The Value of Exclusivity

My girlfriend and I were strolling around downtown today when we decided to stop into Macy’s. As I walked through the store with her pointing out shoes I thought were cute (as it turns out, I’ve got a pretty good eye for women’s shoes), I overheard an interesting conversation. It seems that a pair of sisters was shopping for prom dresses. The older girl was very adamant that her younger sister try on a strapless white dress. “You’d look so good,” she cawed. The younger sister was not impressed. That’s when I heard the interesting bit. “Look,” said the older sister, “that other dress Mom got you was $400 and this one costs even less.”

Now I understand that prom is a special occasion and dresses are often even more expensive than that, but $400 to a broke college student like me is a fortune. To give you some scale, my outfit for the day consisted of jeans bought off of eBay, a free shirt courtesy of DePaul University, and a hand me down track jacket. At that point, I couldn’t comprehend spending more than ten bucks on anything besides food.

“Why is it,” I thought to myself, “that people are willing to spend so much money on clothes?” Then it occurred to me: exclusivity. We simply love being the only person to have something and marketers know it. In fact, it’s that one simple fact that drives the entire luxury goods industry. Whether it is a Rolls-Royce car or a Rolex watch, the fact that some people can afford it and others can’t creates a visceral appeal. Even when it’s a product that’s mass produced, the illusion of individuality draws thousands of customers each year.

So how can we marketers of tomorrow benefit from this knowledge? Well, the first thing we can do is reexamine the way we look at ads. Remember, we might be marketers, but we’re also consumers and we have a lot more experience at consuming. By first acknowledging our own bias toward exclusivity, we can reconsider different ways to make an ad appealing. After all, the best ads are the ones that attract the consumer a lot of different ways. It is that kind of openmindedness that could set you apart from other job applicants.