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.
