Sellevision

http://www.flickr.com/photos/escapist/2103441969/

A big thanks to our guest blogger Kitty, for this great post :)

I never thought that I would spend my days thinking about how to sell things. I’m not what you would call the ‘sales-focused’ type; I was more about creating things and making pretty films, but all of a sudden, here I am in the throes of consumerism. How can I make this shampoo sell better? Should I throw in a styling product as an add-on purchase? And will it help if I throw together a fishtank demonstration of nanotechnology? Oh, and by the way, we can’t use the word ‘nanotechnology’ because it has negative connotations in terms of health, so we’d be better off using the term ‘microtechnology’.

One week we can sell a shampoo and conditioner set, and extol the virtues of a sulfate-free ingredients list. We tell the customer that they MUST buy this particular shampoo because anything that contains sulfates is B.A.D. The next week we’re flogging a different shampoo that has two different sulfates in it, but now we’re calling it a ‘natural botanicals based’ product (let’s just glaze over the sulfates things, guys!) and talking about how you couldn’t possibly consider using any other shampoo.

The television marketing business is a fickle lover. I love her because it’s exciting to watch sales; to plan and program; to figure out the best way to get people to buy this stuff. At the same time, my inner film-nerd just wonders – is it wrong?

Our average customer is a middle-aged woman with grown up, coop-flying children and a husband who makes a LOT of money. So dedicated are they to their viewing that they will record a show if they’re going to be out, and watch it as soon as they’re back in the house. Some of them play our shows all day, from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep. One woman I met watches during the day but has to switch off the television before her husband gets home so that he doesn’t clue in to the fact that she’s been exercising the credit card in a major way since he left for work. She also told me that as soon as he falls asleep at 11pm, she sneaks upstairs to the study to jump on the web so she doesn’t miss out on any great deals. A colleague of mine tells a story about a customer whose house he visited to film a testimonial. When she ushered him in, he gasped out loud (before clamping his hand firmly over his mouth), for before him was a virtual display room of our products. She had twin massage chairs beside her fake fireplace, sitting on top of a hideous rug (a one-off show that everyone agreed was a mistake). She owned every single piece of jewellery that the company had sold in the last five years. She had a jewellery room. A ROOM! Sapphires, diamonds, emeralds, pearls, 14kt Italian gold and hand-crafted French silver. A bathroom full of cosmetics she had never used and about fifty handbags, carefully stacked up in rows and columns in her walk-in wardrobe. Upon returning to work, my colleague checked on her account to see just how much this woman had spent. Now, without even considering inflation, the sum is one that sends shivers down my spine. In the three months leading up to his visit, the customer had spent $258,000.

When we meet our customers, they tell us that they love our shows. They feel like the presenters are their friends and family, and that we are selling just to them. It makes them feel special, and they buy all these glamorous things because we tell them to. But if a woman has time to sit down and buy twenty handbags in a month, three different brands of cosmetics, a new wardrobe and fifteen rings, then I’d like to know how she finds the time to use them all. And how does her husband feel about it?!

Even so, every Monday I pop off to work and start looking at the next identical product, and try to figure out a new angle. Sulfates, no sulfates, natural botanicals, colour-lock technology, nettle to stimulate hair follicle growth, it’s made by so-and-so, celebrities love it, it’s used by so-and-so. And so on, and so forth, and I still don’t know quite how I feel about it. So I’m just going to go onto the website and buy something with my staff discount to make myself feel better.

The Open Book (unfinished)

Mad Rain

This is a little poem I wrote yesterday, just before it started raining.

Pokers stand up straight and fiery,

Exercising vain power against the wind

Heat rises up from an unseen source,

Joining with the wind to buffett and call up the rain

Every impending drop a word,

heavy with meaning like an unformed prayer

Every tongue vibrates with anticipation,

straining to translate the relevance of

almighty nature expressing itself in a common way.

Felt by everyone,

enlarged pupils look up at a partial sky

still scraped through with blue,

the remains of a fine but significant day.

But it cannot be grappled with.

The sky falling on warm hands and faces, incomprehensible.

Pilgrim

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hmorandell/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I've started writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing in the mornings, as recommended by Julia Cameron in her book 'The Sound of Paper'. This book is a series of essay, with tasks, designed to help you get in touch with your creative self. This morning, my writing was strangely different from the usual anxiety and drivel. Here is an edited version.

I ask for genius to run through me like wildfire, as if I were a field of grass left for too long in the dry heat. I want to be in the exotic places of the Australian desert, I want to be in Coober Pedy. I want to be entirely alone, a stranger in an unknown land. I want to go by my own two feet, walking a dusty pilgrimage, marking a route that is mapped out inside me. Following some path that was determined before I was born. To discover things left there for me, by the last cosmic traveller. Walking on the land, but in a parallel dimension. There, but not there. In the world, but not of it. There, but for the grace of god, go I. And I will see my shadow pass before me and lead the way. Strung out in the afternoon sun to a stick figure of immensely skewed proportions.

I never would have dreamed. But keeping my eyes on my feet, I don't question but simply follow. Walking under the hot but cooling sun. Soon it will be cold. So cold I will wonder if the day will come, with its sticky closeness. The night opens up a space akin to agoraphobia. A stark contrast to the day, when you feel you can't get away from your own skin, clung down with humidity. The motion when you walk, is of skin sliding on skin, lubricated by salt water sweat. Sweat turns into air from your back.

You walk the pilgrim's road asking for favours. You're looking for signs from on high. You look into the faces of strangers, searching for a friend to tell you the way. But not one spark of recognition in their eyes. They don't see you, and you start to wonder if you are already a ghost. If you're caught in a time warp on an invisible plane of existence. One way glass, you can see out but they can't see in. You feel strangely liberated, free from their observance. Free to look how you feel and do as you please.

You sag under the heavy, dwindling sun, keeping up a steady rhythm. An insistent forward motion. Plowing through the air thick with your evaporating breath and the flies that cluster around the intake and exhalation of your mouth. Each time you suck in, they are in danger of being drawn into the vacuum. Soul food. Soul flies. To feed the hungry traveller.

You need somewhere to rest your weary head. In the safe and comforting caverns underground, where men have carved a home for themselves. An inversion of the outside world. Contained, like a lunchbox, and dark. A culture for groups to multiply, provide each other company through the night.