I love watching the work of marketers. What they do is as lurid and engrossing as sharks attacking chum. The art of manipulation, of tapping into our frail psyches and implanting new wants and needs, is a never-ending source of fascination for me. I can (and do) stare at infomercials with rapt attention, listening for the features and the benefits (OH the sweet, sweet benefits!) of using their product. I listen for brand positioning, for pricing, for purchase triggers. How are they creating urgency? What needs are they claiming to meet?
I’m trained in marketing. I understand why marketers do what they do (because it works). If I can create an emotional bond between you and the product or service I have to offer, you are FAR more likely to buy it.
I’m mentioning all of this because marketing is an ongoing struggle for me. I own a business. I make products. I’m hoping to provide for my family through the sale of those products, so I really, really want you to buy my products. I believe they are extremely good and well-made products. In fact, I believe that what I make is some of the best stuff out there.
Was that compelling for you? I doubt it. I don’t want to be manipulative, though, even though I know that is effective. This quandary is captured brilliantly in a clip from ‘The Invention of Lying.’ The premise of the movie is that the hero (Ricky Gervais) lives in a society that is incapable of telling anything but the absolute truth. In one scene, he lies down in bed and watches the following ‘advertisement’ for Coke:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2QO5E1xE2M[/youtube]The opposite of that advertisement, for me, is a famous commercial from 1975. I absolutely LOVE this ad, mostly because it is riotously unsubtle:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIL3fbGbU2o[/youtube]I can almost see the marketers sitting around the Chrysler conference table, laying out the vision. “Can we get Ricardo to really roll those “R’s?” I want Corrrrrdoba and Corrrrrrinthian to sound like the purring of a cat!” By almost all accounts, this was an extremely crappy car. But Ricardo pimped it with a 70’s savoir-faire that was rivaled only by the likes of Billy Dee Williams (Colt 45, anyone?). And the car sold! It doesn’t matter that there’s no such thing as ‘Corinthian’ leather. People instantly believed in Corinthian leather and, more importantly, wanted it.
Generally, marketing and advertising is more subtle now. A great example is this 2012 commercial for York Peppermint Patties:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WldsOu_4a8g[/youtube]I didn’t catch it the first time. It was the lip-biting that finally made it clear. SEX! Eating a York Peppermint Patty is like having sex! Your pupils dilate (or… un-dilate, whatever), the hair on your arm stands out, you gasp, you bite your lip, your fingers clench uncontrollably… my goodness! That’s quite an experience! Who wouldn’t want that??? Interestingly, there’s a 2010 version of the same commercial that’s a tad more subtle. I guess the brain trust wanted to provoke a more visceral reaction from their viewership. Incidentally, men, any time you watch TV and see a woman brushing a strand of hair behind her ear or biting her bottom lip, you are being prompted sexually. I don’t know why those two actions elicit responses, but they do. And marketers know it.
Ok, I’ve wandered far afield. Let’s move away from the sexual hotbed of candy bars and back to the comparative safety of wood furniture. I’m about to make two little Youtube videos, mostly for marketing purposes. In the first, I’m going to compare end-grain cutting boards to other types of cutting boards (plastic, face grain wood, and the dreaded bamboo). I’m going to try to explain why end grain boards are better. The challenge will be explaining why they are better without resorting to marketing silliness (“if you care about the safety and health of your family, you will buy what I am selling!”) When in doubt, I’m going to stick to features rather than benefits. Implicit in this strategy is my core belief that benefits are manipulative at best and deceitful at worst. So if I give in on that, call me out on it!
In the second video, I’m going to try to provide a narrative of how I build end-grain cutting boards. It will probably be more illustrative than instructive, because an extremely detailed instruction of woodworking technique would put most readers to sleep. But I’ve been commissioned to make 2 custom cutting boards, one by a famous knife-maker and one by a customer who owns and wants to preserve the edge on his extremely expensive knife. So I’m going to document the steps of those projects, in the hopes that people (you) will be impressed by the time and effort that goes into these suckers and decide they (you) want one for themselves (yourself).
So, friends and neighbors, brace yourselves! Don’t be lulled by the siren song of soft, classical music. Ignore the brie, the leather furniture, the elegant, smiling people, the champagne. Instead, I humbly offer you sweat and sawdust. I desperately want that to be enough.
