As a result of this column you and your organization will: Position yourself in the mind of your customers to generate far more business. Understanding the powerful underlying buying emotions of the Hero, Outlaw and Magician. Capture greater market share by understanding what underlying emotions your product or service triggers in the mind of your customer. Viewers tend to feel universal, highly emotional responses when watching the Johnson & Johnson ad showing a mother being handed her baby for the first time or when the United Negro College Fund depicts an elderly African-American man rising to his feet when his grandson receives his college diploma. Academy Award winning movies that exemplify classic emotional stories include. Forrest Gump who depicts the power of the “wise fool.” Braveheart, portraying the triumphant hero. Titanic illustrates the tragic love story. Shakespeare in Love shows the artist transforming the suffering of lost love into ennobling art. American Beauty dramatizes mystical enlightenment.

By understanding powerful, underlying buying emotions, organizations can position themselves in the minds of their customers to generate far more business.

Do your customers inwardly admire…

• The Hero?
• The Outlaw?
• Or the Magician?

Each stands against some limiting, restrictive, or harmful reality.

Heroes, often seen as warriors, take personal risk in order to defeat evil, or protect society or sacred values. Proving their worth through courageous and difficult action, hero personalities include Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Glenn, and Nelson Mandela. Hero brands include the Marines, the Olympics, Nike, and FedEx.

The Outlaw acts as a disruptive force, violating cultural norms and rules for adventure and personal gain, the good of others, or out of desperate alienation. Desiring revenge or revolution, the goal is to destroy what is not working. Outlaw brands, such as Harley Davidson, Fox-TV, and Apple Computer can break through old thinking to champion a new and better way.

The Magician acts as a catalyst for transformation or healing and, unlike the Outlaw, rebels against the status quo in order to find a better way for everyone, not just himself. The core desire is to gain knowledge of how the world works and to share his enlightenment. From Merlin of Camelot to Yoda of Star Wars, real magician types are the ones who created most new technologies, such as PC’s, the Internet, organ transplants, and genetic engineering.

Customers everywhere also want to feel emotionally connected and want to feel as though they belong. This is a primal urge with many differing personality characteristics.

The “regular guy’s” core desire is for a connection with others. They fear standing out in any way and being rejected as a result. The regular guy hates artifice, hype, and people who put on airs. Appealing to them are folksy ads for Wendy’s hamburger chains and Just My Size apparel outlets for heavier women.

Lovers want to attain intimacy and experience sensual pleasure. Their goal is to be in a relationship with the people, the work, the surroundings, and their experiences. A Jaguar, while sleek and beautiful, is not so much for impressing others as to envelop the driver in a sensuous driving experience. Victoria’s Secret and Revlon are other examples that help the consumer feel special.

The Jester’s core desire is to live in the moment, to have a great time, and lighten up the world. The Jester in us loves humor. Celebrities sporting milk mustaches and Club Med vacations are Jester-aimed creations.

By understanding what underlying emotions your product or service triggers in the mind of your customer, and by designing your marketing strategy around that information, you can capture greater market share, even in a recession.

If you enjoyed this column you’ll love our Books (click here) and Training Programs (click here). Each is filled with hundreds of leading edge profit enhancing ideas from the best business thinkers in the world.This is one of over 300 columns published and part of the reason why The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have called The DreamSpeaker^TM about Business Planning Issues.