You can see how Valpak is using AR in a very clever way later in the book.
❯❯ Flash mobs: Imagine if all the pedestrians at Times Square were suddenly surprised by an impromptu performance of people dancing and singing in your company’s uniforms and handing out coupons for a free drink, cosmetic item, or such at your store around the corner?
❯❯ Captivating displays: What if a tall building in your town was lit up all night long with images of your products and logo on it and a coupon code flashing that offered a not‐to‐miss discount to those savvy enough to see it?
Things like these get people’s attention and break into their routine.
Other forms of guerilla marketing can be as simple as offering the best in industry:
❯❯ Return policies: Be better than Nordstrom’s if you can and take the fear out of committing to high‐end purchases or subscription‐based services.
❯❯ Free product trials: Let people try a product for free with an easy return process if not happy. Once it’s in home, a very high chance exists that they won’t return it no matter what they think.
❯❯ “Freemiums”: Offer for free what others charge for and make your money through sponsorships, advertising on your sales websites, or upgrades to your basic service.
Blending guerilla marketing with CSR can have a really powerful impact as well.
Guerilla marketing and community building
The best guerilla marketing tactics are those that are fun both for you to execute and for your customers to experience.
Earlier in this chapter, we discuss building a community around a women’s clothing store and helping distribute clothing to underprivileged women trying to enter the workforce. Here’s how guerilla marketing can blend social giving and outside‐the‐boundaries thinking.
What if you asked your customers to adopt the cause of helping abused or homeless women get out of shelters and into jobs? You can tap into the emotions of their own personal journeys to success with a campaign on the theme of “Remember when.. ,” such as “Remember when you were just starting out and people said you couldn’t, wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, but you proved them wrong by becoming the successful businesswoman you are today?”
Your campaign could go on to invite women to “adopt a woman” just starting her journey to success like you did at one point in your life. UNICEF encourages people to adopt a child through monthly donations for education, food, and shelter. You could ask your customers to donate a small amount every month for clothing items that you donate to the woman they have adopted (anonymously so privacy is maintained, of course) or to women in shelters in their community. Upon purchase of items they buy for themselves, you could send them an email or insert a statement with their receipts asking them to recycle the clothes they just purchased by donating to a local women’s shelter when they no longer need them. You could even host donation days where you invite customers to come in and donate old items at your retail outlets and get 20 percent off any new items they buy. You’d be building a community among “people just like them” and helping others find joy by doing good in the world – a powerful way to bond with customers and communities.
A campaign like this shows guerilla marketing at its best because it not only involves customers and surprises them with a new idea, but it also takes them away from considering the competition as you’ve given them a strong emotional reason to stay loyal to you. People buy TOMS shoes knowing a kid in need will get a pair, too. The clothing guerrilla marketing idea has the same appeal. Buying a new blazer or winter coat from your store provides them with warmth and fashion and a good feeling because someone else is getting what she needs as well as a result of their choosing your brand.
Chapter 2
The Psychology of Choice and How to Trigger It for Lifetime Value
IN THIS CHAPTER
❯❯ Focusing your efforts on the unconscious mind
❯❯ Discovering what really drives consumers’ choices
❯❯ Making use of social influencers
❯❯ Acknowledging people’s need for happiness and purpose
❯❯ Creating ESP profiles
When asked what really drives consumer choice, common answers include quality, reputation, brand awareness, convenience, and of course price. However, although these are influencers at some level in most decision processes, they’re not the most powerful driver as many consumers and marketers believe they are. Another more powerful influencer must be engaged in all decision processes, B2B and B2C, for both small and large purchases, before any of the others have a chance to influence people. That influencer is the unconscious mind, which drives 90 percent of people’s thoughts and behavior, according to various neuromarketing studies, including those from Gerald Zaltman of Harvard University, widely known as the pioneer of neuromarketing.
So think about that for a minute: If 90 percent of all thoughts are unconscious, why do we market to the other 10 percent? If you’re marketing to the conscious mind with “limited time offers,” “act now,” and “our quality is better than their quality” types of appeals for consumers to ponder and act on, you’re targeting only 10 percent of the decision process. That is a lot of waste!
Traditionally, advertising has been all about promoting prices, conveniences, brand reputations, price advantages, and other appeals that the conscious mind processes. Yet people don’t always get far enough into advertisements to process the value of a given offer if the ad, content, posts, experience – whatever the medium is – doesn’t first appeal to their unconscious mind. If the research is true, you’re wasting 90 percent of your budget by appealing to just the 10 percent of the brain that drives the decisions people make. That doesn’t make for good marketing returns.
The unconscious mind makes rapid judgments about marketing materials and messages and dictates immediately how it should “behave.” These thoughts and actions are driven by our “schema,” or set of preconceived thoughts and beliefs that drive what we believe to be “truth,” real, and valuable.
The influence of schemas and the unconscious mind
We all have schemas associated with our political, religious, social, and brand beliefs and choices, and we typically pass off any outliers that don’t fit the notions we believe as anomalies, even when evidence proves our schemas wrong, or at least makes us question what we believe.
Pew Research shows that scientists and the public are far apart when it comes to believing evidence of opinions about key social issues, such as vaccines, GMOs, and climate change. And no matter what people hear about their chosen politicians, religions, and other sources of ideology, they tend to believe what they’ve chosen to believe and ignore contradictory facts despite the sources of the scientific, validated data. For example, 88 percent of scientists say research shows that GMOs
