Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Marketing Tip: What's in a Name? You May Be Surprised

Found this article in Sharing With Writers, a newsletter of the Authors Coalition, which is full of fantastic marketing ideas and sound advice. If you like it, consider subscribing. it's free: To subscribe to Sharing with Writers send an e-mail with "Subscribe" in the subject line to: HoJoNews@aol.com.

New Studies in Why We Buy

Judging Products by Familiar Names: New studies confirm that we don't care much about the quality of something or maybe even the cost; we judge products by what they're called and how well we know that name. The University of Cologne asked participants to pick between to airlines, one with a name they knew and one without. Mot chose the name they recognized.
Then the researchers planted negative suggestions about the big - name airline's safety record. People still chose the big - name, big - recognized airline. So, tell me that marketing your name (first) and your title (second) isn't important and I'll tell you that you've got it backward. Your name will be around a lot longer than any one specific title.

You might want to read Gerd Gigerenzer's Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious. You'll be convinced of the effectiveness of repeated exposure to a brand (yep, your name, your book's title). As a psychologist the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, this author conducted a study. People sampled peanut butter from three different sources. All were the same peanut butter but 75% of the testers thought the butter in jar that had a brand name on it was better than the other. Stanford did a similar study with French fries and the ones in MacDonald's packages won mouth - down. Now, for my theory. Yeah, it's great if you can get on Oprah. But with many (MANY!) links and mentions all over the web a few mentions in print, and maybe even a review or two, you can be a brand name to your niche audience. It's grassroots branding and most branding starts that way.

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