How to Make "Ease of Use" Easy in Life Science Marketing

Ease of use shows up frequently as a benefit in life science marketing. But demonstrating it is not easy at all.   Why do so many campaigns ignore the emotional aspect of “How will this product or service make me feel?”  Sometimes this is because people have simply not thought about it.  But often it is because marketers don't know how to do this effectively.If your marketing messages don't  trigger emotion in your prospect, they may get lost in the noise.  In this post, I’ll review a campaign that tells a story and demonstrates how customers could feel with the products.  I’ll also add a few suggestions on what I think would make it stronger.InPersuading Scientists: Marketing to the World’s Most Skeptical Audience, Hamid Ghanadan makes the point that many campaigns lean too heavily on logical arguments to sell their products and ignore appeals to ego and emotion. This is important because engaging ego and emotion can bypass scientists' natural filtering reaction to claims of superiority. And the reality is, people rarely buy anything based on its superiority for any given criterion. Seth Godin argues we buy a story.If You Want To Be Easy, Sound EasyLet me show you a brand that I believe is likely to be fascinating their prospects. I don’t work for these folks. In fact, I have never met them.  First of all, they changed their name from Cell Biosciences, which sounds like it could have fit any number of life science companies to ProteinSimple. Good move. The new name makes a statement. It introduces their whole story which, as you would expect, is centered around easy analysis of proteins.Now meet some of their products: Simon, Peggy and SallyThese aren’t customer service reps. They are actual products sold under common names.  This touches the mystique fascination trigger.  It makes you wonder “Why did they do that?” Is there a story behind the names? This touch of mystique is a bit provocative. It should get people curious and talking.These three light-hearted product names do something very difficult, very well. They communicate ease of use. At the company level, the simple, familiar names tell you that this is a company that is creating products that will be a customer’s friend.   They set the expectation that working with those will be a pleasant experience.Light-hearted Doesn't Mean Lightweight“But wait”, you say. “If we don’t sound serious, who will take our products seriously?” This concern is unfounded. I’ll give two examples. First, you probably know more than one person who is great at their (serious) job, but is happy to share a funny story or lead the company softball team. Second, Disney makes billions by creating an environment where kids of all ages can be silly, but takes its work and product quality very seriously. Their primary spokesrodent is a mouse.At the product level, demonstrating ease of use on a web or printed page is difficult. Companies often say their products are easy to use and point out how few buttons there are or show a screen shot that makes the software look easy.ProteinSimple has done it another way.  Through your first interaction on the web they are showing you, rather that telling you, what working with them is like. The writing is simple, the pages are clean and I struggle to find numbered specifications on the capabilities of the instruments.For a web page, that’s a good strategy. It’s all about benefits and solving problems - more time for other tasks, faster decisions, minimal sample requirements and less human input (read error).What Is Fascinating Here?Which fascination trigger(s) are being activated here? I already mentioned Mystique with respect to the naming. It certainly arouses curiosity. Why names? Why those names in particular?  Rebellion is another one I find here. The overall approach is very different so it should appeal to scientists that have a bit of a rebellious streak in them.  (And most of them do.)But this story is primarily about ease of use, which from the customer point of view translates to Power.  It gives the customer control over things she would have worried about before (speed, precision, sample requirements etc.)A lot of scientific tools claim to be powerful and most of them are.  What’s the difference here?  By fascinating their customers with the way they tell their brand and product story, ProteinSimple is more likely to be remembered and better yet, more likely to drive a buying decision before the prospect is even aware of it.To be fair, I also see some challenges. In the Simple Western line along with Simon, Peggy and Sally, there is a fourth product called the NanoPro1000 which sounds more typical in this industry.  This makes me ask, “Why is it different from the others? Why not 'Joe'?” All the products in their other lines seem to be named somewhat conventionally.  Is there a brand shift going on here? If not, is the overall story as strong as it could be?Sell With Emotion, Justify With LogicThe time to trot out product specs is after the prospect has fallen in love with the idea of easy westerns. In addition to being fast and easy, reducing human sources of variability is a likely concern for customers.  How could this campaign be stronger? Data showing the difference in precision between manual and automated analysis would be compelling. This would be a great example of backing up emotional decisions with logic.  It allows customers to justify their purchase by saying, “Look at how reproducible the data is!”