Marketing Rant

Mistake #2: Using A “Vitamin”, Not A “Pill” Marketing Strategy

Granted, some people will be responsive to a promise of better environment for our children and grand children. But most folks will just ignore it since there is no immediate pain relief or gratification for them.

Every single product or service in the world either addresses an immediate pain (a “pill”) or mitigates a future risk (a “vitamin”). When it comes to marketing, pills work and vitamins generally don’t.

And “better environment” is a “vitamin”.

Mistake #1: “Me Too” or “We’re Just As Good” Marketing Strategy

Now then, let’s assume that the products made from recycled materials are as good and as safe as the ones made from new materials.

In this case a proposal to spend more money on educating the consumer (you and me) about this fact comes from a desire to build a “recycled materials brand”. (Hey, look at this little triangle: It’s a recycling logo!)

The problem with this type of “brand” though is that these products are only “as good” as — and not any better than — other products. Which means the “brand” has no foundation, and no amount of marketing (i.e., tax money) will be able to fix that.

“As good” just simply won’t cut it. No matter how much money you throw at it.

Yet another huge marketing flop on the part of the government.

The Business Review writes that “blue boxes have become just another garbage collection program”, only because people like buying products made from… (surprise!) new materials!

People generally consider products that contain recycled materials being of inferior quality compared to similar products made of all new materials.

The paper indicates that that is a “popular misconception” and that more money (i.e. my and your tax money) should be spent on educating – me and you – on the fact that products made from recycled content are as good as those made from virgin materials.

This begs a question: If these products are as safe and as good – why not drop this logo altogether? And if they are not as good or safe, then why are we talking about spending more of our money on deceitful propaganda?

Whatever the case, there is a marketing lesson (or two) to be learned. And I will discuss them in my future posts.

And by the way, in case you weren’t sure, the answer to the question in the title of this article is yes: According to the same article, your car you are driving is 80% recycled.

Even the glossy magazines now “get” it.

People don’t buy magazines because of their “brand”. They buy them only for what these magazines promise them on the cover.

How about this for a magazine name: S H - - E? Apparently, by thoroughly examining the cover you can deduce that the magazine’s name is SHAPE, but the full 2 letters (!) of a 5-letter brand are hidden by a huge photo of a girl in a bikini.

THE BRAND IS NOT IMPORTANT! Even if you are a magazine.

Or how about P E - - L E. Or C O S M - - - L I T A N.

These are all magazines that are predominantly sold at the cash counter at a grocery store. They do offer subscriptions but to a much smaller extent than other magazines.

In those few minutes that you are staying in line at the cash counter, these magazines need to do the following:

1. interrupt you with a picture,
2. engage with the headlines,
3. promise a type of content that would be useful and interesting to you, and
4. make you reach out with your hand, take a copy and put it on the conveyor belt.

And “brand” won’t be of much help there.

So study the covers and steal as many ideas for your business as you can. (And no I don’t mean the bikini girl, I mean headlines).

Yup it is really mind-boggling to see how many blogs there are.

So here’s my contribution to the English language, the new word: “mind-blogging”, which means “having an overwhelmingly huge amount of information comparable only to all the blogs in the world combined.”

On the other side, with the amount of email sp@m hitting our inboxes every day, blogging should’ve become much bigger by now.

Welcome to my Marketing Rant, the “dumping ground” for thoughts or useful things that are related to marketing and that I didn’t have a chance or didn’t want to turn into something a tad more structured.

See you soon,

Alex Makarski

bizLeverage