Motivation

Motivation is an ever relevant topic in marketing terms due to it’s importance in determining the needs and wants of target consumers. This involves two main aspects: the drive of consumers and their wants. A drive is an arousal of an individual based on discrepancies between their present state and their ideal state. For example, someone who owns a Honda may may strive to one day own a Mercedes, their drive is their will to work hard to achieve this particular goal. A want is just a need which has transformed due to various personal factors.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a concept in which an individual is viewed as having basic needs and increasing levels, all the way up to self-actualisation needs. The five levels from lowest to highest include physiological, safety, belonging, ego and self-actualisation/fulfilment. While this model has it’s flaws and shortcomings, it is a helpful tool for marketers who want a basis for appealing to certain aspects of their desired target market.

Canadian Club has managed to utilise this pyramid in a way where their ads target the belongingness and esteem needs of their customers. Traditionally alcoholic beverages have been consumed to fulfil the basic needs for drinks. In past decades, beer has been the market leader for this industry and individuals would drink beer largely due to unfulfilled needs in terms of belonging or because it has become a low-involvement purchase that everyone tends to steer towards, especially in the Australian market.

Through their advertising campaign “over beer?” Canadian Club have challenged the need for a drink that people supposedly only drink due to the societal pressures of such a large cohort who live in a land of “beer worship”. These ads appeal to the esteem needs of the consumer, while portraying them as trend-setters going against the flow of the beer culture and belonging in that group.

This brand has also used techniques such as novel stimuli in order to increase the involvement in purchasing alcoholic beverages such as the one shown above. Alcohol is usually viewed as a low-involvement product and using rhetorical questions that challenge the way that consumers think allows us to be more aware of the variety of options available to us in an increasingly saturated market.