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[PP Brand story] Bold provocative

 

The title of this post is PP Brand.

 

PP stands for Personalised Plate.  Here in our part of Australia, and perhaps where you live too, when you register a car, you can have the registration plate combination of numbers and letters allotted to you, or you can pay more for a personalised plate.

 

There must be many reasons for acquiring a personalised plate, but when someone sees your plate, they see your expression of your identity.

 

When I was growing up on a farm, we (my mother and I) recognised the locals' cars by their number plates.  These were not personalised.  I don't know if the concept even existed then.  But for majority of the locals, particularly of my father's generation there were two types of cars - Holdens and Fords and probably they could recognise those.  These were the men who could articulate a wide variety of types of cattle, and a wide variety of the crops you would grow to progress any particular type of animal to its best.

 

My mother, struggling to identify one out of many in either car type, I suspect, identified the cars by their number plates - or maybe it was just a topic of conversation.  The main two in our lives were ours and my aunt's and my mother referred to herself and the aunt as Mrs PIF and Mrs PEL because those were the letters in the number plates.  Ours was PIF 917.

 

Number plate as identity.

 

And now we have personalised number plates, sure signs of identity and therefore, if possible, brand.

 

Some mean nothing unless to those who know the owner, but there are those chosen with a message.

 

The one that made me super aware of this phenomenon was stopped at the lights as I was waiting to cross the street in our CBD.  It was on a low-slung, hugely expensive sports car, the motor purring as it sat there.  The Personalised Plate held one word and that word was

 

HATE.

 

The car and the plate screamed brand identity.

 

What would you associate with that setup?

 

My first reaction was "In yer face" and this is what Google provided

 
Aggressively or blatantly confrontational
Marked by, or displaying, a boldness of character
Offensive, causing or eliciting a strong negative reaction
Forceful, or having an immediate impact

 

I have had fun writing imaginary brand stories that involve that car.

 

The Archetype? --- has to be --- Outlaw!!

 

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What are you really selling?

What exactly are you selling?

What exactly is your client or customer buying?

The obvious answer, of course is, "your product or service".

And that is true,

until you actually have to persuade someone to buy,

until "sell" involves something more than the physical exchange of money or value.

Then it becomes fairly obvious that there is something more involved.

Let me say, right now, that what you are selling is a story.

A story is

the story of a change,

the change that your customer or buyer goes through when they use your product or service.

And that is the story you have to sell.

And while that change will have physical aspects and outcomes that might involve things like health, wealth, relationships; ultimately the result your client or customer wants is the emotion, the feeling.  They want to feel free, valued, better than, at peace; all sorts of things.  And they may not articulate that, but the want will be there.  

There is a saying that people buy based on emotion and justify based on logic.

And that is why stories are so valuable.  They can tap into the subconscious level of emotions.  We are wired for story and stories are inherently built on emotion.  

So your client story is vital in your marketing.  

Where are you telling your client story - that story of change?