Market What`s Meaningful

market what’s meaningful®
Market What’s Meaningful
®
to drive more profitable relationships
Lori Colman, Co-CEO and Founder
Liz Brohan, Co-CEO and President
Gina Miller, Vice President, Director of Customer Experience
What You’ll Learn
The most important question organizations should be asking
The role of brand values and personality
The vital importance of research and co-creation
Dear Executive,
Today’s chaotic marketing environment barely allows us to take the time
to breathe, let alone explore a fresh approach to conducting business. But
here, in the next few pages, you’ll discover why we need to do just that—to
deliver a fusion of value and meaning far beyond traditional customer-centric
strategies. It’s an opportunity to get to the heart of why your company exists,
for whom you exist, and what experiences you must deliver to gain and keep
customers. Welcome to …
Market What’s Meaningful
®
It’s never been more important to fold your business around your most
valued customers like bubble wrap around a fine crystal vase. And it’s even
more critical for your business to find a way to be a company that customers
seek out.
To accomplish this, your focus needs to shift to marketing what is most
meaningful about your brand, product or service. That is, you must understand
and define the meaningful experiences that appeal to people on a deeply
emotional level. The kind of emotional experiences that tie a customer to
a brand, and move them to share their experiences socially, exponentially.
By gaining more intimacy through emotional connections with customers,
you’ll experience more profitable relationships.
Employing this approach nets benefits well beyond the marketing function.
It drives business strategy and internal brand development, connects sales
and marketing departments, and enables cultural shifts enterprise-wide,
starting with the executive team.
We hope you’ll enjoy learning more about this new way to think.
Best,
Lori Colman
Liz Brohan
© 2011 Colman, Brohan & Davis, Inc.
CBD market what’s meaningful
®
Market What’s Meaningful® to drive more profitable relationships
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Market What’s Meaningful.
When it gets right down to it, people buy things
and perform well in their jobs because they want
to feel—friendship, connection, acceptance,
importance, joy, excitement—all that it is to be alive.
This is what being meaningful requires … providing
experiences that help people connect with and
bring significance to their being. The list of feelings
and sensations that people want to experience is
long and rich in relationship-building opportunities.
People want social and professional currencies in
order to feel more meaningful themselves. To be
respected for their intelligence and have a way to
feed it. To live a long time and secure the well-being
of their families. To dispel a sense of loneliness or
isolation, to seek joy in giving, and to find rebirth
in the novel or luxurious. This is far from all that
they desire, but whatever it is they want, they want
it on their own terms.
You can’t blame today’s consumer or business
buyer for being elusive. We marketers chase them
everywhere, even into restrooms, taxicabs, and
amusement parks. We clamor for their attention
every second of every day. We’ve invaded their
space and taken up their time. In doing so, we’ve
trained them to tune us out. “Don’t call us, we’ll call
you” is what they’ve been saying to us for a long time.
If companies truly do want to
differentiate and engage their
markets, the only path is to be
what buyers want them to be.
Relevant. Valuable. Meaningful.
But is this the way it has to be?
When people don’t engage with companies, it is
because they have too few reasons to do so. Story
lines that center on end-benefit, product quality and
functional needs, though necessary, are exhausted
in many a brand space and product category.
Buyers crave something more. Something to fill a
void. Spoiled by choice, they increasingly seek out
brands that reflect unique principles and qualities,
because they are often fulfilling needs well beyond
the possession of a thing.
Serving these emotional needs is what companies
truly exist for. Do you really know the deep-seated
desires you are currently fulfilling? Are you adequately
articulating how you fulfill them? Are your marketing
activities and processes creating the experiences
people want? Do you wish to know what other
needs you’re leaving on the table?
Price, convenience and quality aren’t enough to
keep them. They want meaning, too. If companies
truly want to differentiate and engage their markets,
the only path is to be what buyers want them to be.
Relevant. Valuable. Meaningful.
CBD market what’s meaningful
®
Market What’s Meaningful® to drive more profitable relationships
3
Bring Passion and Compassion Back.
Business is conventionally a dispassionate
practice, but it didn’t start out that way. The earliest
merchants knew their buyers quite intimately, and
the rituals of relating and haggling were a process
both parties had a good deal of skin in. The
social aspect of the transaction was anticipated.
News and gossip were traded as well as goods.
