And what would you pay to live 5 more years? These questions and the answers are priceless, especially in business.
When you think of PRICE what do you think of? Shopping? How much money you’ll have to spend to get something you want? The cost of an iPad, new shoes or a dress?
That’s certainly one form of PRICE but it’s actually so much more.
The video below is not only super cool, but it highlights a compelling pricing twist in consumer minds…
What about The Price of friends? The Price of fame? The Price of Free? Or even The Price of the Future?
Turns out price plays quite a role in daily human choices, but it’s often a radially different cost process than you’d think.
I recently I learned about a new book by NY Times editorial board member, Eduardo Porter, called The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do, and found it very intriguing.
The premise is very simple: there is a price behind each call that we make, whether we’re deciding to have a baby, drive a car, or buy a book. We often fail to appreciate just how critical prices are as motivating forces shaping our lives. But their power becomes clear when distorted prices steer our decisions the wrong way.
This book is an eye-opener that will make you think. It also will expose you to some realities about PRICE that could shift your perspective in surprising ways.
This book is definitely a recommended read. And if you are interested in winning a free copy of this book, click here (you’ll need to sign up by the 11th) or download a free excerpt.
At this very moment you are putting a price on knowledge by clicking through or blowing it off. What are your thoughts about PRICE and why we pay what we do?
For more on pricing, view: Coupons, Groupon and gambling with a brand.
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Launched in 1985, VH1 hoped to mirror the success of MTV, but to an older audience. Through the years it’s jumped around with playing volumes of music videos to producing a wave of reality TV shows, some great, some worse than awful.
My love for music has kept me loyal to this brand. Since 1999, I’ve been big fan of The Top 20 Countdown show which runs on Saturdays and Sundays at 9AM eastern time and maybe once during the week too. If you or your company markets and sells to any one in the 24-40 year age segment watching this show is a must in your weekly consumer research routine.
Here’s just a few insights I picked up today.
- Pop culture trends
- Fashion week in NY high lights
- Concept metaphors
- Art direction ideas for broadcast (video) and print (CD covers)
Click here to see Bruno Mars ” Just the way you are”
- Strategies other big advertisers are using in their TV ads that run during the show (StateFarm, Burger King, Tide and YP.com)
- Sex still sells and so does pain
- Slang – RT (artistic), Collabo (collaboration)
- Seeing superstars like Adam Lambert and Chris Daughtry who took great risks and worked relentlessly to achieve their dreams. Both finalists in American Idol.
- Nobody is too old to be understand and create great marketing. Seeing Clive Davis the legendary music mogul, who is much older than me, still getting the music scene is encouraging as even the best marketing minds get older
Music is part of life. If you are not spending some time in the music space every week, you’re likely missing some very important beats in building your business and brand.
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It’s no understatement to say women rule. They make up over 85% of the driving force behind the largest consumer purchases. Yep, they are a $5 trillion dollar buying machine. So what’s the best way to connect these powerful femmes?
Like I reported earlier, I’m in Memphis addressing a group of healthcare executives and here’s what I told them. Women process information significantly differently than men. Make sure you are speaking their language and that you are relevant to their worlds.
9 ways to connect your brand to women buyers.
1) Connect the benefits to their needs (What’s in it for me?)
2) Be likeable from the get go. Marketing begins at the first touch point.
3) Gratitude is very important. Thank yous earn big loyalty points.
4) Understand the sales cycle with women is slower. Many times, 6-8 conversations are needed before they act.
5) Women buy with their heads and hearts. Use emotional messaging.
6) Justification is part of most buying processes. Spotlight a multitude of reasons why they need your offering.
7) Details add richness and value. Easy comparison methods also further justification. Give a woman a reason to rationalize her purchase and she won’t think twice about buying it.
8) Women respond to convenience. Save them time. Make it hassle free. And women want to know you care, about them and others. Women will pay 20% more if they feel like their choice will help the community, the world and others.
