Just before Christmas, I was with my son and granddaughter at a ‘pantomime’ in a local park put on by a local group for the sheer fun of it.
All the usual characters of a pantomime, a wise old man, loving mother, young hero, an innocent victim, and a nasty villain in a black cape were there. The story made little logical sense, but that did not matter a whit. All the kids were deeply, deeply engaged as the young hero seemed to just fall into deliberately placed and progressively ensnaring traps placed by the villain, despite the advice of the wise old man, entreaties of his mother, and roared warnings of the toddler crowd, and their grandparents.
It struck me that the whole engagement of the kids, driven by the innocent victim being progressively drawn into the villain’s web, was a metaphor for successful marketing. This is especially the case for a small outfit going up against a larger and powerful incumbent.
Make the incumbent the villain, demonstrate that the gorilla is not solving problems that nobody may have even thought about to date, but once articulated, can become a cause celebre.
One of my clients is a small company delivering double glazed uPVC windows and doors to residential clients. The benefits of double-glazed uPVC are significant. The reductions in power bills and noise by increasing thermal and acoustic insulation via sealed double-glazed windows and doors are enormous.
uPVC is relatively new to the Australian market, but increasingly making ground, as the huge benefits become known. However, the incumbent aluminium and wood window and door suppliers still control 98% of installations, flogging products with little thermal or acoustic insulation at all to unsuspecting ‘victims’.
Our villain is those producers who continue to deliver substandard product, simply through momentum and lack of regulatory standards.
Who or what is yours?