Merchants knew and asked about families; they
would discover what their buyers needed and
actively search it out. They were highly visible and
connected community members.
But through the centuries, all this changed.
Personalized commerce gave way to scalable
horizontally targeted businesses that operated in an
“us/them” framework. Organizations built systems,
processes, and cultures to perpetuate the distance
between company and customer. Companies
were secure behind the veil of mystique that these
barriers created. As organizations grew larger and
more complex, multiple layers of processes fortified
the walls of separation.
When HBO and the Internet emerged, the
snowpack began to shift pretty quickly. Channel
proliferation, driven by the content preferences of
individuals, provided faster access to large volumes
of information and news and the offerings of
competitors. Marketers were just learning to adjust
to deepening buyer savvy, wariness and cynicism,
but then came the avalanche—broadband, social
media and smartphones.
Meanwhile marketing, whose job it was to know
the customer, evolved from being the hub of
business strategy into a business function in a
supporting role. Its purpose was to interrupt and
cajole target audiences with blunt instruments like
“sale,” “guaranteed,” “limited time only,” “free”
and “new.” Marketing messages exploded broadly
The way people consume information has vastly
evolved … from complete focus on one channel at
a time, to scanning three or four channels seeking
bullet points. At a time when businesses need
relationships most, meaningful connection is hardwon in today’s electronic ecosystem. Companies
are still reeling, grappling with how they can lead
their organizations through this revolution. A big part
of the solution lies in creating emotional relevancy.
via every communication channel, yet most fell on
uninterested ears.
CBD market what’s meaningful
®
Market What’s Meaningful® to drive more profitable relationships
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Changing the Conversation.
2. Looking but not seeing. “The customer”
becomes something abstract and intangible while
we juggle the myriad tasks that keep a business
running. Our collective intuition tells us what
customers want and need, and we trust that the
messages we put out there are what the market
believes about our company. We begin to think
of ourselves as the customer, and imagine we
know and understand what they need. We look
at where they work, what they do, how they live,
and then make so many assumptions about how
we can be helpful to them.
Instead of wondering how they can have their
voices heard in such a fragmented media
environment, companies need to ask a different
question. That is, to ask how they can be the type
of company and deliver the kind of advertising that
people want to engage with.
3. Customers as numbers. We truly do have
the best of intentions about being customercentric. Some of these get lost as we crunch vast
amounts of data, overanalyze it, and ultimately
paralyze ourselves. We know who will spend the
most with us, but we don’t want to risk ignoring a
potentially valuable segment. We also don’t see
that we really need to invest anything in our best
customers, because they keep coming back.
People have little use for a brand that fills a need
but brings scant meaning to their lives. To stop the
downward spiral of irrelevancy, brands must figure
out how to stand for something meaningful to
the people they most want to serve. To do this is
to turn “marketing” back into what it was always
meant to be: a core business strategy with the
customer at the center. It means stepping through
the dispassionate professional veil that keeps
“us” on the outside, to feel truly passionate and
compassionate again about those who are in the
community, and those we would welcome into it.
4. Compromising positions. Our original
objectives get obscured as we compromise on
execution because of our resources, processes,
or technologies. Still more mutation occurs
through committee or silo decision-making and
competing priorities, not to mention ambitions of
individuals and corporate politics. Some of our
Fight the good fight
Companies can face a staunch, uphill battle to be
more meaningful. Do you see your organization in
any of the following situations?
best plans get buried when we bow to internal
pressures to focus on price and features.
5. Checking the box. Initiatives that are important
to humanizing our organization and increasing
opportunities for engagement do not drive
immediate revenue. We do what we can
with things like thought leadership, content
development, community outreach, and
sustainability programs, but these are not areas
of real focus or investment.
1. Targets we know how to hunt. We think
about customers every day. We have endless
conversations about them. We think about what
we can offer and the messages that will attract
them, get them to come back, or encourage them
to talk about us with their friends. We look at
how we can divide them into groups and upsell
them or find others like them. All this is to say
that we’re not really thinking about the customer,
except as a means to an end.
CBD market what’s meaningful
®
Market What’s Meaningful® to drive more profitable relationships
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What do you stand for?
As tribes of people, companies and organizations
cannot escape a collective need to matter. It’s in
our DNA to want to be more meaningful to our
customers. The great challenge is how.
