I assume you know this story:
There once was a shepherd boy who was bored as he sat on the hillside watching the village sheep. To amuse himself he took a great breath and sang out, “Wolf! Wolf! The Wolf is chasing the sheep!”
The villagers came running up the hill to help the boy drive the wolf away. But when they arrived at the top of the hill, they found no wolf. The boy laughed at the sight of their angry faces.
“Don’t cry ‘wolf’, shepherd boy”, said the villagers, “when there’s no wolf!” They went grumbling back down the hill.
Later, the boy sang out again, “Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is chasing the sheep!” To his naughty delight, he watched the villagers run up the hill to help him drive the wolf away.
When the villagers saw no wolf they sternly said, “Save your frightened song for when there is really something wrong! Don’t cry ‘wolf’ when there is NO wolf!”
But the boy just grinned and watched them go grumbling down the hill once more.
Later, he saw a REAL wolf prowling about his flock. Alarmed, he leaped to his feet and sang out as loudly as he could, “Wolf! Wolf!”
But the villagers thought he was trying to fool them again, and so they didn’t come.
At sunset, everyone wondered why the shepherd boy hadn’t returned to the village with their sheep. They went up the hill to find the boy. They found him weeping.
“There really was a wolf here! The flock has scattered! I cried out, ‘Wolf!’ Why didn’t you come?”
An old man tried to comfort the boy as they walked back to the village.
“We’ll help you look for the lost sheep in the morning”, he said, putting his arm around the youth, “Nobody believes a liar … even when he is telling the truth!”
**
Now consider the e-mails that pepperfry.com sends me EVERYDAY:
Everyday is the LAST day on pepperfry.com!
Everyday is the LAST opportunity to get a good deal on the site!!
If the pepperfry.com management were in the fortune-telling business, then everyday the earth would have stopped spinning, the moon would have stopped shining, the dogs would have stopped barking and the toilets would have stopped flushing – UNLESS we bought something from their site!
Jokes aside, this is my moot point:
– Why don’t serious, well educated brand owners UNDERSTAND that they cannot keep sending me the SAME SICK message everyday and expect me to believe it?
Insight – celebrate your birthday ONCE a year. If you tell everyone it’s your birthday EVERYDAY, then you will get a slap instead of a present.
Extrapolation of message – promotions and offers work best when they are once and far-between.
– USE YOUR HEAD to drive sales, rather than discounts!!!
Sure, consumers LOVE the smell of discounts and price-off’s, but is that SERIOUS BUSINESS?
Is that what you want to be building as a business model?
Do the world’s biggest businesses do this?? Is this the way great BRANDS are built?
Note – Louis Vuitton NEVER does a sale. It destroys its old bags but never sells them at a discount
– Why the hurry?
Why should everything end today?
What’s the rush?
Why the doomsday warning?
Do people buy rugs and beds and carpets and cushion covers when a gun is pointed to their heads?
Lesson – why go against common sense? Why not build a story on the great products you are selling and the benefits of the products RATHER THAN selling as it as ONLY being available in the next 23.776 minutes??
– DESPERATION STINKS
You know what I see and smell in this communication?
Desperation! (maybe the investors are really desperate!!)
Everything seems to be ‘OMG’ in the communication.
Lesson – Desperation never works. Never will.
NEVER build a business, a brand and a career in a hurry. Or in desperation.
*****