A Marketing Idea That Didn’t Work
Steve recently bought a motorcycle. But he needs to get rid of the bike as soon as possible. In a classified ad, Steve wrote, he was selling it because it was purchased without proper consent of a loving wife. Apparently, he felt he could do whatever he wanted because his wife told him “Do whatever the h*** you want, ” but as he says in the ad, she she really didn’t mean it.
Steve’s classified ad for his motorcycle was one of the most popular on T.V. station Website. On August 30, the ad had gotten around 83,000 views. By September 6th, the last day the ad was on the site, the bike had reached 115,244 views. That’s a huge number for a classified ad. The site administrator and his staff noticed a surge in traffic on the Web site they traced to Steve?s ad, with the majority of it coming from Yahoo e-mail users. They think the ad has made the e-mail circuit.
Yet despite all of the hoopla, the motorcycle didn’t sell. The attention the ad was generating was most likely from Steve’s funny and concise explanation of why he’s getting rid of the bike.
In the ad the tells about the bad timing of the purchase. He and his wife had promised each other that they would get out of debt before they made any more large purchases. Eventually, his wife got fed up and told her husband the line that has been e-mailed and viewed thousands of time.
What can we learn from this funny story besides the fact that women often don’t mean what they say? We can learn a valuable marketing lesson about ads. As Steve found out, making an ad funny or weaving in a personal story is a great way to make it stand out, but it’s no guarantee that it will help it sell.
For more details on this story and other business ideas go to:
http://www.businessfastlane.com
Technorati tags: they didnt steve classified wife steve?s
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
