Marketing Is Not About Your Company’s Value: It Is About Your Customers Values And Aspiration

Marketing is really about how your customer’s values translate into aspiration, insecurities, fears and motivation. Twenty years ago, in 1987, Steve Jobs told us “Marketing is about Values”. He was right of course. He was right about a lot of things, and marketing in particular was where he ruled. He was right when he said “the way to talk about a brand is not to talk about speeds and fees or bits and mega-hertz or why we are better than windows” he was right that marketing is about benefits not features, and he was right when he said “our customers want to know who is Apple and what is it we stand for”

All true. But what he did not explicitly say is that customers only want to know “what a company stands for” as it relates back to them. Marketing at the end of the day is not just about a company’s value, it is about understanding what these means to a customer and getting the meaning to be felt strongly enough that they buy.

Now, the real mastery of Jobs is that he almost certainly knew this, consciously or subconsciously. He almost certainly knew full well that people care more about themselves than Apple, and he almost certainly knew full well that the speech he gave was not talking about marketing; it was marketing, which is why he says things like:
“Apple at the core—it’s core value—is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better and the people who believe they can change the world are those who do”
When he said this, he almost certainly knew that he was not talking about Apple, and he was not even talking about the customers. He was talking to them.

People do not care about you, they care about themselves and they care about you only to the extent that you fulfill their wants and needs. Look it is not cynical. It is FACTS!. People do not do business with you as an act of charity or to get in on some of that sweet values set that you have got going on. They do business with you because they believe you are adding value to their lives, and how that sweet value set of your align with their own.
People do not come into the whisky bar because it is cool—they come in because in because they want to feel cool. They do not drink it because it is manly or strong, they drink it because they want to feel manly and strong. People did not buy Apple because they liked that Apple “believed people with passion can change the world”, NO! (some do not even have a passion), they bought Apple because they wanted to see themselves as one of those people. The success of a business—and it’s marketing message is partially figuring out what people want; and partially the promise of fulfilling it.

People care about the way you make them feel. There are a number of companies popping up that sells clothing with elephants on it, trees on it—anything name it, and donate part of the proceeds to “saving wildlife, saving trees”. They are popular and they are popular not because donating makes people feel good, but because that particular ‘cause’ makes them feel good.
Why? it is very simple. You want to sell? Look at who is buying it (the product or services) , look at why they are buying it—their values, insecurities, their wants and aspirations or motivations, then you can figure out how exactly to market it.

Marketing is about figuring out who your customers are, what they value, and most importantly how this manifest in their insecurities and aspirations, and then it is showing them the solutions in your brand.