One of the best songs ever written about marketing–and really how many are there?–is \u201cStep Right Up,\u201d by the gravelly voiced singer Tom Waits.<\/p>\n
In about five minutes, Waits hits every sales cliche known to mankind, including the need for change, \u201cChange your shorts, change your life, change into a nine-year-old Hindu boy, get rid of your wife….\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"BrandMe](\"http:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/brandme_antique_dollar-300x300.jpg\")
But it\u2019s a truism that a reliable way to get consumers interested in your product is to claim it\u2019s new. If it\u2019s new, there\u2019s nothing wrong with it (so far). In our fast-paced age, there are the instances of the new pharmaceutical product that cures the common headache, and then a few months later, there are the lawsuit commercials asking, \u201cDid you take Vioxx?\u201d<\/p>\n
But, by and large, new works. New is cool, not stodgy like that brand we\u2019ve all grown tired of. New is innovative, promising to include all the latest technological advances, all the good stuff that the smart people thought of in the lab. New can be slapped on just about anything.<\/p>\n
Who likes new? Young people–after all, they\u2019re new or relatively new. Dissatisfied people like new, they\u2019re fed up with the way things are, and they\u2019re ready to embrace something, anything, that\u2019s different.<\/p>\n
If your product is something that\u2019s never been seen before–the first iPod, for example–you\u2019ve no choice but to go for a \u201cnew\u201d marketing campaign, because it\u2019s a new product. You\u2019re going to have to explain its merits from scratch, but then you can always say, \u201cYou\u2019ve never seen anything like it.\u201d That\u2019s powerful stuff. You\u2019re on your way to owning the future.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, there may be problems with new. For as much as consumers claim to want change, they resist it. What they really want is reliable, tested, old-fashioned. They do not have time in their busy days to hassle with this novelty or that, they want to get from point A to point B. They do not want to learn how it works. They will avoid products that appear to have potential<\/i> problems. And if they hear a report that the car catches on fire, they\u2019re out of there. That\u2019s why there\u2019s a truism among the car buying public about never buying the first production year of a new model; let them get the kinks out and we\u2019ll get back to you.<\/p>\n
Some products just go better with old-fashioned. No one really wants new ice cream. We want slow-churned, creamy, flavorful ice cream like we remember when we were kids.<\/p>\n
But, as it turns out, even ice cream can be made new again. Sometimes the new product is the return to the old. Just ask Ben and Jerry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the best songs ever written about marketing–and really how many are there?–is \u201cStep Right Up,\u201d by the gravelly voiced singer Tom Waits. In about five minutes, Waits hits every sales cliche known to mankind, including the need for change, \u201cChange your shorts, change your life, change into a nine-year-old Hindu boy, get rid of your wife….\u201d But it\u2019s a truism that a reliable way to get consumers interested in your product is to claim it\u2019s new. If it\u2019s new, there\u2019s nothing wrong with it (so far). In our fast-paced age, there are the instances of the new pharmaceutical product that cures the common headache, and then a few months later, there are the lawsuit commercials asking, \u201cDid you take Vioxx?\u201d But, by and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[7,93],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marketing-advice","tag-marketing","tag-marketing-tips"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}