Today is Halloween. Do I have to?

But why?

Have you ever asked yourself, why am I celebrating Halloween? I am 44 and I have never stopped and asked myself, “why am I celebrating this holiday this year?”  I can recollect about 39 times in my life that I participated in this holiday and truth be told, I can justify participation once.

1. I don’t like processed sugar anymore and the holiday seems to be a retail driven.
2. Even though I am a salesman and a marketing guy, I don’t like the concept of panhandling for sugar.
3. I live in Colorado and it never fails that Halloween is always cold and bad weather.
4. I don’t mark a religious celebration with the holiday.
5. I like dressing up, but costumes that stand out are usually expensive, time consuming and almost always uncomfortable.
6. The holiday marks no significance in history or the work of a great human being.

Come to think about it, I cant think of any good reasons why I should support the silly Halloween habit other than it gives my children something to do.

There are many things we do in life that are like that, participate just becuase we have always done it or that is what the masses do.

Thinking about not participating in Holloween this year to see if it changes my life.

Maybe our marketing is that way, we do things because it’s what we have always done or it’s what we are expected to do. The herbal company that sells their product in cottage retail vitamin shop. The software company that attends trade shows. The newspaper that drops there content in your driveway. The liquor store that advetizes in the newspaper that is dropped on your driveway.

Innovation is rarely found in the stream of the masses.

Take a step back and look at your present marketing and sales tactics and ask “what happens if we don’t do it this year?”

I think I am going to go to the gym this year while everyone is out drinking or parading around in uncomfortable costumes. I am sure there wont be a crowd at the gym and that just might be a good thing.

Over the past few months our firm has created new client relationships with many organic, nutricutical and natural food and supplement companies. It’s always exciting to start new relationships.

My business plan did not call for us to focus in the “healthy living space” but here we are working with some of the top players in this vertical market.Fun stuff.

I come out of the computer software and hardware industry and the one thing that industry does well is sell solutions.  I can site example after example where we created software and hardware combinations to complete a solution.

Back in the day, (people always use that term…) I was involved in vertical marketing proof of delivery systems  in the early 1990’s. While the systems  were indeed document imaging and document management systems, we were not successful until we spun a story around the solution and not the product. We solved a problem and did not sell a software. I solved the problem of a trucking or shipping company getting paid faster because we could prove the load had been delivered and signed off in the same day. It was nearly revolutionary at the time.

Fast forward to today and I find myself in the middle of a market where very few companies sell solutuons, but rather they sell products.

Stop it.

Consumers want an outcome, not a product. Nobody cares about the product it’s self, they care about the outcome.

Dont sell me a meal replacement shake… solve my problem; help me loose weight!

Dont sell me organic cocoa nut sweetened with cocoa nut sugar, sell me the satisfaction and delight of a hot cup of cocoa on a cold winter day that is delicious and warms me up from being out in the cold sledding or shoveling snow.

Dont sell me a organic antacid, teach me how to buy an antacid that gets rid of my discomfort and wont make toxic.

Stop pushing ingredirents and teach me why it makes me feel better, look better, have more enery, helps me have better sex, or some other solution to the problems I face in my day to day life.

Get over your ingreidents, forget about the 30% off, free shipping, and great packaging, teach me how to solve a problem and I am yours.

Want to get attention, pay attention to the needs of the buyer.

Until next time, stay connected!

I would like to welcome to our family of clients, Cheryl Opperman Photography.

If you are not familiar with Cheryl’s work, you really ought to check out her website, her photos are stunning. The pictures are so well done that some of them almost look fake. ( Cheryl, I don’t mean any thing but a compliment..)

Our firm is helping Cheryl bring to the market her stunning work as we plan on getting her prints, screen savers and down loadable wallpaper for your digital device spread world wide.

Thanks to John Hay for the referral.

I am excited to see what kind of pictures Cheryl brings back from her next trip to Africa in a couple weeks.