Nathan Gwilliam Blog :: e-Business, Social Enterprise, Faith

Last year I took an insightful MBA marketing class from Dr. Gary Rhodes and Dr. Michael Swenson. The concept which stood out the most to me in their course was that we should “sell to the swing group through the eyes of the love group.”

When Dr. Rhodes and Dr. Swenson taught this principle, they gave the example of an advertising campaign which was run by the American Plastics Council. From 1987 to 1992 the percentage of the American public feeling the risks of plastic outweighed its benefits increased from 32% to 64%. Negative media coverage of the plastic industry was as frequent as positive media coverage. More and more legislation was being introduced to ban plastic packaging and large manufacturers were beginning to de-select plastic. This ad campaign was being run to help change public perceptions to be more favorable concerning the use of plastics.

So, the American Plastics Council (APC) ran ads which illustrated some of the benefits of plastics, such as credit cards and garbage cans. The majority of respondents to these ads had a favorable impression of the advertisements, but the level of guilt associated with buying products made of or packaged with plastic did not change. Consequently, the expensive ad campaign was deemed a failure.

At that time, Bob Nightengale from the APC said, “I think we need to be concerned with the performance of the communications program. Even though it is still early, we just are not seeing the type of improvement we had hoped for. I am worried that we are not “moving the needle.”

The APC learned the concept of “selling to the swing group through the eyes of the love group.” The potential users of plastics can be divided into those who are passionate about plastics (love group), those who are indifferent (swing group), and those who advocate against the use of plastics (hate group). It is often very difficult to convince the hate group to change their position and the love group already uses your product or service, so the group to whom advertising would probably be most effective is the swing group.

With this new insight, the APC ran a second set of advertisements telling stories of people in the plastics love group. For example, one television advertisement featured a father telling the story of his child who was born premature and was kept alive by a plastic incubator. He was definitely in the love group for plastic, and his ad along with the others in this new style, were emotionally compelling to the swing group. As a result, from the 1st quarter of 1993 to the 1st quarter 1994, plastics usage increased 17% in the retail and clothing industry, 35% in industrial manufacturing, 65% in the food industry, and 30% in the healthcare industry. The amount of legislation introduced to adversely affect the plastics industry was cut in half since 1991 and positive media coverage of the plastics industry was five times greater than the negative coverage by the 1st quarter of 1996.

The LDS Church, with the help of the BYU Ad Lab, recently developed a new advertising campaign with this type of “love group” focus. They identified people who had converted to Mormonism and asked them to share their conversion stories. That was the “love” group. Then, snippets of those conversion stories were run on many different advertising channels, such as radio, television, billboard, magazine, and on the Internet at Mormon.org in an attempt to reach the “swing” group.

I would definitely not say I am an advocate of many forms of plastics. However, what I take away from this powerful lesson is that when I am developing an advertising campaign, I should locate the people who love my product or service and try to distill the core reasons why they love my product or service. Historically, I have focused on a “facts and benefits” style of marketing. Now that I understand this concept, I am eager to re-develop several websites, such as Adoption.com, to better sell to the swing group through the eyes of the love group.

Posted on April 3rd, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Adoption, BYU Marriott School, Business Management, Internet Marketing