Putting lipstick on the pig

I have used the statement "putting lipstick on the pig" many times in my Marketing career. The reason is that I have marketed products I don't fully understand. At Harrah's I marketed gambling, and I don't gamble and don't really understand how to do it. At Cisco I marketed networking technology, and I don't know much how a server works. Today I market liquid fertilizers and waste water management tools, and there is so much chemistry and biology involved as well as farming knowledge that I do not understand. I don't know how to raise the pig, I don't know how to turn the pig into delicious bacon, but I know how to stick lipstick on it and make it attractive.

All this has made me think how important it is to understand your customers. The 4 P's are product, price, place and promotion and the 5 C's are customer, company, competition, context and collaboration, but are any of those really worth anything without knowing the customer?

Today I work for a company with a great proprietary technology that can do all kinds of great things for a farmer or waste water technician. The challenge is now which of these things does the customer care about? What color of lipstick does these customer like? Which color will they ignore? You can have the greatest product ever but if you don't know your customers and what they want you are just spewing white noise.

So this is the challenge, knowing exactly what your customers want, and what attributes of your product they care about. I feel too many times we get so hung up about specific attributes of our products and how cool they are we just assume the customer wants them and so we are going to market those. The customers might not give a care about these things, so your marketing falls on its face and fails.

Granted, there are companies out there who say the customers have no idea what they want so you have to give it to them, like Apple and the iPod. Sure, the customer might not have been able to fathom that a device could come along and do what the iPod does, so they might not ask for it, but you still need to understand the customer likes music. You might have some other makeup besides lipstick to stick on the pig that the customer could not understand but would like, but you still need to understand from the customer that they like makeup on the pig.

Assuming that the customer wants what we think is cool is a mistake. You need to understand who your customer is and what they want or you are going to throw a ugly looking pig in front of the customer that they want nothing to do with even though that pig could give them everything they need.

Are you sure Starbucks?

Starbucks is about to release a new Marketing Campaign about how you shouldn't be seduced by lower prices (McDonald's) and trade down your coffee experience. Is this really the message you want to get across in these times? The Tag line reads "Beware of a cheaper cup of coffee, it comes with a price", but Starbucks is constantly losing to McDonald's and other companies in taste tests, so what is the price? A better tasting cup of coffee? This seems like they are just setting up the competition with ammunition for a campaign in response to this.

If you read further into the article it speaks about how the "cost" isn't just worse coffee but the fact Starbucks is a more upstanding company that has "practice of buying fair-trade beans and providing health care for employees who work more than 20 hours a week." The problem with this is that this information is buried and all people are going to see is the headline and the fact that Starbucks is saying they are more expensive and worth it. In the article Dennis Lombardi said "Who's taking the time to read that stuff? We're in a world of subtitles, and if you can't get your message out in an elevator speech, then you're going to lose attention pretty quickly." The danger with this is that customers can take away a different message than the one you want to portray.

On the other hand this might be just what Starbucks should do. I spoke in an earlier post about the Love, Hate and Swing groups, and maybe Starbucks understands it is not going to get the Hate group (people who just want coffee and are willing to go to McDonald's) and they are focusing on getting that part of the Swing group that will pay a little extra money so they don't have to go to McDonald's and get a more premium experience without the smell of McMuffins and Hash browns in the air. I compare this to people who shop at Target instead of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is cheaper and essential the same products, but sometimes people just don't want to deal with Wal-Mart and the craziness you run into there. I admit I will go to Target sometimes because I just don't feel like dealing with it. I think there is still a market for premium pricing and experience, and with the economy the way it is something small like coffee might be the premium experience people will start looking for instead of bigger items.

I will admit when I started to write this post I was going to blast Starbucks about how dumb they are trying to say they are a premium product when they constantly lose in taste tests, but when I looked into the segments of customers who buy coffee they might be on to something here. Some people just don't want to go to McDonald's, it can be crazy and dirty and not the experience you want. Starbucks has a different atmosphere and a different feel to their products. They have been building a brand image for years, and so has McDonald's, but McDonald's brand image is not one that really coincides with a nice coffee experience. Starbucks should hit on this, and go after that section of the swing group that is looking for that slightly premium experience. I believe everyone wants to feel special, have a premium experience, and with the economy hurting Starbucks might be onto something trying to get people to enjoy that experience with their coffee.