If you cant AMAZE them, ALARM them
I was bracing for an explosion. ANY minute now!
She was holding her papercone full of sukha bhel – balancing precariously with a quarter of her ample bottoms on the corner seat of the crowded local. Her wrinkly eyes flashed as a salesgirl stabbed her with a device that whirred, vibrated & protested angrily against the bare skin on her chubby back.
The world suddenly seemed to move in slow-mo. As a stray grain of kurmura plunged from her lips into the folds of her synthetic saree, it happened.
“AAAYEEEE BAS KAR VEDIII AURATTT!!!”
The startled salesgirl retracted quickly. She stashed her ‘handheld clawed massager’ into her overstuffed bag and squeezed away through a wall of sweaty women with surprising agility.
Her sales strategy for today was simple:
Step 1: Enter peak-hour trains (ladies compartment) with fully-charged massagers.
Step 2: Switch on the massager and shove it into every visible patch of bare skin of your fellow passengers.
Step 3: Repeat a well rehearsed sales pitch. (Aaaraam milenga maidumm for 100 bucks wonly!!)
Step 4: Make the sale & repeat from step 1!
Though the kurmura lady’s reaction was warranted (and drop-dead hilarious), I was gobsmacked by the audacity of the salesgirl.
Her strategy was unapologetic. And unforgettable.
In my professional life, I am often asked to follow suit – to write unforgettable / unapologetic content, to present bold ideas and to be audacious. And this local train salesgirl’s modus operandi had my attention!
I’m constantly looking for great content or inspiration & have come across genius stuff! This is what they have taught me:
- Explode with personality: Personify the product, bring out your aspirational side & give your buyers an ego massage. Just like Old Spice’s website where visitors are encouraged to buy a ‘manly’ amount of products.
- Make them laugh & you’ll laugh all the way to the bank: Inject humour & make them giggle. I read about a recent study that proved that making your potential buyer laugh makes the seller seem trustworthy & salespeople should not hesitate to use humour while closing the deal. (“So this is my final offer along with all the extras. If you insist, I can throw in my pet frog, but that’s about it. Deal?”) You can find hilarious product descriptions in Firebox’s ecom site, that sells socks with your face printed on it and other unusual products.
- Be punny: Poo-Pourri’s no-sh*t pitch & unapologetic toilet humor for selling their ‘before-you-go toilet spray is my favourite. Their website is full of puns & wordplay like ‘we give a crap’, ‘control the shituation’ etc. One of their products is called ‘Deja Poo’. Genius!
- Simplify: You can be CRED and help redundant artistes come back to the limelight with cheeky jingles. Or be magicpin, make a spoof on CRED with Vijay Raaz speaking in Hindi & simplifying the proposition. For someone who has lakhs of CRED points and not knowing what to with them I’d prefer straight talk & cashbacks.
In short, if you can’t amaze them, alarm them!
Like Sushant Singh Rajput & his friends intimidating competition in this scene in Chhichchore – (where they disguise the canteenwala as a coach).
Or like the girl with the clawed massager in the train.
Have any brands amazed you with their content? Share with me in the comments below!
P.S. I also love this scene from Chhichchore where ‘Acid’ deals with writer’s block. Eventually his friends have to ‘alarm’ him to make him write amazing slogans for their match!
P.P.S. Even my writing sounds like ‘1-2-3-4-H4-H4’ before I’m able to nail it. (all my east-or-west-h4-is-the-best kinda writing will be brought out of the recycle bin in another post) 😛