January 6, 2005
the power thing
When I was just starting out in the ad game, we had this thing we called “the consumer benefit”. It had other names, but it was the thing in the commercial that made you want to buy the client’s product.
“This car makes you look sexier.”
“This powder washes whiter.”
“The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hands.”
“Cheap tickets to Florida for less than $200.”
Sometimes the benfit wasn’t so obvious. So there’d be more emotive reasons to buy.
“Share the dream.”
“Just do it.”
“Think different.”
“Invent.”
Me? I’m less interested in “benefit”, of the rational or emotional kind.
I’m more interested in power.
I’m interested in how your brand makes the customer a more powerful entity.
Nobody cares about your whiter-than-white laundry detergent. They care about power. The sooner you stop pretending otherwise, the easier your path through life will be.
And no, you don’t need a big-shot product– fancy cars, computers, motorcycles etc– to get into the power thing.
All you have to do is think of your brand as not a thing, but as a place. Let’s call it “The Brand Arena”.
The customer walks into the Brand Arena, stays a while, then leaves.
How is the person changed, between entering and leaving? Is there a tangible difference? Has anything worth talking about actually happened? Is there a “Kinetic Quality”?
You tell me.
What really resonated for me in the Hughtrain was ” at the center of every human soul is the intense longing to be closer to God. A brand that can empathize with that is powerful.”
Its a jump though to suggest a brand makes a person a more powerful or kinetic entity.
One lie expressed in advertising is that “she” is a fixed thing that becomes a better fixed thing by interacting with a brand. There must be a way around this. I expect a brand that is expressed while respecting people’s intense longing for the truth of our fluid selves could do quite well.
“Power” is a fairly fluid term.
As is “Fear”.
Hmm the f word. Pls expand.
POWER = convenience? (for certain values of “convenience”)
From a technology standpoint, “power” has always seemed to be in “convenience”- VHS took off more for the fact the media could hold an entire movie, and much less for cost, etc. The iPod and portable music players are all over the place because they’re more of a convenience than a walkman or discman– you get the ten good tracks by the artist instead of having to shuffle through the seven CDs they’re on, burning a comp disk, whatever. Porn built the internet. Cel phones hit that “my life sucks and I don’t want to be alone on the bus” niche dead on. Empowering the end user by inflicting boatloads less bullshit on them with convenience on the side.
I totally see how the Power bit of the Hughtrain can be made to apply to clothing, appliances, electronics, etc. The thing that’s puzzling to me is this– how does one apply the power thing to “awareness” of media (that is, comics, novels, etc.)? Watching webcomics advertise themselves is like watching shitty amateur porn– how to sell the Power thing when the product ultimately kills a few minutes of your day, if that much?
Maybe this is why I’m not in advertising, but I’m really coming up short on ways that, say, the mentioned powder for making things whiter can increase anyone’s power. I mean, I guess it could increase your power over stains, but seriously, for some stuff, I just don’t see that marketing can ever really go beyond instilling name recognition.
How can garbage bags increase my personal power, or how could you even pitch them in such a way? Power over not having the bags rip and spill stuff all over me?
Am I missing something?
I do see where this could apply in the technical arena, or with cars, or suits, or whatever. I’m not seeing that the Hughtrain has universal marketing power.
The power of a brand comes from the company’s sense of purpose.
I think it is possible to be evangelical about a garbage bag.
But you need imagination and a sense of adventure.