Why some Ideas Survive and others Die?

Having spent more than a decade in marketing & sales working across a diverse set of brands, I always wondered why some campaigns survive while others fade away. I still remember the first time I read about the concept of “Loss Leadership” by the marketing guru Philip Kotler. Loss Leadership Marketing is what brands such as Gillette and Hewlett Packard have done over the years by selling their primary products such as the razor or the printer at low margins or sometimes even at a loss, only to hook you on to the product ecosystem. Instead these brands earn their profit by selling the support required for the continued usage of that product which in this case is the cartridge.
 Loss Leadership ignited my love affair with marketing, as I realized that marketing is as much a science as it is an art. The best marketers have an ability to amalgamate the two to churn out the most impactful campaigns. Hence the last 11 years, I have strived towards adding more science into the art of marketing.
 In this article I am going to take you through once such framework that I have found to be immensely useful while crafting campaigns. The framework we are going to talk about is called “SUCCESS” which essentially stands for Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible and Emotional Stories*
 *(This framework originates from the Book "Made to Stick" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The book coupled with a course taught by Professor Jonah Berger (Marketing Professor at The Wharton School and author of the bestseller Contagious: Why Things Catch On) on “Viral Marketing and How to Craft Contagious Content” have helped me put together some tips that marketers can use to make their messages stick.)
S imple: A campaign that has always inspired me is when Apple first advertised Mac Book Air- their thinnest notebook. All they did was to show how their beautiful and sleek laptop was being slid inside an envelope with a singular message at the end saying “The world’s thinnest notebook”. That’s it! They left their consumer with one simple attribute of the product that they believed will appeal to them the most and appeal it did. This compared to most of the competition unleashing hordes of product features on their consumers only to load them with information, very little of which was probably retained. As marketers we should be making consumer’s lives simpler and not more complex. Don’t split the consumers’ attention rather leave him with a simple central narrative they can walk away with. It creates intrigue in the consumers mind to find out more and that is what pulls people in rather than pushing them away. 
  U nexpected: When Apple pulled out the Mac Book Air from a regular envelope it was an unexpected move. Consumers didn’t expect such marvelous engineering to come out of an envelope. It was unexpected! Nobody thought of this before they did and there lies the beauty of making a communication that sticks! Break the pattern and hold their attention. However this doesn’t mean brands and marketers do atrocious things to get the consumers attention. Getting attention and holding attention are two very different things. The former you would easily forget the latter is hard to forget. Something that stood out to me from Prof. Jonah’s book* is the concept of “Opening a Curiosity Gap”. It is basically that sweet spot where you leave the consumer so that he is excited enough to dig for more information. As a marketer each time you try to create a piece of communication, ask yourself if the ad is enticing enough for people to find out more information.
 C oncrete: The third aspect to keep in mind while crafting sticky campaigns is to build something concrete. Eg: When Samsung revealed the waterproof Samsung Galaxy S5, it didn’t just say waterproof but showed the feature by dropping the phone in water across different life situations. This is an example of showing concrete proof and not just saying it. You need to be able to build a picture in the consumer’s mind and therefore the choice of words becomes important too. Abstract words won’t help you get far as the consumers struggle to build a concrete visual. Ask yourself will the consumer be able to build a mental picture with the words and visuals that I am using.
 Let me take you through a real life example. At the start of my career, I was handling the communication strategy for one of the Automobile brands in the passenger car segment. The brand had just launched in India and already launched its first TV commercial in which one of the features that they wanted to highlight was how spacious this car is. This was a great starting point as research after research revealed that this is feature that most consumers considered in their buying preference matrix. The ad highlighted the idea of space by stating “XXX is a wide body car”. Not surprisingly the ad didn’t cut ice with the Target Audience. Further research revealed that consumers weren’t able to picture what a “wide body” car even meant. The use of abstract words didn’t help. Where the brand failed is in their ability to build a picture in the consumers’ mind of a spacious car. How did we solve this problem?
 We showed it instead of saying it. We built a premise of a young boy in India who is going abroad to study. His excited and abnormally huge family wants to go see him off at the airport. The concept of the spacious car was brought to life by showing higher than normal number of people fitting in the back seat and higher than normal units of luggage fitting into the boot. What we did here is bring those features to life visually. It worked instantly and the campaign was a successful as the sales numbers went up. Make it relatable and real for the consumers!
 C redible: Will people believe you? Too often marketers use numbers and statistics to sound credible. While numbers are great they aren’t necessarily memorable. Apple didn’t just say they have built the world’s thinnest computer or state how many centimeters thin the laptop was, they showed it to by fitting it in an envelope thereby building credibility. Give those numbers some context otherwise the consumers won’t be able to understand the impact of that innovation. You constantly see detergent brands comparing their brands with competition in their ads. The comparison makes it easy for consumers to attach a value to how much whiteness to expect from that brand vis-à-vis competition. Whiteness suddenly has a metric. Now imagine brand saying “This detergent will give you 60% more whiteness”. How good is 60%?! Brands need to give consumers some “testable credentials” which encourages the consumers to test it themselves therefore building credibility.
E motional S tories: The last part of the framework is creating emotional stories. The more consumers care what you are saying the stronger the impact your ad will have on them. Let’s look at the current scenario. In the midst of the Covid pandemic you have a lot of insurance company using an emotional angle to get people to buy more insurance and safeguard themselves and their loved ones. One needs to be careful between playing on fear and making the campaign connect emotionally. It is a fine line and when marketers tread it carefully they come out on the winning side. One brand that has built emotional stories to increase their brand salience is Cadbury Dairy Milk. They have used quintessential Indian emotional nuances over the years to create campaigns that make consumers smile and relate very positively to the brand.


So guys there you have the SUCCESS framework to build ads that stick. I think as a marketer if you 

are able to tick all of the above boxes you will in all likelihood created ads that stick and probably 

even go viral. Do give this a shot and tell me if it helped make your campaigns stronger!


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