Laughter hope sock in the eye's Blog

A Thousand Songs in My Pocket

I remember thinking I was the coolest guy in the world when I took my iPod to the gym. It’s funny because I’m not an early adopter and I’ve never really been into gadgets. But I got my first iPod about a year after they came out, and I can’t think of anything I ever bought that made me feel so good. 

Effective advertising tells people how your product is going to solve their problem. My iPod solved a problem I didn’t even know I had. I needed a device smaller than a Sony Diskman that could hold my entire CD collection. And there it was. 

“A thousand songs in your pocket” was the perfect slogan, even though an iPod actually holds a lot more songs than that. A thousand songs on one device sounded pretty miraculous at the time, and the slogan flows really well. (Like all forms of writing, copywriting is essentially poetry.)

Selling Joy

Byron Sharp* notes that the iPod advertising campaign “did not mention the term ‘MP3 player.’” In fact, “their advertising didn’t talk about this new technology at all.” 

Instead of selling new technology, Apple was selling joy. As Sharp explains, the iPod advertising campaign 

always employed the same silhouette figures against colourful backgrounds and these figures were always joyfully dancing (while listening to their iPods) and the white headphones were always obvious. Technical details were left to sales people and web sites to explain.

Carbonated Cough Syrup

A lot of people are willing to pay three times as much for an 8-ounce can of Red Bull than they would for a 12-ounce can of soda. But when it comes to ingredients, the only real difference is that Red Bull has a lot more caffeine and a smidgen of Vitamin B. 

So how did Red Bull convince so many people to pay so much more for a beverage that tastes like carbonated cough syrup?

The obvious is answer marketing, which is the art of convincing people to buy things. One of the most effective ways to convince people to buy things is by appealing to their internal narrative, which is the story everyone tells themself about who they are.

According to Seth Godin**, “our actions are primarily driven by one question: ‘Do people like me like things like this?’” If you align your product with the customer’s internal narrative, you can make oodles of money.

To align their product with the internal narratives of millions of customers, Red Bull spends billions of dollars in advertising every year, creating the perception that people who drink Red Bull are:

• Young
• Healthy
• Athletic
• Male
• Carefree
• Adventurous

Different Can, Different Product

People drink Red Bull to get amped up on caffeine. But Red Bull had to convince customers that they weren’t just buying a new type of hyper-caffeinated soda. Instead, Red Bull sells people a whole new lifestyle.

By making the can so distinctive, Red Bull creates the perception that it’s a totally different type of product. 

Rory Sutherland*** of Ogilvy & Mather Group explains: 

How can Red Bull charge £1.50 a can when Coke only charge 50p? Weirdly you make the can smaller. Suddenly people think this is a different category of drink for which different price points apply. If the can had been the same size, I am not sure they could have charged £1.50. Logic won’t tell you that and research won’t tell you, because in research we all pretend we are maximisers and hyper-rational.

by Richard W. Bray

* How Brands Grow, p142

* *This Is Marketing, p104

***Quoted in The Choice Factory by Richard Shotten, p67