Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?: And Other Provocations, 2006-2012 (22 page)

One reason so many big ideas come from small organizations is that there is far less fear of change at the top. One mistake board members and shareholders make is that they reward the scared but hyper-confident CEO, instead of calling him on the carpet as he rages at change.

When I first encountered surfing, I was scared of it. It looks cool, but an old guy like me can get hurt. A patient instructor allayed my fears until I was willing to get started. When you first start out, the things you think are important are actually irrelevant, and it’s the stuff that you don’t know is important that gets you thrown into the ocean. Finally, and only then, was I smart enough to actually learn.

I’m bad at surfing now, but at least I know why.

Comfort the frightened, coach the clueless, and teach the uninformed.

Madécasse has a lot going for it. It’s delicious chocolate. It’s made in Africa (the only imported chocolate made on the continent with local beans). The guys who make it are doing good work and are nice as well.

The question I asked them was, “does your packaging do its job?”

I don’t think the job of packaging is to please your boss. I think you must please the retailer, but most of all, attract and delight and sell to the browsing, uncommitted new customer.

Let me take you through the reasoning, because I think it applies to your packaging as well.

We start with this: if I’ve already purchased and liked your product, the packaging isn’t nearly as important. I’m talking here about packaging as a sales tool for converting browsers into buyers. (If you’re already a buyer, all I need to do is remind you what we look like.) If word of mouth or other factors are at work, your package matters a lot less. But for a company this size, in this market, the package matters a lot.

Now, among people who haven’t bought, but might, understand
that every one of them starts with a worldview. What are the beliefs and expectations and biases they have about the world?

In this case, it’s about someone in the market for high-end chocolate. If your worldview is, “Hershey’s is the best, it reminds me of my childhood,” then I’d argue that this $4 bar isn’t for you no matter what they do with the package.

Perhaps you believe, “All that matters is how it tastes, and great chocolate looks a certain way,”

or perhaps, “I care about the origin of what I buy,”

or perhaps, “I want something out of the ordinary, unlike anything I’ve had before,”

or perhaps, “Chocolate is like wine. I am interested in vintages and varietals,”

or maybe, “Chocolate should be fun. Enough with the seriousness.”

As you can see, no package can optimize for all of these people. You can compromise your packaging, try to appeal to everyone, muddy your brand promise, and hide your story. I think that’s sort of what the existing packaging does and I’m not sure it’s smart.

The alternative is to focus not on ALL the people in the market, but on just a few. Winning hands-down with 25% is plenty in this market, and perhaps in your market, too.

You could figure out how to tell the
delicious
story, by referencing (copying the style of) other products in other categories that are already seen as delicious, at least by this audience.

You could tell the
snobby varietal handmade
story, and that’s been done many times as well.

Or you could tell a story that is yours and yours alone.

For example, the Madécasse story about
made by Africans in Africa
is very powerful, at least as powerful as fair trade, if not more. (They keep four times as much money in Africa by selling chocolate bars as they would if they just sold cocoa beans to other companies.)

If that’s true, then why not put your workers on the label? Big beautiful pictures that would be an amazing juxtaposition against all the other abstract stuff in the store. Tell me the story of the worker on the back of the package. Make each one different and compelling. Packaging as baseball card. I wouldn’t put a word on the front, just the picture. Now
I not only eat something that tastes good, but I feel good. You’ve made it personal. The story on the back is about a real person, living a better life because I took the time to buy her chocolate instead of someone else’s. When I share the chocolate, I have something to say. What do you say when you give someone a chocolate bar? This package gives you something to say.

Or be fun and funny. Make the product itself almost a bumper sticker, something worth buying and talking about.

The two elements that must come together are:

• The story you can confidently tell and
  
• The worldview the buyer tells herself
  

When those align, you win.

This is the chasm of the new marketing.

The marketing department used to be in charge of talking. Ads are talking. Flyers are talking. Billboards are talking. Trade shows are talking.

Now, of course, marketing can’t talk so much, because people can’t be easily forced to listen.

So the only option is to be in charge of doing. Which means the product, the service, the interaction, the effluent and other detritus left behind when you’re done.

If you’re in marketing and you’re not in charge of the doing, you’re not going to be able to do your job.

… then do marketing.

You can learn finance and accounting and media buying from a book. But the best way to truly learn how to do marketing is to market.

You don’t have to quit your job and you don’t need your boss’s permission. There are plenty of ways to get started.

If you see a band you like coming to town, figure out how to promote them and sell some tickets (posters? Google ads? PR?). Don’t ask, just do it.

If you find a book you truly love, buy 30 and figure out how to sell them all (to strangers).

If you’re 12, go door to door selling fresh fruit—and figure out which stories work and which don’t.

Set up an online business. Get a candidate you believe in elected to the school board.

The best way to learn marketing is to do it.

Taxi drivers in New York were worried about adding the ability to accept credit cards in their cabs. The fee (5% or so) would cost them too much, they said.

It turns out that tips are up, way up. Taxi drivers are actually making far more money now.

Why? Because most of the card-reading machines offer a shortcut for the tip: $2, $3, or $4.

You can decide to be a cheapskate and hit the $2 button. Except …

Except that if you had paid cash, you probably would have tipped 75 cents for that $4.25 ride. It takes a few more clicks to type in 75 cents, and hey, $2 is the lowest and it’s a more “normal” amount.

It’s a three-second decision that happens over and over. People really like cues.

People are moved by stories and drama and hints and clues and discovery.

Logic is a battering ram, one that might work if your case is overwhelming. Walmart won by logic (cheap!), but you probably won’t.

