Now sit back and think. Can you remember the television advertisement that informed you of the name of the drink? Perhaps an article in a magazine you read last week featured medical experts’ views of vitamin-enhanced beverages.
A large percentage of the communication that reaches us includes some type of marketing. In fact, the great marketing story that is unfolding around us at all times usually catches us unaware.
Sales, Marketing, or Creative Thinking?
What words are usually associated with the term “marketing”? Pushy? Salesmanlike? Sales and marketing are often confused with each other, and a marketing professional is also seen as someone who can be very sales-oriented. There is also a perception that a career in marketing involves aggression and the ability to be pushy at all times.
While there may be some truth to these ideas, the bigger reality is that marketing (and even sales, for that matter) is a career that can challenge an individual’s creativity to the utmost. The single most important reason that marketing is so challenging is that it has to coax people to part with their money. As anyone who has sold anything — be it products or ideas — to a disbelieving audience knows, people are very protective of their money and determined to get what they consider good deals. Individuals in marketing jobs have to determine potential customers’ deep-seated beliefs and perceptions in order to make the case for purchasing their products.
Understanding Marketing
To repeat a cliché, a successful marketing professional is one who understands his or her audience of consumers.
In his bestselling book, The Culture Code, Dr. Clotaire Rapaille takes the reader through different codes — all finally arriving at a “way to understand why people around the world live and buy as they do.” In the introduction to his book, the author speaks about the importance of interpreting different cultures, each of which has a different code.
Dr. Rapaille begins with a study of principles that are inherent to understanding cultural codes. Through these, he explains why you cannot always believe what people say and how emotions are inherent to learning, among other principles. Dividing the book into different codes — such as the code for quality and perfection, the code for work and money, and the code for shopping and luxury — the author emphasizes imprinting at the individual and cultural level for what may seem like ordinary, everyday facets of life.
From the viewpoint of a marketer, to understand that certain ordinary, everyday events influence peoples’ purchasing decisions is to unlock the secret to successful marketing.
Conclusion
For the marketing professional the message is very clear: attempt to determine why people behave the way they do by figuring out what drives them.
