Prince Edward Sells Death Benefits of Duke’s Award

One of the pillars of the Marketing Concept is the idea of selling the benefits of your product or service. Benefits relate to the value that the purchaser or user gets from using what is offered.

The recent observation by HRH Prince Edward that there might some allure in the risk of death from participating in the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme is a fascinating case study for several reasons.

The first has to be the lesson it gives to us all about the speed and reach of the digitally connected world. The reputation of any brand can be affected in an instant. Brand identities that have been meticulously crafted over years can be undermined in the time it takes to say something careless.

The second lesson is that there is always a difference between what is said and what it means. As Bandler and Grinder have noted “The meaning of communication is the way it is received”. Whilst the Prince thought he might have been conveying a dark sense of humour his remarks were unlikely to have been heard as ‘funny’ by relatives of Duke of Edinburgh Award participants who had died whilst they were taking part on the scheme.

The third lesson is never confuse an ‘advantage’ with a ‘benefit’. Product and Service advantages are what the seller assumes are appealling dimensions of what is offered. The Prince seems to have ‘fast forwarded’ from a hunch that the demanding and thrilling aspects of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award means that risk of death is a good thing. Oops.

Clearly what has happened is an unfortunate turn of phrase. I’m not sure that Death could ever be construed as a ‘benefit’ when selling products unless you are an arms dealer. I think the Prince is quite right to highlight the appeal of thrill-seeking, and that the DOEA organisers are right to emphasise that the award is about developing individuals as safely as possible. The prospect of challenge and risk must figure as one of the key psychographic choice factors of the target segment who are likely to join the scheme.

There are clearly personal experiential and transformative benefits associated with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and these should be emphasised. The transformative and beneficial effects of Death is perhaps a more challenging ‘sell’.

Find out more at Duke of Edinburgh Award

Is Selling The New Marketing?

Pick up any classic marketing text and one of the first things you are told is that ‘marketing isn’t selling’.
Not only that you are told that selling only has a bit part in the whole marketing performance, and that marketing done properly means selling isn’t actually required.

On the other hand, walk into any business and get talking to the staff and one of the first things you are often told is that ‘this is a people business’. That people develop trust between one another and that they buy from people who help them solve their problems.

Doesn’t this strike you as strange? In practice, the arts of social influence, relationship building and service are seen as key. In text books these very same things are relegated to a mere feature of the marketing mix.

Robert Louis Stevenson said “Every one lives by selling something”
It is how things are made to happen. Its how people are persuaded and convinced of the benefits of value propositions. In mass consumer markets selling is invariably the responsibility of marketing communications in business to business it is what happens face to face.

Skilled selling is a strategic necessity for business. Skilled sales people can differentiate your company/brand from the competition.

The September 2009 edition of the European Journal of Marketing carries a special series of articles themed under the title, ‘Sales Evolution and Revolution: The Sales Function in the 21st Century’

Over the last few years Sales has been rediscovered and its strategic importance re-stated. Its no longer necessary to keep sales at arms length as the domain of silver tongued masters of deception. The province of mere functionaries who do the bidding of ‘marketing’. Selling is increasingly being recognised for its strategic value creating impact (see Harvard Business Review special edition on Sales- 84 7/8 2006 -The Top Line by Thomas Stewart)

Susi Gieger and Paulo Guenzi in their European Journal of Marketing article say that academic interest in selling is moving on from what Williams and Plouffe (2007) classed as concerns with motivation, the Saxe & Weitz SOCO scale, relationship building and trust. Most of these issues are now well taped by practioners. Academics need to help in other areas such as scenario, sense-making and forecasting capabilities.

So what is happening with this changing attitude towards Selling then? Storbacka, Ryals, Davies and Nenonen say that businesses now see Sales as a process not just a function, that it is integrated rather than isolated, and crucially strategic not simply operational.

Sales people might be last step of the getting a product to market but they are frequently the first step in getting the market to the organisation. Classic marketing explains what happens in linear rational terms. Everything is about getting your ‘ducks in a row’. Now that might be fine for creating planning documents but it doesn’t reflect what happens in reality. A more systemic view seems more appropriate. Seeing things this way emphasises inter-dependencies and the simultaneous nature of ‘doing business’. As Peter Senge explains, thinking is circles rather than lines is more like reality.

Are you sold?