Simply

[Stuart Burnfield]

In the autobiography of Fred Pohl (SF writer), he talks about his stint 
working in mail-out advertising after WWII. Someone had the idea to 
print ads using scented ink. They sprayed some of the postcards with a 
cheap but pleasant perfume and found that this test batch had about 
double the usual response rate. Of course they couldn't spray a full run 
by hand, so they sent gallon bottles of the perfume to the printer to 
mix with the ink. When it came back the ink and scent had undergone some 
sort of unhappy chemical reaction and the result smelled very strange 
and not at all pleasant ("a little like rotting hibiscus").

Rather than waste the batch they sent the cards out. They didn't achieve 
the double response rate but they still outsold the original, unscented 
cards.

So that's an example of a screwy marketing ploy that worked. For those 
of us who work on software projects, it's probably also a lesson in the 
difference between testing a prototype and testing the real thing once 
it's been through the full production process.

Stuart

Gene Kim-Eng wrote:
> As someone who started out working as an engineer and then moved
> over into this field and who has always been more or less "technical,"
> the two things that have always mystified me about marketing are
> (1) how anybody could think that some of the screwy things marketing
> people always want to say and do could possibly work to attract 
> customers, and (2) that so many of them seem to work.
> 
> Gene Kim-Eng
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stuart Burnfield" <slb at westnet.com.au>
> 
>> What I doubt has ever happened in the history of the world is that 
>> someone was persuaded to buy a product because the first page of the 
>> manual congratulated them on their purchase, or lauded the product as 
>> being simple, powerful, advanced, popular, user friendly, industry 
>> leading, blah blah zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...