How can you add MUD or MELONS to your marketing? Click HERE to watch 2 minute video!

Seriously, Sunkist?

“Not your mother’s grapefruit”?

You’ve re-invented the grapefruit?

We get that you couldn’t stick “New and Improved” on the label like they do with laundry detergent, but “The Health and Beauty of the Modern Grapefruit”?

I bought 5 bags of these MODERN grapefruits.

Just in case my 4 millennial daughters don’t want to eat old fashioned grapefruits!

I’m not sure if the oranges, apples and bananas I bought were the MODERN kind

or the OLD FASHIONED kind, but I did cut off the label and scan it so I could share this

with those of you who love advertising chutzpah as much as I do.
[Tried to add scan image here, guys, but WordPress.org HID my Add Media button. If you know how to get it back, comment below!]

They could have gone the other way, do the nostalgia thing, like Smuckers and Kraft and Schneiders:

They did hedge their bets and kinda cover both bases with the younger woman on the left and 50’s retro Mom on the right.

Kinda makes me smile and roll my eyes thinking of the Mad Men sitting in their offices, slugging back a few and coming up with this stuff which makes its way onto real live grocery store products.

And they get paid to do it.

Now, that’s a fun gig.

Would something like this work with YOUR audience?

Consider it, before dismissing. Can you distinguish your stuff from the olden days, OR could you make the nostalgia play?

I did with my book-retro TV and stories of the TV shows we grew up with).

Below is an actual scan of the grapefruit bag label I bought this morning.

Let me know if you’re going to try this!

See you in the Spotlight!

Discovered this by chance. On my morning walk.

I walk. Every morning. 30 minutes. Minimum.

My version of Pay Yourself First.

2 loops around the park. 30 minutes and Bob’s your uncle. Done.

Only that’s a lie…

I’ll explain…

Couple of months ago, decided to shove my ipod nano into back pocket.
Blue. Fully loaded with favorite songs. Surprise gift from daughters. No occasion.

Has a fitness counter. Simultaneously measures kilometres (it’s Canada), steps and minutes walked.

BEFORE, I measured only minutes. 30.

Or 2 loops around the park. 2.

NOW, I notice that I cover anywhere from 2.56 to 2.94 km in those 2 loops.

So, decided to bump myself up to 3 km, minimum.

Round number. Respectable. Nice.

So, had to go a bit more than 2 loops.

But then I noticed I was at 3.14 km.

Unsettling. So, I walk till 3.25 km.
That’s respectable.
But I notice the steps counter is not a round number. 4796 steps?

So I walk a few more steps till it hits a round number.

But then the minutes are off.

38.6 minutes? Surely, I can walk another minute and a half and get to 40 minutes.

And so it goes.

I reach 40 minutes, but then a few more steps and I’ll be at 4 km.

What’s a few steps?

And by jumping from measure to measure, loops to km to steps to minutes, I keep increasing the amount of exercise I get until I am ready to stop.

Each time, I tell myself, I’ll just go to 3.75 km, but I check and I’m already at 3.91, so…

I go to 4km, but then it’s 4.14, so I’ll do 4.25 and before you know it, I am anywhere between 3 and 5 km or more on any given day.

Anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour all by luring myself from measure to measure to keep leading myself farther and farther, i.e. closer and closer towards my goal, which is not a number at all. Those are moving targets. The goal is to be active. Healthy. Alive.

Often, I’m on my front doorstep, about to turn off the ipod, when I notice that I’m at 4.67 km. Or 4890 steps. Or 47.5 minutes.

Seriously?

Off I go again, to make it an even 5. Or 50. Or whatever.
Got me thinking about how we can do this in our businesses.
Instead of having ONE measure, often money, can we stagger 3 measures?

____ dollars per month
___ clients per month
___client sessions (or billable hours) per month

and keep trying to get round numbers there?

$8950? What can I do to make it $10,000 before month end?
9 clients? What can I do to make it 10 before the month is up?
18 client sessions? What can I do to make it 20 before the month is up?

How this might work for you?

What measurements do you use in your business?

How do they motivate you to keep pushing to the next marker?

Tell me in the comments below. Go!

Tsufit is the author of the irreverent marketing book, Step Into The Spotlight! : A Guide to Getting Noticed

Is it ok to eat cheese from 1893?

That’s the link I clicked on online.
Didn’t realize it was an advertisement.

Thought perhaps it was a crazy news story.

So, is it ok to eat cheese from 1893?

Clicked on their link and found out:

“It’s OK if it’s OKA. While we still use the same recipe from 125 years ago, the cheese you’re about to enjoy isn’t quite so old.”

Clever.

Good headline for an advertisement.

How can you use a simple device like that:

*On your website?
*In a 30 Second Networking Infomercial?
*On your business card (if you still have one)?
*In your social media profile (LI, FB, Twitter etc.)?
*As a subject line for a newsletter or online autoresponder series?
*As a title of a blog post?

Tons of ways to ask a simple provocative question to get folks’ attention to whatever you are promoting.

Any ideas for YOUR business?

Have you seen OTHER short clever or provocative headlines like this one?

Tell me about them in the comments below!

Tsufit

First of all, keeping it real, we don’t really know if it did.

Or if it even existed.

The jury is still out.

But Ernest Shackleton’s famous advertisement in London’s newspaper, The Times, has become urban legend.

And does demonstrate an important marketing principle.

“MEN WANTED for hazardous journey,small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honour and recognition in case of success.”

We already knew that some people will do anything for “honour and recognition”.

Car commercials do a great job of exploiting that fact.

But there’s another lesson to be learned from this advertisement.

Entrepreneurs naively think that spouting their features and benefits out all over the place will attract clients.

That copywriters spewing out “boatloads” of clichés & superlatives will have ’em “lining up around the corner”.

Well it ain’t necessarily so.

It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the principles of influence, of persuasion, of why we buy.

Sometimes what attracts us is the rare refreshing appearance of candor.

A more recent version is “Buckley’s Mixture.
It tastes awful. And it works.”

Truth is an advertising aphrodisiac, in part, perhaps ’cause it is so rare.

“Avis. We’re number 2. We try harder.”

How can YOU use this in your business?

Please post other examples of this “truth tactic” in the comments below.

Tsufit
Author, Step Into The Spotlight! : A Guide to Getting Noticed

Saw this advertisement in a store window in Madrid.

So, what do you think?
Is it still true that sex sells?
Or does it repel?

BTW, who do you think is the intended prospect for THIS advertisement?

Had YOU heard of Billy Porter before last night?

Me, nope. I didn’t hear of him till this morning when photos of him in his suit gown hit the Internet.

Holy Personal Branding, Batman!

No awards show outfit has captured our attention this much since Lady Gaga’s meat dress. Or maybe her entrance in an egg shell. Wow!

(Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Is there one simple but daring move that could make YOU a household name?

Ideas?

Are you willing to do it?