Sometimes to Sell the Aspirin, You’ve Got to Sell the Pain It Cures First

As mentioned previously, a very important piece of the messaging puzzle is to identify the benefits (as opposed to features and attributes). Another way to view benefits is to answer the question, “What pain are you solving?” If your company has not figured out what pain your customers are feeling, how is it able to deliver the cure?

Identifying the challenges and industry trends facing your customers is the first step in figuring out how your product addresses those challenges, as seen in the Messaging Timeline.

To offer an example, here are some of the trends in the media and entertainment space. As with most sectors, the challenges are diverse and complicated:

Trend 1 – Digital Convergence

Digital convergence was one of those hyped-up trends that promised to create new revenue streams for the media and entertainment industry while also driving down the cost of production and distribution. Reality was different; revenue growth has mostly come from acquisitions, and returns have actually declined.

Why? Fragmented media markets are certainly a cause. For example, the average audience per media property has been slowly decreasing and remains low, yet operating costs have grown.

Trend 2 – Wireless

With the recent launch of a $327 million satellite,

South Korea

and

Japan

have joined the race to allow users of handheld devices to receive satellite transmissions. This satellite broadcast conforms to the digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) standard,

South   Korea

’s proprietary standard.

South Korean and Japanese mobile phone and handheld computer users will be able to receive broadcast transmissions of news, sports, entertainment, and other programming. This migration of broadcast delivery to new users raises questions for broadcasters, including news directors, over how best to serve this niche.

In the

United States

, MobiTV, a specialist in the live streaming of television content delivered to mobile telephones, carried live television coverage of President Bush’s State of the Union address that could be watched on a cell phone.

Launched in November 2003, MobiTV is available through Sprint and AT&T/Cingular and will be on most carriers in the coming year.

While the technology is in its infancy, mobile entertainment and streaming television content to mobile telephones will become more common as 3G (third-generation) cell phones begin to appear. This provides network and local news operations with a powerful means of branding themselves and gives them new revenue streams to exploit, enabling the carrier to reap the benefits of increased ARPU (average revenue per user).

Trend 3 – Flexible Screens

FOLED, or flexible organic light emitting devices, is a technology that could one day be responsible for bendable TV, computer, and cell phone displays at home and potentially on the news set.

On a news set, bendable video displays could wrap gently around a wavy desk or be used in interesting ways in conjunction with real cycloramas and virtual sets. Or, imagine a reusable electronic newspaper that could download and display the day’s news and be rolled up after use.

Are you starting to get the idea? These trends are what the editorial community will be writing about and are also what your customers will be exploring. Your job is to fit your story, your vision into those trends. This is the top of the Credibility Pyramid and the first section of the Messaging Timeline, and it is of utmost importance as you create your story, form your messaging, and figure out what your customers care about.

Comments

[William]

You're right on it. The features/benefits days are long gone. You have to lead with a value statement rich with benefits that are meaningful to the recipient. It has to make a connection with them that smacks a problem or pain point right between the eyes. To do that, yes, you have to determine the pain. However, sometimes companies do not recognize they even have the pain. So, as marketers, we not only have to identify the pain they may be experiencing, but also help them see where there may be 'hidden' problems. Then you can provide the remedy to the root cause of an issue. Call them pain relievers or whatever. Customers buy value and they buy based on a motivation that will make their lives better.