January 20, 2012
Candidates scrunch into booths at small town coffee shops or hop onto the beds of pickups to talk to small groups of voters, then quickly move on to the next group with hands outstretched.
This hardly seems the way campaigns are supposed to be run in the digital age, yet once again candidates have hit the road to campaign much as Lincoln did, only with TV cameras in their wake.
Despite the emphasis on media, retail politics remains very much alive and kicking in the presidential primaries.
The early primaries provide a delightfully old fashioned look at democracy, coaxing candidates out from behind the media apparatus to actually sit down with people and create a personal impression.
They also offer some perspective on the value of thingness.
Thingness understands that even in a wired world we still want to want to see and touch the product. We want a tangible connection with the substance of a thing. Or a person, as in the case of the early primaries.
If we can’t have that personal connection, we depend on proxies.
The good citizens of several small states are currently screening candidates for the rest of us. Like the people who review toasters they purchased on Amazon, we’re getting their feedback, only in the form of votes.
Thingness is a vital quality that is becoming more elusive and marketers are partly to blame. Many companies think they can do without it entirely in their marketing and sales, relying on technology touchpoints instead. And sometimes they can.
But they don’t realize they could better engage consumers at times if they stepped out from behind the screens long enough to carefully consider the emotional needs of their customers.
Consumer engagement is not simply a result of rich interactive technology. While we may live in a digital culture, our emotional lives remain rooted in retail sensibilities.
Thingness often helps us make purchase decisions, especially when faced with new choices such as an unfamiliar company or brand, or a big ticket item we purchase only infrequently.
Big screen TV retailers realize many of the customers in the store are trying to decide on a brand before they go home to check prices online. The same is true for automobile showrooms.
Thingness requires personal experience. Our own, ideally. But if not, then someone’s.
That is why sampling and trial still trump everything else. Figuring a meaningful way to share the actual brand experience before purchase remains the gold standard when it comes to creating thingness.
Next is proxy trial. That is, old fashioned word-of-mouth. The endorsement of family and friends carries considerable weight, but even the opinions of strangers can be valuable, especially when there are a lot of them.
What is important is that someone, somewhere in the levels of influence around us actually touched the product and had a good experience to share.
Even if it was only a quick handshake in New Hampshire.
