Hot Button: Pain
I have long shared in my marketing consultation and brand seminar that 70% of people would response and take action faster to reduce pain than to increase pleasure, here is another interesting real life example,
Swedish creativity lecturer Fredrik Härén mentions an interesting case in his The Idea Book:
One of the cafés in an international European airport was often full. The problem was that people sat nursing their coffees for a long time as they waited for their planes to depart. The café asked itself: How can we encourage our customers to vacate the tables more quickly?
Their first ideas were probably along the lines of uncomfortable chairs, a seat charge, clear the tables immediately and so forth. However, the idea they finally decided upon was this: to turn off the flight monitors in the café! This made people worry about missing their flights, which led to them looking for monitors that worked, thus leaving empty tables. When the café had enough empty tables, the flight monitors suddenly started working again to attract new customers.
Your comment?
P/S: Need ideas that sell? Drop me an email at ken@justmedia.com.sg
Tags: Marketing Idea, Brand
Richelle Lim Shuling said,
June 28, 2007 @ 12:21 am
An amazingly simple solution to a common problem.
Thanks for sharing this tip, Ken!
I’m getting lots of value from ur blog.
P/S. just clicked on ur adsense to express my gratitude.
Cheng said,
July 6, 2007 @ 9:26 pm
This mean idea works for the purposes to get customers off their chair when biz is too good. It works in an airport lounge where most of the customers may not be returning customers.
But if you want regular customers, this may not be too good an idea.
Better to get customers to order more by getting the waiter/waitress to ask them if they want more foods/drinks. Of coures use EQ and be polite. After a while if the customers really have no more needs, they probably get the clue and go away. I think Chinese cafe/restaurant uses this technique.
This gives good services when tcustomers wanted it and on the other hand reminded customers that they are depriving the biz of space when the customers really have nothing to order.
Lee said,
July 6, 2007 @ 9:29 pm
This idea is extremely unfriendly to customers. It is not a great way to create good impressions at any airport. Imagine the inconvenience caused to existing customers. Any airport with a forward-thinking management will never use this short-term sales tactic.
Andi Ong said,
August 15, 2007 @ 8:36 pm
Thanks For sharing ! I always wanted to find a book that talk about creative business .. finally the law of attraction has bring me to your blog! I found Swedish creativity lecturer Fredrik Härén … Thanks Ken.