Know Your Audience

The other day, I mentioned I was going to a convention to sell shirts.  The convention was PhenomeCon, a day-long event that featured the usual convention fare, speakers, vendors, etc.  My company, Progressive Design Apparel, printed the convention’s shirts and setup as a vendor at the event.  Ben, from our art department, created a great design for us to sell on shirts at PhenomeCon.  We printed 72 shirts on smoke, aloe, independence red, city green, and lake Anvil T’s.

Ben’s design incorporated various imagery from the paranormal world, angels, skulls, and ghosts.  It also had a Ghostbusters quote for a little humor–”Back off man, I’m a scientist.”  Instead of normal plastisol, we used discharge and water-based black.  For those that don’t know, plastisol is the type of ink most shirts are printed with.  It’s a plasitc-based ink and can be a little heavy.  Discharge is a chemical reaction that takes the die out of the fabric.  The reason you’d do this is twofold, 1) because it adds zero weight to the shirt, and 2) it allows you to add lighter, water-based ink without the dark shirt color bleeding through.  The combination of discharge and water-based black gives the shirts a light feel and an extremely soft hand.

Everyone loved Ben’s design, so I boxed up the shirts and headed south to Columbus, Indiana’s Crump Theater, location of PhenomeCon.  We knew our audience.  Or so we thought.  Turns out we got lots of compliments on the shirts there as well.  But we didn’t sell very many.  Why?

It wasn’t the price; no one tried to haggle.  It wasn’t the design; lots of people told us it was cool.  It turns out that there was a unique physical characteristic that the majority of the audience shared.  And this hampered our sales.  In fact, it entirely hamstringed our success.

Lesson learned?

Know your audience.

Don’t just know what your audience likes.  Know who they are.  Know why they like what they like.  Know why they don’t like what they dislike.  Knowing who your audience is and not just the perfect item to sell them will make sure you don’t end up like me, with a box of product and a convention of interest.

The Snow Day That Almost Was

In general the tone I try to take on Marketer Synergy is casual, but I also try to stay on the path of professional. So with the casual theme in mind, let me tell you about The Snow Day That Almost Was.

Indianapolis was supposed to get hit with roughly 8-10 inches of snow this morning. It was going to continue through rush hour, so a lot of people thought today’s commute was going to be miserable and a lot of kids expected to not have school today. In fact, I was hoping to have a day off too. I live and work on opposite sides of the north end of Indianapolis and in order to get to work I have to drive across town. In normal rush hour, it’s not a fun experience, but in icy, slick, snowy conditions it’s even dangerous. Now I’m from Florida, didn’t see a snow flake until a few days before my 21st birthday, and therefore have no idea of how to drive in the snow. I’ve slid across the street a few times in those low priority areas where a plow and salt don’t go (like neighborhood roads). So you can imagine I’d rather just work remotely today (I can log in to my work PC from home).

Well, little Marketer Synergy rex decided today was the day when she wanted me to get up at 4:45 a.m. and take her out (my wife’s out of town on business, so no dice on that option). So I try to get her to go back to sleep for at least a half hour without luck. When I do get downstairs and let her out, I find about an inch or two of snow on top of a layer of ice. I knew two things 1) we weren’t getting a snow day and 2) driving across town over a layer of ice was going to be horrible. Thankfully one 1 of those two was accurate. The temperature on my drive was actually about 34, so instead of ice, it was mostly slush and water. So here I am, at work, and safe. The morning got started off nicely, someone brought in Krispy Kreme and we had an Anvil rep come in and discuss his line and changes to the ’08 catalog. Hopefully the drive home is just as safe. If so, I’ll be back on Monday!