What Are You Buying?

If you're one of the lucky few people that have actually spoken to me in person, then you've probably heard my "story" daitribe (badly paraphrased from Seth Godin, I'm afraid).

It goes fairly simply; Every product, every construction, every experience is a part of a story. This story can be incidental ("Hey, I'm a kid on a bike. I'm having fun!") or it can be entirely manufactured ("Chanel smells good, and will make you attractive."). The "Eureka!" moment comes when you realise just how many products in our lives are a part of a manufactured story. How many? All of them.

There's the obvious ones, of course, like "Coke adds life!", and "BMW means you pay more in tax than most people earn." However, there's also the more insidious ones, like the two dollar shop, or ipods (Stories about value for money, and image, respectively.)

Unfortunately, what most people don't realise is that often there isn't much more than the story in what you're buying. Coke doesn't actually add life, it just provides a sense of comfort and familiarity. Driving a BMW isn't about impressing your neighbours, it's about impressing yourself. You want to make yourself feel special, feel part of a particular story, you buy the product.

I recently shopped at ALDI, a discount supermarket. Although many products were actually quite similarly priced to a regular supermarket, the design and experience of shopping there makes you feel like you're getting a bargain. Products are stacked on pallets, there are no plastic shopping bags, and many classes of product are actually unavailable. The story? Shop here to save money. Whether or not you save anything is immaterial, you already feel a sense of satisfaction at being a part of a story.

You're buying the story.

To most people, it doesn't matter what's in the can, just that "coke" is on the label.

And, as Seth said long before me, The path to success is in telling a story that's compelling and honest.