A $165 shower head? In this economy?

Have you ever heard of selling a problem, instead of a solution?

Sounds counterintuitive, right?

But that’s how luxury shower filter brand Jolie went from $0 to $30 million in three years with just a single product.

Jolie's shower head costs $165 and promises to improve hair and skin health.

Yeah, it’s not the easiest sell off the bat.

It may be appealing if you’ve got a good amount of disposable income. But in this economy, many consumers focus on the essentials and the 'nice to haves' fall by the wayside.

But Arjan Singh, co-founder and head of brand marketing at Jolie, would argue against that point. 'We would not say Jolie as a product is a want or something that’s nice to have, but more a necessity,' he told Marketing Brew.

But how do you prove this to an audience tightening up on their spending?

Show you the cut, then give you the Band-Aid.

This is a term coined by Creator Kane Kallaway, referring to the marketing hack Jolie used to generate crazy growth in such a short space of time.

Here’s how he breaks it down:

A shower filter is a solution to a problem most people don’t know they have. So, Jolie couldn’t just make ads about a filter that nobody knew they needed.

So the brand focused their marketing on educating their audience about how dirty their water is. 

This included 15 Jolie-branded trucks driving around NYC, decorated as if covered in mud. The trucks had the words, 'What if we told you that your shower water was dirtier than this truck?' written on them.

'[The truck campaign] has been, by far, the most successful form of marketing that we’ve done, measured by how many times it gets brought up to us or [posted],' Singh said.

Jolie funnels all traffic to take a free water quality quiz, which gives customised results based on your zip code. The results show the amount of harmful chemicals and contaminants are in your local water supply.

Your natural reaction is, 'OMG what? That’s fkn disgusting! What am I supposed to do!?'

Then boom. Jolie supplies you with the solution.

Their luxury shower head, which is designed to filter out those nasty chemicals that will age your skin and thin your hair.

Hook. Line. Sinker.

While there are heaps of brands doing cool sh*t in the DTC space right now, I’ve not seen this strategy used before.

It’s essentially the ‘sell me this pen’ scene from Wolf of Wall Street. The core idea is that, for generating sales, a pitch often matters more than the actual product.

How to take a page out of Jolie's playbook:

• Reverse the roles. Think about the problem your product or brand solves. Now think about how you could highlight the annoyances/ inconveniences/ disastrous effects of said problem. Then lead with that.

• Personalise, personalise, personalise. The fact that Jolie’s quiz had results specific to each zip code was genius. Similarly, having potential customers take a quiz to find out which of your products suits them is a great way to get their buy-in.

• Selling painkillers/ Selling vitamins. You have two routes here:

1. Selling band-aids to people who are already cut is more efficient and pragmatic. With a clear and present pain, buyers are much more motivated to act. This is often referred to as painkiller selling.

2. Selling band-aids to people who are afraid of getting cut. This is known as vitamin selling because it’s a preventive solution. It helps your audience avoid a problem that is yet to materialise.

Think about which route works best for your brand. Mwah x

-Sophie, Copywriter