Here’s a little insight into a classic marketing technique. This happened on a recent train ride to Santa Monica. I witnessed first-hand the power of consistency in marketing by a candy and snack vendor.
The hour-long train ride was disrupted by a strikingly tall black woman in jeans and a yellow and black t-shirt. She slowly made her way up the main aisle announcing in a confident voice,
“One dollar! Snacks one dollar!”
At first, everyone ignored her. We all stared more closely at our phone screens and the pages of our books. (Yeah, there was actually one other woman apart from me reading a book made of paper.) This is a natural reaction when someone’s trying to sell us something these days –– purposeful filtering.
Vendors are fairly common on the metro system in Los Angeles. We riders pretty much know the drill. They hop on, they try to sell, they hop off before they get caught.
(It’s technically illegal to sell stuff on the train. But it’s also fascinating to watch the underlying patterns of human behavior, marketing, and economics at play when it’s done right.)
What was her differentiator? An 8-year-old kid was in tow, and he was pushing a stroller with a docile 6-month old pitbull! That caught a few eyes, including mine.
The train slowed and stopped at a platform. The woman, the boy, and the puppy left the car. They had to keep moving to stay ahead of any authorities on the train.
The crew moved toward the front. But after a few stops, they were back in our car. When she first stepped back into the car and the train lurched forward again, the vendor looked around and recognized a few of us. She embraced it.
“Is this Dejavu?! Still one dollar. One dollar for snacks!”
Heading back through our car, she announced
“It’s a short train, people. We’re gonna get to know each other before our destination.” This time she got a little more attention. People smiled. People chuckled. She was quickly becoming familiar.
This time, one man had worked up the guts to ask her,
“What kind of snacks do you have?” She was happy to present her inventory.
A lightbulb really went off for me. Maybe people on the train were hungry. Maybe they were even curious about what she had. But they didn’t have the guts to speak up because of
- Unfamiliarity (stranger danger)
- It takes some guts to raise your hand and admit that you’re lacking something. Even snacks!
These are common barriers for marketers to overcome
From there, the exemplary moments just rolled out one after another. More and more people spoke up with every pass she made through the train.
By the end of the ride, thanks to her consistency, we knew each other pretty well. She was right.
I knew that she offered Doritos, Cheetos, Skittles and a few chocolate treats. I knew that her Pitbull puppy was named Daisy, she was 6 months old and she wasn’t for sale, and that she liked to infuse her marketing messages with pithy little phrases that aid memory and just plain work in marketing, such as,
“One dollar makes ya holler!”
(You might have guessed I didn’t actually get much reading done on this trip.)
Her consistency wasn’t just the persistence in physically showing up over and over. It was also in her message, tone, and delivery. She was who she was, a strong, funny, playful mom, a puppy mom, and a saleswoman.
As marketers, we can all learn from her. She didn’t pretend to be something she wasn’t or shrink away when faced with the same people who ignored her twice before.
She was loud, proud, and true, but not pushy! There was no getting in anyone’s face or playing any kind of sympathy card. She just let us know who she was and what she was offering, loud and clear.
Read about the differences between inbound and outbound marketing here.