How marketers think and how consumers think couldn’t be more different. “We need to stop looking at people as consumers and start looking at what they are, which is people.”
The election of Trump and his continued division politics is having an effect on people: they are getting angry at everyone and everything because they feel a government for and by the people has been replaced with a government for special interests and big money.
Their anger is increasing like a pressure cooker and people are just looking for scapegoats. Papp John’s found this out when they tried to blame the NFL for sagging sales and even Starbuck’s is facing an angry backlash over some of their high sugar drinks.
More often the place that people take out their anger is on social media. There they can get their hits of dopamine as more people agree with their complaints. Consumers may not unite to follow your brand, but you had better believe that they will and are uniting to against brands that ,they feel, do them wrong.
Now more than ever, it’s important that brands get it right and deliver a good product at a fair price that meets customer expectations. Things like big data and mobile marketing do nothing to ensure the most basic brand equation of satisfying the customer.
[pullquote]The problem is that brands are trying too hard to complicate marketing. It’s not that hard really, except the MBA’s will try and tell you that it’s a science.[/pullquote]
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]Consumers are basically simple creatures with straightforward needs and easily observed behaviors[/inlinetweet]. Marketers are complicated critters with strange customs and mysterious beliefs. Marketers are taught not to think simply. In fact, the whole practice of marketing is based on the conviction that there are forces at work in the minds of consumers that only trained specialists are qualified to interpret. Thinking simply has been beaten out of marketers. You can’t be taken seriously in any marketing or advertising organization if you suggest that the bulk of consumer behavior is perfectly obvious.
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]Consumers want clarity and simplicity. Marketers want to complicate the shit out of everything[/inlinetweet]. Marketers are no longer responsible for selling stuff, instead we are social workers whose job is to “engage in a community” and “co-create with people.”
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]Our brands are very important to us marketers and very unimportant to most consumers.[/inlinetweet] Please read that again, and again.
