Today I was looking for a parking lot and was very happy to find one that displayed a large sign offering one hour free parking with every carwash.
My car certainly needed washing, so I took up the offer and parked my car there. Three hours later I came to get the car and was prepared to pay for two hours parking. To my surprise, the cashier at the booth told me to pay for one hour only.
I couldn’t hide my surprise, and so the cashier explained why.
“A few weeks ago we decided to change the offer from one hour to two hours free parking. We started this new offer before we received the new sign. When we saw how surprised and grateful people were on learning that they actually get two hours free instead of one, we figured that it would be best to leave the sign as it is.”
“You see,” he explained, people are so excited about getting two hours free instead of one that they tell all their friends about us, and so we decided to leave the sign offering one hour free parking.”
Well… they’re absolutely right. On leaving the parking lot, I called three friends to tell them about the parking lot, and now I’m passing on the news to many more people worldwide!
The marketing moral is simple (and well known): If you want people to talk about your product, give them a reason to do so - equip them with a good story.
This story is a great demonstration of SIT’s Qualitative Change principle. The usual thought is that the more attractive the offer we advertise, the more customers we’ll get. Here the opposite is true (at least to some extent).
Of course we have the Closed World principle here too. Instead of spending money on advertising, we let our customers do the job.
If you know of similar stories, please share them with us.
See you in my next posting,
Roni
Visit Roni at the start2think website
Photo copyrights: ©iStockphoto.com/eyeidea
Beautiful. Another angle of this story is a reminder of the “Weber-Phechner law” a psychophysical law that claims we perceive an offer only when it is well distinguished from the basic one. When we would like someone to notice a difference in quantity or size, we should make sure that the delta change (added or removed quantity) is at least 20% (Rule of thumb. It varies between perceived sight, weight, sound etc.) of the basis quantity. In your story Roni, these smart people made a 100% change in relation to what was expected (2hr instead of 1hr) that of course lead to a real surprise!
A similar effect is experienced every year by my beloved wife Nitsa. Every 1st of February (her birthday) Nitsa is waiting for a surprise party … and the surprise is really big because I never do it.
dov
Another story, I guess from Guerrilla Marketing book, is when a company pays toll fares for a couple thousand cars in peak hour.
Who would forget that? That action is also a buzz generator.
Fabian,
I love your story. I can see the great “happy hour” camapign. every day the rush hour will be spomsored by a brand that enables everybody to hurry home and save time on stopping and paying the toll. Which brands this type of promotion will be most relevant to? from the world of cars? maybe entertainemnet or food (something that waits for you at home), maybe a safety campaign (we save you time so you can drive calmly and not rush home)… what else?
The real story was about a real estate broker.
Quoting from your post : “The usual thought is that the more attractive the offer we advertise, the more customers we’ll get”
Though the more attractive the offer, more crowd you ar able to pull. But if the offer is not worth you will lose on them more quickly than you would have enticed them.
The popukarity of a product in the market is determined by the number of customers. And number of customers is determined by how much they talk about the product/offer and spread the good word across. This is a fact.
Reason why this has come as ‘Viral Surprise’ is that we never had that insight, we never had that vision earlier.