Awareness
Familiarity
Amplify meaningful values
Opinion/Imagery
Advertising Hall of Famer E. St. Elmo Lewis may
have been the first to articulate a theory to explain
a customer’s path from awareness to purchase.
His framework, which delineated the phases in four
steps (awareness, interest, desire, and action) has
evolved somewhat, yet the “purchase funnel” is still
central to the work of marketers today.
Consideration
One Make/
Model Intention
Shopping
Purchase
Values, emotions and senses are in play across
the decision process well before the rational
mind is engaged.
The problem with the purchase funnel is that it
depicts the “what is happening” and overlooks
“why it is happening” entirely. And the “why” is
where there is an opportunity to be meaningful.
Most companies publish a list of corporate values­—
their institutional standards of behavior. Instead
of a promise to the customer or a statement of
differentiation, these ideals are generally table
stakes like honesty and great service.
Values, emotions and senses are in play across
the decision process well before the rational mind
is engaged. When you are able to relevantly align
with a buyer’s values, satisfy their emotional needs
and please their senses, their rational mind is
predisposed to justify what you offer as desirable.
Any organization today can distinguish itself by
taking a fresh look at its values and implementing
changes to ensure that they are meaningful and
alive across every touch point and transaction.
The fact is that living the right principles leads
to sales. In 2004 Booz Allen Hamilton and the
Aspen Institute, a nonprofit and nonpartisan forum
A person’s values, especially, are engaged across
the full spectrum of the consideration process,
and therefore should be considered primary
purchase drivers.
focused on values-based leadership and public
policy, conducted a global study of corporations
in thirty countries and five regions. Their findings
demonstrated that values-driven organizations
outperform their peers.
CBD market what’s meaningful
®
Market What’s Meaningful® to drive more profitable relationships
6
Inject distinctive personality
Increase relevancy
Developing a distinctive brand personality—inside
and out—is a strategic must for delivering a more
meaningful experience. It’s how you add that sweet
or savory flavor to your interactions. Your brand
personality should influence your approach to every
touch point—visual style and design, the tone of
all communications, and even how your people
present themselves.
No doubt, there is something profoundly meaningful
to people in what you offer or the way in which you
deliver it.
In fact, you may be very meaningful for dramatically
different reasons across segments of customers.
One product or service might have twenty or even
thirty meaningful aspects when you analyze your
customers’ needs, motivations and behaviors
against your value propositions. You just need to
discover what they are, and deliver opportunities for
your audience to experience them.
When you have a brand personality that is
aligned with your values and the needs of your
best customers, you have a more strategic way
in which to answer the big questions:
Too many companies attempt to generalize their
meaningfulness, usually to simplify the marketing
process or reduce costs. This results in a lack of
relevance to much of the market, and leaves a lot of
opportunity untapped.
inform
delight
inspire
engage
How do we…
connect
meaningfully?
fulfill
partner
reward
One product can represent a host of distinctly meaningful aspects, as illustrated in this simplified example
for a nutraceutical supplier.
Who
she is
Gym Rat
Multi-task Maven
Skinny Inside
Health Nut
Aging Gracefully
Focused
Driven
Body image
conscious
Active
Inspiring
Aware
Caretaking
Time starved
Distracted
Frustrated
Deserving
Food conscious
Hopeful
Risk taking
Informed
Discriminating
Disciplined
Skeptical
Quality of life
conscious
Confident
Active
Objective
Who she
is not
Complacent
Self-centered
Satisfied
Reckless
Obsessive
Positioning
implication
Live lean.
Be strong.
Look great.
Get more,
don’t do more.
Feel great
about what
you eat.
Replace a
nutrient your
body needs.
Balanced health,
balanced life.
CBD market what’s meaningful
®
Market What’s Meaningful® to drive more profitable relationships
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Research as co-creation
Believe it or not, beneath a veneer of indifference to
your brand, most people are wishing you’d just ask
them what they want. They want to be consulted,
and they value and talk about brands that confer
with them.
In the rare event that you’re inventing something
that will truly transform the way humans get things
done, you can afford to follow your vision as Henry
Ford did. However, when it comes to making
something better for those who will use it, consider
the example of Mercedes-Benz, who discovered
that co-creating with their customers could end up
preselling the first-year production of a new model.
Too many marketers lead the witness, designing
studies to elicit the answer they want, or discard
what they learn because it’s inconvenient to change.
Meaningful marketers partner with customers and
constituents and act on what they learn.
