Talk to the Hand Raisers
With the recent passing of Elizabeth Taylor, and all of the focus on her famous jewelry, I find myself thinking about hands.
I remember visiting Grauman’s Chinese Theatre at a young age and being so impressed by all the famous celebrity hand prints. The romantic in me is thinking about how Elizabeth found the one man who would put the 33-carat Krupp Diamond on her hand, Richard Burton. The marketer in me keeps thinking about how we focus on consumer’s hands and the actions they perform.
As marketers, we should be looking to find consumers who will fall in love with our goods and services over and over just like Liz and Dick. They were so in love that they married each other twice.
There are approximately 622 million hands in the U.S. Hands help us form powerful connections. They caress an elderly parent’s face, soothe a crying child, and pet our beloved animals. They pass out business cards, sign contracts, and introduce us to new partners. They also have the ability to click on our offers, write for more information, or call to buy a product.
Hands are a vital part of our interpersonal communications. Without our hands, we would not be able to post 140 million tweets, send 5 billion text messages and 465.7 million emails, open 584 million pieces of mail or redeem 8.2 million coupons each day.
We repeatedly strain our digits by texting, twittering, blogging, and using our cell phones. It is no wonder that there are 8 million people whose hands suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome.
Hands also select which products, services, and offers a consumer is interested in. These qualified hand raisers are consumers who identify themselves as a prospective customer by giving their contact information. They click on a website or respond to a direct response television advertisement, and want to be connected with relevant brands of their choice. Marketers are able to find hand raisers through paid and organic search, social media, email marketing and other lead generation opportunities. Behavioral targeting and data mining also allow for customer centric marketing.
Allstate has incorporated hands into its logo and tag line, “You’re in good hands with Allstate” for years. The hands help convey a brand promise that the insurance carrier will deliver to its customers.
Another famous pair of hands was famously broadcast around the world last month, with more talk of famous jewelry. When Prince William married Princess Catherine, cameras caught every moment of the wedding, especially when he struggled to put the wedding ring on her finger.
Over 400 million users viewed the Royal Wedding on YouTube, and approximately two billion more watched on television. On April 29th, 4 billion hands applauded the newlyweds. Although the monarchy is several centuries old, they have embraced the social media outlets of the 21st Century, through an exclusive partnership between the Palace and YouTube, as well as Facebook.
The Official Facebook site for the Royal Family is liked by 484,301 people. The Royal Family did not need to advertise the event. Most of the globe chose, on their own, to follow this joyous event through texts, tweets, blogs and online views.
Princess Catherine and her family understand the importance of hand raisers. The Middleton family owns the largest party supply catalog / online company in the UK. They understand the need to reach consumers through direct channels, and to communicate with them when they have an interest or need for their product. Understandably, traffic on the Party Pieces website and Facebook page have spiked over the last few weeks. Although they cannot overtly use their daughter’s wedding to increase sales, they should be capturing the data on the consumers visiting their site for future sales.
If the consumers were seeking out the site at the time of the Middleton’s party, hopefully the consumers will use their hands to return to the same site at the time they are planning a party for themselves.
As marketers, our messages need to be powerful enough to gain the hand raiser’s attention. These messages also need to be memorable, so that the consumer will return when their own need arises. As direct response marketers, we need to continue to search for qualified hand raisers who will find our brand and offer impossible to resist…just like the Krupp Diamond or a Royal Wedding.
Adrea Rubin is CEO of Adrea Rubin Marketing Inc.
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