Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy

6

From Positioning to Touchpoints

Bringing Value to Life

So far we have seen many facets of the implicit level of marketing, ranging from perception to motivated behaviour. In this chapter we will focus on how we can efficiently and effectively implement our goal-based strategy to create product experiences and communication. We will also explore how to judge whether an execution credibly fits this strategy.

Closing the implementation gap

When we summarize what we have learned in the previous chapter, marketing appears, on the face of it, to be quite simple: we have to create a value proposition consisting of both explicit and implicit goals, link the implicit to the explicit goals, translate this proposition into signals which will activate mental concepts within the consumer, and then, if these mental concepts fit with the consumer’s active goal better than those activated by competitors, they will buy our brand or product (see Figure 6.1).

Figure 6.1 Implementation: translating strategy into signals that address consumer goals

That appears to be fairly straightforward, but we all know how challenging it is to develop a compelling strategy and to implement it across all touchpoints. It can take months, dozens of meetings and hundreds of hours to discuss the strategy alone. When it comes to implementing the strategy, the discussions become increasingly intense. Which creative idea will ...