"The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us."
The most pervasive and limiting metaphors in business are the ones that compare customers to territory, targets, fish and eyeballs. We talk and write about "capturing" marketshare and "retaining" customers.
I've discovered a useful metaphor that helps reorient business people around the new realities of a world awash in choice, information and advertising clutter. Here's how it goes:
Picture your brand - what people expect from you - as a magnet. And picture your audience as iron filings. (Please bear with me.) Now, you could say that you - the magnet - cause the iron filings to move towards you, with such assets as your reputation, packaging, advertising, pricing, distribution strength, sales skill, etc. Or . . . you could say that the iron filings value movement towards you.
What's the difference?
Scientifically, there is no difference. (Although a recent article in The Boston Globe contends that what one atom does influences what others might do, and thus atomic physics may be as helpful as psychology when it comes to understanding mass behavior). Anyway . . . there is a huge metaphorical difference!
When you believe that you cause people to move towards you, it implies certainty. And so, you continue on your merry way, pouring resources into irrelevant activities and tweaking stuff that people may not truly care about (think GM, US Air, Polaroid, etc.). But when you believe that people value movement towards you, it implies preference. And preferences are changing in the marketplace all of the time.
So forget about capturing and retaining customers. Instead, get creative about how to continuously attract them and their friends with a compelling and evolving reputation, as well as packaging, advertising, pricing, distribution options, sales skills, etc. Today brand is a verb, not a noun.
Note: With regards to "a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths," I'll be attacking some branding "truths" all day tomorrow while hosting the excellent 1-800-CEO-READ blog. Please stop by and join in on the fun.
Posted August 17, 2005
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Tom is timely, thought provoking and all about the new brand vision packaged as a Seinfeld stand up. I went to school on his ideas.
Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com and CEO, Eons.
When Tom Asacker writes, I read. Opportunity Screams is the right message for the right time.
Tom Peters
Good point. When nearly everyone is a "me too," it's easy to apply the tired hunting/military metaphors to business. Do something original, that nobody else is doing (or in a way nobody else is doing), and you have no competition. You are like a beacon that attracts customers who are floating out there in a sea of mediocrity, sensing for value.
Posted by: Michael Martine | August 17, 2005 at 07:52 AM
this sounds so obvious, that i find it hard to identify the originality in this post - except maybe for the point that corporate marketing reality STILL is based on the old thinking of manipulating customers. - we only need to throw enough money into the battle and we'll get them!
but this old thinking is losing ground by the minute.
what are the remaining pillars of marketing, i ask. no idea. the discipline's basic assumtion of manipulating markets has always been so nerdy and luckily has proved so wrong long term speaking, that it is almost hard to think of a future of the term "marketing" in - let's say - 10 to 20 years from now.
by the way - in this context i really like chris kenton's blog marketonomy. he has such a hard and honest struggle in rethinking and reshaping marketing from the inside of marketing-thinking...
personally i do not think that one can change a paradigm by digging deeper into the same. but i also feel that the future needs people like chris - questioning the discipline from the inside, stripping it down mercilessly and with a strange kind of love for this rotten old coat.
speaking of rotten coats. germany is having elections this september and our still-chancellor schroeder is again attacking the us for his personal populistic convenience. not that i expect too much from schroeder's opponents - the chistian democrats under angela merkel - either (politics are changing much slower than management paradigms, and we thought that was slow. :)) - but: gerhard schroeder, as always in a rally, thinks that bush-bashing will activate quite some votes towards his favour.
not that i am a heartfelt fan of your g.w. - but this simply stupid and hopefully not effective tactics of our german show-chancellor do fill me with disgust.
stangely enough schroeder's personality - his brand dna - has something almost clinton- or kennedy like - so that one might be tempted to forgive him his sidesteps. he has got a lust for power and yet acts like the young college boy. for some strange reason, he has got something that works as a projection board of eternal promise. he communicates a strange kind of potential...
but - sincerely - he is not worth a damn euro-cent and he has had enough time to prove it.
so, as i am no german government official i am not gonna appologize for my chancellor - and i do not envy our diplomats right now - but let me tell you: i do hope that this unworthy theatre play comes to its end this september.
Posted by: jens | August 17, 2005 at 02:05 PM
While I appreciate the argument that value will inherently bring customers, it doesn't happen all the time. The fact that Wal-Mart constantly wins customers has as much to do with the economy as it does with their approach of pricing. You can build the best appliances, but when times are rough (as they are now in our current recession), customers will gravitate to whomever gives them the best price. Sometimes value is not so much quality as it is the best bang for the buck.
So for a business to disregard customer retention, and focus entirely on brand would probably be a mistake. Brand works great for recognition, awareness, placement, and advertisement. Value unfortunately is much more fickle, and changes daily. In that respect Asacker is dead on.
As a preference, Value moves with the moment and can be influenced as such by a business. But a business' customers should not be willingly thrown away for a concept. At the end of the day, it's people that sell products and services, not concepts.
Posted by: Tom Lutzenberger | October 05, 2008 at 09:53 PM