Brooklyn Superhero Supply Store.

On my recent trip, I finally got around to making the obligatory visit to the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Store.

When you read about this place, you tend to read about the zany merchandise and the humour of the place. But while that's all there, what I saw was a great example of marketing to different audiences.

The store itself is designed to be remarkable. It's their display advertising aimed at people such as me who will be intrigued enough to visit and then spread the word about the store and its real purpose.

Interestingly, a number of local people with whom I spoke thought it was just a retail store and were amazed to be told that it was really a front for an after-school education programme. They'd have been even more amazed to know the minuscule amounts that the store earns every day.

But the kids who stream in to use the service are reacting to different marketing. They may well have been intrigued by the display advertising initially, but they pay it no attention now. For them, this false shelving is the marketing. It's the door to the classroom.


They're much more interested in their secret place, their ownership of that place that's inherent in their sharing in that secrecy and their knowledge of what it's giving them.

Display advertising works for some people. To really hook your users you need something more powerful. I made one visit - they keep coming back.

Glass Half Empty.

Marketing is generally focussed on encouraging people to acquire something they don't have.

But what if people are motivated more by the fear of losing something they have rather than the disappointment of not getting something new?

If people are motivated by avoiding negatives such as fear, regret or death, how do you reframe your approach?

What Questions Are you Answering?

I spent some hours yesterday critiquing the usability of a forthcoming expensive website and did so largely on the basis that the designers had not asked what journey they expected their users to be taking. So, it was particularly apposite to see Ben pointing out the excellence of Google's print dialogue box as reproduced above. A dialogue box that is designed with the user's journey/questions in mind.

Businesses provide answers for and to customers' questions. Marketing which starts with the design of your product/service should be similarly predicated on those questions. Putting yourself in the customers' shoes is what you have to do, but that does not mean asking yourself or pointless focus groups whether they would like a certain new feature.

Putting yourself in the customers' shoes is all about imagining the journey they want to take in using your product/service. It's about predicting the questions they are going to want answered and it's about making sure you answer all of them better than anyone else.

Think Local.

I caught up with an old friend/client who runs three business locations in Manhattan - downtown, midtown and uptown. It turns out that even within that small area, the effectiveness of various media is different.

Downtown people are more susceptible to online, midtown density lends itself to outdoor and uptown needs the direct marketing route. The customers are similar but their environments and lifestyles are different.

It's a good reminder that aggregating an audience geographically can be as naive as doing it demographically.

Markets Are Presentations.

"A bullet-point that wraps around is not a bullet-point, it's a badly written sentence."

Another great quote from SXSW. This time from a panel about presentations and said by a trail lawyer turned presentation expert.

It's applicable to presentations, of course, but to so much more. After all, a presentation is simply the act of marketing information to an audience. So when you endure your next presentation, use the time effectively. Work out why you're hating it and make sure you're not subjecting your customers to a similar experience.

Kubrick's Five Marketing Lessons.

Marketing is everybody's job and yet many people deny their role in it. They do so either by neglect or ignorance. Neglect occurs when people forget that every interaction is a marketing occasion or, more accurately, the opportunity not to create a bad impression/experience. Ignorance is often more benign and occurs when people are living by marketing principles without knowing it.

I witnessed a great example of the latter here in Austin while sitting in on a fabulous chat with Jan Harlan - brother in law of, and executive producer to Stanley Kubrick. He explicitly denied any real involvement in marketing campaigns, but so many of the things he said about his production philosophy were steeped in great marketing thinking.

1) Get the first three minutes right.

That's nothing other than engaging the customer. Ensuring that you rapidly pique their attention and curiosity while not confusing or boring them.

2) If there's something wrong with the ending, check the beginning.

In other words, focus on getting the product right by focussing not just on where you're aiming (because as I keep saying, your actual customers may not even be there), but on where you're starting from.

3) You've only got one chance.

His full statement was, "you've got just two hours and an audience that comes once". That might seem movie-specific, but it's really not. Think of your customers as a movie audience with their attendant expectations and word of mouth potential and you'll be reminded that "always in beta" is more about continuous improvement than an excuse to make mistakes.

4) Trust your audience.

A corollary of point 1 in my eyes. Not giving them what they want is bad enough, patronising them in any way is worse. Don't keep them in the dark for sure, but don't treat them as idiots either. Give them the tools and the opportunities to understand and appreciate the full potential of your product/service. Their discovery will enhance their enthusiasm.

5) Go and get.

In typical self-deprecating style, he remarked that "Executive Producer is a meaningless title. What I do is I negotiate. I go and get what's needed." This included making four trips to Venice to buy face masks for Eyes Wide Shut because the costume designer was better employed back at base. Marketing departments are all too often about the business of marketing and not about going and getting.

The Problem With Marketing.

If someone says they work in marketing, the next response is frequently "What do you market?" As if all expertise was sector or product-specific.

The problem with marketing (well one of the many) is that its practitioners do a lousy job of marketing themselves and what they do.