Koopman Ostbo | Marketing Communications. @Issue Journal of Business & Design | by Corporate Design Foundation. Contagious Design - Edinburgh. Clients : Door Number 3 Advertising Austin. Richard Branson: The Importance of Not Being Earnest. The famous British billionaire says having fun should be an essential part of your business. The four P's -- people, product, price and promotion -- are often cited as the keys to a successful business. Yet this list omits a vital ingredient that has characterized Virgin companies throughout our 40 years: Fun, with a capital F.
When we started Virgin Atlantic in 1984, we had some great people and lots of good ideas about how to do things differently . Sadly, we did not have a lot of money to take it to the streets. Compared to the giant establishment players of the time -- TWA, Pan-Am and British Airways -- we had a tiny fleet, if one plane qualifies as a fleet, and a miniscule advertising budget. We could not do much about the single plane -- leased from a generous man at Boeing.
We had to make the most of our meager marketing money. We also started to run some funny, pretty direct and usually highly topical advertisements to grab the public's attention. When Gen. Brandflakesforbreakfast. Zeus Jones - Marketing as a Service: Using Marketing To Do Things For People. Ten Words That Build Trust. Do you think one short sentence at the end of your ad could cause a major increase in the level of trust customers place in you? Believe it or not, it’s true. Researchers found that placing the following statement at the end of an ad for a auto service firm caused their trust scores to jump as much as 33%! “You can trust us to do the job for you.” Seems simple, eh? Nevertheless, that phrase caused people to rate the firm in the ad higher in every category: Fair Price – Up 7% Caring – Up 11% Fair Treatment – Up 20% Quality – Up 30% Competency – Up 33% It’s quite surprising that as nebulous as the “trust us” statement was, it produced major increases in very specific areas of performance.
So, if you want your customers to trust you, remind them that they CAN trust you. Image via Shutterstock. The BrandBuilder Blog.