What Companies Can Learn from the Homeless

"I'm homeless. I'm hungry. I've got 6 kids. I've got AIDS. Pleas help. God bless," reads the handwritten cardboard sign sitting in front of the homeless man. Sometimes we are drawn to give and sometimes we're not. Regardless of what you may think is happening that sign he are holding is in fact a piece of marketing. The question is, is it an effective piece of marketing?

As much as we like to think we are giving selflessly, the fact is, every time we drop some spare change into the cup of a homeless person we are completing a perfectly legitimate business transaction. What the homeless are selling is the feeling of goodwill...and sometimes we buy it. More importantly, our decision to buy goodwill from one homeless person or another is based on all the same decision-making principles as any other purchase decision we make everyday. And, like most businesses, the homeless use marketing to help drive the transaction. In their case, billboards.

If all the principles of communication work the same way for a company as they do for a homeless person, I decided to do a little experiment to prove it.

We found a homeless woman in New York who was willing to help. Sitting on the corner of 23rd St and Park Ave, she told us that she makes between $20 and $30 over the course of an 8-10 hour day. $30 constituting a good day. Her sign was similar to the norm - I'm homeless, I'm hungry, please help, etc. She agreed to use our sign the next day and with it, she earned $40 in 2 hours.

So what did the new sign say?

For starters, it didn't talk about her. Like so much bad marketing out there, her original sign tried to sell based on facts and details about her without considering why anyone would give to her in the first place. We don't know if any or all of their claims she presents are true and, like companies, she has also experimented with which claims work better than others.

Companies are no different. They offer features and benefits, facts and figures, everything they think we need to know about their product or service to encourage us to buy. A computer company, for example, tries touts the superior memory and the processor speed or other bells and whistles. A law firm tells us they are one of the biggest firms with all Ivy League attorneys. A cereal company tells us their product is packed with vitamins and minerals and is part of a well-balanced diet. But why should we care? They've spent most of their time and energy telling us about them without saying a single word about us.

Claims or no claims, what if the whole marketing approach was completely flawed? What if effective marketing had nothing to do with features and benefits at all?

Good, effective marketing is that which talks about the buyer not the seller. We don't care about the seller, we care what we can get from the seller, and I don't mean the product attributes . We want things that reflect our own values and beliefs, things that fit into how we live our lives.

So what can companies learn from the homeless? Stop talking about yourselves and start talking about why anyone should care. Talk about our lives and simply place yourself and your products comfortably into our lives. That's exactly what we did with that homeless person's billboard.

And what about that sign? What did the new sign say that was able to double revenues in a quarter of the time?

It said simply: "If you only give once a month, please think of me next time."

For more from Simon Sinek visit simonsinek.com

Comments

[Dameocrat]

They already play the victim card better than the homeless. Nobody's giving trillions of dollars to the homeless.

[IraMandelker]

Panhandling is "marketing", no doubt, but you associate panhandling with homelessness only because panhandlers present themselves as homeless. I have worked with homeless people for >20 years and only a small percentage I have met use panhandling as a regular, consistent income strategy. I have seen many web sites encouraging panhandling as an "occupatio­n." They often encourage panhandlers to adopt a homeless presentation as a compelling marketing strategy. You could say that one of the marketing lessons is to adopt an identity that is misleading, and manipulative, and misrepresents your product - there's enough of that in the business world already.

As a human service provider, I am more than a little disturbed by the idea that you really used a homeless person in your marketing "experimen­t." Panhandling by people in truly desperate straits is a humiliating experience. Helping a homeless person become a better panhandler might do more harm than good. You could have made the same point by utilizing subjects posing as homeless, and donating the "take" to a shelter or homeless service provider.

[KillTheMessenger]

Give a homeless ten bucks and he can eat for a day, but give him a marketing manager and he can make a living?

That sounds so wrong... although for the lady it was probably a godsend. Sadly, I can see the lesson that's to be learned here. I used to live near a street with two "professional" homeless people. The first one was always extremely nice. He would smile at you, you would give him a dollar and he would return all the blessings in the world for you. And you would believe that he actually meant it. He was my favorite and he got a dollar every time I saw him. The other person was extremely clean and took the bus. He had a monthly bus pass, showed up at the same time in the morning and always left at the same time in the afternoon. I don't think either of them was homeless. This was just their day job...

[PhilipTaylor]

Your "outside the norm" examples say nothing of the true damage done to innocent victims all over America.

A typical rethug trick!

[PhilipTaylor]

Principled and Principal-ed OUTRAGE!

Executives=300 to 500 times income of Average Worker

Executives Income 30,000% to 50,000% the Income of the Average Worker

# ! Greediest Nation = # 1 Debtor Nation = America = BANK Owned Federal Reserve Debt System

[KillTheMessenger]

Yawn. The overwhelming majority of executive salaries is between $150-400k. Try again.

[PhilipTaylor]

Useless Info!

Top 3% is what is of Great Concern!

[olddognewtrick]

I think the main lesson would no tax on your income. What a savings.