“I sure wish my building products looked ugly in my marketing materials”
said nobody . . . . ever
It’s my blog and I will talk about vacuum cleaners if I want to
Building product marketers, stop what you are working on right now and think about the last vacuum cleaner you personally used. For some of you it might be never, and if this is you – let’s pretend for a second that you do your part at home for the sake of argument.
Vacuum Cleaners are Ugly
A vacuum cleaner is not inherently a beautiful thing. It’s mostly a functional thing that we pull out of the closet, take advantage of it’s utility and then throw back in the closet. This is great news for anyone who makes vacuum cleaners because they are completely exempt from having to worry about aesthetics, right?
Dyson Changes the Game
I’m pretty sure that in the pre-Dyson era, vacuum cleaner manufacturers did not try very hard to make their products look very nice. I think we can all learn a lesson from how game-changing Dyson was at taking a new look at an old functional object and breathing new life into it.
Admit it, you just want it
Sure the cyclone thing works better, I think, and it doesn’t lose suction or whatever – but the real game changer is the thing just looked cool. It looks like something you want to have, you want to be part of the club. You see it, you want it and then you use all the other information they give you about suction and all that to talk yourself into buying it.
The Customer Experience of Shopping for a Vacuum
So, browsing online for a vacuum cleaner is your homework. See how the pride of design shows through in the visual marketing. Every time you see the product displayed you can see the pride taken in design. Videos, Animations, 360 spins, interactive demonstrations are the norm. In the screenshot below, you can see that a box appears on their web site which contains and intro video, a 360 spin view of the product and other specs and information. There is no reason why we cannot do this for building products.
Building Product Marketing Should be Equally Visual
We can take lessons from the vacuum industry here. Do you want to be a game-changer? If so, make your products stand out in the crowd. There are many factors in branding and marketing which you do not control. The visual representations of your products online and offline is something you DO control. Let the pride you have in your products shine through everywhere.
Regards and I hope you find beauty today, even if you are not Sir James Dyson.
-JY
About the Author :
Jason Yana has 2 decades of experience in architectural technology, 3d graphics and construction marketing. This unique combination provides highly-effective visual representations of building products that fuel marketing and support efforts.
His award-winning body of work informs, inspires and educates building product customers.