I appreciate your comments as I am still looking for the best way to present our services.

I think that freedom strategy goes back to that a bit: People who get into IT want to be a big driver of their company and it’s growth, almost like a techno super hero. The fear (which is often realized) is getting stuck dealing with maintenance chores like data migration on the weekend and becoming a cog in the wheel.

This is tricky though, there has to be a subtext just like there is with Apple or with BMW. Their technology superiority is the rationale, but it’s the coolness that people really want.

Customers don’t actually ask for specifics, because you’re right—they don’t know what they want—but only in terms of specifics.

This is why the want factor is the holy grail for most marketers. How do you give someone what they want, when even they don’t know they want it. And not only do they not know, but they’ll never admit to wanting it.

That’s to say: If you went up to someone and said: Would you buy an mp3 player for $350 which could scroll and hold all your music (instead of your CDs), you’d actually get a no. Now it seems implausible that people would turn down the iPod. But that’s not what Apple really sold to us when they sold us the iPod.

They sold us the fact that we need to be cool. Look at the iPod ads that you saw on billboards everywhere. There was no description of the iPod at all. Instead we saw bright orange, green, etc posters of people in silhouette (and they were dancing with these white headphones).

That’s really what people want when they buy an iPod or iPhone. They’ll rationalise it with the “Oh, I bought it for the features”, but give them another brand such as Rio Diamond (yes, they created the first mp3 player) and give them the exact features of the iPod, and they won’t buy it from you. Or even be happy if you gave it to them as a gift for their birthday.

The Want factor is deeper, almost at gut level. The customers never agree that you could come up with such a crazy idea. Think about it. You’re sitting in a board meeting for Weight Watchers, and some smart alec comes up with the concept: Let’s sell them “food”.

Ah, what an idiotic idea, you think. These folks are headed to Weight Watchers to eat food? They can get all the food they want at the Burger King or Chopsuey Palace down the road. No way are they coming here for food. They’re here to lose weight. And that’s not the Want Factor.

The Want Factor is “show me the food”. Just like the Want Factor in workshops is “show me the exit”.

It’s a bit of a book, and I’ve been making notes, but it’s not something you can amble up to a customer and say: What do you want? The answer is always: I don’t know.

Or rather: I don’t know what I want, but I know what I don’t want.

BTW, there is a former psychotherapist that does market research. His name is Clotaire Rapaille, and the book is The Culture Code. Highly recommended reading for marketers.

But let me ask you this: Did people know they wanted iPods before they were invented? Apple has to look beyond what people tell them and make a leap. This is true more often in some categories than others, but we often need to make a cognitive leap as creative people.

Once I made a leap in selling multi-million dollar data storage virtulization system that needed to be sold in to multiple levels within client companies. We analyzed the needs and the jobs of these people within the time and budget we had and then made a decision: We sold it on the basis that it would bring them freedom.

For each group, we very specifically told them how the technology would bring them freedom to do the things they wanted, and we brought the idea to life visually as well as verbally. Ultimately, it was very, very successful. Do you think that IT Managers and System Admins told us what they wanted from software and hardware was ‘Freedom’? Not on your life.