Ice to the Eskimos: How to Market a Product Nobody Wants by Jon Spoelstra

Author:Jon Spoelstra [Spoelstra, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061446900
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.

When I was on that private island in Japan, the phone rang in my suite early one morning. As I tried to snap awake, I thought the ringing phone was one of my Japanese hosts. Instead, it was the president of a major performing arts center in the United States. Somehow, he had tracked me down. If my friend ever left the performing arts business and got into tracking, pity the fugitive who is trying to disappear.

I mumbled a hello.

“Did I wake you?” he asked.

“No, I had to get up to answer the phone, anyway.”

My friend apologized for tracking me down and calling me so early. It was actually earlier than he had thought, but he just wanted a quick opinion. They were on the verge of hiring a VP-marketing for the performing arts center. He was down to three candidates.

“What would you look for?” he asked.

Sleep. That’s what I would look for. There was a pause on the phone as I thought of a more polite and meaningful answer.

“One person is very impressive,” my friend said. “She has prepared some really beautiful brochures and mailing pieces for another performing arts center. The best I have ever seen.”

My head was clearing a bit.

“That might not impress me,” I said. “Yes, it’s important, but what is more important, does that person know how to put those expensive brochures into the hands of the right people?”

There was a pause at his end of the line.

“I would really question deeply each candidate’s understanding on database marketing,” I said. “After all, brochures for performing arts centers are usually really expensive pieces. Your customers are usually very upscale. Sending one of those to a person that is not interested in the arts would cost about $4. Sending those brochures to 30,000 people that are not interested in the arts would cost $120,000. Find the person that knows how to market to a segment of one. So I would ask each candidate two things when they show you the brochures that they have done.”

“What are those two things?” my friend asked.

“Call me back in four hours and I’ll tell you.”

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