Are prospective members really that stupid?

Going through the Research in Action discussions in preparation for an ASAE sponsored conference call at 12:30 p.m. today. Right now I'm looking at the Scrimping discussion and there's a rather lengthy debate about features vs. benefits.

Now, I'm all for explicitly stating the benefit, rather than the feature, but honestly: Are prospective members really so stupid that they can't connect the feature to a benefit? I was talking to another membership director last week, and he remarked that sometimes the feature is more concise and descriptive than the benefit. Are benefits really that much more convincing than features?

Tagged: Association Association Management Associations benefits CAE Certified Association Executive features marketing membership