Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

The Fear of Missing Out
I got caught.

I got caught up in all the hype these last few weeks about an event that was portrayed as a can't-miss moment in television history.

Yes, that's right. I got caught up in the hype for the departure of Grissom from CSI.

And the reason I did was because of an important element in human psychology -- an element that every marketer should understand backwards and forwards if you want to market effectively. I'll explain what that is in a moment.

First a little background. Grissom is the main character in the TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. My wife and I used to be big fans of all the CSI shows. We never missed.

But, over the years, our interest in them waned. We rarely watch any of them anymore.

Over the past few weeks, though, promos for the show have hammered at the fact that January 15 would be Grissom's last episode. The actor who played him, William Petersen, had decided to move behind the camera full time. So they were writing the character out of the show.

But first, they were going to get maximum viewership out of his departure.

The inundated the airwaves with commercials about what a significant episode this would be. News anchors (on CBS affiliates, of course) stressed the historic nature of this upcoming episode.

I got caught up in the hype. Although we hadn't watched the show in years, something about his departure seemed like something we couldn't afford to miss.

Which brings us around to the human psychology that made use feel the need to watch.

We're all wired for self-protection. We're also wired to grow and explore. Both of those things lead us to be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary.

At worst, something out of the ordinary could be dangerous. Our self-protection instinct kicks in.

More often than not, though, those out-of-the-ordinary occurrences are opportunities for growth. They are the gateway to discovering new things that can help us grow our knowledge and better our situations.

We therefore respond to the unexpected by turning our attention to it, either for self-protection (if necessary) or for possible growth.

What the advertisers did with CSI, was to tap into that instinct for focusing our attention on the unusual. When a character so deeply entwined with a TV show leaves, it is highly unusual.

So the advertisers played up this moment as a historic moment in TV history, a moment you dare not miss. A moment that all your friends would be talking about for weeks to come, leaving you feeling left out of the inner circle of pop culture awareness.

It was an effective campaign. It snared my wife and me.

So what can we learn from this for your marketing?

Look for ways to position yourself and your product as something out-of-the-ordinary. You, too, can tap into people's instinct to pay attention to the unusual. Look for ways to position your product as something that they can't afford to pass up knowing about. Look for ways to position it as something critical for their well-being.

Connecting your product to out-of-the-ordinary events can win it attention. That's just part of the way we're wired.
Jeff

Labels: marketing

Hot Offers for January 16, 2009

A fellow Internet marketer has a birthday today and guess who gets the presents? You! Dave Lovelace has developed a lot of great tools for:

• List building
• Traffic generating
• Creating infoproducts
• ... and more
  

And to celebrate his birthday today, he is offering a bunch of them at 80% off.

Check my Hot Offers page to find out more about this -- and other -- special deals I've found.

Or go directly to Dave's birthday page to find out what all he's offering.

I hope this helps!
Jeff

Labels: hot offers

Frustration
Here's a favorite quote from Sydney Harris:

"Frustration is commonly the difference between what you would like to to be and what you are willing to sacrifice to become what you would like to be."

May you get much progress out of the cost of your frustration today!
Jeff

Labels: inspirational quotes