What are you really marketing?
If you listen to the oddsmakers, you’re more likely to become President of the United States, date a supermodel, or become a saint than you are to win the lottery. Yet Americans spend about $78 billion annually on lottery tickets.
As an investment, it’s one of the least logical decisions you could possibly make. But we keep playing our lucky numbers. A recent article from Nautilus magazine explained the phenomenon:
As one trademarked lottery slogan goes, “Hey, you never know.” Somebody has to win. But to really understand why hundreds of millions of people play a game they will never win, a game with serious social consequences, you have to suspend logic and consider it through an alternate set of rules—rules written by neuroscientists, social psychologists, and economists.
Once you know the alternate set of rules, plumb the literature, and speak to the experts, the popularity of the lottery suddenly makes a lot more sense. It’s a game where reason and logic are rendered obsolete, and hope and dreams are on sale.
Or, as Rebecca Paul Hargrove, who was at least once described as the “Babe Ruth of lotteries,” told Nautilus:
“It’s not an investment. It’s entertainment. For a very small amount of money you might change your life. For $2 you can spend the day dreaming about what you would do with half a billion dollars—half a billion dollars!”
Hargrove went on to say: “I thought, ‘What made me play?’
“What made me play was the thought of what I would do with $40 million. You pay $1 and then for three days you can think about that question. “Would I share with my brother-in-law? No! I don’t like that brother-in-law. But I would share with my neighbor’s nephew.”
Right or wrong, lottery marketers have found a way to reposition a snowball’s chance in hell as a bus trip to heaven. And people can’t wait to get on. It’s from this that we can draw a lesson.
Reframing the Conversation
A good marketer frames messages in a way that resonates emotionally with their audience. In the case of marketing the lottery, messaging strategy was effective—they shifted from a transactional mentality (i.e. I am investing in a chance to win something big) to an experience mentality (i.e. I am buying the experience of daydreaming).
Determining where your brand has permission to engage emotionally is essential to a successful marketing strategy. For some products—like lottery tickets—the connection is simple: People want to buy hope, and the lottery serves as the perfect conduit for that.
The power of an emotion in marketing was similarly demonstrated in early 2014 by Powerade with “Nico’s story“, which has racked up 2 million views on YouTube—earning seven years of collective audience attention through one video. Give it two minutes of your time and you’ll see why:
Successful marketers identify where they have the opportunity and permission to connect emotionally with their audience and build their communication strategy from there.
To convert attention into long-term value for your brand, you must provide an experience that provides an emotional impact. If you can win the heart and mind, you have a better chance of winning the wallet.