Every now and then, marketing geniuses will come up with an idea that will take their product to the top. The best ideas don't usually involve an improvement to the product, rather they convince people they need to use more of the product or even better, they pull a "New Coke" (as Shannon pointed out here) and make people realize what they already have. I guess Crystal Pepsi would fall in this category, only with lesser success.
How about "Shampoo, rinse, repeat." Unless someone uses a lot of hairspray, there's no need to repeat. If your shampoo is so weak that you need to wash twice, you'd be better off buying a different shampoo. Come on. Just shell out a few extra bucks and buy a better shampoo instead of using twice as much of the cheap stuff.
Another favorite of mine is the baking soda phenomenon. It's not enough for Arm & Hammer that we keep a box in the fridge and/or in the freezer for freshening, plus a box in the pantry for baking purposes, plus you can use it as an antacid, a tooth cleaner...the uses are endless, yet the clever people at Arm & Hammer recommend we dump it down the drain! I can hear the marketing meeting: "How can we possibly get people to use more baking soda? They're already using it for everything, but that's not good enough...I know! We should get them to just dump it out! We can tell them that it will 'freshen their drain,' but really, they'll just be pouring it out, so they'll have to buy more!"
That's the best marketing ploy since the pet rock.
That baking-down-the-drain thing will work for trash cans, too, which is an even more efficient way to get us buy more baking soda. Those Arm & Hammer guys are diabolically clever, dastardly fiends that they are.
Posted by: gosey at August 21, 2003 12:13 PMYou know what marketing I get a kick out of? When, for instance, a dog food advertises something like, "New and Improved" or "Now more flavor." How do you know? Who tested it and reported back on the improvement?!
Posted by: Tom at August 21, 2003 10:35 PMThe old comic strip "Pogo" used to make fun of that all the time by having the characters get involved in these schemes to sell different things. Once they decided to package and sell dirt since housewifes would have nothing to clean without dirt and thus be out of a job. Then they decided that Americans would buy local weather conditions since they were tired of imported weather from mexico and canada. Good stuff.
Posted by: Patrick at August 25, 2003 09:04 AM