, took a tour of the Schlitz brewery. At the time the Schlitz brand was eighth in beer sales and their share was dropping.
Today beer is sold in disposable bottles and cans, but not then. Beer was delivered to bars two ways: In barrels stored in coolers and served ‘on tap’ glass by glass or in returnable glass bottles.
Each brand had its own bottle shape and color and could be drunk at the bar or taken home. Each empty bottle was returned to the brewery, refilled and sent back out again.
Mr. Hopkins had done his homework and knew how beer was brewed. As he toured the brewery with Schlitz executives, he watched and asked about each step in the complicated process.
He learned Schlitz beer was cooled in rooms with filtered air to keep its purity.
He learned it was filtered through wood pulp. He saw that the shiny brass and copper brewing equipment was cleaned twice a day; that each bottle was cleaned four times to prevent any kind of contamination. The executives explained how Schlitz used pure artesian water and aged the beer for six months before distribution. Schlitz was being brewed from an original yeast cell that was the result of more than 1,200 experiments.
Mt Hopkins was impressed. Every other beer was advertising purity and customers didn’t seem to care.
When Mr. Hopkins asked why Schlitz wasn’t advertising this complicated process the executives said, “Well all brewers use pretty much the same process.”
“But they aren’t telling anyone!” Hopkins said.
Schlitz changed its advertising to explain why they could call Schlitz a pure beer. They told the Schlitz story.
It was the truth for all brewers. Schlitz preempted all other brewers from explaining their process. No brewer could, or would, or should say, “Me, too.”
As you would guess Schlitz jumped to a tie with number one in months.
A few years back I worked with the Houston Post. It was the city’s morning paper. The Chronicle was the evening paper. The circulation for both papers was fairly close. For a number of logistical reasons the Chronicle gave up its afternoon edition and switched to become a morning paper.
The Post circulation dropped. The Chronicle had deeper pockets and ran more news than the Post and carried more features. The Post had lost its “only paper in the morning” position.
I helped develop a campaign that positioned the Post as Today’s Paper.
Of course the Chronicle also published an edition every day. Both papers covered pretty much the same stories but the Post campaign pre-empted the truth by making readers think if they subscribed to the Post, they would receive the latest news. The campaign also pre-empted the Chronicle from commonly used phrases: “I saw it in today’s paper.” “The scores you want are in today’s paper.” “Did you see that story in today’s paper?”
The campaign repositioned the Post as a more current, more modern, more with it newspaper.
So if the campaign was such a success where is the Post today?
That would be a story for another article!
A marketing campaign I helped develop for Victoria Bank & Trust used the same pre-emption strategy.
VB&T was a small bank with branches in Texas towns, of which many of us have never heard. VB&Ts customers lived simple lives in some of Texas’ most insular communities. These are the small towns where everyone actually does know everyone else’s name.
The bank was very nervous. The onslaught of the nationally known banks coming to town and offering a wide selection of what seemed like attractive products and services were knocking on the doors of VB&Ts customers.
Our research showed banking customers were just not impressed with what the big national banks offered. They wanted simple banking. Of course the big nationals all offered the same simple banking Victoria Bank & Trust did but they were to busy blowing their horns about how up to date they were.
The campaign line of, “Banking. Pure and simple.” pre-empted the big national’s exotic and state of the art banking system. It answered what customers wanted and told a story about why VB&T banking would be more like them.
The campaign worked. New accounts grew by over 20 percent. Deposits grew by more than 30 percent. Loans jumped over 10 percent.
VB&T held off the onslaught until it grew so large the big boys had to buy them.
Your small business is probably doing something all your competitors do. If your customers only knew what you were doing they would probably be impressed.
As you lay out your marketing plan look for the story that is behind why you are doing what you are doing.
All of us love a story. Everyone and every company has one. Tell yours.
N D Brown
Principal
brownchild ltd inc
3754 Sunset \Houston TX 77005
713 807 9000 cell 713 822 8370
www.brownchild.com
