Selling a Feeling

Published by

Lem Usita

on

June 6, 2009

I was watching a Seth Godin video – from visceralbusiness.com (I got it off iTunes). He’s a marketing guru, and he was talking about selling – and marketing. It’s been interesting to learn about marketing and advertising. There is a shift for those that are involved in advertising. When they “sell” something, they are “explicitly” selling a product, but they are “implicitly” selling a feeling.

According to Seth, Starbucks sells the feeling of being with people that are much like you; that when you are walking around and you’re thinking of a place to get a drink that the feeling of – “oooh Starbucks” is what they’re selling. That’s why you pay 4 bucks for the coffee. They’re selling the feeling.

Tiffany & Co sells blue boxes. Have you ever given someone a blue box from Tiffany’s? I have. I gave my wife 2 of them at one Christmas. I happend to have some awesome jewelry in the boxes, but the feeling that everyone in the room got when she got the blue box – even before she opened them – that was what Tiffany’s was selling and that’s what I bought. It was good too.

I believe it is the same for a Crate and Barrel box. It’s the anticipation of walking into Abercrombie & Fitch – anticipating the smell and loudness of the store.

The other thing that I was thinking about was the power of the shared feeling that can be sold. When a few people are all feeling the same thing – and a ad can tap into that – that’s even more powerful. I’m just starting to process through these things. I think I’m going to ask my friend Chato Hazelbaker to shed more light on this. Come on Chato – you have to leave a comment now and help us all understand this better.

4 responses to “Selling a Feeling”

Lara

June 6, 2009

This is absolutely true – a genius ad campaign will sell a dream, not reality. In my opinion, Tiffany & Co has done a superb job of convincing people that their mundane, mass produced merchandise has some intrinsic value. Of course it does not. Victoria’s Secret is another example of selling dreams – add some Victorian decor, heavy incense, and some chamber music to the store, and sell KMart quality underthings for quadruple the price. This economy has woken up the vast majority of folks, who now realize that the dream is a myth.

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Lem Usita

June 6, 2009

What a great insight Lara. I like how you put it, it’s selling a dream and passing it off as reality. What’s crazy is it really works. People are buying the feeling. Do you have experience with this? Do you have further insight into the psychology of it? I’d love to hear more of your thoughts.
Have you ever gotten a blue box?

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Chato

June 11, 2009

A day late and a dollar short, but Godin is right on as usual. His book “Permission Marketing” is a must read for people who do what I do. I wrote a piece one time about how brands should have a smell, and then used Starbucks as an example. Of course that was overstated, but good brands are really about the experience. The problem comes in that the whole experience has to make sense. As Lara points out, if the quaility of the product doesn’t match the experience the consumer will eventually “wake up”. To me that’s why good marketing/communication has to be high integrity, because beyond brand what it is really about is the mission. Is the mission at the core, and are we delivering the mission (whatever it is for our organization). If that comes, all else will follow.

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Gareth

June 20, 2009

Absolutely. Great post.

Looking forward to reading more. I’ll also comment on some others!

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