Marketing 101 with my 5-year old

Learning how to market a product in 3 easy steps

'Daddy, at your new job do you get to do craft?'

Unfortunately, I don't get to live the dream and 'do craft' at work. I did however find a way to integrate some marketing principles into our daddy-daughter weekend craft project. We thought it would be fun to launch a new breakfast cereal - something we both love to eat!

While this project is designed for kids, you can run it in the boardroom during workshops. It's a nice chance to help people generate new ideas and apply marketing frameworks.

Items required:

• Old cereal box
• Paper
• Pens
• Sticky tape / glue

To prepare, simply stick some paper to a used cereal box so we can draw over it. Now the marketing piece begins. How are we going to design this product so that people actually buy it?

1) Determine the product type

Products typically fit somewhere on the buying behaviour triangle. How attached are your buyers? How much will they research? What does the product need to do for them functionally, socially, emotionally? Let's start with some examples:

Orange Juice

This is typically a low involvement product. You run out of juice, you buy more juice. People won't (typically) research juice at any great lengths; they'll buy based on price and a couple of functional features (pulp, fruit origin, presence of preservatives, purity). If the brand they want isn't available, they won't go to a different supermarket to get it. The involvement is low here because the gap between the best outcome (amazing juice) and the worst outcome (sub-par juice) isn't that big.

Caravan

This is highly utilitarian and often requires lots of consideration from the buyer. The buyer may have a list of needs and wants, which all come at various price points. They then evaluate 'value' based on the amount of requirements that can be had at a given price. The distance between the best outcome (a great caravan at a given price), and the worst outcome (a lemon at a given price) is big! Thus a lot of research is done by the customer, and careful consideration needs to be given to communicating functional value.

Precious Ring

Luxury items are typically classed as expressive purchases. Jewellry such as rings are often 'symbolic' and are expected to deliver social and emotional benefits to the buyer and wearer. Customers can be seduced by the brand, the story behind the ring, stone or maker, the associated symbolisms to that stone, fashion benefits etc. Functionally, rings don't really have to do anything other than sparkle / not fall off.

In creating a new breakfast cereal, we knew that the product is considered 'low involvement'. How could we design it so it yelled "Pick Me"?

2) Move up the involvement chain

Products like Dove have had success launching expressive campaigns such as the Dove "Real Beauty" campaign.

The reason this campaign was so successful was that Dove turned a 'low involvement' product into an 'expressive' one. You aren't simply buying soap; you are identifying with a movement or 'Real Beauty'. A company that stands for something.

So to stand out, we would need to tap into people's emotions when buying our cereal. This led to the creation of a 3-box storyboard:

The emotion my daughter chose was 'Happy'. The mascot she chose was 'Frog'. So we had Happy Frog Cereal.... the cereal that makes you happy when you eat it!

For a functional product like a Caravan to move up the buyer behaviour triangle, it might seek to be more expressive. It could seek to highlight the desirable kinds of people that buy it ("adventurous, carefree, fit and active travellers"). Or the kind of social impact that owning a particular brand will have amongst their friendship group.

3) Define your Unique Value Proposition

A unique value proposition should have 4 components:

1. Positive Brand Association - this is a positive link between your brand name and your product. Or at worst, the lack of a negative link. For example, you wouldn't want to name a new dessert "Roadkill Ice Cream". This would be negative brand association. However "Roadkill Rat Poison" might work.
2. Clear - your unique value proposition has to be clear. Make sure everyday consumers can identify it quickly.
3. Compelling - this means you need a point of difference between your competitors and yourself. If you simply do everything they do, customers will choose on price. What makes you different? On our storyboard we had a box for 'Secret Ingredient'. This would be a reason to choose us over our competitors. Everything needs a secret ingredient or "secret sauce"; it helps customers choose you. They will rationalise the purchase on the fact that while other similar products didn't do the job, yours will because of the secret X-factor.
4. Credible - any brand promises you make need to be credible. If we claimed our product gave eternal life, you wouldn't believe us, and you'd buy something else. In our design, we pushed the boundaries here - claiming that eating Happy Frogs would make you happy. But then again, eating Happy Frogs with Extra Caramel really would make most kids happy (just perhaps not their Dentists). We also added a Happy Troll for extra credibility. Because everyone knows Trolls are happy :)

With that, we had our new product and learnt a bit about marketing along the way. The next time we went to the supermarket, we talked about the packaging of products, and how which simple tricks they were using to get our attention (insert frog, troll or happy person here). It was a fun activity and a great way to remind us to shop mindfully.