The Vine

Hugh MacLeod is a brilliant, unorthodox, provocative thinker on brands and relevance and creating meaningful interactions with customers.

Hugh nails it yet again with this recent post. He writes:

“Too many brand managers ask the question, ‘What message do I have to craft in order to get people to buy my product?’ It’s a dead end. A far more useful and profitable question would be, ‘What can I do to make my customers’ lives more interesting and meaningful?’

And ‘Meaningful’ always has a social dynamic. We find meaning via our relationships with our fellow creatures. ‘People matter. Objects don’t.’

A bottle of barbecue sauce isn’t going to instantly change anyone’s life for the better. But that 4-hour-long conversation with an old friend, sharing a plate of ribs and brisket, with some Shiner Bock… Well, that might. So you want your product to be there when it happens; you want your product to be around during your customers’ significant moments.”

If you’re a builder or developer, good news, your product already is around during your customers’ significant moments. But walls and windows (and patios and parks and plazas) are just objects. It’s not until human beings animate them that they become places of significance.

Okay, duh, that’s stating the obvious. Then why is real estate so often marketed on the basis of objects, and so rarely as a story of people and relationships? As Lisa Kalmbach recently commented, “no homebuyer thinks in terms of price per square foot.”

One last thought. A lot of marketers now get this, and all kinds of brands are rushing into the “significance” space. It’s the sophisticated ones, however, that understand how and when (and when not) to insert themselves into the picture.