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A speaker demonstrates how to sell a basic Bic pen at premium prices using personalization, trend-jacking, co-branding, and scarcity tactics, then compares these tricks to how investment managers inflate fees on small amounts of capital.
A speaker demonstrates how to sell a basic Bic pen at premium prices using personalization, trend-jacking, co-branding, and scarcity tactics, then compares these tricks to how investment managers inflate fees on small amounts of capital.
Sell me this pen. Ah, that old chestnut. So if I were to tell you to sell me a Bic off-the-shelf pen that's normally, I don't know, maybe a dollar maximum, and I wanted you to sell that to me for $100, how would you do it? Well, the old adage and the other things you've seen, probably, you know, we'll talk about the features and the benefits. Look, it's got a clip. You can attach it to your shirt or your pocket. Or, you know, look at all the ink, it lasts forever. Or the uses, you can write a story about it and sell the story. And then, you know, some people that are deep in the design game will talk about other tertiary uses like the fidget factor, the fiddle factor. So that's like the fidget spinner, right? Where you can just click the end of the pen. Great for you, not so great for other people in the library. So then if we've gone through all that, none of those work, what's the best way to sell that pen? Well, a couple other ways. One is trend jacking, personalization. So you could put people's name on it. You could follow the trend like who's playing in the latest sports event, what's happening in our world, and brand it that way. You could do a partnership with another company Co-brand it, go to market that way. But perhaps the best way to sell you a couple hundred dollar pen that's really only worth a nickel is to hand you a check for $10,000 and say you can only get it unless you sign your name on the back of it. And wouldn't you know it, you're like out walking around, so there's no pen in sight. And I'm the only one with the pen. So you would definitely be willing to pay me $200 for that pen in order to get that check for 10 grand. So that is the investment management industry, right? Give them $10,000, they'll turn it into $200 or whatever the case may be, an extra $200. So yeah, that's how to sell a pen on this really sunny Wednesday morning.
