Importance Versus Urgency

Most commercial communication is predicated on the notion that a person who recognizes that their needs are important will purchase a product that is relevant to those needs.   It’s sound logic and entirely plausible, but messages that persuade a customer that a product is important do not have an impact on immediate sales.  This is because importance and urgency are two different things.

Human beings are notorious procrastinators, and in an environment in which they are constantly bombarded with things that demand their attention, procrastination (along with ignorance) is entirely necessary to avoid spending every moment in frenzy to satisfy all the demands on our attention.   So even if you are capable of convincing someone that your product is important, they are likely to disregard your overtures unless they also feel that it is urgent.

Urgency is the perception that something needs to be addressed right away – and it is a perception, in that logic doesn’t enter into the assessment of urgency.  The urgency of eating and drinking, particularly in developed countries, defies logical criteria: people feel the need to take a meal at an appointed time even if they are not hungry, and to have a beverage constantly within reach even if they are not thirsty.   Survival needs have nothing to do with the degree of urgency they feel.

Meanwhile, things that are very important are not regarded as urgent.  It’s particularly evident when it is necessary to act in the present for a need that will not occur until a future time.  Retirement savings are an excellent example: people recognize that they will need to save for retirement, and that the earlier they start in life the less difficult it will be to accumulate sufficient funds.  Yet the vast majority do not even think of it, particularly when it is twenty or more years in the future.

With this in mind, urgency is a more reliable predictor of human action than is importance.   This is likely a reason that sales promotion often ahs to be split off from advertising in marketing departments: advertising convinces its audience that something is important, promotion that it is urgent.

While the tactics that succeed in getting a person to regard a product as being important are straightforward (cause them to recognize their need and the product to be relevant), the tactics of urgency are not very well developed, and are so clumsy that they are ineffective.

Attempting to cause a person to feel fear and panic of an impending problem, or suggesting a problem will arise if they fail to act immediately, have been attempted so often that it has lost all credibility.  A melodramatic sales pitch is automatically regarded as false and is more often ignored simply for its tone.

Attempting to give a person the sense that an opportunity will be lost is also less effective that it once was, particularly in a competitive market.  The artificial “deadline” of a promotional event has less impact to a customer who has multiple options (what is “on sale” at one store this week will be “on sale” at another next week, and is probably available from a third vendor at a regular price that’s lower than either of the promotional ones).

In all, promoters are relegated to waiting for urgency to naturally occur, and left to deal with importance – in hopes that convincing someone that something is important will implant the brand in their mind for a time when they feel a natural sense of urgency to have it.  That tends to be effective, but the effects are not immediate.

It’s also worth noting that advertisers very often focus overmuch on importance, even for trivial products.  It is certain that every chewing gum brand has a staff of marketers who have devoted an inordinate amount of time and energy to mapping out the mental model of various market segments in various gum-buying scenarios to determine how best to associate their brand to the need.  It seems highly unlikely that the gum-buyer puts much deliberation into the decision, and merely chooses among options available at the time of need based on their superficial preferences.

But at that, it seems this line of thought has petered out and is moving in an altogether different direction.