I was at the grocery store a few days ago and I saw a mindboggling sight. It was there on the shelf, in the coffee and tea aisle.
The local brand of coffee, called Franck, has two varieties:
1) Regular, which comes in a blue bag and costs 29 Croatian Weasels, and…
2) Delicious, which comes in a red bag and also costs 29 Croatian Weasels.
My forehead scrunched up as I tried to compute an answer to this puzzle:
What kind of idiot would choose regular blue coffee when you can get delicious red for the same price?
And yet…
I don’t think this is an example of branding stupidity on the part of the coffee company. Instead, I think it’s been well-tested and shown to increase sales.
One reason I think this is cause I saw something similar when subscribing to a paid newsletter a few days ago. My options were:
1) Platinum subscription: 4 free bonuses + digital newsletter + print newsletter, at the low price of $79
2) Excellent subscription: 4 free bonuses + digital newsletter, for $49
3) Premium subscription: digital newsletter + print newsletter, without bonuses, at a reasonable $119
I remember staring at my options in confusion for a few minutes.
“What am I missing here?” I thought. “Why is the Premium $40 more expensive than the Platinum, when it’s a strict subset of the other offer?”
I guess I’ll never know. But I’m sure this company tested it, and found this kind of customer confusion increases sales. Which makes me think that, like regular and delicious coffee, marketing has two flavors:
The first is intuitive, common-sense marketing. Sell people what they want at a price they can stomach… Make the offer crystal clear… Focus sales messages on benefits from the buyer’s point of view. And so on.
And then there’s the second flavor.
That’s the minboggling stuff that gets revealed through testing. Odds are, we’ll never know why a significant enough portion of people, lying in bed with their phones pressed against their faces, make some of the buying decisions that they do. All we can do is accept it and profit from it.
So what does this all mean for you?
When you’re just starting to develop your direct response palate, you’ll probably prefer the comforting, familiar aroma of common-sense marketing.
But as your business grows, it might make sense to start blending in spoonfuls of mindboggling marketing.
After all, you never know if an irrational dollop, mixed into an otherwise deliciously common-sense sales pitch, could increase your sales by 20%, or take an unprofitable offer and make it profitable.
It probably won’t. But it might be worth a test.