The Stag at the Pool and the Power of Context
We’re all niche marketers. The difference is that successful companies acknowledge this reality and act accordingly.
One day, the stag was drinking from a crystal spring. As he drank, he admired his large antlers but hated his spindly legs.
"How can it be," he sighed, "that I should be cursed with such legs when I have so magnificent a crown."
At that moment, he heard an approaching hunter and quickly bounded out of sight through the forest. But as he ran, his great antlers caught in the branches of the thicket, and the hunter easily overtook him.
Context is Everything
When we make blanket statements about how our product is “better,” we fail to acknowledge the lens our customers are using to view the world; we fail to motivate them to act because we are selling without providing a common worldview.
Markets are defined, won, and dominated by those who proactively organize the assumptions under which their audience operates in order to bring consensus to the idea they are selling.
Instead of assuming the context into which they are pushing generic product benefits, they build concepts and stories around their product to influence perceptions.
As marketers, we must acknowledge that people don’t buy something like aerial imagery. They buy the outcome that aerial imagery can deliver for them inside their context and belief system; they buy the entire concept, not just the product itself.
The problem with most marketing campaigns today is that they make overly broad assumptions about the context their customers are operating in. They take for granted that the product they sell transcends their customer's context.
So they skip right over it, much to their detriment.
The Balance Between "How" and "Why"
As technologists and innovators, most of us are inherently obsessed with the question of “how?”
How does your technology work?
How are you able to implement this new system?
But you will have minimal success selling customers the "how" behind your product before they know the "why" - specifically, the reason why it matters to them.
Answering why requires that you use context to elevate beyond your product to a concept that you can sell. You have to embed your product into meaning that matters to your customer.
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” - Nietzsche
Example: Selling Computers Through the Cold War
In 1978, the company JS&A was responsible for selling the Chess Champion MK1 computer in the United States.
The manufacturer contacted JS&A to tell them that the Russian chess champion, Anatoli Karpov, was willing to endorse the computer.
They proposed a traditional endorsement where the renowned chess player would lend his name to the product while touting the superior specs and functionality of the chess computer.
But JS&A boss Joseph Sugarman rejected that idea and used the connection to Karpov to challenge the champ to a match against the computer publicly.
At the height of the Cold War, they positioned “American technology” against perceived Soviet dominance.
The news spread like wildfire, and the computer orders came pouring in.
They leveraged the context of their target customers and sold them a concept that included their product.
We’re all niche marketers. The difference is that successful companies acknowledge this reality and act accordingly.
Make something different. Make people care. Make fans, not followers.