Be Different or be dead

October 21, 2010

How to market happiness and beat your competition

Source: Pexels

How to market happiness and beat your competition.

Happiness has significant implications for marketing to stand-out and be more successful.

The simple truth is that marketing happiness makes good business sense. But I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

I find marketing for the most part today predictable and for the most part lacking imagination.

As I’ve said elsewhere, probably greater than 80% of all marketing activity is spent flogging products and services to mass markets (although the internet technology available today allows a higher degree of personalization) based on persona composites of the ‘average’ person in the crowd.

Product myopia is the result of a supply-minded view. Marketers are infatuated with the capabilities of what they produce. The coolness of their technology. The functionality of their gadget.

The problem is, with virtually everyone following this marketing pedagogy none achieves the exalted position of DiSTINCTION, UnFORGETTABILITY, UnIQUENESS, GaSPWORTHINESS and ReMARKABILITY.

Consumers see a blur of offerings and capabilities with no one standing out from the herd. Value is a spoken word with no substance. It’s all about the ‘iron’ of production. The secret desires of the fan are lost in the flurry of product management activity to ship the product.

The course of marketing must change if it is to be relevant in today’s markets.

A person buys when they are happy and it’s the experience that triggers it.

Tangible goods at best deliver short term euphoria; they don’t produce long term happiness.

A new SUV initially delivers awesomeness to its owner for a period, but the euphoria soon fades as it becomes a used car. A new condo is amazing as the paint dries, but thereafter is an asset that has to be cleaned and maintained.

And if the new MacBook Air delivers all the functionality it promises, it’s rated ‘ok’; it’s acceptable but no long term adulation is created (in fact if the functionality of a tangible good is not delivered as promised, the purchase creates short term ‘pain’ for the producer as the consumer’s anger is spread to their friends and family).

Experiences on the other hand are a different matter. People remember experiences. They feel experiences. They talk to others about experiences. They buy repeatedly on experiences. They are happier when they are in a memorable experience. It’s not rocket science.

The trip to Maui leaves long lasting impressions and the family dinner leaves gratitude indelibly etched within us. And we want to experience those feelings again and again.

So why don’t marketers listen?

- They don’t understand the power of the happiness marketing strategy and why it should take priority over a product-push one;
- The product push approach has worked in the past and they trust that it will continue to work in the future;
- They like what they’re doing and don’t want to change;
- There is a great deal of effort required to engage niche customer groups and find out what experiences, specifically, would make them happy;
- They see happiness as a ‘fluffy’ value with little evidence that marketing it will produce economic benefits.

Yet credible opinion exists on the power of happiness and the benefits produced:

- University and other studies — at Cornell for example — show that experiences bring greater happiness and satisfaction than buying and owning possessions;
I attended a Deepak Chopra event in Vancouver where he argued that experiences deliver happiness in three ways: planning an experience creates anticipation and excitement, participating in the experience creates in-the-moment euphoria and remembering the experience creates lasting memories;
- Tony Hseih, CEO of Zappos in his book Delivering Happiness, discusses ‘how using happiness as a framework can produce profits, passion and purpose in both business and life’;
- And happiness has even taken on a political dimension. Tiny Bhutan has made ‘Gross National Happiness’ the central aim of its domestic policy to increase well-being and improve the quality of life for all their citizens.

The current attitude to marketing happiness must change if the craft is to become an even more relevant and vibrant profession.

What we need is a ‘happiness pandemic’ in the marketing community where the virus is encouraged to spread.

The new marketing order — happiness marketing — must focus on creating memorable experiences for people. Where feelings reign supreme. Where emotion rules. Where marketing success is measured by how many mind-blowing experiences are created for people rather than how many products are sold.

There is a simple, practical way to get started. Establish the position of ‘Experience Manager’ to marketing organization charts to complement the product or customer manager position.

Hold the experience manager accountable to:

- Learn about what types of experiences in various customer groups make people happy.
- Define the high emotion experiences with the strongest appeal.
- Use the ‘happiness secrets’ that are discovered as the vaccine to inject into company operations as well,as products and services.
- Measure and track the number of memorable experiences created in the organization every day.
- Set experience targets in the marketing plan.
- Work with product management to determine the products and services that produce the best experiences for customers and find ways to replicate the happiness impact with the broader product portfolio.
- Build an annual marketing ‘experience plan’ that influences what the product and customer managers do.

Happiness can be an amazing business builder for any organization and epic experiences are the way to trigger it in any person.

Establish the Experience Manager and use the position to give your organization a competitive advantage over the product-floggers.

Cheers,
Roy
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• Posted 10.21.10 at 12:00 pm by Roy Osing
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