[LET'S TALK- 1]: MARKETING EMOTIONS AND ASPIRATIONS.

“So how is your beer better than other beers?, I mean what is your USP here” I asked a beer company that I was consulting, and honestly it was my first time consulting a beer company. I asked the above question because I simply had no idea where to start. I had marketed and sold Softwares all throughout my career and though I had ventured into e-commerce here and there but I had never consulted a beer company.

“ Well the hops content is really low, and we add a strong hint of coriander and honey flavors, which makes it less bitter and it has 4% alcohol so it is fairly light and has more drinkability. “ He said.

“ But I guess, that is the case with few other beers in the market, have you thought of something around what is the target audience you want to target for your beer ?” I asked

“ Target audience for beer? Who does not love beer ?” He said laughing, he then added “ Why does anyone choose or drink any beer? it’s because of the taste they like, why does anyone drink Heineken what is their target audience ?”

Well, I had seen ads of Heineken and other beers as well, but to be honest I don’t remember any beer commercial making claims on the great taste of the beer, in fact the beer itself merely made a cameo in the end or for a short while. So what actually sold the beer?, what was the point of showing all these urban, semi entrepreneurs, independent men and women drinking and having a great time .wait a minute!

“ PEOPLE DO NOT WANT TO BE SOLD A PRODUCT, PEOPLE WANT TO BE SOLD AN EMOTION OR ASPIRATION”

Independent young urban people having fun in retro-themed parties, just having a good time. They seem to have an air of confidence about them, looks like these people have their life figured out and are now having fun with their success and independence. So these are the people who drink Heineken?

People subconsciously copy or pick up traits of people whom they aspire to be, what was the common thing among all the successful, independent people having fun? Well they all drank Heineken. That was brilliant, no words were spoken, no one told why you should drink Heineken, but it got people drinking Heineken, because we wanted our lives to be like the characters they showed in the ad.

It did get me thinking what could be the earliest examples of this type of marketing, so I researched a little and the earliest that I came across was

“WHEN MARLBORO STOPPED BEING A MILD CIGARETTE FOR WOMEN AND CREATED MARLBORO MAN, A SYMBOL OF MASCULINITY”

So, it was out, the reports had proven that cigarette smoking and that means any kind of cigarettes( looking at you camel) was harmful for your health and had cancerous effects. So, what do you plan to advertise now? You could not tell why your death sticks were better than others.

I am pretty sure a lot of you have seen the episode of mad men where he adds” its toasted” to the lucky strike marketing campaign. Though clever in real life, it was Marlboro that became the №1 company in the US and not Lucky Strikes.

Marlboro initially marketed to women, being light cigarettes with filters with the tag line “Mild as May”. And they completely changed their marketing strategy from targetting women to targeting men. And created what is probably considered one of the best marketing campaigns ever in the “marlboro man”

They initially showed typically macho stereotypes like navy officers, sea captains, construction workers, and finally made cowboys a permanent stay of their marketing. People in the ads defined the strong, hardworking silent men, but what was common in these men ? well they all smoked Marlboro. Women liked the strong and silent types and men thought that maybe smoking marlboro will make them look rugged and macho in front of women. Welcome to marlboro country they said, and men everywhere came running. Marlboro ended up becoming the №1 brand of cigarettes in the US, thanks to the marlboro man. Fascinated by this I started searching for more examples around this when I realized

“IN 1938, DE-BEERS PROBABLY RAN ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS EVER “

So, why are diamonds so expensive? Is it the rarest and most beautiful material found on earth? I can not debate about beauty as it may be a subjective concept, but I can assure you that it is not the rarest, in fact far from it. The high price that you pay for diamonds is due to a marketing campaign run by De-beers. The demand for diamond itself is a marketing invention and de-beers controlled the supply and kept the costs high. But what really did help them keep the costs so high?

Well that is because “a real man proposes his women with a diamond ring” heard this one before? You see it in all the movies, a man got down on one knee, slips a ring out of his pocket( Champagne glass, depends what movie you were watching ), and asks his loved one to marry him. Well if movie stars are doing it, that must be the cool thing to do right? If this is how you propose someone in the most romantic movie you ever saw, you have to get a diamond ring for the person you are about to marry, right? And no matter what happens the sign of your love stays on the finger forever, right? after all Diamond is forever as they say.

Well there are so many amazing case studies to check out where brands related themselves to an emotion or to an aspiration and turned their fortunes. Chevy Camaro came back and became the car bumblebee transformed into in the Transformers Movie and people who buy Apple products the artistic, high-level thinkers? We live in a world where every movie or tv show that you watch, everything that you read is advertising to you something subconsciously. But my question here is “ If you made a beer what would you want your beer to be associated with?”