Why is a polished piece of dirt worth 2 -3 months’ salary?
Answer – because it is called a diamond.
How did this happen?
Why are people prepared to forget function and start buying dreams?
Listen to my latest podcast to find out why – it will change your business.
Transcript:
A cloth bag is not worth $4,000 without a Gucci logo, or some other designer’s logo.
You may feel that it is not worth $4,000.00 with the logo either. But that reveals you remain hung up on what a product is, instead of what it symbolises and represents, what status it confers on its owner, what emotional reactions it evokes, how it feels to purchase and own it, how others important to its owner feel about it.
Few things are intrinsically worth their price.
Diamonds are, in essence, polished dirt.
We have all accepted that a diamond engagement ring should be priced at least equal to two months’ salary.
Finding rocks is easy. Selling rocks, tough. In the last 50 years, only two markets have opened up for stones. You wear them on your fingers when in love; you put them over the head of a loved one after death.
Both excellent examples that evoke reactions and eliminate price resistance.
What De Beers did for diamonds, anyone can do for anything.
There are wines that sell for hundreds of dollars per bottle.
But there is BrewDog beer that sells for $765 US per bottle. How can beer be worth such a price?
You may answer: It can’t. Or answer: Why not?
To make a giant income marketing to the affluent, you must erase your own deeply ingrained insistence at connecting price to worth and worth to function.
Marketing to values is more powerful than the marketing of products.
As a marketer, it’s a choice between selling things, or selling aspirations.
Selling things often requires brute force, typically against resistance. Whilst selling aspirations and emotional fulfillments takes finesse, typically with little resistance.
Which is the more pleasurable and profitable?
