He walks into your office, with an air of importance, wearing an oversized suit and a briefcase that seems to keep swinging like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.
You smile, welcome him to your establishment, and ask him what he needs. He explains his revolutionary product that will change the world and how he wants to reach everyone…
Pause.
Let me come clean. This headline is actually misleading. I must confess that you can’t appeal to everyone, and the post should have been titled “ Why you can’t appeal to everyone (and that is ok)”.
Take a moment to remember you had a client say this to you, or maybe you were the one with that revolutionary product and service that everyone needed to hear. Close your eyes, and imagine that you could reach everyone. Calculate the logistical nightmare, the communication hitches you will surely hit when interacting all the cultures of the world and all the other intricacies. Now open your eyes and whisper to yourself, “its only a dream.”
Don’t you feel better already?
No matter how big or creative you are, or how many products you have, you can’t talk to everybody and that is okay. Think of the biggest brands in the world (E.g. Coca-Cola) or any other brand that readily comes to mind and you will find out that none of them has reached everyone with their product. There are just too many people, and even if by some stroke of luck you are able to do so, your product will not be loved by everyone. It may seem sad, but this really could be your greatest weapon.
A brand can only go so far before it suffers from inelasticity – this is the reason Toyota created the Lexus brand. The Toyota brand isn’t elastic enough to appeal to the premium market and as such Lexus had to be made to penetrate the premium market. All brands have breaking points, including yours.
Also, you must have a clearly defined audience. At every point of communication, your message should be streamlined. Hence, talking to a very wide audience would lead to a lot of noise. But like I said earlier on, having this limitation is not a bad thing. It is actually one of the strongest assets in your arsenal.
Focus. Know your audience. This ideology is one of the most powerful strategies in marketing. Learn about your target consumers, know as many concrete details about the life of your average target consumer and then design your communication accordingly. This type of focus is necessary because to know your consumer is to win their hearts. Brand communication as a whole can be boiled down to single-minded focus.
To be continued next week…