Phil Bernstein – Page 31 – Phil Bernstein's Advertising, Marketing, and Sales Training Blog

How to Get Men To Order Chicken Wings

It’s all in the presentation.

Note: I would credit this if I could, but have no idea where it originated — it’s just one of those things making the email rounds. I’m not even sure the person who sent it to me wants his name associated with it.

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When You’ve Got a Kitten Wearing a Tiny Hat…

… it may be appropriate to suspend the normal rules of effective advertising. But ultimately, some heartless, cruel advertising blogger will risk the anger of an entire nation to point out that this Lake Street Creamery ad would have been a better selling tool with an offer at the end.

There, I said it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMnpWYaCKB0]

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Microsoft Takes a Page From the Singer Playbook

Knit blogger Pdxknitterati writes today about an old Singer miniature toy sewing machine that she encountered recently at her mother’s house. From about 1926 into the 50’s, Singer marketed these to little girls. They likely made a little money on each toy sewing machine. More important, Singer established the Singer brand early with these girls, and made a lot of money when they grew up and bought full-size Singers for themselves.

Microsoft is likely to get similar results from a new program they’ve established with the Employment Department in my home state of Oregon. Under the Elevate America program — which is also operating in other states — Microsoft will give out 16,000 vouchers good for free online training in the programs of the Microsoft Office Suite. To be eligible, recipients must have been unemployed for 45 days or longer.

Here’s the beauty of this program: not only is it genuinely helpful, but it also gives Microsoft the opportunity to use three of Robert Cialdini’s six “Weapons of Influence”:

Authority: Microsoft’s products get an implicit endorsement from the Employment Department, and the Governor
Social Proof: people will be more inclined to do something — like buying Microsoft software instead of using, say, Google Docs — if they see other people doing it
Reciprocity: when these people re-enter the work force, they will feel a debt of gratitude to Microsoft. If any of them wind up having responsibility over purchasing, Microsoft has the inside track.

Like the girls who learned to sew on Singer machines, there are 16,000 Oregonians who will be most comfortable with Microsoft Office when they get jobs again. So Microsoft isn’t just doing good — they’re going to do well.

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Portland Mattress Store Matches Message to Market

When I consult with local business owners around the country about their advertising, I advise them that their message must be distinctive and meaningful — they need to say something that nobody else in town in saying, and it needs to be of value to their target.

Here’s a great example of this from my hometown of Portland.

Mattress Lot is a small, family-owned mattress retailer on the Northeast side of town. There’s a lot of competition in this category here — multi-location chains such as Sleep Country and Mattress World have large advertising budgets. Going after the mass market, they’ll drown out anything a small operation that Mattress Lot could put out there.

But Mattress Lot has discovered a very interesting niche. Portland has a large, loud, and passionate bicycle community — the kind of community that speaks up, and gets a lot of attention from city government. The kind of community that just might devote its dollars to a local business that speaks its language.

So Mattress Lot is now delivering mattresses by bicycle:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOv4r1NMuZA]

Marketing guru Chris Lytle likes to say that the human mind is a card file, and most consumers only have room for a couple of “cards” in any category. If you’re the fifth place a customer might think of in your category, you’re often out of the running.

Mattress Lot may never be one of the top two cards in the general mattress category. But if they do this right, they have a chance to become the first place a Portland bicyclist thinks of when it’s time to buy a new bed.

They have created a new category, and have a chance to own it.

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Position it Right, and People Will Buy Anything

Does your coffee taste like… dung? There may be a reason. From New York Times comes this news:

Costing hundreds of dollars a pound, these beans are found in the droppings of the civet, a nocturnal, furry, long-tailed catlike animal that prowls Southeast Asia’s coffee-growing lands for the tastiest, ripest coffee cherries. The civet eventually excretes the hard, indigestible innards of the fruit — essentially, incipient coffee beans — though only after they have been fermented in the animal’s stomach acids and enzymes to produce a brew described as smooth, chocolaty and devoid of any bitter aftertaste.

A few thoughts come to mind:

I would love to meet the person who first saw what looked like coffee beans in a pile of animal dung and decided to use them to make a drink. Just to ask, “What were you thinking?”
No, I mean really. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?
There’s no way a woman would have done it first. It had to be a guy. Most likely in his late teens or early twenties. Of this I am certain.
On second thought, that’s not the guy I want to meet. The guy I want to meet is the person who decided that this is a product he could sell. Just to ask, “How did you arrive at a price?”

And for those in my readership, a question: Have you ever tried this stuff? If, say, Starbucks carried it, would you order a grande?

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Got a question? Wanna argue? Email Phil Bernstein here.

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