by Ariella Brown
There is a kind of disconnect is very common in all kinds of businesses in which the sellers fail to see things from the customer's eyes and project their own tastes and values on others. It doesn't occur to them that other people have their own calculus and that features and benefits they go on and on about may not matter to them at all.
In chapter 23 of The Little Prince, we get the perfect illustration of the misalignment between the value proposition of a product and what the customer actually wants in the interaction between the prince and a merchant he meets on his travels:
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"This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to quench thirst. You need only swallow one pill a week, and you would feel no need for anything to drink.
"'Why are you selling those?' asked the little prince.
"'Because they save a tremendous amount of time,' said the merchant. "'Computations have been made by experts. With these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week.'"
"'And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?'"
"'Anything you like..."
"'As for me,' said the little prince to himself, 'if had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.'"
This is highly relevant in an age in which marketers have convinced businesses that they have to espouse causes to push on their customers. M.T. Fletcher debunked this effectively in a June 2023 AdAge article entitled Why Brands need to stop 'purpose' pandering:
Politics and purpose are not the same, rarely mix well, and yet marketers continue to wade into social issues they are unable to navigate. Some seem wholly dismissive of their own band DNA, which might explain why today's advertising seems so disposable.
We said this more than a year ago after a major study by the Brunswick Group demonstrated that most CEOs felt their brand needed to take a stand on social issues, while less than third of consumers wanted to see politics in marketing --roughly the opposite of what every agency was telling its clients at that time. Just because some major brands got away with it, and in a few cases hit all the right notes, doe not mean my toothpaste has any credibility in telling me which cause to support or when to feel outraged or guilty. It's stressful enough being told I have to floss everyday.
Read more examples here.
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