There is No Such Thing as a Boring Product
It is every marketing student’s dream to work for some really hot and sexy brand. A million years ago whe
n I was in college all the big names would come on campus and grab the best and the brightest; Proctor and Gamble, Black and Decker, Coca Cola, and others.
But then, if you ran into some of these new professionals over the summer, many of them would say that they were nothing more than cubicle slaves. The Emerald City of high-profile branding meetings seemed years and many 80+-hour work weeks away. The whole thing just wasn’t as satisfying as they had hoped.
I had made the decision to take "consumer-based" marketing into the industrial world. After all, it was people who bought and used industrial products. The same people who bought and used Crest toothpaste also bought machinery and pharmaceutical packaging and check valves. They very same. Didn’t they deserve the same kind of marketing "zing" in their 9 to 5 as they got at the grocery store?
It seems that this view has really caught on.
Dirt Devil has come up with the Kone and Kurve "designer" vacuums. And a company called Home Hero Fire Extinguisher has come up with a line of sexy fire extinguishers.
What I like about this is that this company has taken the time to think about who their ideal customer was and what was REALLY important to them when they were buying fire extinguishers. They answered the question what is it that these people WANT – rather than what do they need.
Needs are boring and wants are fun. Everyone NEEDS a fire extinguisher in the kitchen – next to where the fire can happen (the stove or oven). But fire extinguishers are ugly. Unless you have a kitchen that features bright red (which I actually used to) you’re going to keep the fire extinguisher hidden way back under the sink somewhere. But look at this baby! It’s beautiful. It actually looks like a fancy pepper shaker or something. Of course that could be a problem if you decide to use it as a pepper shaker and end up with foam on your food. But that’s another story.
The point here is to be clear about what your ideal customer really wants. There’s no rule out there that says that "industrial" or practical products have to be boring.
Kudos to Home Hero for using or hiring real designers and engineers to help them connect with customers.
You may not have to go that far. Really think about your customers as people and what they want, rather than what they need. The results may surprise you.
