st learn to ask and find answers to these questions: What do they believe to be true about themselves? What do they believe to be true about the world in general?

Consider laundry soap. We live in an efficient, competitive epoch of commodity products where a soap powder that has made it into the marketplace is assumed to be effective. If it is for sale, “it works.” The problem is that there is a Grand Canyon between a customer’s favored product choice and all the others in a category, and this attachment to a particular product has nothing to do with effectiveness. The products that become part of a consumer’s life do so because the consumer feels an emotional pull towards those products.

Why has Tide remained the market leader? Does everyone who use

Making advertising effective is more difficult today than ever before. To get TV viewers to give a precious second of their attention to a commercial message is beyond daunting — it’s nearly impossible. A commercial that fails to entertain, therefore, has very little chance of tearing a viewer away from a myriad of other distractions.

Remote controls have made it too easy to surf around commercials. And the new TiVo technology, which enables viewers to record favorite programs with commercials automatically edited out, presents a truly frightening prospect for our advertising industry. The question we must ask of advertising is: How do we craft marketing strategies and creative brand messages that prompt viewers to voluntarily surrender their attention to watching a commercial? We might also put it this way: How do we get customers to care?

The importance of that question cannot be understated. It is vastly different and quite superior to the question: “What do we tell the customer?” It brings about a more effective answer because “caring” is an emotional response. A consumer simply hearing some facts (if we can even get them to listen to those facts) is not as engaged. Great advertising must prompt people to care rather than simply understand a list of product attributes. Yet a great deal of advertising today is merely factual.

For the most part, marketing departments have believed that they need a quantifiable product advantage in order to convince a potential customer to switch brands. They ask themselves why the customer should care, and yet they answer this emotional question with a rational benefit. Hmmm.

Most of us have no understanding of the reasons behind our brand selections — as a matter of fact, we don’t need reasons. Oh, sure, when somebody asks us why we choose what we choose, we can and do come up with some rational reasons. We do it because we think we need a rational basis for our purchasing behavior. But really, we don’t. Our actions in the marketplace are almost always intuitive and emotional.

Consider beer purchases. Does anyone believe that Budweiser is the runaway market leader because beer consumers are big fans of Beechwood and Budweiser is “Beechwood Aged?” In other words, do they buy it because of taste? They may say they do, but in blind tasting only the savviest two or three percent of beer drinkers can distinguish any difference between beer brands. If they can taste a difference, they are hard-pressed to name the brand. Beer brand choices are obviously not about taste and rarely about benefit or attributes.

If you want a customer to change brands, you must make them care. You must know what they care about, and it is no surprise that the thing people care about most is themselves — their beliefs, attitudes, convictions. Therefore, you should develop a strategy and execution that speaks to them in an emotional way that connects your brand with their beliefs. This means that you must understand your customer better than your competitors understand your customer. You must learn to ask and find answers to these questions: What do they believe to be true about themselves? What do they believe to be true about the world in general?

Consider laundry soap. We live in an efficient, competitive epoch of commodity products where a soap powder that has made it into the marketplace is assumed to be effective. If it is for sale, “it works.” The problem is that there is a Grand Canyon between a customer’s favored product choice and all the others in a category, and this attachment to a particular product has nothing to do with effectiveness. The products that become part of a consumer’s life do so because the consumer feels an emotional pull towards those products.

Why has Tide remained the market leader? Does everyone who uses

watching a commercial? We might also put it this way: How do we get customers to care?

The importance of that question cannot be understated. It is vastly different and quite superior to the question: “What do we tell the customer?” It brings about a more effective answer because “caring” is an emotional response. A consumer simply hearing some facts (if we can even get them to listen to those facts) is not as engaged. Great advertising must prompt people to care rather than simply understand a list of product attributes. Yet a great deal of advertising today is merely factual.

For the most part, marketing departments have believed that they need a quantifiable product advantage in order to convince a potential customer to switch brands. They ask themselves why the customer should care, and yet they answer this emotional question with a rational benefit. Hmmm.

Most of us have no understanding of the reasons behind our brand selections — as a matter of fact, we don’t need reasons. Oh, sure, when somebody asks us why we choose what we choose, we can and do come up with some rational reasons. We do it because we think we need a rational basis for our purchasing behavior. But really, we don’t. Our actions in the marketplace are almost always intuitive and emotional.

Consider beer purchases. Does anyone believe that Budweiser is the runaway market leader because beer consumers are big fans of Beechwood and Budweiser is “Beechwood Aged?” In other words, do they buy it because of taste? They may say they do, but in blind tasting only the savviest two or three percent of beer drinkers can distinguish any difference between beer brands. If they can taste a difference, they are hard-pressed to name the brand. Beer brand choices are obviously not about taste and rarely about benefit or attributes.

If you want a customer to change brands, you must make them care. You must know what they care about, and it is no surprise that the thing people care about most is themselves — their beliefs, attitudes, convictions. Therefore, you should develop a strategy and execution that speaks to them in an emotional way that connects your brand with their beliefs. This means that you must understand your customer better than your competitors understand your customer. You must learn to ask and find answers to these questions: What do they believe to be true about themselves? What do they believe to be true about the world in general?

