My wife and I love blueberries, especially when they are big, fat and plump. We can’t get enough of them all year long. We especially love the Gold Cup brand blueberries that connect to us emotionally with little ‘fortune cookie-like’ saying on the outside of the box. They stand up on the shelves screaming, “pick me, pick me.” They make us smile. I love a great headline for a product.
While other fruits and vegetables sit rooted in their boring packages, the blueberries are teasing us to pick them up and take them home. They shout at us at the top of their blueberry lungs:
I am active, I am great, and I am jolly!
Emotional and Direct Messaging
When a brand can connect with you simply, directly and with some passion, it gets your attention. Even my beloved Dyson vacuum cleaner has a message for me. I have The strongest suction of any vacuum says the billboard banner plastered on the front of the machine.
HEADLINES GRAB OUR ATTENTION
When you bury a brand’s key message in brochures or manuals, no one notices. But make it a headline and give it top billing, and your story is going to pop and gain attention. The following are three marketing suggestions you can learn from blueberries and vacuum cleaners
MAKE IT PROMINENT
If you have a headline, key message or strong value proposition, can you make it so prominent on your package or website that the visitor can’t miss it? If I am in a store, I may look at a hundred different packages. If I’m surfing the web I might visit dozens of websites. You only get one key message to communicate. Make it count.
Most people read the headline of articles they read online, not the article itself. Don’t bury the lead. Let your key message grab your visitors so they can’t miss you in the 2.3 seconds where you get to reach them.
MAKE IT EMOTIONALLY STICKY
Can you connect the consumer or end user of your product with a strong emotion that will make them want to learn more? Your competitors probably aren’t doing this, so it’s a great opportunity to grab attention quickly. However, your headline has to matter and be very relevant to your audience. When you touch an emotion, people either love it or hate it – but you’ll be noticed and remembered.
MAKE IT MORE HUMAN
A package or product that makes you smile makes you want to become friends. I am often amazed at how similar most packages are on a shelf because everyone is fearful of projecting emotions onto an object. Products get made by real people with ticking hearts and smiling faces. So few food and beverage packaging show human beings express joy, happiness or delirium. Most brands could leverage this idea throughout a lot of their market.
Can you make your brand more personal, more real and less serious?
As The Who sang in Tommy, the opera, See me, feel me, touch me and hear me.
Is your messaging getting through? Maybe you need to
SHOUT.
I have a megaphone and I’m not afraid to use it.
Call or text me at 919 720 0995 or email me at jeffslater@themarketingsage.com
Photo: Jeffrey Slater while shopping at Whole Foods and vacuuming my living room.
