Lifestyle Marketing - You could be them!

What is Lifestyle Marketing?

Lifestyle Marketing focuses on creating a position in the customer's mind with the help of celebrities, aspirations, or goals of the person. These brands create an impact in the mind of the customers and establish themselves as a perfect tool for the achievement of the lifestyle that the customer aspires for. In this marketing technique, the brands focus more on who is advertising their product? Or How their product is getting advertised, rather than focusing on the product itself.

Customers start buying these products not because of the quality of the product or what value it will add to their lives, but they start to buy these products because one of their idols said so. Most of the time, in this style of marketing, an idol or a personality who is admired by millions is involved, but many times brands build a whole lifestyle or a story around the product that makes people vulnerable, and they become loyal to that product. Let’s understand it by an example, assume you are a forty-year-old man who is married and has two kids. You have a perfect life, you own a house, your kids go to the best school in town, and you also have a decent source of income to provide for your family. The only thing that you don’t own is a car now, you become the favorite target for the companies selling sedan, they will show you in their advertising how a family man like you drives a sedan, and his wife loves him, and for the kids, he is a hero. They will create an environment in your mind about what a perfect dad looks like and, although you don’t need a sedan, you will go on to buy one, as you want to be a perfect and responsible man in the house.

Lifestyle marketing's prime focus is not to sell you their product but, prime focus is to sell you the ideal. They do not want you to be just their customer but, they want you to get stuck to their brand so much that whenever you even think of buying the same product from some other brand, a feeling of guilt arises inside of you and feel like you are cheating on your ideal. Hence, people who bought the product because of their ideals tend to stick with their brand till the time that ideal sticks with the brand. 

Brands involved in Lifestyle Marketing

Nike’s Air Jordans

If you are a 90’s kid and you watched Micheal Jordan play, I bet you that at some point of your life or in your friend circle must have owned a pair of Air Jordans. And the chances are, when you visited the store, you cared nothing about the quality of the shoes or how comfortable they were. You just wanted those shoes. It was not just once, but whenever you visited the shoe store, you chose Air jordans by default. Now, ask yourself why you wanted Air Jordans? Well, that was because you idealized Micheal Jordan. He was your hero, you aspired to become Micheal Jordan, and hence you wanted to own everything he wore or was part of his lifestyle.

The shoes gained so much popularity that even after 19 years of his retirement, Micheal Jordan receives 100 Million dollars in royalty from Nike every year.

Johnson and Johnson

It would not be wrong to say that J&J is trusted blindly by mothers all over the world.

They created trust in the mind of the mothers by using the terms like “no more tears."

They created such an image of their product that it was believed by the parents that an idol mother will only use J&J products for her baby, and often some ladies used it just because they wanted to be the perfect mother, even after not fully trusting the brand.

Marlboro

In 1962, the U.S. government officially announced that cigarettes cause cancer. Every tobacco company’s sales came crashing down, and some even went out of business. But there was one company that went on from having just 1% of the market share to owning almost 35% of the market, and today they are the 4th largest cigarette manufacturing company. The company was Marlboro, and it took care of the situation in a very unique way. Instead of defending tobacco or proving the research false, it used the tactic of Lifestyle Marketing. Since they cannot advertise cigarettes directly, they created the character, the Marlboro Man. It was a character that was supposedly everything a man wanted to be. He was a cowboy with a perfectly built-up body and, the commercial showed him as the ultimate archetype of manhood.

The men of the 1960s were so fascinated by this character that the commercial became a massive game-changer for the company. And that is how Marlboro became a legend in advertising and laid the foundation for Marlboro to become a $58 billion company.

Conclusion

Lifestyle marketing is nothing but advertising in such a way that you are in a false belief that your idol uses the brand. Like I mentioned in the title, brands create an impact in the mind of the customers and give you a message that you could be a replica of your idol if you become a customer of that brand. Every company does this kind of advertising but, some of the brands created a humongous impact on the market with the help of Lifestyle marketing apart from the brands mentioned above, many brands like Coke, Armani, Pepsi, Reebok, Huda beauty, etc. have been using it for a very long time.

Trust me, other forms of marketing will provide you with customers but, lifestyle marketing will give you loyal customers. People who bought Air Jordans as a kid are still buying those shoes. That is because people who were loyal fans of Jordan are now loyal customers of Air Jordans. However, this Lifestyle Marketing is not limited to only the companies with a huge net worth. You can use the method of Marlboro. They did not hire any celebrities. They instead created an imaginary character and showcased him as the definition of an idol man. If you are a business owner, you can use this marketing strategy. You have to only figure out what will suit your brand and how to impact your customers.