Marketers can sometimes create a powerful influence over customers by taking advantage of their believes and practiced rituals.
So if I want to sell you a bottle of juice and convince you that it is good for your blood pressure, bones, aging skin, hair, and the bonus, it helps you lose weight! Then, this is how it gonna be:
- Give it a strange name, and preferably a name of something real, rare, and its benefits have never been scientifically proven. So try a fruit name from South America!
- It should be pricy; you know, scarce stuff cost!
- It should not be available everywhere. Choose only some big stores as your distribution outlets; or better yet, try phone and home visiting marketing techniques!
- Now the big trick! To convince people that a singe kind of unknown drink can virtually solve all their health problems, they better perceive it as some kind of medicine! So regardless of the fact that you are selling it as 100% natural juice, you better convince them that they need to take it in dosages. You know, small spoon before breakfast, and one after sleep, I mean before sleep! That would emphasis the image of a medicine, wouldn’t it?
- Give them an extended period of time to start noticing changes. Again, to start noticing! Something like a month could be good! And hey, if it did not work, they must have done something wrong, maybe did not commit to the precise dosages or times of taking the medicine, I mean the juice!
p.s. this post is based on a true story!
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totally in disagrement on content and final conclusion you reached.
Marketing is “strategically” to postion a brand in a certain mind slot/ status in order to differentiate and stand up.
i doubt that consumers are so naive to be sold the idea of medicinal juice.
Target group will defiantly recognize if a brand is overvalued ( price) if they did receive an added value or not.
till now there is no naming exercise guarantees brand success ( brand building) or adding to brand equity … for example their is a biscuit called Abu Al Walad and it selling like creasy all over Mena and GCC… personally i will not -even- pick it up from store shelve.
i agree that in the absence of food and drug authorities in this part of the world provided a window of opportunity for local and international brands to claim healthy, wellbeing and medicinal attributes ( Indomie, Nestle ..etc.)
however consumers are not morans, they have the power to make or break brands , brands that still inform and educate will fail … brands need to live up to target group needs, aspirations and to engage in a conversation…
Hello Ayman …
Thank you for this thoughtful comment. In a matter of fact, I am bit surprised that you started your comment with disagreeing with my ‘content & conclusion,’ because I am almost in a total agreement with all what you’ve said and I believe my post do as well!
I did not mean to promote such marketers behavior or even approve it. I am totally in agreement with you that sustainable brands are built upon customer understanding and communication, and of course, being honest with yourself and your customers.
However, this should not lead us to exclude the fact that there are some misleading marketing practices out there! The post is actually talking about a real product! I’m confident that such products won’t live for a long time but it could skim some profits for a while before disappearing form the market!