“People aren’t motivated by logic and information alone. Emotion is the driving force in action. Thinking takes too much time and effort. Emotions are instantaneous. People decide emotionally then justify logically.”
-Brian Tracy
Companies that tell consumers what to do or what to buy, will eventually fail. People have trained themselves to shut down when this happens. A company must earn the consumer’s trust in order to just gain their attention. People don’t want to be told what to do or what to buy. You have to inspire them to advocate on your behalf. True power comes from letting people discover things on their own.
In the past products were all about fulfilling needs. Now they have become about fulfilling wants. What you buy shows people who you are. It is no longer good enough to simply be “cheaper”, “faster” or “better”. These things are expected. In the past if you had enough money, you could get in front of enough people to talk about why your product is better…. and that may have been enough. There was a time when people were starving for information due to inaccessibility. Now we have access to information from every angle and the only way to live life is to tune most of it out. Marketer and author, Seth Godin, describes it as moving from interruption marketing to permission marketing. You have to ask people to listen to you before you can tell them about your product. And the only way to do that is to talk about your product’s story or purpose. Stories elicit human emotion and emotion motivates people to act. Your customer will resonate with this and become your biggest advocate. Find the motives of your customers then align your brand to that purpose through crafting a story around it. The story allows the consumer to express themselves, and in a world where no one is listening, people just want to be heard. Your product must become the platform for your consumer’s voice to be heard. At Ashcraft Design we create products and brand experiences people aspire to own and be a part of through carefully crafted stories that align with your customer’s world view.