Review: The Transformational Consumer
A review of Tara-Nicholle Nelson’s book on how consumers increasingly seek transformations
The Transformational Consumer is a great book by Tara-Nicholle Nelson, especially for marketers. Now Tara-Nicholle Kirke, she was chief marketer for MyFitnessPal – a transformational app purchased by Under Armour – before investigating how consumers increasingly desire transformations.
The reason I like the book is right there in the (long) subtitle: Fuel a Lifelong Love Affair with Your Customers by Helping Them Get Healthier, Wealthier, and Wiser. As readers know, I have grown to love that same phrase originated by Ben Franklin as the way to think about transformations – Kirke calls them “the three aspirations” (p. 16) – although I have extended it to health & wellbeing, wealth & prosperity, wisdom & understanding, and added a fourth “sphere” of transformations, as I like to call them: purpose & meaning. (See here and here.)
Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: “the three aspirations”
Kirke’s research shows that “billions of people worldwide are coming to the marketplace specifically looking for the products and services and brands that can help them live healthier, wealthier, and wiser lives” (p. xi). She views “Transformational Consumers” as a “massive, rapidly growing segment” (also p. xi) – “50% of U.S. consumers” she asserts (p. 14) – and both describes them and how to serve them well, with many good personal transformation and business examples.
The highlights include:
Pay attention to the “humanity of the people” you serve as this “deep, human motivation – transformation – is one of the most elemental reasons people do the things they do. The drive for their lives to be different and better than they are right now is the pure, primal force underlying nearly every purchase decision and brand interaction people make.” (p. 2)
Don’t tell a story of your brand or company; “It’s about crafting an authentic, relatable, warts-and-all before-and-after story about them and delivering products and content that help them progress along their journeys. . . . It’s about casting them in the role of hero. . . and then providing the resources to make this story come true, over and over, for a lifetime.” (pp. 30-31)
Extending that, chapters 3 and 4 focus on the Hero’s Journey, while chapter 5 offers another great way of creating dramatic structure, a story spine known as Pixar’s story structure (pp. 70-71).
Marketers and brand managers should in particular read this book, and it offers great inspiration to anyone.
Joe Pine
© 2024 B. Joseph Pine II