SELLING WHAT PEOPLE DON’T KNOW THEY WANT
PEOPLE DO JUDGE BOOKS BY THEIR COVERS
In marketing jargon, there’s a well-known selling strategy called “selling the need.” We’ve all seen it. Recall those mouthwash commercials?
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Gingivitis? Who ever heard of gingivitis? But thankfully this company has the solution for a problem you didn’t even know existed ten seconds ago! That’s selling the need. Just because it’s a marketing strategy doesn’t mean it’s a bunch of hooey. A quick lube business may spend a sizable chunk of its advertising dollar convincing you that you need to change your car’s oil regularly. Truth is, you do! Allow me, then, to give my sales pitch as to why your company needs to put its best foot forward when it comes to visually presenting itself to the public.
PEOPLE DO JUDGE BOOKS BY THEIR COVERS
In a small town near where I live there was a video-rental shop that took over an old Ben Franklin department store. The selection of movies was decent, but the new owners were frugal in their use of signage and store fixtures. A hand-painted sheet of plywood became their “shingle,” and broad-tipped markers noted the hours on poster board taped to the door. They soon went out of business. The inventory was bought and the store re-opened under new management. The new store has thrived for years though the product line and pricing has remained much the same. Why?
The issue came down to something called sensation transference. This is a concept coined by one of the great figures in twentieth-century marketing, a man named Louis Cheskin, who was born in the Ukraine at the turn of the century and immigrated to the United States as a child. Cheskin was convinced that when people give an assessment of something they might buy in a supermarket or a department store, without realizing it, they transfer sensations or impressions that they have about the packaging of the product to the product itself. To put it another way, Cheskin believed that most of us don’t make a distinction—on an unconscious level—between the package and the product. The product is the package and the product combined.
One of the projects Cheskin worked on was margarine. In the late 1940s, margarine was not very popular. Consumers had no interest in either eating it or buying it. But Cheskin was curious. Why didn’t people like margarine? Was their problem with margarine intrinsic to the food itself? Or was it a problem with the associations people had with margarine? He decided to find out. In that era, margarine was white. Cheskin colored it yellow so that it would look like butter. Then he staged a series of luncheons with homemakers. Because he wanted to catch people unawares, he didn’t call the luncheons margarine-testing luncheons. He merely invited a group of women to an event. “My bet is that all the women wore little white gloves,” says Davis Masten, who today is one of the principals in the consulting firm Cheskin founded.” [Cheskin] brought in speakers and served food, and there were little pats of butter for some and little pats of margarine for others. The margarine was yellow. In the context of it, they didn’t let people know there was a difference. Afterwards, everyone was asked to rate the speakers and the food, and it ended up that people thought the ‘butter’ was just fine. Market research had said there was no future for margarine. Louis said, ‘Let’s go at this more indirectly.’
Now the question of how to increase sales of margarine was much clearer. Cheskin told his client to call their product Imperial Margarine, so they could put an impressive-looking crown on the package. As he had learned at the luncheon, the color was critical: he told them the margarine had to be yellow. Then he told them to wrap it in foil, because in those days foil was associated with high quality. And sure enough, if they gave someone two identical pieces of bread—one buttered with white margarine and the other buttered with foil-wrapped yellow Imperial Margarine—the second piece of bread won hands-down in taste tests every time. “You never ask anyone, ‘Do you want foil or not?’ because the answer is always going to be ‘I don’t know’ or ‘Why would I?’” says Masten. “You just ask them which tastes better, and by that indirect method you get a picture of what their true motivations are.”
Now the question of how to increase sales of margarine was much clearer. Cheskin told his client to call their product Imperial Margarine, so they could put an impressive-looking crown on the package. As he had learned at the luncheon, the color was critical: he told them the margarine had to be yellow. Then he told them to wrap it in foil, because in those days foil was associated with high quality. And sure enough, if they gave someone two identical pieces of bread—one buttered with white margarine and the other buttered with foil-wrapped yellow Imperial Margarine—the second piece of bread won hands-down in taste tests every time. “You never ask anyone, ‘Do you want foil or not?’ because the answer is always going to be ‘I don’t know’ or ‘Why would I?’” says Masten. “You just ask them which tastes better, and by that indirect method you get a picture of what their true motivations are.”
—Excerpt from BLINK by Malcolm Gladwell
This last statement is key. People take in a lot about your business on an unconscious level. Their decision to spend money with you or move on to a competitor is largely subliminal. Ask someone straight out whether a hand-written sign in the window bothers them. They may shrug their shoulders and say “Never really thought about it” or “Why would it?” But truth is, subliminally they may already have opted to do business with a company that appears more professional.
LESS IS MORE
In 1959 Volkswagen ran a press advertisement which was
later nominated by Advertising Age to be the greatest ad campaign
of the 20th Century. It featured a diminutive shot of a Beetle, a great
deal of white space and a headline: “Think Small.” The ad was the
antithesis of the “pack ’em full of features” car ads of the time and
stood out because of its simplicity, clarity and persuasiveness. It
broke every rule in the book. A couple of years later, a senior vice president named Fred Manley
from US ad agency BBDO wrote a parody around the “Think Small”
advertisement called “Eight Ways to ‘Improve’ An Ad” (more like Eight Ways
to Wreck an Ad). He suggested the following “helpful” rules:
1. Show your product as large as possible
2. Include the product name in the headline
3. Add in some “news” about your product
4. Never use negative words in headlines
5. Show people enjoying the product
6. Make the logo as big as possible
7. Add snazzy copy, bullets, and sales points
8. Always localize ads, e.g. make it American
By following these “golden rules” step-by-step, Manley managed to
change the headline “Think Small” into “New from Volkswagen! A ’63
Sizzler with New Sass and Skee-Daddle”. Compare the two in this animation:
What’s all this got to do with retail? Fifty years later, many well-meaning retailers and ad agencies are still guilty of
“improving” their advertising by cluttering them up. Flip through any newspaper and
you’ll still find ads full of star bursts, FREE, PLUS,
NEW and price, price, price. The ironic thing is by trying so hard to
stand out, these ads instead recede and become wallpaper.
Retailers should follow the advice of the Bauhaus architect, Mies van der Rohe, who coined the phrase “Less Is More.” It might seem counter-intuitive but it’s absolutely true. The more you strip out of an ad, the better you communicate your message. When it comes to advertising your wares, consider the famous Volkswagen ad. Keep it simple. Simplicity sells.
Need more convincing? Check out this humorous video on how to turn something beautifully understated into something horribly complex.
Retailers should follow the advice of the Bauhaus architect, Mies van der Rohe, who coined the phrase “Less Is More.” It might seem counter-intuitive but it’s absolutely true. The more you strip out of an ad, the better you communicate your message. When it comes to advertising your wares, consider the famous Volkswagen ad. Keep it simple. Simplicity sells.
Need more convincing? Check out this humorous video on how to turn something beautifully understated into something horribly complex.
