Are You Selling Hot Dogs Or Steak Franks? A lesson in the language of marketing

by Bonnie Boots

One of my family's favorite lunch stops is Steak & Shake. My family likes it for the tasty hamburgers and milk shakes. I like it for the excellent lessons in marketing I learn at every visit.

Steak & Shake excels at tabletop marketing. Everything you see when you sit down at one of their tables is designed to make it easy for you to order. And everything, from the paper placemats to the standing flip cards is wonderfully designed to carry their brand while making your mouth water.

Last week I noticed one of the flip cards extolled the virtues of their "Steak Franks," describing the franks as being made from the very best ground steak.

From its inception, Steak & Shake has used the word "steak" to raise the perceived value of its chief product. By touting their steak franks, they were simply applying the same concept to hot dogs. Let other chains sell hamburgers and hot dogs. Steak & Shake sells only steak burgers and steak franks. Which would you rather eat?

That little trick of language is part of the branding of Steak & Shake, and that brand has undoubtedly played a big part in their success.

The company could have gone another way entirely. Steak & Shake sells a high-quality product at a low price. They could have built their brand around low price. I've seen many businesses do battle on that ground, and I've seen what a slippery slope it can be. When you fight for the label of "lowest price," there's almost always someone who can take it even lower.

Steak & Shake mentions, but does not focus attention on price in their advertising. Instead, they focus on quality. And they make sure you appreciate the level of quality they deliver by equating their product with something of even higher value-steak.

That one subtle trick of language puts them in a unique position, one where they have almost no competition. Steak places are not going to compete with them on the grounds that their steaks are better than Steak & Shake hamburgers. To do so would position them alongside hamburgers. The effect would be to bring them down in the public's perception.

And no hamburger place can compete with them because no one else can claim their hamburgers are made of steak. Oh, there's no law against it. But Steak & Shake has so aggressively marketed their brand for so long that anyone else using it in their advertising would effectively be advertising for Steak & Shake.

That's because so few people listen to or read advertising with their full attention. Instead, they absorb advertising in a sort of autopilot state of consciousness. In that state, the brain takes shortcuts. In this instance, when the brain hears "steak" and "burger," it's going to take a shortcut and imagine dining at Steak & Shake. What it's NOT going to do is listen to an entire ad campaign to learn there's another place that also claims to make burgers from steak.

In marketing, this all falls under the label of "positioning." And it's all done through the magic of words. When you need sales and marketing materials for your own products and services, keep this in mind-that by using language to position yourself alongside something your target market holds in high regard, they automatically hold you and your products in the same high regard.

That's a delicious lesson in the language of marketing, one you can learn over lunch.


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