Consider laundry soap. We live in an efficient, competitive epoch of commodity products where a soap powder that has made it into the marketplace is assumed to be effective. If it is for sale, “it works.” The problem is that there is a Grand Canyon between a customer’s favored product choice and all the others in a category, and this attachment to a particular product has nothing to do with effectiveness. The products that become part of a consumer’s life do so because the consumer feels an emotional pull towards those products.

Why has Tide remained the market leader? Does everyone who use

mselves why the customer should care, and yet they answer this emotional question with a rational benefit. Hmmm.

Most of us have no understanding of the reasons behind our brand selections — as a matter of fact, we don’t need reasons. Oh, sure, when somebody asks us why we choose what we choose, we can and do come up with some rational reasons. We do it because we think we need a rational basis for our purchasing behavior. But really, we don’t. Our actions in the marketplace are almost always intuitive and emotional.

Consider beer purchases. Does anyone believe that Budweiser is the runaway market leader because beer consumers are big fans of Beechwood and Budweiser is “Beechwood Aged?” In other words, do they buy it because of taste? They may say they do, but in blind tasting only the savviest two or three percent of beer drinkers can distinguish any difference between beer brands. If they can taste a difference, they are hard-pressed to name the brand. Beer brand choices are obviously not about taste and rarely about benefit or attributes.

If you want a customer to change brands, you must make them care. You must know what they care about, and it is no surprise that the thing people care about most is themselves — their beliefs, attitudes, convictions. Therefore, you should develop a strategy and execution that speaks to them in an emotional way that connects your brand with their beliefs. This means that you must understand your customer better than your competitors understand your customer. You must learn to ask and find answers to these questions: What do they believe to be true about themselves? What do they believe to be true about the world in general?

Consider laundry soap. We live in an efficient, competitive epoch of commodity products where a soap powder that has made it into the marketplace is assumed to be effective. If it is for sale, “it works.” The problem is that there is a Grand Canyon between a customer’s favored product choice and all the others in a category, and this attachment to a particular product has nothing to do with effectiveness. The products that become part of a consumer’s life do so because the consumer feels an emotional pull towards those products.

Why has Tide remained the market leader? Does everyone who use

ey do, but in blind tasting only the savviest two or three percent of beer drinkers can distinguish any difference between beer brands. If they can taste a difference, they are hard-pressed to name the brand. Beer brand choices are obviously not about taste and rarely about benefit or attributes.

If you want a customer to change brands, you must make them care. You must know what they care about, and it is no surprise that the thing people care about most is themselves — their beliefs, attitudes, convictions. Therefore, you should develop a strategy and execution that speaks to them in an emotional way that connects your brand with their beliefs. This means that you must understand your customer better than your competitors understand your customer. You must learn to ask and find answers to these questions: What do they believe to be true about themselves? What do they believe to be true about the world in general?

Consider laundry soap. We live in an efficient, competitive epoch of commodity products where a soap powder that has made it into the marketplace is assumed to be effective. If it is for sale, “it works.” The problem is that there is a Grand Canyon between a customer’s favored product choice and all the others in a category, and this attachment to a particular product has nothing to do with effectiveness. The products that become part of a consumer’s life do so because the consumer feels an emotional pull towards those products.

Why has Tide remained the market leader? Does everyone who use

st learn to ask and find answers to these questions: What do they believe to be true about themselves? What do they believe to be true about the world in general?

Consider laundry soap. We live in an efficient, competitive epoch of commodity products where a soap powder that has made it into the marketplace is assumed to be effective. If it is for sale, “it works.” The problem is that there is a Grand Canyon between a customer’s favored product choice and all the others in a category, and this attachment to a particular product has nothing to do with effectiveness. The products that become part of a consumer’s life do so because the consumer feels an emotional pull towards those products.

Why has Tide remained the market leader? Does everyone who uses Cheer wear only color clothes (Cheer has positioned itself as color safe), and do Tide users wear only white shirts to take advantage of the bleach in Tide? If the effectiveness of advertising were truly based on specific advantages of products, then all of us would keep at least two brands of laundry soap on the shelf: Tide for white clothes, Cheer for color clothes. Soap brand managers must believe Tide users don’t care whether color clothes fade. Uh-huh.

Tide has remained on top of the laundry heap because there is an emotional connection to the brand message that extends way back to its emergence as part of the American cultural landscape. Even consumers born in the eighties find comfort in the familiarity of the brand, and it’s not about heritage and habit as much as it is about family and family values. How much are consumers willing to pay for this feeling of connection? Check out the price points next time you are in the supermarket. Consumers don’t pay this premium because of effectiveness or a brand promise of quality. They pay it because they desire a closer connection to their own lives.

Those that steal share make closer connections. Their brands align themselves with the target audience’s precepts and “mean something.”