Dialing down with Dial to clean up the message

You’ve gotta give your customers a product they want. This may seem like a no-brainer, but this concept sometimes seems like an elusive one in the marketing world. Relying on the field of dreams mentality (if you build it, they will come) simply doesn’t work.

Take soap. It gets you clean. Everyone needs to be clean. Simple, right? But it is not enough to be that general. How can this product become innovative and reach a specific audience? First it was the battle between bar soap and liquid. Now it has come down to targeting health-conscious and clean-conscious women and men.

Dial for Men has already been a popular line, and now they are marketing a hydrating scrub version (that’s exfoliating to those of you who don’t speak “guy-talk”). The strategy Dial took for this line was to find some specific features that men wanted in their soaps. It seems like a novel concept to actually talk to the customers, especially about a product as basic as soap, but the truth is there are numerous nuances to the soap decision.

Dialing down the message to target a specific person (in Dial’s case finding out what men are looking for in their soap) is exactly what our Persona model does. You put a face with the brand, and get very specific for the audience.

Marketing is communication, and the better you speak the language of your audience, the more effective you will be.