Rating Qualities

9
Engaging
Well Structured
Concrete Examples

Fascinate, Revised and Updated

How to Make Your Brand Impossible to Resist
Sally Hogshead | HarperBusiness © 2016

The word “fascinate” derives from the Latin word fascinare, meaning “to bewitch or hold
captive so others are powerless to resist.” Being able to “fascinate” others is a powerful capability
that companies can use to promote their products or services. In this second edition of
Fascinate, branding expert Sally Hogshead’s major overhaul of her 2010 bestseller, you’ll learn
how to use marketing to fascinate customers with your product. Hogshead’s original edition
explained why certain ideas and individuals fascinate people. Here, she goes beyond explaining
why fascination works to explaining how. She tells marketers how to use her branding tactics to
sell their goods or services. Being fascinating could be very handy for marketers, entrepreneurs,
consultants, coaches, speakers, politicians and business owners.

Take-Aways
• The ability to “fascinate” is an essential component of your relationships and your life.
• Fascinating marketing can win the public’s limited, fractured attention amid countless
commercial messages.
• Fascination is the crucial component of any compelling advertisement.
• Fascinated consumers become spellbound and hypnotized.
• Products, people or services can fascinate in different ways, based on seven “Fascination
Advantages: Innovation, Passion, Power, Prestige, Trust, Mystique and Alert.”
• Discover the primary Advantage that differentiates your firm from your competitors.
• Exploit the seven Advantages tactically to develop fascinating marketing messages.
• Don’t focus on beating the competition. Focus on what makes your brand different.
• You don’t need a lot of money or experience to create a fascinating brand.
• Chipotle and Old Navy know how to be inexpensive, quick and good.

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 Summary

Five Little Candy Worms

Dinosaur Food is a popular candy for small children. You can buy it in gift shops, if it isn’t sold
out. The packaging shows a ferocious T-rex chasing terrified little kids. The actual food inside
the $3.99 package is five gummy worms, candy that cost about three cents to produce. The
manufacturer makes a Tyrannosaurus-sized profit for one reason: the super-cool Dinosaur
Food name, which fascinates small children. Little kids see parents who bring home Dinosaur
Food as conquering heroes, wrangling a game from a scary prehistoric era. That’s the magic of a
product that fascinates its consumers.

The Appeal of a Cult Beverage

Jägermeister, a German herbal liqueur, fascinates its loyalists though most drinkers say they
dislike its bittersweet flavor, which has been compared to cough medicine or licorice. Yet, it is a
global sales champ among spirits. How can this be? The answer is clear: fascination. In its quirky
green bottle, mysteriously decorated with a glowing cross between a stag’s antlers, Jägermeister
intrigues the people who line up to buy shots. Ironically, most drinkers – primarily college
students – order Jägermeister not in spite of its taste, but because of it.

“Focusing your marketing message around your brand Advantage…allows you to

distinguish yourself from the competition and not compete on price.”

This is largely due to brilliant counterintuitive marketing by its importer, Sidney Frank. In 1985,
Frank saw a brief Baton Rouge Advocate article that described Jägermeister “as a cult drink,
hopped up with opium, Quaaludes and aphrodisiacs.” Most marketers would have tried to bury
such an inflammatory article – but not Frank. He made hundreds of copies and posted them in
college bars all over the United States. Intrigued, young people quickly adopted Jägermeister as
their drink of choice for taking a walk on the wild side and flirting with illicit flavors.

Marketing Witchcraft

Successful companies create compelling advertising messages – marketing witchcraft – to

fascinate consumers. As a result, these firms’ products captivate public attention. This goes
beyond gaining interest; fascination translates as rapt engagement. When you fascinate
consumers, you make your product their inevitable choice – as if you’ve hypnotized them. The
idea of making thoughtful purchasing decisions fades away when fascination marketing works as
intended.

