Marketing Subjects

Convincing people to buy anything is tough. From sales pitches about fear and safety to prideful notions of about ‘sexy’ and ‘powerful’ most of it has been tried before. The successful brands understand how visual cues and pattern recognition trigger wants and needs. 

I remember shopping in a trendy part of Shanghai. The brick road that ran between the glass storefronts was full of venders standing behind temporary stalls. From comic books and cologne to DVDs and fried candy it was a buffet for the senses. This wasn’t one of those markets where you argue with the stall owner over the price of a fake North Face jacket or pick the best looking imitation Rolex. This was a legit shopping experience although the dodgy types were around trying to sell knockoffs to anyone who could be pulled away.

 A lot of the retail stores would look right at home in any major city’s shopping district. One particular store had a display like a wooden book shelf full of square shelves with t-shirts from floor to ceiling folded neatly. It covered the entire side of wall. Much of it was too high for the clerk to reach without a wheeled ladder, again like in a bookstore. I couldn’t look away. It was beautiful. Every imaginable color of shirt perfectly sorted and identical in pile size to the one on each side of it, not to mention above and below. If you stood back, way back, it resembled a rack of those little paint swatches you get at Lowes. It was a freaking wall of cotton t-shirts why should I care about the display?

“Of course I’ll buy one! How about the purple one at the top, someone get the man a ladder! Get a red one too.”

I don’t think I connected it at the time but the impressive display was the point. Our eyes are attracted to symmetry and color. A corporate research team probably figured out the most efficient way to bring attention to their product (This was a chain retailer). By using recognizable shapes and colors they tricked me into buying stuff, the essence of marketing. The t-shirt display in Shanghai was one example of marketing on steroids, or maybe just an updated version of a proven sales tactic. Show the goods, highlight, display, demonstrate.

 Most of us can think of a time when something on a store shelf got our attention or a showy product feature impossible to ignore. It’s the phycology of selling. I want to know what attracts the human eye to product, ordinary boring stuff like cotton shirts that most people would look at unless displayed in an attention grabbing way. This isn’t just intellectual curiosity. I’ve worked retail for a lot of years and in many cases had to set up displays for stuff no one seemed to want.

Two solid rules to selling,  People love ‘cute’ and demonstrations bring audience. 

We used to have miniature baseball bags complete with functional zippers and garish brands splashed across the sides. The tiny wheels rolled like carry on luggage across tile floor, I demonstrated a few times. The marketing idea being a tiny version of the real thing is the best way to show it. Outdoor retailers do this with tents. They were only props though. Problem is the props didn’t work like the props should. Customers were interested in the mini bags instead of the actual ones.

Customer: “How much for the little duffles?”

Me: “Sorry they're just displays, can’t sell em”

Customer: “I just want one, the yellow one?”

Me: “Yeah, I not supposed to sell them either as a set or individually”

Customer: “What are you going do with em after the season, you won’t need the display?”

Me: “Don’t know…probably sell them”

Customer: sarcastically “Yeah thanks!”

Those types of conversations happened almost daily over those stupid little bags. I don’t remember selling too many of the real ones. People just wanted the ‘cute’ ones.

Another thing people like is demonstrations. A product you can show is a product you can sell. We had a putty type material that solidified when hit. You could knead the raw stuff in your hands like Play-Doh. The putty substance company put it in rib protectors for football players and girdles for hip and thigh protection. It was expensive but worked great and we got to demonstrate how protective it was by slamming a helmet on our hand with nothing but a rib shirt between the hand and the helmet. Best part was it made a huge banging noise when we attempted to show how protect-ant the material was. Imagine the thunk--thunk of a slamming football helmet on a counter and you’ve got it. People stopped what they were doing and ambled over the watch the eager salesman mash his hand under a swinging helmet. It mostly worked...mostly. A really enthusiastic smash would still get through. Course you had to play it off like “Pain? What pain?” and hope no one noticed the red throbbing hand. I had plenty of training for this growing up with brothers. Any show of emotion during an arm punching contest was a sure looser.

 I learned how to smile through the pain, tears below the surface.

Ever been to a public event or busy shopping district and noticed kids break dancing? Watched a chef show off some new knives at a grocery store at a makeshift kitchen between the cereal and soap isles? The crowds gather because something out of the ordinary is happening. Some form of entertainment is happening NOW. It’s seemingly spontaneous and demanding. No matter how amateur or silly the show we all want to watch. We love distraction. Best of all, distraction helps to sell when done right.

 The classic example of marketing distraction was Nike at the Olympic Games in Atlanta. Reebok owned the rights to officially use the Olympic trademark and outfit athletes in their gear. Nike managed to set up a giant logo (how is that legal?) outside the athlete’s village so when cameras panned over the facilities a massive swoosh loomed large on TV screens. They also got Michael Johnson to wear a pair of bright gold running spikes in his winning event. They made a lot of enemies for their “ambush” style but nobody could have pulled it off like Nike.

I guess we are all subject to distracting advertising and bright attention grabbing displays. I try to remember it before shopping for t-shirts.