Status Skill Marketing

Nick Wreden at Marketing Profs.Com introduces a neat new idea, status-skill marketing.

The idea is simple enough. People have always sought status symbols -- a Rolls Royce, a bottle of vintage wine, a suburban mansion -- to show off and impress others.

In our society of knowledge workers and creative and innovative idea shapers and instant millionaries, however, it is a lot cooler to know how to do something than just to own something. Hey, everyone can OWN something. But what can you DO with it, dude?

Japan airlines now includes Japanese lessons among its entertainment options on overseas flights. You no longer impress folks with that trip to Japan, but you sure might when you hop from the plane and start chatting away in Japanese?

Wine dealers are offering courses in wine tasting. Sports car dealers are giving away lessons in race driving. Art dealers are teaching buyers the fine points of building collections. They are not just selling the status symbols but tying their sales to the much more impressive sophistication in their use.

According to Wreden, "one study claimed that 20% of consumers who learn a skill based on a product will buy that product, 65% will buy that brand again, and a mouth-opening, eyebrow-raising 96% will tell a friend about the experience."

Now a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and nothing would be worse than a transparent veneer of sophistication. We all know what we thought about that little know-it-all in seventh grade. So in order for status skills to work they have to penetrate at least a bit below the surface.

This is where university-based "executive" programs might enter the market. You can only learn so much Japanese on that overnight trip to Tokyo, or so much art history from the dealer advising you about the current post-impressionist market. Most instant millionaires, however, would not be caught dead in typical university-based continuing education courses, which are either based on regular university courses for your teenage daughter or shaped for the elderhostel crowd.

So keep an eye out for upper-end executive "status skill" cohort programs coming soon to a campus near you.