Want vs. Need

“There’s a thing in my pocket; but it’s not one thing, it’s many.

It’s the same as other things; but exactly like nothing else.

It has an eye and an ear; it shares what billions hear and see.

It’s not a living thing; but if you feed it, it will grow.

It can rally the masses; it can silence the crowds.

It can speak a thousand words; but it has no voice.

It can find you the places, so you can get lost;

And it can let others feel, what you’ve just been touched by

There’s a thing in my pocket.

But it’s not one thing.

It’s many.”

So reads the copy of what is probably my favorite advertisement (at least on TV). Nearly a decade ago, this one minute TVC, pretty much changed my life. Growing up in a family that lives and breathes advertising, the values of advertising’s original “Mad Men” were ingrained in me. “The Drama is never in the ad. The Drama comes from the product” said Bill Bernbach, a man who knew more about products and advertising, and consumer intent than probably anybody before him.

But THIS ad in particular, for the first time showed me that advertising could be so much more. It could be as artistic as any auteur’s film, any jazz musician’s frantic, modal solo. Ads didn’t have to talk about what the product is, or what the product does. They could talk about what the product could be. What the product could do. And what a beautiful way to show it.

What is this magical product anyway? The Nokia N95. The end of the ad states:

“It’s a GPS. Media Player. MP3 Player. Camera. PC. It’s what computers have become”

The intent is simple. Tell the consumer what it could be.

A decade later, a similar group of people (albeit from different companies) are trying to push a similar device (albeit in a different form-factor) to the very same people who bought into the N-series a decade ago. They might not do it with the same subtlety or elegance as that ad, but the intent has remained the same.

In today’s market of me-too smartphones, the sales are to a want, rather than a need. Nobody needs a phone that is 2% faster or a phone whose screen is 10% bigger. But everyone wants one.

A perfect example would be the iPad. When launches, it was the device that nobody wanted. “An iPad? Isn’t it an iPod with a bigger screen? Or a laptop without Microsoft Office? Who needs it?” And yet here we are, more than a few years, and more than a two hundred million iPads later, and that train is far from stopping.

The devices might be marvels of design. A sleek, carved marriage of glass and plastic, seamlessly intertwined. The surfaces glossy where they need to be, and smooth satin everywhere else. There’s no denying the appeal. I for one firmly believe that the feeling of the perfect weight of a device, the smooth surfaces, the definite click of the button, the bright colorful screen displaying an equally beautiful picture that I took from the camera tucked in the back can’t be matched. Nor can that feeling you get when you know those around you are looking and admiring your phone, wondering what model it is.

 Truth be told, I use a 3 year old phone. Yes, 2 new generations of devices have come and gone in that time. The company has been sold, and bought, life has moved on. My phone still does exactly what I need it to. It is everything I want it to be. I still get compliments and questions about it, people curious to know if it is some new model they haven’t heard of yet, others asking why I haven’t upgraded yet.

In today’s society, that’s a question that gets asked a lot. Why hasn’t Facebook changed its interface in months? Why haven’t you Instagrammed or Tweeted in the past hour? One of the perils of an increasingly connected world is the want for faster connectivity.

Marketers rely on this too. In India, products are typically purchased on the basis of which has more mileage, more features, faster benchmarks, and bigger numbers. They sell numbers, not products. And they have to.

As devices become less and less differentiated, the only way for products to stand out, is by telling their consumers how much better they are than the competitors. They talk about how much faster it is, how many more apps it can run, how many more songs it can old. Again, they’re trying to tell you what this device could be.

All marketing boils down to that. What the device could be.

“With this new barbecue grill, you will be the talk of the town”

“With this new fragrance, you could be even more appealing to women”

“With this new phone, you could change the world”

Will you? Probably not. You’ll be too busy checking your twitter feed to try. But you could if you wanted to.