OLD WOMAN BAIT - Marketing 101
Mar 27, 2025, 8:27 PM

BUSINESS schools love to teach the foundations of marketing strategy through Jerome McCarthy’s “4 Ps” framework: it suggests that a competitive business is one that can accurately tailor its “Product, Price, Place, and Promotion” offering to fit a well-defined “Ideal Customer Profile” (target market).
It’s a reasonable place to start - it helps bring attention to the understated aspects of marketing, a blanket term that is often reduced to a synonym for advertising. Like any framework however, it’s important not to follow it too rigidly. Blindly believing in its predictive value makes it easy to neglect the importance of creative innovation when building brand image, and risks underestimating customers' universal appreciation for authenticity. This is especially important in today’s world, when nearly everything around us seems to be coldly optimized and data-driven.
The most memorable trip to a bookstore I’ve had in the last few months… well, maybe years… well, maybe - anyways, the point is it’s been a while - occurred when the very last thing on my mind was a trip to any bookstore. I was walking with my girlfriend through the city, breathing in the fresh air, listening to the songbirds, and enjoying life, when we eventually passed by a little wooden table out on the sidewalk. It staged a small green basket labelled “$1 BOOKS”, filled with a batch of old pocket-sized paperbacks. As we stopped to glance at it for one (1) single second, out from the door popped a soft spoken old lady with a pleasant smile. She looked delighted by our interest in the books and literature overall (I’m a really good actor) and invited us in for more; basically, we were doomed…
We walked out of the store twenty minutes later with our pockets twenty dollars lighter. The worst part? It was actually a great experience – I came away from the store not just happy with my purchases, but also inspired by the chance to talk to her and listen to her tales of working at the store for decades, caring for the bookshelves. This suggests another interesting question about the ultimate definition of business "success", one that might celebrate more than just generating profit growth year-over-year for eternity. Maybe businesses could also be a means of sustainably supporting memorable and enriching experiences. Maybe. That’s a topic for another day.
(I’ve only cracked open the books only a few times since then. I’ll get to them eventually. Surely.)
TALES FROM MY LIFE / MAR 2025
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