Ditch the “pain points”

It’s time for marketing to work with higher values

One of the first things most marketing people learn, whether they’re novices or professionals, is to focus on people’s “pain points”.

That is, figure out what annoys them, what causes a problem for them, and then offer a solution to this problem. In the worst scenarios, marketers will even invent problems for us and then convince us that we need them solved (salad spinner anyone?) or pick a common insecurity to hone in on and make us feel like it is a real problem (watched the “super strength deodorant” ads lately, aimed at all those people who fear they may sweat a little more than average).

Sadly, all this focus on our problems leaves most of us feeling pretty inadequate and unhappy. It drives us to make buying decisions from a place of fear, shame or guilt, rather than from a place of joy or sharing. We are just trying to plug the holes.

Of course, this style of marketing works — it drives a constant cycle of feeling bad, buying stuff to feel better, feeling bad again, buying stuff again… We’ll even buy a brand to feel like we belong to a tribe of some kind.

If we want to take a more positive approach to marketing, a values-based approach, then we need to consider not focusing on the pain points. What happens if, instead of pointing out problems all the time we focused on what is great in the world and helped people to realise they can have more of that?

I believe that if we promote self-acceptance and treasure everyone’s uniqueness, encouraging people to feel good about themselves and to feel like they belong, buying patterns will shift — people will buy less but buy higher quality, more fairly and sustainably produced products and services. And they will focus more on the wellbeing of the whole community, not just themselves.

Not-for-profits, social enterprises and socially minded businesses need to lead this shift, sending a positive ripple out through the community. How can your marketing messages encourage self-acceptance and the compassion for others that accompanies that?