9) Keep your pulse on popular women’s Web communities like: cafemom.com, Dove.com, capessa.com, ivillage.com, wowowow.com, and shespeaks.com.
Can you share any other marketing to women insight?
Do you have any favorite campaigns that you believe get it right?
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Coming in at the top of heap in the branding survey, Apple certainly seems to have a number of people drinking the Cool Aid. But in two of the questions it is just stunning and hard to believe that Apple could come in not just first, but far ahead.
1. What brand, if sent back 100 years, would have the biggest impact on the course of history?
Coming in first with 15.5% is Apple. This, of course, is absurd when Google is coming in third here with only 8.4% of the vote.
And then:
2. What brand can you not live without?
Again, 15.2% chose Apple, making it Number One. 5.5% of respondents told the truth and answered Google. I don’t care how much you love Apple; the brand simply does not do what Google does on a daily basis.
But what does this show about Apple’s brand? To me it demonstrates that Apple is not nearly as powerful as I had once believed. It simply has louder advocates who are devoted on a level so completely that they are blind to answering anything but “Apple” on any survey.
Full disclosure: I sometimes write for Brandchannel. Particularly, I have written about product placement. Apple maintains a special place in the world of product placement in that it is constantly appearing in films. It has benefited from nearly 20 years of on-screen promotion, from 1986 hit films like “Short Circuit” and “Star Trek IV” to a stunning 13 of 2007’s total Number One box office hits.
And yet, despite all of this “can’t live without it” admiration and screen time, the Apple brand controls only 8% of the computer market. These numbers just don’t add up.
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Porfolio’s reasoning is that, comparatively, $1 billion buys a lot more than, say, Microsoft’s $500 million to promote Vista. One gets you written into the history books and access to the purse strings to the most powerful nation on earth; the other, a substandard OS upgrade that will be replaced in a half-decade But by these guidelines, the Presidency is nothing compared with the bargain that is health care.
Knee replacement surgery, even at its most expensive, runs about $40,000. Compare that to $20,000 for a new Chevrolet Malibu. One buys you the ability to walk again. The other, a rental-agency-quality car.
In an even more extreme example: Appendectomies run about $35,000 (and as low as $14,000). Compare that life-saving dead-without-it surgery to one academic year at Sarah Lawrence College: $36,088.
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We all have a few of our own memorable (even if not good!) brand sounds. For us, some are the NBC chimes, the Intel Inside sound and the Yahoo! yodel and 867-5309/Jenny by Tommy Tutone. These are all simple sounds, but they’ve gotten lodged in our brains – sometimes annoyingly so, hence another name for them, ‘earworm.’
How are these sounds created? What makes them memorable? Is there a magic formula? We wanted to know so that we could pass the information along to you.
We found a great series of podcasts called BRAND SOUNDS series with John Groves. There’s tons of good info on topics such as: composing unforgettable brand sounds, when to hire a sound consultant and answers to the question “Is a Sound Logo a Sound ID?”
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A carefully selected and nurtured trademark is a valuable business asset for most companies. For some, it may be the most valuable asset they own. Estimates of the value of some of the world�s most famous trademarks such as Coca-Cola or IBM exceed $70 billion each. This is because consumers value trademarks, their reputation, their image and a set of desired qualities they associate with the mark, and are willing to pay more for a product bearing a trademark that they recognize and which meets their expectations. Therefore, the very ownership of a trademark with a good image and reputation provides a company with a competitive edge.
Source: “MAKING A MARK!
An Introduction to Trademarks for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises” by Carol Desmond http://www.trademarkstogoinc.com/
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This is an oldie, but a goodie and sort of contradicts our Smart Tip of the week, where we suggest that you should boil down your PowerPoint slides to as few words as possible. But, hey, we like to hear all sides of an argument and challenge our own Smart Tips.
This article from the New York Times December 14, 2003 discusses Edward Tufte’s (the famous theorist of information presentation) 28-page pamphlet that claimed that Microsoft’s PowerPoint forces people to mutilate data beyond comprehension.
What do you think?
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