The benefit exchange: Make it personal!
- Fri, July 25 2008
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
Continuing with Benefit Exchange week, keep in mind, you need to make yours personal.
Our audience members need to believe from our message that the reward we’re offering for taking action will make life better for them as individuals. The private sector understands the importance of making rewards personal. They don’t sell you a car by explaining the way the engine is built; they tell you the car is reliable, safe, or fast, depending on who you are and your personal priorities. They take the attributes of their product and translate them into personally desirable benefits.
That translation is easy to make for most products. It’s harder for good causes.
While I was living in Ukraine, the government tax authority launched a campaign to motivate taxpayers to stay honest and continue paying their taxes. The tax authority developed several ads. One was a cartoon illustration of a bee in front of a hive with a slogan celebrating the fruits of a collective contribution to the government. Another was a photograph of a new well and water pump; city residents could fill containers with fresh water from the well. An accompanying slogan thanked taxpayers for making the well and other city improvements possible. In one of my trainings, I placed the ads side by side and asked a roomful of Ukrainians which was more effective given the tax authority’s marketing goals. Not surprisingly, they were unanimous in their judgment that access to fresh water was far more personally relevant, and therefore motivating, than a role in building a metaphorical hive.
This example seems obvious, yet in our communication we often focus more on hives than on wells. We talk about saving the earth, ending poverty, or creating a great society. Every day, we have to remind ourselves that the hive is what we’re building; the well is what our audience needs to see.
At the end of the day, the personal connection, not the grand concept, grabs our attention.
Comments
You have a great way of making these principles seem so practical and doable—those of us with limits in these skill-sets thank you.