Steve Jobs famously said, “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” And as much as we may understand him as telling us to ignore the customer, I believe he was looking at the customer from a different perspective.
One of the business sectors I am most fascinated by is the world of banking and finance. For as long as I have read banking and financial promotional material, I was led to feel as though I should buy their product and feel privileged and empowered.
Their material almost always features photography and imagery of people living their best life without ever showing the actual product. In contrast to insurance products that promise peace of mind ‘just in case’, banking and finance products promise an almost instant change to one’s lifestyle by showing us where we could be if we used their products.
We are introduced to a new way to reach our goals, a means to an end, rather than the end itself. That is compelling. Is this what Steve Jobs meant? After all, it is true that we did not ask for an iPhone before it was ever invented, yet it provided a new, easier and faster way of doing our day-to-day tasks through the use of this new device.
In our brand strategies, this is also a very powerful tool, particularly when working on our brand positioning. How are we helping our customers reach their goals easier, faster, cheaper, better, stronger than ever before? Does it matter how many buttons a gadget has, or is it more relevant to explain how those buttons can help your target market do more with less?
This is a paradigm shift that many of us need to make, from one that focuses on products objectively to more contextual products. The same applies to our approach when defining our brand strategy, from telling our customers about our product to showing our customers how we can make their life better.
