Be Aspirational in your marketing!
Picture the 1995 movie Jumanji, with Robin Williams? In the movie, the main character, Alan Parrish was the son of a business owner who owned a factory that made shoes. As you would expect from a shoe manufacturing company in the sixties, there was a lot of machinery in an old New England mill building. You saw a bunch of middle-aged, apron-wearing dudes feeding leather into the machines. Lots of noise … it was definitely a manufacturing “process.”
You can just smell the oily machines and the freshly cut leather, yes?
OK, now that you have firmly in your head, WHAT a shoe manufacturing process is, think of “Nike.”
When most people think of Nike, they DON’T have a picture in their head like the Parrish Shoe Company.
It might be more along the lines of health, youth, vigor, victory, achievement. And, their commercials usually have super achieving athletes.
So, when you think of those athletes, do you think to yourself, “Yeah, I could slam dunk just like Michael Jordan? Yeah, I could do that!”
That’s what we’re talking about today. Being aspirational.
We discover today that it’s a powerful idea that A LOT of brands might want to consider.
Here is the article in Inc that we refer to:
“Steve Jobs Stole His Best Idea Ever From Nike’s Brilliant 2-Word Marketing Strategy”
(sub-title: Aspirational brands talk about people, not products.)
What did Steve Jobs steal from Nike?
A great Steve Job’s quote from the article is:
“In their ads, as you know, they don’t ever talk about the product, they don’t ever talk about their air soles, how they’re better than Reebok’s air soles. What’s Nike do in its advertising? They honor great athletes and they honor great athletics. That is what they are about.”
How many times have we said that here? It’s NOT about the products!!! In fact, they even go so far as to distill that quote down to two words: NO PRODUCTS!
Listen in as Kevin and Amy pick a few archetypes and talk about how each one could be really aspirational while remaining on brand.
A WRAP-UP
- If you’re feeling INspired to get your customers to ASpire, then we met our goal for the day. If, in this process, you have questions, feel free to reach out to us.
- Head over to BrandArchetypes.com to find out more.
- Follow us on all the social media @BrandArchetypes
Marketing Mayhem
Check out the Johnson commercial we discuss on this week’s Marketing Mayhem:
We what to know your thoughts. Send us your terribly amazing examples of Marketing Mayhem you find.
