Jack's life advice: If you're trying to sell something, TELL PEOPLE WHAT IT IS

[jack]

This one is something of a cheat, because I'm advising people on something I WANT them to do, not actually what's necessarily best for them, simply because I want to browbeat them into doing it.

But if you're trying to sell something, TELL PEOPLE WHAT IT IS.

That's not actually true. If you're trying to sell a hunk of crap, it may well be more effective to sell it to people on spurious grounds. It may be more effective to:

* bundle mobile phones with mobile phone contracts and lie to people about which is which
* make a mediocre product and advertise the heck out of it because it's "fun" without specifying what's good about it
* claim something is a "necessity" for modern life without saying what it does

But I wish:

* Film posters are many square meters large (A-2 or something); they should devote a sentence somewhere, even in small print, to telling you what the film is about. If it's small enough, surely all the people who want to see it because it has a cool name and a famous actor in will not be put off, but people who say "wow, that sounds cool" will be enticed?

* Shaving foam, shampoo, non-rechargeable batteries, etc had "shaving foam", "shampoo", "non-rechargeable battery" written on them somewhere.

* Mobile phone sellers had a table of the options you might want, and their cost, rather than collating them into arbitrary bundles with stupid names, and

Comments

[naath]

This cuts off rather unexpectedly... intentional?

[corrvin]

"* Shaving foam, shampoo, non-rechargeable batteries, etc had "shaving foam", "shampoo", "non-rechargeable battery" written on them somewhere."

The problem I have here is that if I purchase some brand of shampoo and the coordinating scented conditioner, the bottles are generally labeled like this:

BRAND NAME Extra Volume Lemon Scented Yummy Special Edition Not Tested On Animals shampoo

and BRAND NAME Extra Volume Lemon Scented Yummy Special Edition Not Tested On Animals conditioner

which does my 20/400 self no damn good at getting the products into my hair in the proper order.

In the meantime, the soda companies have it straight: all regular sodas have colorful labels with white/silver names, almost all diet sodas have a white/silver label with coordinating/colorful names, and caffeine free sodas have a mostly-gold label.

So, which am I more likely to do with my eyes closed or glasses off: drink soda, or wash my hair?

[pseudomonas]

I have shampoo in large squarish bottles and conditioner in smaller cylindrical bottles. This helps.

[seryn]

I buy different brands of shampoo and conditioner for precisely this reason.

For a long time I bought Thermasilk shampoo and conditioner because the shampoo was in a dark purple bottle and the conditioner in a pale lavender color bottle. I'd searched for them in the store because of their dragon commercial and bought them because of the useful packaging that matched my towels. Of course it's been discontinued entirely.

The diet soda is very distinguishable by not being in my house. ;-)

[jack]

:) And in fact, my hair is so short I'm pretty happy to put anything in the shower on them.

[seryn]

Let's hope you keep your soda somewhere other than the bathroom then, otherwise you'd be the sticky monster.

[jack]

Drain cleaner would be more of a problem :) But fortunately, no, I can pretty much tell the difference between sodium laurenth sulphate bottles and other ones. (In fact, my shower gel and shampoo are normally different colours as well, just not always.)

[jack]

:)

[pseudomonas]

I think non-rechargeable batteries are (sadly) normally denoted by being batteries. I can't see manufacturers putting "non-rechargeable!" "one use only! "landfill-tastic!" signs on the packaging unless compelled by law.

[jack]

ROFL. Now I want landfill-tastic labelled batteries [1] :)

I agree, it's probably hoping too much for anyone to actually DO that unless compelled (although it MIGHT make the battery stand out from others), but it still annoys _me_. I guess they have history on their side, in that "batteries" used to be the only sort, but that at _some_ point you to accept that what you're selling isn't the norm any more.

[1] Obviously I don't actually WANT them, but want them in preference to landfilltastic batteries not labelled as such.

[pseudomonas]

It *is* the norm. Many many shops stock no rechargeables at all.

[jack]

Oh, hm. Fair enough. It hadn't occurred to me, I just assumed rechargeables were less faff for most things, so hadn't questioned that they ought to be the default, without considering that they might not be.

[pseudomonas]

I think even if they get to be the default for using, they won't be the default for selling since you tend to buy a few pairs of them and then nothing for five years. Compare cloth vs paper hankies, or refillable vs disposable pens.