The “Keeping up with the Joneses” effect
What consumers want from brands is to support social causes and protect the environment.
That's what Nielsen's Global annual marketing report 2022 says.
The problem is, this claim is absolute BS.
It ain't true.
It's a big fat treta (hint: treta means BS in Portuguese).
As David Ogilvy once said, “The problem with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say”.
I'm not suggesting that all market research is BS.
Market research certainly has its place & merit.
But market research based on surveys like the ones behind Nielsen's report is pure BS.
If marketers want to understand what people want from brands, marketers shouldn’t ask people what they think. Marketers should watch what people do.
A 2016 study of Canadian lottery winners did precisely that.
This was a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
And it examined the effects of lottery winners on the consumption choices of very close neighbors.
The study found that neighbors of lottery winners are more likely to *wait for it* go bankrupt.
And the bigger the lottery prize, the more neighbors tend to spend themselves into bankruptcy.
The reason? “Keeping up with the Joneses” mentality.
What this means is, after the lottery win, neighbors of lottery winners tend to spend a lot more money on visible assets.
So they buy expensive clothes, jewelry, motorcycles and cars. Just to keep up with the winners.
When building brands let us remember that people aren't creatures of logic. And 95% of our daily decisions are motivated by pride, vanity and our own biases.
》”Dangerous” Ideas
1/ Hunt for what consumers need and communicate a want
As Jeremy Bullmore pointed, “A brand is not just a product with lipstick on.”
All brands deliver a mix of functional and non-functional satisfactions. You might be certain about the functional satisfactions your brand or product delivers.
But the one million dollar question is: Are you certain about the true non-functional motives why customers are buying your product?
2/ Humans are creatures of emotions. And our biases, beliefs and impulses drive most of our daily choices.
Left-wing New Yorkers spending $10 on a popsicle to symbolically “eat the rich” is just another Real-World example that confirmation bias is real.
3/ Every product has that special little something that makes consumers keep buying it.
Your pal,
🚀 Founder & Chief Copywriter: Teardwn
💌 Newsletter: Creative Samba
🏂 Side projects: 💭 Snackable Copy Tips + 👀 Great Landing Page Copy + ✍️ Copy Ipsum + 🎧 Chill Music Club
You're receiving this email because you signed up to the free version of Creative Samba. For the full experience, become a paying member.
What’s the difference between the paid version and the free version?
Paid members get the weekly edition of Creative Samba every Friday.
Everyone else gets only one email a month (*cof cof… occasionally I might send two emails a month, every other Monday*).