Dietmar Dahmen inspired an attentive audience at the CO-REACH exhibition in Nuremberg with his presentation about ‘dialog marketing in times of permanent technical revolution’. The ‘enricher of people’ how he calls himself, performed two times during the two day exhibition.
Dietmar Dahmen is a specialist for modern branding and future oriented brand communication of the European Association of Communication Agencies, teaches contemporary communication at the Filmakademie Baden-Würtemberg in Ludwigsburg and is a member of both the Creative Club Austria and the Art Directors Club Germany. He now works as a creative consultant, with emphasis on up to date marketing and digital trends and solutions.
Dahmen encouraged the audience to have more entrepreneurial courage. He stated that in times of permanent technical revolution you need to adapt to new situations really fast to be a winner. It is no longer enough to always try to improve old things. Further it’s essential to concentrate on the core function of your product or service. Ask yourself how the core function of your product or service can help you do marketing, and how you can broaden this function.
Let’s have a closer look at one of Dietmar Dahmens examples: It describes the invention and evolution of the telephone and the winners and losers linked to it. Before the telephone was invented nobody needed one, the people were able to communicate otherwise, via mail, carrier pigeons or in person. When the British queen was given the first telephone she didn’t know what to do with it since nobody else had one. She then connected it to the London opera and so was able to hear operettas sitting in her armchair in the Buckingham palace. From then on everybody wanted to own a telephone and shortly after nobody could imagine to life without a telephone.
The same thing happened with wireless telephone, at first the people didn’t really know what to do with it, and after a while you can’t imagine a life without. It’s the same thing with mobile phones and finally smartphones. In this purpose, Dahmen says:
“To stay in the market you need to fulfill expectations. To lead the market you need to do the unexpected. ‘Why’ is the wrong question and just improves the wrong thing. The question ‘why not?’ brings us to the next step.”
The people who invented the wireless telephone didn’t want to make the old thing better, they didn’t want to invent better telephone ear caps or stronger cables to their existing telephone, they made something completely new and revolutionary. They asked themselves why not? Why not be able to carry the telephone around so you don’t have to be in one place to speak on the phone to another person? But it wasn’t the inventor of the telephone who invented the mobile telephone and this person again wasn’t the inventor of the smartphone.
This describes the challenge marketers and entrepreneurs have to face nowadays: to discover the possibilities the product has to give and to stand out by trying to do something completely new, while concentrating on the core function of your product.
Emotions were just mentioned in passing in this presentation of Dahmen, but nevertheless are one of the most important aspects in marketing. “Thinking leads to conclusion. Just emotions lead to actions”, explains Dieter Dahmen. Emotions decide whether we buy something or not. ”It is easier to rationalize a dream car than to fall in love with a rational car.”