The real power of market research is to open the
door and invite the community to imagine, criticize,
share and co-create with us. While market research
can take many forms, when you approach it with
this attitude, you output truly actionable insights.
You ask better-quality questions with a spirit of
partnership, a respect for all perspectives, and
a commitment to those people you want to
serve most.
CBD market what’s meaningful
®
Market What’s Meaningful® to drive more profitable relationships
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Meaningful brands of tomorrow.
It’s an exciting time for marketers. As we
acknowledge the need to reevaluate and
reshape the way we engage our markets,
we can find so much inspiration in those we
serve. Just by recognizing some of the nuances
between generations, we can see a multitude
of opportunities to be meaningful.
• Baby boomers are retiring, but most will probably
never stop working. Their lives have been a
journey of incredible ups and downs, spanning
the ideals of a maturing nation to the realities of
a complex, global economy. “New” hasn’t lost
its power, even though their lives have been filled
with firsts. They embrace technology, and hold
tightly to the relevancy and power of their youth.
• The “iGen” has not yet been characterized.
However, they knew what Google™ was and how
to access it by the age of four. They will learn
nothing by rote. In fact, they are learning geometry
at least three years earlier than their parents did.
They will be passionate about exercising their
power to make a difference. They will be more
flexible about what being a family means. And
they will be empowered by adults with more
access to information than at any time in history.
• Gen X has matured through the scandals that
spelled the end of political and corporate trust.
Many reflect back on their lost naiveté and work
to hold onto their optimism. This generation is
presently the one that seeks to honor the past
as they hope to guide the future. Many are
simultaneously raising children or grandchildren
while caring for their parents. They are shaping
a new kind of self-determinism, a value their
grandparents embraced.
All these generations want experiences, products
and services, as well as alignment with values,
emotions and sensations that help them to feel
vitally alive. All have the ability and motivation to
seek out meaning beyond expedience, price, and
familiarity. Your brand could be one that earns
a lasting place in their hearts and minds. We
hope we’ve given you enough reason, and a little
inspiration, to take it on.
• Gen Y is entrepreneurial, impatient, and selfpossessed. They will go through a wall, as well
as around, over or under it. They have curiosity
and will take the time to satisfy it. In doing so,
they rapidly access, process and integrate
information from disparate sources. They are
conscious decision-makers. They are already
master networkers who will tap those important
to them before those who possess credentials
or authority.
CBD market what’s meaningful
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Market What’s Meaningful® to drive more profitable relationships
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market what’s meaningful®
About CBD Marketing
CBD is a B2C and B2B marketing services agency that clarifies and articulates what’s most
meaningful about your brand, product or service and helps you build more intimate and profitable
relationships with your customers.
At the heart of everything we do is a deep understanding of the rational and emotional drivers
that inspire your customers’ choices. At CBD, “market what’s meaningful” is our mission, guiding all
disciplines from research and brand development through media strategy, public relations and creative.
Let’s Talk!
To talk about how CBD can help you create moments that matter to your audience and better
connect them to your brand, product or service, please contact Doug Davila, Director of
Business Development at 312.661.1050 or [email protected].
About the Authors
Lori Colman, Co-CEO and Founder
As the Co-CEO and Founder of CBD Marketing, Lori’s expertise in brand development is focused
on keeping brands relevant in the consumer-controlled future. She is also a noted expert on
preventing the commoditization of brands, and the work needed to prevent the debilitating slide
down that path. Lori speaks globally on these topics, including at premier international venues.
Liz Brohan, Co-CEO and President
As Co-CEO and President of CBD Marketing, Liz Brohan contributes strategic marketing expertise
in the areas of branding, positioning, strategic messaging platform development, and brand
revitalization for a broad spectrum of clients. With a passionate focus on customer-centric marketing
principles, Liz leads the development of successful acquisition and retention programs. Liz is
an active industry advocate and speaker for industry associations, conferences, and frequently
requested to address corporate audiences in strategic sessions and leadership events.
Gina Miller, VP, Director of Customer Experience
In her role as VP, Director of Customer Experience, Gina helps clients harness insights derived from
research and data mining to build relevance and uncover new opportunities, as well as support
internal and external marketing goals. As an end-to-end integrated marketing expert, Gina has been
a featured speaker at conferences, corporate meetings, and universities.
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© 2011 Colman, Brohan & Davis, Inc.