Tag Archives: artisanal marketing

Authenticity in Marketing

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In my post on artisanal marketing I talked about how the Fearless Flyer resonates with people the way no other grocery store circular does. It even sounds ridiculous to put resonate and grocery store circular in the same sentence; but that is what Trader Joe‘s manages to do with its flyer. The reason it resonates is that it is authentic and real. Regardless of how it is crafted (I don’t know how or who or how many people write on it, etc.) but it feels like a regular human being has written it for you – to talk to you directly. It’s this authentic, imperfect voice that makes the flyer so appealing and enjoyable. And read – instead of recycled immediately. But what is authenticity exactly?

I think authenticity is the sum of many choices the people who assemble the Fearless Flyer make. First of all it’s not just something you can add, like an ingredient, or pinch of salt in a recipe. There is no one thing that makes something authentic. You can’t just point to something and say “that makes it real” like an art dealer trying to tell an original from a fake. It’s the entire gestalt of the piece that makes you think it’s authentic. There isn’t just one way to be authentic either. For example the Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer has very little in common with a Breitling watch; but they’re both authentic. Just in their own way.

It starts with their customer. They know who we are. They know we are yearning for something more real, something less processed, something more natural. Something that gives us a break from the rat race, mass processed, over produced reality that we deal with every day. So they strip that away from the flyer itself. Newsprint, line illustrations, historic images and font styles all relay simplicity in the look and feel and form of the flyer. Then they perfect the voice. Whimsical, friendly, honest and forthright, the voice is enjoyable, reasonable and helpful. It doesn’t push us to buy, doesn’t scream at us with exaggerated claims of happiness and effectiveness. It simply tells us about the products and how they can fit into and make our lives a bit better in a friendly manner. There are other attributes as well: the length of the product descriptions demands attention from us if we’re to get anything out of it.

It’s this honestly – an intentional design and voice – that creates that authentic feeling. A feeling that compells us to read and to share and to spend. In a world of “pay attention to me” interruption-based marketing, fed by high-gloss, big promises and a dumbed down message the authentic, the real is what we yearn for, recognize and show our appreciation for with our dollars.

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Artisanal Marketing

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My favorite type of marketing, by far, is artisanal marketing.  Hand crafted, thoughtful, intelligent marketing.  Not slick. Not aimed at the masses. Not average marketing for average consumers.  But just the opposite.  Thoughtful, insightful, honest, embracing complexity and celebrating the craft of the product or products themselves.  This type of marketing eschews hype in favor of information yet still has a very strong opinion and point of view that it shares with those that choose to listen.  It’s not easy. It takes thought to get and isn’t for everyone.  And it is all of these attributes that makes artisanal marketing special, unique and, wildly successful.

In a world full of over-promise, under deliver, sell to the lowest common denominator marketing, the artisanal approach celebrates the simplicity (and complexity) of delivering a message about the value and use of a product or service.  And in its own anti-establishment way remarkable and worth talking about.  Artisanal marketing used to be the realm of small companies.  Companies that didn’t have the Madison Avenue Madmen telling them how to package and process their message to hit the widest, most generic target possible.  It was the realm of the companies who clearly “didn’t get it.”  But their charm and earnest nature earned them raving fans who loved the product and felt a connection as part of a tribe that “got” what the company and the product was all about.  The company didn’t settle and neither did their fans, who became passionate consumers and advocates for the brand.

That is the power of artisanal marketing.

But it’s no longer just the purview of those small companies.  Big corporations are embracing artisanal marketing and cultivating that same down-home, honest image and approach that makes artisanal marketing so refreshing, appealing and successful.  Not conicidentally the ones that do it the best are the ones that have done it all along – from the time they were tiny to now.  The ones that haven’t succeed are the ones where the only thing artisanal about the product is the marketing.  Without real, honest product the way you package it up becomes irrelevant.

