Absolutely nothing on sale here today. Honest.

November 27, 2009 By

Black Friday, Schmack Schmiday.

I don’t go in for that nonsense. Never in my life have I spent the night in a Best Buy parking lot, waiting for 12:01 so I could get into the holiday spirit by being trampled by an insane mob while trying to get my mitts on a $99 plasma TV or whatever.

And I’m not going in for the crazy 75% off Internet-only sales either, whether it’s Black Friday or whatever the hip term for the Monday after Thanksgiving is. Mob Mentality Monday, methinks.

So if you were hoping to buy something cheap, all’s I’ve got is my regular stuff, at regular price. Sorry. Oh wait, I’m not sorry at all. Heh.

I’m totally serious. Let me repeat myself: No sales here! If you’re really desperate for an insane deal, though, you could do worse than to check these folks out:

  • Naomi over at Ittybiz is actually selling Online Business School for 75% off, and it’s going off the market in a few days. If you’ve been putting off buying it, now would be a good time.
  • Johnny B. Truant is offering his Zero to Business course for half-price, plus he’s giving a $100 discount on personal coaching. And he is one smart cookie.
  • This one isn’t technically a Black Friday sale, but the early-bird deadline for Mark Silver’s 2010 Opening the Moneyflow course is December 4. And he’s doing a free teleclass on December 2 called “You’ve got one year: Go!” His teleclasses are always gold, and totally not sales-hyp-ey. Highly recommended.

That is all. Back to your regularly scheduled retail extravaganza.

Me? I’ll be curled up with a good book, and occasionally checking Twitter so I can shake my head and tsk-tsk-tsk at reports of consumer-on-consumer savagery.

Filed Under: Announcements Tagged With: , , ,

Marketing meditations on a pizza box

August 30, 2009 By

I picked up two pizzas from Papa John’s yesterday. The take-out $5.99 specials. There were a couple of random things I noticed on the box:

Coupons: A problem and a question

The coupons stuck to the top included the usual fare (two large pizzas for $18.99, family dinner special for $20.99, etc.) but on the same sheet, there was a big coupon for 25% off Amtrak fares (with a huge paragraph of limitations and exclusions).

First, don’t get me started on limitations and exclusions. If you’re going to give me a coupon, don’t make me read an encyclopedia entry on the tortured gymnastics I’m going to have to go through to redeem it. Make it simple. Coupons with wall-of-text fine print say “please recycle me.”

Second, I’d love to know the reasoning behind sticking an Amtrak coupon on a pizza box. Do Papa John’s pizza buyers somehow overlap the demographics of desired Amtrak customers? Is there something about pizza that makes pizza-eaters more likely to travel by train? Or is it a wildly flailing, desperate attempt to somehow get anyone to ride Amtrak?

I feel smart, but somehow also manipulated

There was a little receipt sticker on the top pizza box, showing that my subtotal was $27.48 (that’s what I would have paid if I’d called in the order for delivery, I suppose) and that I got a discount of $15.50 for picking up the take-out specials.

Yay me! I paid only $11.98 (plus tax!) for something some other sucker might have paid $27.48 for! Awesome!

And now I will never again call in an order in advance. Because I will never knowingly pay that extra $15.50. Does that make me a savvy consumer… or a mindless drone who’s happy to obey a corporate giant’s instructions? I’m not sure.

Thanks to Reese for my pizza experience

Also on the receipt was a line that read “Your pizza experience managed by Reese.” Really? Because Reese wasn’t invited to my house for dinner. So how much actual managing of my pizza experience could this guy really do?

Yeah, I know. What they really mean is that Reese was the guy behind the cash register when I showed up to buy my specials. But “pizza experience?” It’s kinda clever, really. Makes it seem like I didn’t just grab a takeout dinner, I had a pizza experience. And it’s all thanks to my buddy Reese.

Filed Under: Real-Life Marketing Tagged With: , , ,