Have you ever heard the negative prejudices of a friend or relative in a speech when they talk about consumption, economy and marketing?
Why does it seem that the values of the corporate and marketing world are not, at first glance, compatible with those of ordinary people?
Personally, I have always liked to listen to the opinions of my friends who, over a beer and with a few laughs, call great criticism of the “system”, of the “consumer society”. These are phrases that occur when it happens to overhear people’s speeches at the bar, or in having a coffee with colleagues in the morning before going to work. They say “now the advertisements have invaded everything”, “we can no longer take the crap they throw in your face!”
Indeed, thinking about it, many times they are not completely wrong. Everywhere you go we find irritating advertisements that invade your brain with songs The fact is that many strategies adopted by some companies harass passers-by (even unintentionally), such as street marketing , where the citizen has his view invaded by billboards, or often finds himself to meet teams of young people hired to flyer. We also all know what happens between being thrown in the trash right away, filling up in a bag for months or thrown directly on the street.
Let’s say that the concept of elegance almost always gets lost in the strategies used to propagate an image or a product.
But what differentiates a good marketing strategy from an ineffective one? How can consumers be satisfied without bothering them too much? What is it that attracts people’s attention?
It happens every day that companies spend exorbitant amounts of money trying to push their name in front of others, but is this an ideal tactic in the long run?
I remember Goodby Silverstein & Partners which hired by the California Milk Processor Board put aside the campaigns that the latter had long ago implemented aimed at demonstrating the beneficial properties of milk while competing with the soy industry.
Convincing them to change their strategy, they adopted the iconic phrase “ GOT MILK ? “.
This propelled the dairy industry’s receipts up high… But why? Because the point was no longer to stipulate whether milk was bad or not, but to make sure that people had it at home regardless, therefore treating it in all respects as a basic food.
Steve Jobs blatantly said that good marketing must be based on important values . It is not so much the product itself as the story or the idealized goal that you want to achieve with the help of it.
We intuitively think of a product that constrains the achievement of that goal as little as possible.
Jay Conrad Levinson , in 1984 even spoke of the importance of urban legends as a very useful means to influence citizens, pushing them to buy a good or service. It almost goes to extremes to help demonstrate a really important point, which is the use of a narrative that stands out, that is credible, and that resonates with people’s values.
Obviously, the largest and most important companies have funds or means to carry out projects with the aim of increasing their visibility in the market that other smaller competitors do not always have.
Steve Jobs, who I mentioned earlier, openly admitted numerous times about how much money has been thrown on his company’s image, but in the end he has always faithfully defended the idea that marketing without values and history cannot go very far.
A case that we all know as anomalous is that of Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX , who has always opted for an almost radical approach, but on the other hand, preferring to invest paltry quantities in marketing and throw everything into R&D, concentrating as much as possible the forces of its companies on the quality of products and services, technological innovations and especially on the nobility of their values and purposes, that is to create the best electric cars in the world, to safeguard the atmosphere by reducing emissions and finally to bring the mankind on other worlds .
Fifty years ago we would have called them just dreams. Today, thanks to the ambition and commitment of these companies and similar competitors, they are increasingly becoming a concrete reality.
It is precisely the admiration that people have for these businesses, purposes and values that underlies this relatively indirect marketing approach done verbally by customers and non-customers.
Companies can also continue to smear the walls of the web with waves of ads and advertisements, not respecting what people really want and need from the market. They will continue to make a lot of noise and unfortunately this will certainly negatively influence even more the idea that people have of the methods used in the dissemination of a good product, however this myopic approach will always be correlated with smaller companies and not always well performing.
The importance of a real, good and simple history, a noble purpose and excellent values, which together form the foundations for the formation of a company, will be the vital factors to attract the common sense of the common citizen.
