Thanks Mark Strickler, a Papa Murphy’s marketing exec, for sending me the idea for this blog posting.
I loathe the expression “What makes him tick.” It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.
- James Thurber
Mark sent me that as a homage to the many conversations we had as marketers together, challenging each other and our agencies and teams to embrace the diversity of the customers we were selling pizza to.
I love the quote and all it means. Its a wonderful mental model for the diversity of marketing that is required in today’s world to not only get to (access) but be remembered by (recall, top of mind awareness) but most importantly, influence (persuasion) consumers to buy your brand.
Today’s world requires using traditional broadscale media balanced by one to one marketing, allowing you to honor and acknowledge that some consumers tick, other tock, chime on the hour, have the snooze button on, or as Thurber writes, are simply broken and currently unavailable.
Why even post on this topic? Because I bet you that no matter how good you are as a marketer, there are days where you treat “your consumers” as if they are one homogenous bunch. They’re not.
Tick, tock, snooze, and chime. Make time with your customers.