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 “Different Is Better than Better”

To fascinate consumers, determine your firm’s primary Advantage and put it forward as the
main message in your marketing and communications. Your Advantage differentiates your
firm from your competitors. Always operate with the understanding that different is better than
better. Don’t be vanilla ice cream; become pistachio ice cream by promoting your main Advantage.
The seven fascination Advantages are different forms of branding and marketing magic. The seven
Advantages are:

1. “Innovation” – Your brand surprises consumers and alters their perspectives and
expectations. It shows customers new behaviors and modes. The adjectives that might describe
innovation include “surprising, visionary, entrepreneurial, forward-thinking” and “bold.”
2. “Passion” – Consumers love and emotionally connect with your brand, which links them to
something bigger than themselves. Their decision goes beyond rational choice. This Advantage
doesn’t explain; it evokes and overpowers. You could describe passion as “expressive,
optimistic, sensory” and “social.”
3. “Power” – Customers savor your brand’s commanding self-confidence. As the alpha dog that
takes the lead, power is “assertive, goal-oriented, decisive, purposeful” and “opinionated.”
4. “Prestige” – Clients respect your brand. If it were a movie, the theme music would be
classical, elegant, stately and noble. It communicates excellence, superiority and exclusivity
to upscale clients who perceive it as “ambitious, results-oriented, respected, elite” and
“aspirational.”
5. “Trust” – Shoppers are loyal to your consistent, traditional brand. They trust products that are
“stable, dependable, familiar, comforting” and “predictable.”
6. “Mystique” – Your brand mesmerizes, intrigues and provokes customers. It is eye-catching,
complex and understated. Your marketing adjectives might include “curiosity provoking,
calculated, observant, substantive” and “private.”
7. “Alert” – Consumers feel secure and organized when they use your brand. The Alert
Advantage is “less like a child’s doodle and more like a surgeon’s checklist.” Its characteristics
are “methodical, organized, detailed, precise” and “efficient.”

In a Competitive Environment, the Most Fascinating Option Always Wins

The Fascinate System – the ultimate marketing hack – is a method for rapidly developing
fascinating, powerful brand messages in 60 minutes. Use this five-step system to develop effective
branding based on your firm’s distinct voice:

1. “Assemble your fascinating team” – Fascinating brands captivate people. Enlist

colleagues who are change agents dedicated to your success. Include marketing professionals.
Select a quality team leader.

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 2. “Identify your brand’s Fascination Advantage” – This is your basic marketing message.
Focus on your primary Advantage. For example, thanks to the Advantage of Trust, Morton’s
Salt can charge 187% more for its salt. Thanks to the Advantage of Prestige, Chanel gets four
times as much for its sunglasses. Find your primary Advantage and repeatedly emphasize it in
all your marketing.
3. “Build a brand Anthem” – “Empower the athlete in all of us.” This is Nike’s Anthem – the
pivot point of its differentiation. What is your company’s Anthem? If you don’t have one, create
one.
4. “Apply tactics to hone your message” – Choose strategies that will fascinate your
customers. Use tactical marketing. To illustrate, Lexus’s primary Advantage is Prestige, but if
it offered a special 340-horsepower engine, then it could promote the Advantage of Power as
well.
5. “Create a culture of fascination” – To maximize the effectiveness of your “fascination
language,” make it an integral part of daily business and your culture. Make your primary
Advantage integral to all of your communication activities, including all internet channels and
social media. Develop and repeat singular words, phrases and slogans that highlight your
Advantage.

“Branding is mysterious. It is fascinating. It is a form of witchcraft. Yet there are

patterns to the process. Once you have the patterns, you can bring it to life.”

Fascinating marketing messages win the battle against the countless commercial messages
vying for people’s fractured attention. The Advantage you establish for your brand provides its
distinctive flavor.