One of the accepted holy grails of building an organization is that you should fill a need. Fill people’s needs, they say, and the rest will take care of itself.

But … someone might know that they need to lose some weight, but what they demand is potato chips.

Someone might know that they need to be more concerned about the world, but what they demand is another fake reality show.

As my friend Tricia taught me, this contradiction is brought into sharp relief when you’re doing social enterprise work in the developing world. There are things that people vitally need … and yet providing it is no guarantee you’ll find demand.

Please don’t get confused by what the market needs. That’s something you decided, not them.

If you want to help people lose weight, you need to sell them something they demand, like belonging or convenience, not lecture them about what they need.

Ideas spread when people choose to spread them. Here are some reasons why:

1. I spread your idea because it makes me feel generous.
   
2. … because I feel smart alerting others to what I discovered.
   
3. … because I care about the outcome and want you (the creator of the idea) to succeed.
   
4. … because I have no choice. Every time I use your product, I spread the idea (Hotmail, iPad, a tattoo).
   
5. … because there’s a financial benefit directly for me (Amazon affiliates, MLM).
   
6. … because it’s funny and laughing alone is no fun.
   
7. … because I’m lonely and sharing an idea solves that problem, at least for a while.
   
8. … because I’m angry and I want to enlist others in my outrage (or in shutting you down).
   
9. … because both my friend and I will benefit if I share the idea (Groupon).
   
10. … because you asked me to, and it’s hard to say no to you.
    
11. … because I can use the idea to introduce people to one another, and making a match is both fun in the short run and community-building.
    
12. … because your service works better if all my friends use it (email, Facebook).
    
13. … because if everyone knew this idea, I’d be happier.
    
14. … because your idea says something that I have trouble saying directly (AA, a blog post, a book).
    
15. … because I care about someone and this idea will make them happier or healthier.
    
16. … because it’s fun to make another teen snicker about prurient stuff we’re not supposed to see.
    
17. … because the tribe needs to know about this if we’re going to avoid an external threat.
    
18. … because the tribe needs to know about this if we’re going to maintain internal order.
    
19. … because it’s my job.
    
20. I spread your idea because I’m in awe of your art and the only way I can repay you is to share that art with others.
    

Should you invest in TV, radio, billboards, and other media for which you can’t measure whether your ad works? Is an ad in
New York
magazine worth 1,000 times as much as a text link on Google? If you’re doing the comparison directly, that’s how much extra you’re paying if you’re only measuring direct Web visits.

One school of thought is to measure everything. If you can’t measure it, don’t do it. This is the direct marketer’s method and there’s no doubt it can work.

There’s another thought, though: most businesses (including your
competitors) are afraid of big investments in unmeasurable media. Therefore, if you have the resources and the guts, it’s a home run waiting to be hit.

Ralph Lauren is a billion-dollar brand. Totally unmeasurable. So are Revlon, LVMH, Donald Trump, Andersen Windows, Lady Gaga, and hundreds of other mass-market brands.

There are two things you should never do:

1. Try to measure unmeasurable media and use that result to make decisions. You’ll get it wrong. Sure, some sophisticated marketers get good hints from their measurements, but it’s still an art, not a science.
   
2. Compromise on your investment. Small investments in unmeasurable media almost always fail. Go big or stay home.
   

And if you’re selling unmeasurable media? Don’t try to sell to people who are obsessed with measuring. You’ll waste your time and annoy the prospect at the same time.

A friend wanted to buy Dr. Dre’s headphones. They list for about $300.

Any audiophile can tell you that they sound like $39 headphones. Instead, consider a pair of $300 Grado headphones. We can prove they sound better!

But of course, that’s not the question. It’s not what sounds better, it’s what’s worth it.

The Dre headphones come with admiring glances at no extra charge. They come with self-esteem built in. You can argue that this is a worthless feature in a device designed to reproduce sound accurately, but you’d be wrong. After all, the whole reason you’re listening to music in the first place is to feel good. To be happy. If the Dres make you happy, and your happiness is worth $300, then they’re worth it, no?

For others (put me in that category), headphones are evaluated differently. I get more happiness knowing that I didn’t fall for a clever marketing ploy, and I buy the headphones that I believe
sound
better. Of
course, that’s a clever marketing ploy, too—persuading me that better sound is worth this much. But don’t tell anyone. That would make me feel manipulated.

A recent study found that placebos work even if the patient is told by the doctor that the drug they’re taking has no “real” medicine in it.

Huh?

We’ve come to understand that the placebo effect is real. If we believe we’re going to get better, perform better, make the sale, etc., it often happens that we do. That’s because the brain is the single best marketing agent when it comes to selling ourselves something. If we think we’re going to get better, we’re much more likely to actually get better.

So then why do clearly labeled placebos work?

Because of the process. The ritual. The steps we go through to remember to take them, to open the bottle, to get the water, to swallow. Over time, we don’t remind ourselves so much about what’s in the pill, and we remind ourselves a lot that we’re taking significant action.

This is one reason Disney makes you wait in line for a ride even if the park is empty. Why a full restaurant is more fun than an empty one, even if you know the food is precisely the same.

Marketers ostensibly know this, but it seems as though most organizations still act as though they’re selling pencils to accountants.

We’re complicated. I hope that’s okay with you, because like it or not, you’re not going to make people simple.

“How’s the wine?”

You really can’t answer that question out of context. Compared to what? Compared to a hundred-dollar bottle? Not so good. Compared to any other $12 bottle? Great!