Aim High in Maslow's Hierarchy

Looking for a new approach to meeting your customer needs? Try Abraham Maslow.

You know Maslow. In 1943, Maslow identified five needs that motivate human behavior and arranged them in a hierarchy. The most basic of these are your physiological needs, which cover everything from oxygen to sex. Next up are your safety needs which cover security, stability, structure and order. Climbing higher, we have your need for love and belonging, or your social needs and recognition of your place in a group or family. After that comes your need for self-esteem, which includes validation, self-confidence and a sense of contributing towards the greater good. Finally, on top of the hierarchy is your need for self-actualization, which means becoming everything that you are capable of becoming and being true to your nature.

Of these five needs, the last one – self-actualization – is the hardest to satisfy. This is not because self-actualization is difficult to achieve; rather, it is because the need gets stronger as you feed it. The more self-actualized you become, the more self-actualized you are motivated to be.

So, how does Maslow’s Hierarchy help you with your customer needs? Here’s the idea – when you target customers in advertising, aim as high into the hierarchy as you can. If you aim too low, you’ll miss out on some of the motivation.

Let’s look at a few successful examples:

1. Secret Recipe, what’s that? A cake shop? No, delicious cake is a first-level need. Secret Recipe is a lifestyle café, which feeds on your need for self-esteem.

2. The Malaysian Ministry of Health encourages spending 10 minutes a week hunting and clearing breeding grounds for aedes mosquito larvae. Why, for health? No, rather in the name of love for your family, a third-level need.

3. Buy the Toyota Camry, why? For transport around town? No, to help you spontaneously discover the pleasures in life (from their ad).

When you’re identifying customer needs that you want to meet, aim high. But be realistic. Nobody will believe, for example, that your hammers and screwdrivers will lead to self-actualization. However, better tools are safer tools, and this targets a second-level need.

Targeting your customer’s needs prominently and accurately on Maslows’s hierarchy motivates them to come to you to get their needs fulfilled.