Desire Driving in Product Marketing: Influencing purchase decision is not enough

In product marketing, we mainly focus on two things:

1. we drive desire;
2. we influence decisions.

Desire driving and decision influencing in product marketing

In 1997, when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he gave a speech to the company.

In the speech, Jobs mentioned:

The dairy industry tried for 20 years to convince you that milk was good for you. It’s a lie, but they tried anyway. And the sales were falling. And then they tried “Got milk” and the sales went up. “Got milk” wasn’t even talking about the product. In fact, it focuses on the absence of the product.

It may sound counterintuitive, but sales of milk were rocketed due to the Got milk campaign.

It tells us one thing: any successful campaign will not just talk about unique selling point, which is meant to influence decisions only. After all, customers won’t buy something just because it is good, but will be more likely to buy things that they truly want.

So should we skip promoting product features in marketing?

Of course not. Product features are important, and promoting them does influence the customers’ a purchase decision. That said, however, it is not enough to promote them alone.

A product marketing campaign will work much better, when it can make the target customers recoganise one of the scenarios in their daily lives, and learn about how using the product can make their life better by solving their problems, releasing their stress, or satisfying their demands.

Customers understand product value through scenarios. Scenarios inherently have an educational effect, making it easier for consumers to perceive the product’s features when it’s presented within a context. Scenarios plays a critical part in product marketing.

As it’s said at the beginning of this article, marketing involves two main tasks: driving desire and influencing decisions.

A selling point which is normally a product feature, is not equal to desire; customers need to understand the product’s features within a scenario to develop interest in the product first.

In product marketing campaigns, scenarios should always precede product features, and customer’s developed desire of the product will eventually influence their purchase decision.

As Red Bull co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz said:

We don’t bring the product to the consumer, we bring consumers to the product.

Driving desire through scenarios means creating opportunities for product consumption in customers’ life, making the purchase of the product a natural result due to their desire. Only with scenarios, the marketing model becomes complete.

An epic desire driving product marketing campaign: Coffee Break

American psychologist and founder of behaviorism, John Watson, was also a successful advertiser. During his time as the vice president at the renowned advertising company J. Walter Thompson, he had a classic case promoting coffee products when coffee was not yet popular in the United States.

Watson believed that selling coffee shouldn’t just emphasize on how good it tastes, but rather create scenarios in which drinking coffee is appropriate, thereby influencing people’s behavior.

So, Watson launched the Coffee Break campaign across United States, making coffee time a daily routine for people no matter they are at home, in factories, or in offices. This campaign led to a new trend with coffee becoming a daily necessity for many people, and no wonder the sales of coffee surged thereafter.