Drew made an analogy between marketing and horses in his post in Drew’s Marketing Minute. He writes that you can lead the horse to the water but you can’t make it drink. You could force the horse by putting its head inside the water, which is not very nice, or wait until the horse gets thirsty. I thought it was a very interesting approach, and it made perfect sense.

If the horse was a customer, the water is a product. I think the role of marketing would be to arouse thirst in the customer that he would feel the need to drink the water, so that he will be motivated to do so. When a new product is introduced, customers are led to the product (or water in the analogy). Marketers  try to appeal to customers by showing how awesome their products are through advertisements. If they can hold customers’ interest until they are motivated to buy the product, they will make sales eventually. Some might leave, but you can’t get everyone to buy your product.

In another post about his experience in Walgreens, he says how Walgreens made him uncomfortable by putting too much pressure on him to make a donation. What Walgreens did is like trying to force the horse to drink the water, but this kind of approach makes the customers feel animosity toward the company rather than the need to buy the product.

Marketing attracts customers to the product, but it can’t make them buy it. We need to hold their interests, let them hang around by the water for a while and decide whether they feel thirsty or not.