Remember Crazy Eddie?
If you called the Tri-State area home circa 1980, you sure did… the discount electronics store’s commercials ran non-stop across TV and radio hawking deals so low they were insaaaane! If you didn’t, enjoy this.
Crazy Eddie sold stuff quickly with outrageous offers from an over-the-top pitchman barking a catchphrase so sticky Saturday Night Live parodied it. This annoying but memorable marketing worked… until it didn’t -- the company went bankrupt in 1989 and CEO Eddie Antar went to prison on racketeering charges.
The chain’s gone and the tactic doesn’t work anymore -- rapid, repeated messages, hammering a single benefit over and over is now called spam. It doesn’t build trust. But one element of Crazy Eddie’s marketing plan lives on today and is in fact necessary. That’s frequency -- the number of times your message must land to spur action -- except it’s grown from 7x to 24x. Yikes!
How’s a hard workin’ budget-strapped time-pressed marketer supposed to do that?
Meet David Allison, the charming researcher who discovered the best way to reveal what motivates us. David breaks it down for us this way …
Demographics describe what you look like.
Psychographics describe what you’ve done.
Valuegraphics describe why you did it.
Boom!
The founder of Valuegraphics details 56 values that drive virtually every action we take, plus he’s mapped the who, what, and when of each one.
You see, Crazy Eddie hit one value (cheap prices) over and over with high frequency in a compressed time frame (aka spam). That won’t work, because to reach your audience 24x, you need more than one value -- you need to reveal dozens of different value propositions delivered over a long period of time (branding). None of them will resonate with everybody, they’re not supposed to. According to Allison there are 56 reasons people care -- and you need to tap those to start the dozens upon dozens of conversations you need to matter.
Valuegraphics provides a perfect example of why all the variations that Lately’s Neuroscience-Driven AI™ creates work. They let you reach the right audience at scale by framing your message from all the different angles that your audience cares about. That’s why we let you supercharge your social for free with Lately’s 7-day bootcamp -- you get access to the platform plus day-by-day video tutorials that lead the way.
But for now, let’s unpack the 56 values and how you can weave these into your social messaging to tap the buttons people care about most. In each clip, David describes on the fly, how a marketer might leverage one of the 56 values to market a product or service.
If you were trying to appeal to people who value “community”, what messaging would you use to sell coconut seltzer?
How would you reach a customer who values “relationships” above all else if you were marketing a grocery store chain?
The #4 value in the United States is personal growth, therefore, how would you speak to people who care about personal growth if they’re in the market for a Peloton bike?
The #1 value that people in the United States hold most closely is “belonging”. With that knowledge, how would you use that to encourage people to vote?
More than 50% of the United States relies on “loyalty” as a primary decision-making tool. Therefore, how would you appeal to someone shopping for a rug based on loyalty?
Surprise -- only 26% of the U.S. population is motivated by “happiness”; it ranks 28th out of the 56 Valuegrpahics values. But how would that value be applied to a marketing approach for Gummy Bears?
About 44% of the US population values “creativity”; how would you leverage that if you were a marketer of chocolate?
Learn more about Valuegraphics here, then apply those tips and start creating radically effective content with Lately today.
