Marketers: Dump the Glitter

Summary: With educated, connected individuals abounding in markets, marketers should focus on real messages rather than glitter.

For about a year I started to use economy discount dishwasher tablets. I abandoned the flashy, premium all-in-one tablets with little red balls and twinkling stars on their boxes.

Why?

I saw the premium price and the flashy hyperbolic, content-free advertising used to market them. Because the brand in question had relied on jazz hands to sell the product led me to one conclusion: these were not innovations at all, but gimmicks designed to increase the manufacturers margin for little benefit to me.

Then in December, I had the privilege of speaking at the annual Global CMO Conference of IMD, a Swiss business school. One of the speakers was the most senior marketer for Dow Chemical's business unit that makes the raw ingredients that go into detergents. Ultimately his team was responsible for most of the innovations that are some of the more recent state of the art in cleaning products.

So first hand, I was able to ask whether these innovations actually made any difference or whether they were a simply a dreadful marketing gimmick.

The value of face to face

But face-to-face with the marketing leader responsible for bringing these innovations to market I got an informed, structured and honest answer.

It was an unveiled answer. It was an answer presented with supported data. And it was unlike anything I had heard or read through the product’s marketing communications; whether it was their tv adverts or product packaging.

In summary: The specific innovations do improve cleaning performance. They do reduce the headache of using many products and they do result in generally better cleaning performance; and less hassle for the householder.

The cost: a slight premium, in return for convenience and time saved. For a householder like me: net/net these advanced products are the ones I should be buying. They will give me better cleaning performance with much more convnience at a marginal premium.

The trouble with advertising

The trouble is that until the most senior marketer at this huge company presented the facts and segmentation to me, I simply didn’t believe it.

I didn’t believe the advertising.

Because it condescended to me. It was filtered through the rosy tint of TV ads whose polish rivalled the tidy manicures teeth-straightened actors speaking the unspeakable. Those attributes, the hallmarks of TV advertising’s great age, turn me (and many customers) off. (38% of consumers don't trust TV ads according to Nielsen.)

In fact those ads persuaded me that the advanced products couldn’t be better: if they were better, why not just tell me why they are better in a structured, empirically clear way, rather than through overpriced TV commercials or copy filtered through the saccharine lens of the copywriter's art?

The great advantage of truth telling

Even as seemingly unsexy as detergent actually has tremendous impact on people’s lives. Hygiene controls the transmission of disease. Anything that saves time in the domestic realm has the de facto impact of improving the quality of life of the women in a family. (In most countries, women are responsible the lions share of domestic tasks). Improved technologies that reduce the water burden of cleaning are important. Water is a scarce resource to our species. In other words, even the humble detergent is very meaningful.

The argument for dumbing down your messages and making them glitzy might be that most customers aren’t like me. That presenting structured verified data with honest comparison to my alternatives is to much for the ordinary person in the street.

But ordinary people are getting smarter not dumber. Education levels globally are higher than ever. As a species we seem to be reasonably good at standing on the shoulders of the giants who came before us. The internet makes access to data a ubiquitous right not simply a reserve for the privileged. And through social platforms, we can hear the unvarnished voices of other consumers as well as experts.

In other words, you can’t hide from the truth. Better than that, you can benefit from the truth.

The social opportunity

Brands can use social to transmit the truth of their products.

1. Use your experts - the product managers, engineers or scientists - and have them talk about the quality of what they have built and why it does what it does. The curious consumer can verify their credentials by searching LinkedIn on the social web.
2. Present data, information and analysis. Show the segmentation you used to build your offerings. (Consumer goods companies like detergents, soaps, etc are particularly bad at this). Explain what the trade off between different products is. This product is X% more expensive that the other one, but it is more convenient because you don’t need to do A, B or C.
3. Use social as a channel to connect to the people who care and can advocate why your products matter. According to Nielsen, 84% of people trust recommendations of friends. So getting truthful, data-rich messages to individuals who are trusted by their friends is a one way to ensure those messages spread via trusted links.

No more glitter

There is an old marketing adage that "you can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter".

In the pre-connected world of TV glitter-encrusted questionnables could work to persuade a less informed audience.

Perhaps the converse is that if you product genuinely does what it says on the tin, then stop rolling it in glitter and present the unvarnished truth.

I got the unvarnished truth about dishwasher powder.

And the result? I've switched to the premium, convenience-oriented tablets, jam-packed with the latest innovations.

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Credit: Flickr/ pumpkincat210 / Courtney Rhodes