You Can Either Have the Biggest Budget or Be the Most Fascinating

Tactics enable your firm to accent its most dynamic message and cut through the communication
clutter. To support your specific Advantage, select a specific aligned tactic (or tactics) from the
following list. You want to use these tactics to position your marketing message and meet your
goals, such as increased sales. Ask, for example, how could a company using an innovation brand
apply each of the seven tactics effectively to its strategic marketing. The seven tactics are:

1. “The Innovation tactic” – Use this when your marketing message stagnates, when new
products outshine yours, or when the market changes and your products must evolve to remain
current. Communicate how your product is revolutionary. Intrigue customers with interesting
analogies, gripping stories or novel business perspectives.
2. “The Passion tactic” – Use this when you want customers to connect more with your brand.
It can help you increase employee engagement, give consumers a more splashy experience or
get back in touch with lost customers. Use marketing language that evokes emotional responses
and targets customer senses. Communicate through gripping stories and arresting imagery that
appeals to users’ emotions.

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 3. “The Power tactic” – Use this when your customers don’t recognize your firm as an industry
leader, you want to gain control of a situation, you want your clients to heed your professional
counsel or your customers have no idea what matters to your company. Provide customers
with special, fresh insights. Don’t ramble or waste time. Focus on customer contact points, and
always work from a strategic game plan.
4. “The Prestige tactic” – Use this when you want to demonstrate that your firm is in a special,
elevated class separate from your competitors, when you want to promote a pricey product,
when your pricing plummets or when one of your competitors dominates a competitive luxury
sector you want to enter. Develop distinguished marketing materials, demonstrate how you will
improve the results your customers currently receive, tout the awards your product received as
well as praise from third parties, and spotlight your products’ special features.
5. “The Trust tactic” – Use this when stability becomes the most important factor to your
customers and you want to demonstrate your company’s special heritage. Be consistent with
your marketing materials; compare your offerings to other things with which your customers
feel most comfortable. Avoid jargon and buzzwords.
6. “The Mystique tactic” – Use this tactic when you want to demonstrate serenity or when your
competitors try to appropriate your proprietary processes. Phrase your marketing message as
perfectly as possible. Refine it, but “keep your ‘secret sauce’ a secret.” Don’t overexpose your
marketing; be calm, not emotional.
7. “The Alert tactic” – Use this when you need to generate quick capital or cut expenses, or
when your offerings seem to confuse your customers. Concentrate on the data. Demonstrate
how you test your offerings, and provide minute details. Stay rational.

Customize Your Brand

The right tactic enables you to tailor the voice of your brand to connect more robustly with
customers. Use this formula to achieve your commercial goals: “Advantage plus tactic equals your
specific message.” Apply the most appropriate tactics under these circumstances:

• When you want to jump on a short-term sales opportunity, but want to remain authentic to
your brand.
• When you want to encourage specific customer behavior or hope to bring a new viewpoint to
your marketing activities.
• When you move into a new business area or want to diversify your communication style.

Inexpensive, Quick or Top Quality?

One favorite saying from the world of advertising says, “Cheap, fast or good…pick any two.” For
traditional marketing professionals, this was quite practical; it seemed to be the best a company
could do. However, you lose when you limit your thinking according to this old saw. For example,

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 say your company hires a marketing firm. Sticking with these limited outcomes give you just three
options:

1. The results will be “cheap and fast but won’t be as good” as they could be if you retained a firm
that cost more money and took more time.
2. The results will be “fast and good but won’t be cheap.” The quality firm you retain will be
efficient but expensive.
3. The results will be “good and cheap but slow.” The less expensive firm you retain will be expert
at what it does, but not efficient.

“Brands aren’t static; they are living, breathing things that organically change and
evolve as new people join the conversation.”

Then, consider the stellar results you could achieve and sustain if your marketing, branding
and offerings cover all three options. For example, the Chipotle restaurant chain delivers
inexpensive, quick and tasty food to its customers every day. Chipotle isn’t as expensive as a
standard restaurant. Yet its food is delicious, and its servers are fast. Apparel retailer Old Navy
is low-cost, efficient and high quality. Its blue jeans are less expensive than other jeans, yet they
are top quality, and you can buy them quickly. Timex watches and Mini Cooper cars also hit all
three criteria. If that is your goal, combine your Advantage with the right tactics to fascinate your
consumers.

About the Author

Best-selling author Sally Hogshead also wrote How the World Sees You and developed the
Fascination Advantage® assessment. She is an award-winning copywriter, and her advertising
work hangs in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

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