The best marketers don’t just create a brand; they create a universal message that seamlessly crosses borders and effortlessly charms wildly different cultural groups.
In this three-minute emotional marketing lesson video, emotional marketing expert Graeme Newell reveals how to appeal to very different customer groups, while still maintaining a tightly focused brand message.
Transcription text of the 3-Minute Emotional Marketing Lesson Video “Marketing a Brand: How Car Advertising Creates Universal Brand Appeal” by Graeme Newell, emotional marketing researcher, emotional marketing speaker and customer loyalty researcher, and consultant at 602 Communications.
Hi I’m Graeme Newell. Today, how to make your brand work with very different customer groups. Big brands with big product lines can have big branding problems. Toyota’s brand must find a way to appeal to almost everyone. It must go highbrow, stroking the egos of African American men.
“You’ve been influenced by man. But defined by none. A masterful fusion of functionality and design”
But then, that same Toyota brand must be warm and approachable.
“With space for eight, and the exclusive sliding front and center seat, families fit perfectly in the Toyota sienna”
And then, the Toyota brand must crack open a tall can of testosterone.
“So this half-ton has got the most torque, six-speed tranny with tow-haul mode”
All these wildly different customer attitudes are enough to give any brand whiplash.
“Put that in your pipe and smoke it”
That’s why big brands with huge product lines, often brand with these universal human emotions. Virtually everyone in the world feels these emotions. This includes feelings like smart.
“There’s smart, and there’s k-mart smart”
Most everyone in the world believes their intelligence is above average.
“We can build a smarter planet, smarter towns, smarter cities”
Because most of us so desperately want to be seen as “the smart one,” Dunkin Donuts can convince us that…
“It just may be the smartest choice you make all day. I’m on ten”
Sure, some of your customer may be dumb as a post, but that doesn’t matter. It’s what your customers believe about themselves that counts. Attractive is another universal emotion. Sure, we may be a bit homely but most of us secretly believe those fashion models would have a hard time resisting our charms. Most of us also believe we’re bold and brave, that’s what Chevrolet uses to brand the Sonic so it appeals to young demos….
(Music)
And that brand feeling of brave and bold, also works perfectly with the completely different demo of middle-aged men.
“But you do realize, that when an opportunity is missed, it might not come back.”
And as that middle-age man boldly marches forward and steps into his destiny, he knows he has found an automobile that matches his own incredible daring. So remember, if your brand has many different products that must appeal to many different customer groups, universal emotions are one of the easiest way to build a brand connection. I’m Graeme Newell and that’s emotional marketing.
Marketing a Brand So It Has Impact
When marketing a brand, all too often marketers end up just focusing on one or two small demographics. They slave away, marketing a brand to small groups, when they could be expanding their reach to all sorts of new, exciting areas. In order to stay competitive, marketers should always be on the lookout for how their product marketing plan can be tweaked to include as many groups of people as possible. Today, I’m going to talk about how to market a product so it will appeal to all sorts of wildly different groups of people.
How to Market a Product to Almost Anyone
So you’re stuck with having to market your product to not just families, but single, middle-aged men, and young, African-American women. Marketing a brand to this many different groups sounds impossible, but it’s not. The trick to marketing a brand to this many people is simple: you don’t focus on any particular group, but rather an emotion. Every product marketing plan should include what their customers want to feel when they use the product. This feeling could be smart, courageous, or sexy. When considering how to market a product to many different groups, it’s important to remember that emotions are often times universal feelings, common across many age, gender, and racial barriers. For instance, try injecting the emotion of “smart” into any product marketing plan. Chances are, everyone will respond positively. Why? Simply, everyone wants to be smart, and everyone believes that they are a little smarter than the next guy or gal.
Marketing a Brand to Everyone
Creating a universal message is the cornerstone to any good product marketing plan. By getting out of the business of marketing to a single group of people and moving into marketing to a state of mind, or an ideal, you are marketing a brand to many more people than was possible before, but are still doing it in a focused and effective manner. This also solves the problem of how to market a product to, say, both young and old. A young man is going to want to feel sexy, so it makes sense when marketing a brand to young men to make him feel sexy. But at the same time, when marketing a brand to, say, middle aged men, you can use the same branding techniques. This is how two very different demographics can be reached using the same emotional content.
Updating Your Product Marketing Plan
So take a look at your product marketing plan, does it include a lot of goals for tightly-regulated age and gender and racial profiles, or does it look past those things and hit on what really makes people tick – their emotions. Use these universal emotions for more success at marketing a brand to a wide variety of audiences with equal effectiveness. When considering how to market a product to many people, using emotional branding is the only option
So to recap:
- You can market a product to essentially anyone as long as you attach that product to a powerful emotion or feeling
- Marketing a brand should always start with the feeling your customers want to feel, not their label
- Spruce up your product marketing plan by changing focus to emotions, not demographics