Sell dreams not products: What great marketing is all about

Great marketing campaigns and advertisements often propel a brand to an unassailable leadership position for years and years together. I personally adore examples of marketing campaigns & advertisement of 3 brands over the years:

• Apple: The 1984 Superbowl ad and 1997 "Think different" campaign are probably the best advertisements ever made propelled Apple from an upstart to the most valuable company in the world today. Apple sells computers and mobiles and 100s of other companies compete with them. They never talk about screen size and RAM and what not in their ads, they talk about creative people and creativity and how machine enables that.

• Nike: It all started with the 1988 "Just do it" campaign by marathon runner Walt Slack. The 1996 "Good vs Evil" and recently much-acclaimed ad on racial justice and social equity featuring Megan Rapinoe are also adverts for the ages. Nike sells shoes which is a commodity, but they never talk about air soles in their ads, they honor great athletes and athletics and that's their core message. It's called 'Air Jordan' and not 'Air soles'.

• Amul: Amul butter girl ad campaign and witty print ads capturing hearts and minds of Indians for the last half a century. Amul sells milk and dairy products - a basic commodity as any. But that's not their core message. They celebrate the spirit of independent and emerging India. Like the white revolution pulled millions of Indians out of poverty and provided nutrition to make millions more healthy half a century ago, Amul symbolizes the growing shining India.

All these great brands and multi-generational campaigns teach us 3 simple things:

1. Marketing is not a one-time point-in-time activity. Your core message should be consistent across decades
2. Advertisements are a 2-30 second window to tell an extremely attention-deficient person what your brand is all about. Keep it simple
3. And the most important thing of all- companies which go on to become great don't sell products with features, they sell dreams and advertisements are their way to quantifying those dreams to make it understandable for the masses

Thoughts?