Selling Dreams: How to Make Any Product Irresistible

Citation

Hill, R. (2000), "Selling Dreams: How to Make Any Product Irresistible", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 17 No. 7, pp. 627-637. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm.2000.17.7.627.3

It is not often you read a marketing book without drawing apology from Herbert Spencer, Hemingway, Aristotle and Kant, as well as a host of contemporary figures, such as Kotler, Sheth, or other recognized marketing gurus. This book is a stimulating and useful read. Ultimately it also has a certain frustration factor, and could only be said to contain a modest serving of truly new ideas. However, it addresses some significant but neglected topics, these being “aesthetic products” and the role of creativity in marketing.

The thesis of the book is that the way to make products irresistible to consumers is fundamentally to offer them their “dreams,” meaning the things they find compelling and highly emotional. At first glance the book seems a rather long explanation of processes all marketers would readily recognize as appropriate to an up‐market product‐positioning strategy, based on clear differentiation via outstanding client perceived quality and high aesthetic values. It is a strategy which combines the fundamental principles of need satisfaction and product differentiation with the benefits of premium pricing. But Longinotti‐Buitoni is saying more than this.

He is president and CEO of the Ferrari Motor Company, which has proven enormously successful in marketing a “dream” associated with speed, freedom and glamour. Longinotti‐Buitoni denies that his strategy need be limited to top‐end products, citing the VW beetle, Nike sneakers, and Sony Walkman as products which have captured popular dreams without being expensive. However, the strong case made for the benefits of high shares of high margin business – “losing customers to profit” – seems to contradict this. So too does the predominance of very prestigious brands within the large number of anecdotes and interviews that form the bulk of the writing. Gourmet dining, prestigious hotel accommodations, shoes, motor bikes, quality films and cosmetics – they are all there and they are mainly from the top end of their respective markets.

Nevertheless, Longinotti‐Buitoni makes a powerful case for a process by which such a high end differentiation strategy can occur. Essentially, he says that a process of intense creativity is brought to bear on product development (and presumably on promotional planning and on other elements of the marketing mix) in the context of a deep and penetrating insight into the culture, the “zeitgeist” or “spirit of the times,” within which the marketer is working. Culture is seen to drive the dreams of customers. Customer dreams can be understood and even anticipated. Another key to the argument is an understanding of the passion associated with people who dream. They don’t merely prefer a certain dream; they will come close to dying for it.

The book is structured into chapters which introduce how cultural forces shape customer dreams and how marketers can utilize these dreams. Further chapters focus on the specific nature of the customers who dream, and on the “dream makers” – the creators who will fulfil these dreams. A concluding chapter restates seven principles:

1. (1)

   Interpret the spirit of the time in order to understand which dreams will capture the consumer.

2. (2)

   Create products and services designed and engineered to convey intense emotions.

3. (3)

   Practice “dreamketing”. This somewhat clumsy term is used to describe what the author sees as a new imperative to spark the emotions and imagination of consumers, made necessary by the new ease with which technology will enable the delivery to market of goods and services in the future. In an analogy to the work of a film director, the marketer is urged to transport the consumer to a fantastic place of the imagination via enthralling and “emotionally engineered” products.

4. (4)

   Choose the customer.

5. (5)

   Choose a creator.

6. (6)

   Support creators with a creative organization.

7. (7)

   Seize any possible chance to magnify the customer’s perceived added value.

The standout chapter of the book (chapter five) explores in some depth the role of creativity in responding to our understanding of consumer dreams. Although the term is not used, this is essentially a discussion of the nature of “applied” creativity, a fascinating and little explored area. Longinotti‐Buitoni walks the reader through a set of ingredients to this creative melding of culture, product and dreams. He explores factors such as experimentation and risk taking, hard work and “doing nothing” (echoes of De Bono’s “creative pause”), “cultural leadership”, “provocation” (another term popularized by De Bono), luck, the organizational environment and even personal “idiosyncrasies, moods or egocentric ticks” (page 229). The role of the “creator”, who drives this process, is actually differentiated from that of individual “creatives” of various ilks, not just “creatives” as we would understand this term in the context of advertising. The argument is linked well to the practice of branding.

My frustration comes from my desire to see more linkage to relevant theory which is available. For example, the core argument relates quite closely to product classification schemes such as those used in the FCB or Rossiter‐Percy advertising grids (Rossiter and Percy, 1997). The former focuses on “think” versus “feel” product dimensions. The “transformational” types of products described in the latter seem very much in the spirit of Longinotti‐Buitoni’s “dreams”. The concept of relative mental positioning espoused by Reis and Trout (Reis and Trout, 1986) is very relevant to the argument, as is much current work on customer loyalty and customer “delight” (Rust and Oliver, 2000).

The book is clearly targeted primarily at practitioners. As most marketers are in this category (that is, are not academics), it is a pity to miss an opportunity for some healthy diffusion of highly relevant scholarly research. The key arguments concerning cultural linkages to “dreams”, and the intense buyer behavior associated with these categories, are only loosely tied into relevant literature on these respective topics (McCracken, 1986; Solomon, 1983), often via a reference which is listed in the concluding “selected bibliography” but which is not actually cited in the text. The creativity argument draws on Arieti and Kroeber, but doesn’t acknowledge the likes of Guildford (1962), De Bono (1992), Ausebel (1978) and Amiable (1988). This seems an opportunity missed, both for diffusion of ideas and for strengthening of the case made.

The great contribution of this book is in teasing out just a little more the intricate linkages between culture, individual “dream” needs, and the creative response of marketers, especially in top‐end, aesthetic product categories. Whether the book is seen then as some new kind of “postmodern” marketing, or as nothing more than a fresh serving of marketing fundamentals, targeted toward e´lite premium products, the book is a useful read, particularly the chapter on creativity.