{"id":888,"date":"2012-02-21T22:20:35","date_gmt":"2012-02-21T22:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therightbrainstudio.com\/?p=888"},"modified":"2012-02-21T22:20:35","modified_gmt":"2012-02-21T22:20:35","slug":"namaste-honoring-the-light-within-our-consumers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therightbrainstudio.com\/blog\/namaste-honoring-the-light-within-our-consumers\/","title":{"rendered":"Namaste: Honoring The Light Within Our Consumers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by Jeff Hirsch<\/h2>\n

One day before my regular Saturday morning yoga class not long ago, a fellow yogi told me the story of an interesting text message exchange with her father. Inspired by her yoga practice and not even thinking about it, she had signed off her note with \u201cNamaste,\u201d which is kind of a Sanskrit version of the Hawaiian \u201cAloha\u201d or the Hebrew \u201cShalom.\u201d\u00a0 These are words that are used in greeting and parting, but all have deeper meanings than \u201chello\u201d or \u201cgoodbye.\u201d Of the many meanings ascribed to \u201cNamaste,\u201d the one I like best is, \u201cThe light in me honors the light in you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The woman\u2019s father, clearly not a yogi and without a clue to what his daughter\u2019s sign-off meant, responded to her loving and respectful \u201cNamaste\u201d with, \u201cWhat are you talking about – \u201cno nasty<\/em>???\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n

Nothing like a little yoga humor. We all had a good laugh over that one.\u00a0<\/span>Kind of a Monty Python moment, straight from the Sermon on the Mount scene in the \u201cLife of Brian.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cBlessed are the cheese makers!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The Pythons are among many in comedy who play miscommunication and malapropism for laughs. But \u201cNo Nasty\u201d immediately evoked all those times in focus groups when respondents, better known as the people who actually spend money to buy our products, did not hear something quite right or just didn\u2019t have a clue in the first place.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all very amusing to us. We laugh at the old woman in a Memphis focus group who calls casinos \u201ccasiners\u201d and the man, who when looking at an idea for a new breakfast cereal called \u201cCornucopia\u201d asks, \u201cWhere\u2019s the corn?\u201d<\/p>\n

My favorite incident came early in my career when I was observing focus groups for California Cooler. Led by the great moderator Paul Warner, who became a friend over the years, the second and final session of the evening was humming along with lots of enthusiasm and great insights. Then one respondent,<\/span>\u00a0someone from the \u201colder\u201d 35-49 age group, stopped everything to ask a question.<\/p>\n

Printed on the label was a reference to the product being made with \u201cNatural Fruit Particles.\u201d \u00a0Staring at the bottle, this respondent grew quite serious, silencing the room, all eyes focused on him. \u201cI really like this drink,\u201d he said, \u201cbut there\u2019s just one thing I don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s that,<\/span>\u201d asked Paul.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do they have to put \u201cfreeway particles\u201d<\/em> in the drink?<\/p>\n

The back room exploded with laughter and the jokes continued at this poor guy\u2019s expense over post-research drinks. Bits of \u201creal freeway?\u201d Really?\u00a0 However, we belittle our consumers and their \u201cignorance\u201d at our own risk. A failure to \u201chonor the light\u201d in them, to see ourselves as superior and sophisticated, is a terrible mistake.<\/p>\n

How many times have we seen the ad agency art director stand in the back room of the focus group facility bitterly complaining that \u201cthese people just don\u2019t get my work?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the point, isn\u2019t it? They are our customers. If they don\u2019t get it, it\u2019s not on them, it\u2019s on us to do a better job communicating.<\/p>\n

There may not be little pieces of freeway in each bottle of California Cooler, but this hapless respondent was the first to point out that \u201cparticles\u201d might not be the best way to talk about the presence of real fruit in the product. And if people aren\u2019t \u201csmart enough\u201d to know that a cornucopia is a \u201chorn of plenty\u201d and not a corn-based product, well, perhaps that new Cornucopia breakfast cereal isn\u2019t the greatest idea after all.<\/p>\n

We in marketing love to think that we\u2019re smarter, hipper and cooler than everyone else. It\u2019s not a good idea. Most of the time we are not marketing to ourselves.\u00a0 We should never forget that humility, open-minds, tolerance, respect and empathy are the key starting points of great marketing.<\/p>\n

No Nasty! And Namaste,\u00a0<\/span>too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jeff Hirsch One day before my regular Saturday morning yoga class not long ago, a fellow yogi told me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therightbrainstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therightbrainstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therightbrainstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therightbrainstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therightbrainstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.therightbrainstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therightbrainstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therightbrainstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therightbrainstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therightbrainstudio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}