What’s the meaning of this? Winning over Customers with Meaningful
Marketing
by Nancy Pekala
If you want to capture attention of today’s cynical customers, you need to stop “telling to
sell”, and start adding true meaning to their lives. That’s the message that author Bob
Gilbreath, Chief Marketing Strategist at Bridge Worldwide, communicates in his
upcoming book, The Next Revolution in Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by
Marketing With Meaning (McGraw-Hill; October 2009).
Gilbreath explains that when marketing is meaningful, people choose to engage with you
in an exchange they perceive as valuable. “When your marketing is meaningful, the
marketing itself adds value to people’s lives, whether or not they immediately buy what
you’re selling. The numbers prove that the more meaningful people find your marketing,
the more they’ll be willing to pay for your stuff, and the more loyal they’ll become to
your brand.”
Adopting a new approach to marketing, one that is focused on providing meaning to
customers’ lives, is critical because, Gilbreath maintains, consumers’ attitudes about
marketing have changed. “The real problem is that consumers have changed—both in
terms of how they expect to be approached with marketing and the tools they are using to
avoid it,” he explained in his book. “They now have the power to control what they
allow into their eyes and ears—and most of those 3,000 messages we deliver each day are
not making the cut.”
In fact, according to Forrester Research, 48 percent of consumers today now believe they
have the right to decide whether or not to receive advertising. Marketing with meaning
adds value to people’s lives independent of purchase—which is far more likely to win
their business.
In his book, Gilbreath offers a number of examples of brands which are adopting a
meaningful marketing model to their advantage. For example, instead of ads, Samsung
provided electrical charging stations for cell phones and laptops in airports across
America; Charmin underwrote restrooms in Times Square; Bank of America teaches
customers how to avoid banking fees; and Vicks has created a mobile cold and flu alert
service.
The Meaningful Marketing Model
At the heart of this new model of marketing is the need for marketers to determine truly
what makes people tick---what’s important to them and what they aspire to. What people
July 30, 2009
Marketing Matters
really want, Gilbreath asserts, are richer experiences and deeper social connections--ways to improve themselves and to make a positive impact on the world.
He created the Hierarchy of Meaningful Marketing which presents three tiers of
meaningful marketing—Solution, Connection and Achievement—as a tool that will help
marketers accurately identify their customer’s needs and begin thinking about how their
marketing can fulfill these needs at the corresponding levels:
The Hierarchy of Meaningful Marketing marries consumers’ higher-level needs with the
corresponding brand features, resulting in three tiers of marketing that are increasingly
meaningful to consumers:
●Solution marketing. Like the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, solution
marketing covers basic household needs and benefits. For example, helpful offers,
money savings and hard rewards for purchase.
●Connection marketing. This level of marketing corresponds to Maslow’s
love/belonging category, providing benefits beyond the basics of information and
relevance to include something that is of deeper importance in the consumer’s mind
(social outlets and creative expression).
●Achievement marketing. This corresponds to Maslow’s pinnacle of self-actualization by
allowing people to significantly improve their lives, realize a dream or positively change
their community and their world.
Ultimately, the higher the level of marketing, the higher the need it satisfies and the
higher the need, the higher level of marketing it requires.
Gilbreath offers the following four precepts about meaningful marketing:
●Meaningful marketers never push. They invite prospective customers in by creating
marketing that appeals to the higher unmet needs in their overall lives.
●Meaningful marketers know that most of our basic needs are satisfied by the products
and services we already buy. If you sell a commodity, the need and opportunities for you
to create marketing whose meaning transcends your product are limitless.
●Marketing itself must improve customers’ lives and accomplish something of intrinsic
value, independent of the product or service it aims to sell, whether or not people actually
ever purchase it.
●More meaning = more money. (The longer equation is more meaning = more loyalty =
higher prices = increased sales, but the net result is the same.)
Meaningful marketing is ultimately about making a brand’s products and services more
relevant to today’s consumer. It requires a deeper understanding of customers and a true
commitment to changing traditional ways of approaching marketing. Those companies
that are able to change their organizational behavior to accommodate this new model will
reap the benefits of increased revenue and brand loyalty.
July 30, 2009
Marketing Matters