While we are at the diner for our weekly breakfast, my wife gets an email from a jewelry store. She’s surprised and a bit bothered.
So she tells me that such and such jewelry store wrote to tell her that Jimmy Rollins from the Phillies will make an appearance at the store this weekend.
So the conversation starts
“Why would this jeweler sponsor the Phillies? I don’t care about baseball. I signed up for the email list to hear about new designs to go and look at. Why would I go to the store to see this guy?”
“They don’t want you to go to the store and meet this guy, they want me to go to the store.”
“So why advertise with the Phillies? You don’t go to the games to think about buying jewelry. If you go to the store to get an autograph, it’s not like you will walk out with a ring.”
“it’s not about that. It’s about getting the store in my head so that if I am thinking about buying a ring, I will consider them.”
“That doesn’t explain why they want to send me an email talking about the Phillies.”
“My dear, two minutes ago, I had never heard of this store. I don’t even know where he is.”
“King of Prussia Mall, across from Nieman Marcus. He has some really great designs. I really like him.”
“Again, two minutes ago, I had never heard of him. Now I know who he is, where the store is located and that you like his stuff. Now if I am looking for a piece of jewelry for you, he is probably one of the stores that I will stop by. And if I cared about meeting Jimmy Rollins, I will go into the store where you can show me some of the things you would like. Two minutes ago I would have zoned out if you had started talking about the store. But he managed to get me talking about him because you brought up baseball, which I am interested in.”
All of a sudden that light bulb goes off. I could almost see the illumination above her head. All that effort to avoid ads. We have the DVR to skip over commercials. We have satellite radio so we don’t have ads. And she she allowed herself to become an unwitting pawn in this jewelers plot to get me to know about his store.
Somewhere my old marketing professor is saying “I told you so” about how advertising really works.
