by David B. Wolfe, Robert Snyder

IDENTITY VALUES: SOURCES OF THE MOST POWERFUL INFLUENCES ON BEHAVIOR

Identity values, or I-Values, are about the self, its continuity, its projection in time and space, and, for believers in an afterlife, the projection of the self into eternity. Nothing else so broadly and deeply influences customers' buying behavior and lifestyles because nothing so broadly and deeply influences each life. The 17th-century philosopher Spinoza asserted this when he said, "Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being." He called this conatus, the primary life force that motivates each thing to persist in its existence. I-Values form the starter engine and generator of the animating forces of life.

I-Values have a dark side. They spark conflict between people from the petty squabbles of lovers to raging wars between nations. People we call "control freaks" express the dark side of I-Values in trying to recreate themselves in other people by getting them to do as the controller would do, be as the controller would be, and think as the controller would think.

When Maslow described self-actualizers as being detached from the world, he didn't mean they had become socially withdrawn. He meant they had renounced the immature disposition to control externalities, including other people. Sometimes in my workshops I ask the audience to name the biggest source of conflict between two people. The consensus of the audience is invariably miscommunication. When I challenge that by suggesting that the attempt of one person to seek control over another is a better answer, audience consensus invariably shifts to agree with me. I usually see heads bobbing in assent as the consensus shifts, which always leaves me wondering if those bobbing heads recently sparred with a lover, spouse, or boss in a situation in which the sparring partner sought control over the owner of the bobbing head in some issue.

What higher service can you as a marketer provide your customers than to help them recreate themselves through the brands you market? For example, concern about legacy--proof after we are gone that our lives have been worthwhile--grows stronger as we move through the second half of our lives. That is why wealthy benefactors set up foundations, leave money to worthy causes, and buy naming rights to buildings on college campuses.

I-Values operate primarily in service of the social self in the first half of life, but in the second half, they draw us more into service to the inner self. In my view, no brand does a better job of connecting with I-Values generated needs in the second half of life than New Balance.

Achieving Balance in Today's Marketplace

In the late 1980s, New Balance CEO Jim Davis noticed that sales to younger age groups were slowing, with matters slated to get worse during the 1990s when the number of 18-to-34-year-olds in the United States would fall by more than 8 million, putting a huge dent in the sneaker market. Davis reacted quicker than his competitors to that population shrinkage by turning his company's attention toward a loyal group of customers who had bought into the brand in the 1970s and were still with it as they began entering middle age in the late 1980s: boomers moving into midlife. Davis changed the marketing direction of his company toward a growing base of loyal customers who seemed ready to grow old with New Balance on their feet.

Having five shoe widths versus the industry standard of three was a decisive competitive advantage, especially among older people whose feet may have spread a bit, but New Balance's skill in connecting with the altered values of midlife has leveraged that advantage. The signature tagline "Achieve new balance" resonates with the growing desire in midlife to achieve life balance after the frenetic years of early adulthood when unbalanced devotion to career and acquisitiveness dominated lifestyle. The subtext in many New Balance ads is tend to your inner self, not to escape a complex world, but as a way of reentering it with renewed spirit.

Having famous athletes endorse their products has long been a mainstay in marketing sneaker brands. It feeds into the I-Value-generated need of the young to define their identities with a heroic mien. However, New Balance has always been an exception. Going against the grain, it makes a virtue of not using famous personality endorsements. This intuitively wrought decision made it easier for New Balance to shift its attention to older markets because it was not seen as primarily a youth-oriented brand.

Given Jim Davis's eschewing of famous personalities to endorse the New Balance brand, it might seem ironic that in recent years as the brand's popularity has continued growing in New Customer Majority markets it has been enjoying strong growth in younger markets. This development demonstrates the power of ageless marketing to extend a brand's reach across generational divides. While the values projected by New Balance resonate particularly strongly with second-half customers, they resonate with younger people as well. Also, if the idea of the psychological center of gravity described in Chapter 5 makes sense to you, it is only natural that New Balance would be in a good position to grow sales in shrinking younger markets where even mighty Nike is experiencing sales declines.

New Balance presents a kinder and gentler set of values than its biggest competitors. It often expresses those values in poetically compelling ways. Ad headlines convey the spirit of an inner self, uncompromised by a narcissistic need to play to the outside world. Often, through the image of a person in a solo activity, ads project an idealized expression of the inner self.

One ad headline, "The shortest distance between two points is not the point," contrasts vividly with Nike's theme that superior performance, winning, and getting there first is everything. The ad shows a man running along a road carved into the side of a mountain overlooking a shimmering sea--man with nature; not mano y mano. New Balance ads have none of the machismo that typifies sneaker marketing. Its ads promote the idea that one's worth is not measured by superiority over others, an aspiration of the social self, but by the measure of fidelity to one's true inner self. New Balance's marketing works because it connects with people in the New Customer Majority whose self-actualization needs have a growing influence on their lifestyles and buying behavior. One ad, directed to the midlife woman though the woman in the ad shown jogging down a country lane is not seen in enough detail to determine her age, epitomizes the ageless marketing idea of marketing to values, not age. The main copy reads:

One more woman chasing a sunset
One more woman going a little farther
One more woman simply feeling alive
One less woman relying on someone else.

How well has New Balance's brand of ageless marketing worked? Spectacularly. First, know that the sneaker category has been flat since the mid-1990s. Nike has not had measurable sales growth in sneaker lines domestically since 1997. However, New Balance has averaged an annual sales growth rate of 25 percent or more over the past five years.