Marketing Profs

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone got as excited about your company as you are? Unfortunately some businesses just aren't very sexy; in fact, some businesses are downright boring.

As a consequence, companies that sell commodity products and routine services tend to rely on presentations that load up on features, specifications, and statistics. Those may be relevant to anal-retentive types, but they're hardly compelling to the vast majority of your audience.

There is no reason why every company can't deliver an exciting image to its audience and generate the kind of buzz and excitement usually associated with companies like Apple, Victoria's Secret, Benetton, Absolut Vodka, and Sony.

It may seem impossible to produce a whole lot of steam for things like sandpaper, accounting services, and facial tissue, but thanks to the Web and its extraordinary ability to deliver multimedia content, even the most mundane offerings can get hearts racing and the blogosphere blogging.

Emotional Experiences Connect

Let's take facial tissue as an example: It is one of the most common, boring everyday products you can imagine. There is just not much you can do to sell this stuff other than telling people yours is softer and cheaper than the other guy's, but then the other guy is saying the same thing. As a result, consumers buy whatever is on sale.

But wait, the clever fellows at Kimberly-Clark instituted a brilliant website campaign for their facial tissue, called "Kleenex—let it out."

The campaign zeros in on the emotional experience associated with why people use facial tissue: to wipe away tears of joy or sadness or maybe to clean-up cute little runny noses—in each case the result of some moving event.

Tapping into this emotional association is key to the Kleenex campaign—and key to your new thinking on how to make your boring stuff, exciting.

Video—The Best Way to Tell a Story

The Kleenex campaign features prominent videos of articulate people telling their personal stories, all resulting in the need to use a facial tissue.

A pregnant woman discusses the emotional impact of having a child, and as her eyes begin to tear up the interviewer hands her a Kleenex. A second video features another well-spoken woman talking about her return to New Orleans after the devastation of hurricane Katrina. Again, as the woman becomes emotional and begins to cry, the interviewer hands her a tissue.

Nothing more needs to be said; this is very powerful storytelling that connects to the audience and delivers an image of the brand as caring and sensitive—the exact kind of impression the company wants to portray.