Something interesting: how marketing works

Firstly, I am not in marketing. I am a freelance writer and so I do write stuff that could be seen as marketing but I am no marketer. Sounds like Deadpool saying he’s no hero. Well in this case, I am no villain!

If you have ever wondered why you get so many calls about being in an accident or a loan you never took out then keep reading, the answer is actually very simple. This was explained to me when I went on a day long interview to be a marketer, I lasted that day and then ran the fuck away.

Marketing at its core is very basic. The principle is for a company to sell someone something but how do they know who to sell it to or who is interested in buying it? The quickest and dirtiest way of doing it is getting in the field and trying to sell it. This way the marketing people make their money quickly, the company gets the people they want and everyone is happy, apart from the people who are bombarded with cold calls.

Here’s how it works.

Let’s say a lawn mowing company comes to me for help getting customers. They say they normally charge £25 per lawn and I’ll get £10 for each customer I bag them.

If I knocked on 10 of my neighbours doors (cold call them) and said that I will mow their lawn for £25, one might say yes. So I have made £10, hardly a living but ok. But, if I hire 10 people to knock on 10 peoples doors a day for 5 days a week, that’s £500, say they make a fiver each time (working on commission only) and I make a fiver each time. I have just made £50.

Then I put an advert in the paper saying “want to make a lot of money easily, give me a call) I hire 100 people. They knock on 10 doors a day for a week, that’s 50 doors per person a week, 5,000 doors in total. That’s £500, half of that is mine, £250. I have made £250 in a week for putting an ad in a newspaper.

However, there is an easier way. Set up a call centre with 100 people on the phones, calling from 9 till 5 each day. Each person have to average 100 calls a day to keep their job, each sale of a mowed lawn gives them a commission. That’s 10,000 calls a day, 5 days a week that’s 50,000 calls a week. let’s stick with 10% of people will say yes, that’s £5,000 a week.

Then, I promote my best sellers and give them their own offices and their own staff, I take a percentage of what they make but they make serious dough. They tell their staff that they can make serious dough too, those staff work hard because they want dough, all marketers want dough. They end up with their own offices. Soon you have an entire network of marketers selling lawn mowing services and a bunch of other stuff. Cold calling everyone, they designed scripts for the sales so a monkey can do the job and they are off running.

The maths is most likely wrong in this as I am not good at maths but that’s a very basic look at how marketing works. It’s a very simple idea that works very well, if it didn’t, we would never of heard of marketing. As usual, you know the rules, if you found something out you didn’t know or just found this article interesting, share it with your friends. See you tomorrow for another villainous tale!

Something interesting about shadows

This is going to be a quick one, it’s Friday and I want to get drunk, don’t you judge me! I want to discuss shadows and a thought I just had. Shadows are a by product of light. If you direct a light at an object, let’s say a can of beer, a shadow will form on the other side of the beer. This happens because the object itself is blocking the light from getting passed.

I was thinking about whether it would be possible to create a shadow without a light, of course it wouldn’t be possible but it would be cool to have a torch that instead of producing light, produced a shadow. You may already think that I am on the beer but I am not, this is my brain clean and sober!

Thanks for reading, if you found this article interesting, then you know the rules, share it with your friends. If you didn’t, follow along anyway and wait for something you do find interesting!

Something interesting about selfies

I am quite partial to taking a few photos here and there, not of myself as I look like a bags of wet cats with acne and an attitude but of other things. Now most photographers, beginners and pros, will tell you that you spend more time in front of the computer than you do behind your camera. This time is spent editing the colours, cropping and playing around with your photos to make them just right to show to the world, the world that doesn’t care.

As I was sitting in front of my computer the other day, I stumbled across the clarity tool! A really cool tool that allows you to make stuff look really old and horrible, if you push it towards the right. However, if you push it towards the left, something terrible happens. Your photo begins to look more and more like all of the selfies on Facebook that people take when they are bored.

See for yourself, you can get editing apps on your phone that can do it, you know the ones, they are the ones that the girls on your Facebook page use.

What the fuck this means

This means, simply, everyone knows that the selfie you just took spontaneously, wasn’t a spontaneous as you say it was. It was edited to within an inch of its life because you don’t want to people to see the real you yet you do want the world to give you some attention.

I get that showing the world the real you is tough, the world is a scary place, the internet being the most scary place in the world. However, please understand that everyone knows what you are doing and everyone is talking about it, whether they comment saying how beautiful you are or not, we are all talking about it and we all know your little secret.

Just the tip (a tip and a penis joke)

If you are taking a photo with an unshaven guy in it and you try and use this app, your cover will be blown. An airbrushed looking beard is a bit of a give away.

The outcome

Using these sorts of apps is a sign that you need attention every moment of the day, even the moments when you don’t feel you look your best. I respect that a lot of us get bored throughout the day, why do you think I am writing this and avoiding doing real work? But understand that everyone is being nice, we know what you’re doing and know why you’re doing it. If you are cool with that then I guess we have to be as well, but it won’t stop smart arses like me writing blogs about you and hiding behind their words on the internet!

Thanks for reading this, if you found this interesting or funny then, you know the rules, share it with your friends. If you didn’t then follow the blog and wait for something your find interesting to come up and share that.