Feb 19, 2009
It’s Not About Selling, It’s About Buying
Especially in hard financial times it is important to remind ourselves that marketing is NOT about selling stuff, it’s about giving the participant a reason to buy stuff:
Two things:
- 1. It’s not about selling, it’s about buying.
2. There has to be a reason to buy something, an incentive. The incentive is the brief.
So start using your most important tool: Ask why? According to Charles Tilly, in his book “why?” Toyota has it in it’s strategies to ask why? Five times to get to the core of things.
2 Comments, Comment or Ping
Rob
It absolutely is about getting people to buy rather than selling, but this “ask why” – while valid – does not always get to the heart of things unless the people doing it know how to go beyond the superficial and in my experience, even the people at DIAGEO [who have 'WHY' as one of their official brand building tools, hahahahaha] can’t do it properly in the majority of cases.
EG:
HOW CAN WE GET PEOPLE TO BUY OUR WHISKY
Make it cheap
WHY 1
Because it’s expensive
WHY 2
Because we have a minimum profit %
WHY 3
Because our shareholders want a dividend on their investment
WHY 4
Because that’s why people invest
WHY 5
Because banks don’t pay much interest
Thus the insight is “Whisky sales are impacted due to the financial industries low interest levels”
Of course that’s bollocks, but if a person who isn’t trained to understand real insight and cultural dynamics thinks all they have to do is ‘ask why’ 5 times, this is the sort of “insight” you can end up with.
No wonder marketing is so bad these days … ha
Feb 20th, 2009
helge
Hi Rob, excellent stuff, point taken, agreement in full, moderation is needed, don’t let the hoards loose! :o)
Feb 20th, 2009
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