Capture The World With Your Boring Product
Like me, are you fed up with the PowerPoint ‘CX’ experts? You know the ones - they dress in their very now black code, carry glossy slides, have their morning latte clutched in one hand, carry that business school look?
The ones who’ve never ‘done it’ for real - unlike me (although I was one of them 3 decades ago).
And they’re encouraging you to be the next Apple, Ritz-Carlton, Tesla or Spotify. Telling you these brands are great because they did something great, and it’s something you can copy?
It’s BS.
Because they didn’t start with greatness - they started out with a product or service as an idea - a ‘something’ that captured our imagination.
Tesla, Apple, Ritz and Spotify had an idea to change the world for something different or better.
Unlike mouthwash. Nobody makes it with the idea they are changing the world to be different or better.
The truth is, most people don’t care about most brands most of the time.
That’s because most brands are of low interest to us - we give little thought to them. We think about them only when we need them, and most of us are in this category, unluckily.
Categories like pencil sharpeners. Or kitchen-towel. Or large-sized bin bags. Soap. Tippex. Toilet-paper. Shipping containers. (Shipping container?!).
We can’t get that excited about pencil sharpeners. It’s hardly a rich-storied, high-minded, product.
If consumers don’t care about your category, you can’t make them care. But you can make them take notice. You can stand out.
Instead of trying to channel Apple, Nike or Tesla, channel your strategy into the boringness of your category.
And become distinctive.
By Stopping Focusing on Your Product and Evolving an Experience.
How You Can Create Experiences.
When you are selling a boring product, don’t focus on just the product. Pivot to making it an experience. Focus on selling the experience of owning your “boring product”.
Tell a story.
A good story is an effective way to sell a boring product. If the story is compelling people will want to buy it. The best way to do this is to pair your product with an experience that makes it interesting/driven/remembered.
Take the skincare company, Dove. Dove is just one more beauty brand among the scores of others that exist. Except it isn’t. When customers think of Dove, they have a clear image of what the brand experience is. It’s down to its unique storytelling.
What’s the difference between selling Soap A and selling Soap B, if both soaps have basically the same properties and are essentially the same product? Providing something the other doesn’t.
You make your product the hero, the star.
Dove doesn’t talk product. It sells an experience of authenticity and connection, participation in social networks and debates around what real beauty is in response to low female self-esteem caused by society and the media. With lots of similar products out there, yours has got to provide more than the others by bringing something more to the table. Consumers then can identify with the values of your brand and everything your product represents. And good brands are capable of having one foot in their identity and one foot in the lives of their audience.
If you think your product is boring, then David Ogilvy has some news for you: ‘There are no dull products, only dull writers.’
Ogilvy also wrote:
‘I never assign a product to a writer unless I know that he is personally interested in it. Every time I have written a bad campaign, it has been because the product did not interest me.’
Change The Game
What can be more boring and humdrum than the vacuum cleaner?
James Dyson revolutionized the vacuum cleaner market by shifting the consumer perception of cleaning from a chore tied to the female domain to something sophisticated, high-tech and high-performance - even desirable amongst men - and introducing bagless cleaners and playing to the rules of high technology.
As a formerly boring product, Dyson put itself in a category of its own. They bent the will of the market by creating a new context around the meaning of a vacuum cleaner.
Marketing a boring product can be a challenge, but no matter how mundane the product may be, it is important you believe in its value and potential.
As per Salesforce,
‘There are no boring products. There are just bored marketers.’
Talk toilet paper.
Andrex makes toilet paper – the epitome of a low-interest category. They don’t seek to offer purpose or other grand values. Instead, they grab one of the most basic territories you can imagine: softness. They respect consumers’ lack of product-type interest by getting the idea across with puppies. Puppies = softness.
Fun.
One of the other keys to getting engagement for a boring product is to find a way to get attention through fun. Take Beldent chewing gum.
How To Use This Thinking.
Don’t pretend you’re something you’re not. Consumers aren’t stupid. If you’re a mouthwash you won’t change the world. You’re not going to make it as the Tesla of, say, bin bags. Be in a different game. Tell a powerful story, interest the consumer through humour, or show them a purpose (but be authentic).
Pull the market toward you and away from others.
And get out of the way.