I Rode A Table To France
When I bought an outdoor table from Home Depot to put on the walkway outside the front door of my old apartment, I started imagining myself at a cafe in France, perched on the balcony, enjoying the cool morning as I read a book.
In reality, I was a long way from France. The table cost $150, and I used a gift card to pay for most of it. It was 2020, so I wouldn’t have been able to go to France if I wanted to. I still lived in Mar Vista, on Venice Boulevard, with the sounds of morning traffic coursing toward the coast, and construction crews building single-use four-story apartment buildings that gentrified the neighborhood. I was a long way from France.
This is why I love advertising. The products we buy can take us somewhere. They can change what we do. Change how we see ourselves. And maybe, they can change who we are.
I grew up far away from the city, in the suburbs, the kind of place that department stores test new products on unsuspecting shoppers. Frugality was a key value in the community where I grew up, so advertising was seen through a lens of distrust. Terms like “marketing ploy” and “rip-off” were commonplace to describe a burger that was more than $10.
When I started studying advertising, I realized something. Every product has a target audience, and every target audience has something they really want. And if you position your product as a way for people to get what they want, then the investment they make in that goal might be an important step on helping them get there.
If you believe in a brand, market with all your might. If you believe a product has the ability to make someone more confident, or help them achieve a state of mind or being that is good, advertise it like it’s a Religion. For the ten non-believers who bump up your bounce rate, there is one who will imagine themselves in France, and have wonderful mornings enjoying the cool air all to themselves.
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