One artisanal marketer that immediately comes to mind is Trader Joe‘s with their sales flyer that is unlike no other.  The Fearless Flyer reads like a local newspaper, full of kitch and detail and opinion and bad puns and play-on-words and everything that you’d expect from a local publisher.  Except its the sales circular for a large grocery chain.  And it works, brilliantly.  While most sales circulars, loaded down with high-gloss photos of studio shot food and triple coupon specials, end up in the recycling bin without a second thought, Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer gets read, like a magazine and enjoyed.

And it’s completely counter-intuitive to what you’d expect from a grocery flyer.  Printed on newsprint without any photos of the products it is often 4 or 5 times as long as a traditional circular. Product descriptions aren’t two sentences, they’re two paragraphs.  The copy is breezy, funny, and engaging.  It takes time and energy to get the most out of the Fearless Flyer.  It’s the time and energy the other chains are betting its shoppers don’t have.  But Trader Joe’s makes the Fearless Flyer an experience.  A hand crafted experience that insists that you slow down and enjoy it.  It doesn’t hope to reach the thoughtless masses with cheap promotional calls.  The Fearless Flyer says, I’m not mass produced. I’m not aiming for the lowest common denominator.  I will not make it easy to consume and discard me.

The Fearless Flyer is artisanal. It embraces an honest, authentic point of view that celebrates the complexity and diversity and joys of food. It doesn’t try to win in the rat race – it connects with its shoppers who appreciate a more honest and artisanal approach to food.

It’s the perfect expression of artisanal marketing and the power the authentic, less-polished approach to marketing can have.  It’s refreshing and wonderfully done.  I’ll look at more artisanal examples going forward; but my question to you in the meantime is what can you do to bring a more honest and artisanal approach to your marketing?

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Embracing complexity

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As marketers we’re repeatedly exhorted to make our messages simpler.  To cut words, cut nuance, cut anything that may clutter or occlude the core message.  Cut the rest and let the simplicity of the message shine through.  This, our business leaders tell us, is the only way to reach customers in a cacophonous marketplace.  Simplicity.  Design your message so that a busy potential customer doesn’t have to think about you or what you offer.  And it works.  Often.  It works for the middle of the market.  If you’re selling cheese or milk for example you can get your key message down to a few words, Low Fat or Extra Calcium or Organic, for example.  And it works when your product is inherently easy to understand, like the Energizer Bunny and it’s message, “Our batteries last a really, really long time.”  But it doesn’t always work.  And sometimes in our attempts to cut as much fat from the message end up taking some bone with it as well.

Some products are not easy to explain. Others shouldn’t be explained easily, lest they lose their mystique and unique value.  The first case is pretty straight forward. Some products have multiple value propositions and messages that need to be told.  Trying to cull it down into a single, simple message hides inherent meaning and value from potential customers.  It makes the product or service look dumb.  Something is missing in the customer’s eye.  The simplicity has made the value harder to see.  This may have made the message simpler but did it do the product any good?  Take the iPhone for example. Did Apple try to promote it just as the best smart phone out there? No. That would be an over-simplification that hides the inherent value in it’s complexity.  In fact, watching the Apple ads they showcase the variety of applications and features of the phone.  They don’t simply say “It can do whatever you want,” rather they show the value of the phone through it’s rich and unique feature set.  The marketers simplify and clarify, but not at the expense of showcasing the value.

The second case, with a technically simple product is even more interesting.  Consider Burt Bee’s or Kiehl’s body products.  They are tied to a strong creation story that resonates throughout their messaging.  Trying to read a bottle of Kiehl’s is like trying to read a VCR instruction manual.  But it is this complexity that communicates an attention to detail, an artisanal approach to the product that can’t be met by a mass market brand.  This folksy complexity is part of the value.  It’s how Kiehl’s differentiates itself from the mass market brands that are all busy cutting their word counts and culling their message for the sake of simplicity.

A Kiehl’s label:

The moral of the story here is that simplicity is often the right approach; but complexity shouldn’t be ignored simply because of its nature. Complexity can be a good thing. It can stop and make people think. It can convey a sense of artisanal craftsmanship that adds authenticity in a world of soulless mass-produced products. It can be a big differentiator. Not every story was meant to be told in a sound bite – double check to make sure you’re not hiding your value by being overly simplistic in your message.