Crossing the Line – Are You Using Mass Insights to Improve Your Direct Marketing Campaign?
One of the tenets of direct (below the line) marketing is the USP. So, if you are a direct marketer you may be slightly disturbed with the following statement:
…Consumers do not want one characteristic or one USP. Consumers want it all .Why should a consumer have to choose between the longest lasting pain reliever versus the fast acting, or the safest, most gentle, or the cheapest priced? The concept of marketing a USP is not a consumer-centric view.
It comes from ‘Lessons Learned’, downloadable excerpts of John Hallward’s book: Gimme! The Human Nature of Marketing, and, well…it is about above the line advertising…or is it?
Quoting the iconic and USP-absent silhouette iPod ads by Apple, John proposes that emoti-suation, the powerful use of emotional associations to connect a brand with consumers and not the use of a USP, builds brand equity (Aside:according to the Moore & Harvard School of Business, brand equity is a more meaningful metric, long-term, than sales).
Emoti-suation!? Direct marketers take pride in numbers, data and insights coming from n iterations of list, offer and creative …It’s one thing to remove the USP from a TV Ad but can we replace the USP with emotional associations in a direct mail piece without being trite, without crossing the line?
May be it’s time we move from channel agnosticism to marketing agnosticism and make use of the emotional wisdom above the line advertising has built over the last quarter of a century…
Here are a few points direct marketers can play with:
- Emotion is a key element in the decision-making process; example: fear was designed to drive us into action (flee danger)
- Humans evaluate a purchase on emotional pay-offs subconsciously and on rational points consciously
- Humans are sensitive to the IRREGULAR; the human brain will pay less and less attention (desensitized) to the familiar
- Humans cannot cope with too much choice; example: an experiment was set with two shelf units of jam; shelf one had 24 flavours of jam; shelf 2 had 6; consumers were given the choice to pick jam (at same discount) from either shelf; shelf 1 had 60% attraction and 3% purchase; shelf 2 had 40% attraction and 30% purchase
- The more senses engaged in the human brain, the better it files and retrieves information
- Brands that score high on many emotional associations achieve greater commitment in the consumer’s mind
Implications for DM:
- What emotional rewards do we evoke upfront in a direct marketing piece before even moving to the rational portion of the decision, i.e., the call to action?
- If we know that brain (decision) activity filters through an engagement and disengagement mechanism (irregular vs. familiar), can we ignore the importance of testing new formats and creative?
- Can we effectively incorporate archetypes/universal myths in one-to-one communications?
- How well can we link emotional rewards to commodity products?
Case in Point
Linking brand emotional associations to a DM piece is a case-by-case exercise. In terms of engagement, however, direct marketers can make use of the human brain’s preference for the irregular with direct mail’s tactile, visual and yes, even olfactory triggers: unusual shapes and sizes and scented mail. Applications of this principle can also be applied to a multi-drop campaign. As frequency of communication replaces reach (due to better targeting and the need to be relevant), the irregular will play a key role in ensuring your 2nd or 3rd drop will not end up in the recycle box.
