Empowered consumers set to benefit from brand generosity
- Written by Stella Katsaros
12 November 2014. A new modern marketing bible sheds light on the future of brand survival with the release of GRiP: How To Sell More Through The Rules Of Interpersonal Attraction.
The brainchild of marketing gurus Robert Hutchison and Nima Yassini, this revolutionary approach to marketing finally puts the consumer in control and places the onus on brands and business to be more generous and in tune with the needs of their customers.
The book’s thesis is brutally simple. Stop trying to change consumer behaviour and just make your product more buyable. How? By ensuring it adheres to the rules of interpersonal attraction – the psychology that dictates why people like other people.
Nima Yassini, CEO of New Republique explains, “Today’s customer is no longer impacted by traditional marketing tools, they’re more informed, socially connected and digitally liberated. They are fully expecting brands to deliver and change THEIR behaviour if they want to attract customers and increase the buyability of their products.”
Through research and insight, the authors of GRiP have identified that the key lies in the consumer’s view of how generous a brand is, how responsive it is to their needs and how accessible the brand is to them.
“It’s clear that brands have human-like qualities and we sometimes consider brands and their products in much the same manner as we consider other people.” says Hutchison, Strategy Director at New Republique, “Sometimes we judge their values, we shine in their orbit or we ‘save’ the world together.”
GRiP: How To Sell More Through The Rules Of Interpersonal Attraction identifies that consumers are drawn to a brand that is generous both to individuals and to society. A brand’s generosity ofspirit is a reflection of their inner world: a reflection of their values, culture, point of view on the human experience and their drive to make society better in some way.
The duo have devised a simple tool allowing brands to assess their own performance and effectively change the way they market and sell to their consumers. It begins by asking a series of questions about the brand around Generosity, Responsiveness and Proximity - and it is these three variables that come together to form GRiP. GRiP equips companies with the critical understanding and measures to change their own behaviour and determine where to invest their production and marketing dollars in order to attract consumers and sell more products.
Having found success through GRiPs application onto their own company and clients, Hutchison and Yassini have expanded the theory to everything else they felt needed to ‘get a GRiP’, so to speak. The book features a case study using the GRiP approach on the Australian PM Tony Abbott.
“Thanks to some of his most recent decisions, his generosity and responsiveness scores are quite low.” Hutchison says. “His proximity though, is too high. Perhaps Abbott could improve his score by keeping quiet.”
Putting into practice a key variable of the GRiP model from 1st of December consumers will be able to get a copy of the book for free! What better way to launch a book based around consumers and brand generosity?
GRiP: How To Sell More Through The Rules Of Interpersonal Attraction will be generously available to download FREE from Monday 1st of December and the offer will run for the whole month of December. You can find GRiP at newrepublique.com/grip. From the 1st of January, 2015 the book will be available for purchase as an e-book at newrepublique.com/grip for $24.99.