Appeal to aspirations not reality

Some of the most dramatic marketing victories have been won by recognizing a simple fact: the tactical target of your communications program does not have to be the same as the market.

An obvious example fo this principle is the advertising for Marlboro cigarettes. In spite of the fact that the ads show only cowboys smoking the brand, Marlboro has become the No. 1brand of cigarette, among women as well as men. The tactical target is not the strategic market.

Prospects don’t take your advertising personally. Rather, they extract from the message ideas and concepts that they can utilize in their own lives.

There are many products where the target is designed to be considerably different from the market.

“Seventeen” magazine has a name and editorial position targeted specifically at 17-year-old girls. But who reads “Seventeen”? Girls who are 13, 14, 15, and 16 years old. When a young woman grows up to be 17, she usually outgrows “Seventeen” magazine.

Virginia Slims is a cigarette whose target is liberated women and female swingers. Each ad shows a woman who is 25 and “with it”. but the market is the middle-aged woman who aspires to that lifestyle. The average Virginia Slims smoker is more like 45.

Both Virginia Slims and “Seventeen” appeal to aspirations and not reality.

The “implication of the opposite” phenomenon

In deciding what message to use for your marketing campaign, be aware of the “implication of the opposite” phenomenon, that is, consumers may intemperate your message as the opposite of what you say.

When a car dealer says on TV, “We’re selling cars like crazy”, the viewers may say to himself, “they must think I don’t think they’re selling a lot of cars”.

So you should put your marketing messages under the implication microscope. Reserve the message and see if that is really what you want to imply.