The story of two hunters

There is the typical marketing conundrum of pull and push that we sometimes wonder about.
To understand it, let's take the help of a story. It's called the story of two hunters....

Now there is the first hunter and what is he up to?
Well he is on his way to hunt a deer.
And the forest is pitch dark. He is armed with a quiver full of 100 arrows.
So what does he do? Given that he has an urgent target to achieve?
Well he moves deep into the forest. Then he stands, aims and shoots the first arrow.
He then shoots the next.
He goes on shooting his 100 arrows and gets one deer!
Now excited he goes to his boss.
And what will the boss say?

The few possibilities are:
"Well done! Target achieved!"
"Now, get me two deer!" (typical of corporate bosses)
So what does he do this time.
He takes now 200 arrows and gets two deer from the dark forest.
Now that is statistical perfection!

But now there is this 2nd hunter. And he also goes with 100 arrows.
But he thinks differently. For starters, he sizes up the situation.

Situation No. 1: the forest is dark.
Situation 2: the deer is somewhere else and can't be seen.

So he now reasons that he needs to get the deer with some bait or go to a place, maybe a watering hole, that the deer might frequent. (For that he must understand, the thinking of the deer).
And so he figures this out and gets the deer close by and shoots the arrow. But he is a bad shot. So he misses. He shoots again and misses again, and again.
But with the 4th arrow, he gets the deer!
His conversion rate - one out of four. That too when he is a bad shot.

The 2nd hunter has created 'pull'.
He has managed to 'appeal' to his target.
He has got the deer to seek him instead of the other way round.

This is exactly what Starbucks did to Nestle, till then the Gods of coffee.

Nescafe was consumed in-home from packets bought at the store. Starbucks is consumed out of home, freshly made and brewed.
Nestle relies largely on push and in order to drive preference, creates some pull through it's advertising that 'claims' it is the world's favourite coffee.

But Starbucks has a different weapon, which only retail brands have (if they know how to use it). The weapon is Brand Experience (goes far beyond brand claim) through the retail ambience, which changes human behaviour and has the power to create a very strong pull. The bait is the Starbucks store ambience. The coffee is sold as a consequence!
And it is priced many times the price of Nescafe!

Starbucks is the 2nd hunter.

But does the consumer behave differently in a different ambience, you might be wondering. So on this, next time!