Marketeering

Marketeering
©2006
by:
John McCullough

It was a night just like this. I was standing at the counter of Boundaries Bookstore. Before I could plop my book down on the counter, the clerk asked me if I had a Boundaries Incentive Card. I said no. The next question was; did I want one? I said no.
I said thank you for your marketing information, and while we are on the subject; do you know what I would really like? The clerk said no.
I would like to give you my marketing spiel. Turnabout is fair play.
Good products
Good prices
Good location
Convenient hours
Honor your employees

Most important, pass this information on to you immediate supervisor, and make sure he does the same.
With these five principals we could change the way America does business.
Marketing and/or Marketeering as I prefer to call it, is a scam.
Convincing people to want things that they don’t need and inflating the price to “Whatever the Market Will Allow” for as long as the market will allow, is a false economy.
I really never had a problem with wanting. My Dear Santa list is a novel followed up by the sequel entitled “Things I Can’t Afford”, a verbatim duplicate of the Dear Santa novel.
I come from the era when the “Wish Book” came out once a year. They had a seasonal supplement but it was filled with useless things like lawn mowers and patio furniture.
Ah, but the “Wish Book” came out shortly before Christmas and despite the two or three hundred pages of pesky clothes, the kind that made your neck itch on the first really hot day of school because of a combination of heavy starch and the wire brush your mom used on your neck trying to remove three months worth of summer neck dirt. But, I digress.
Women’s intimate apparel did not qualify as pesky clothes.

Ah, but the “Wish Book”. The back half contained the heart’s desires of every kid in America. Bicycles, chemistry sets with potential flammable, explosive, irritant, and toxic capabilities.

The wood burning kit. What genius came up with that one? Like every kid in America wanted to become a sign maker in the fake Indian lodge industry.

Lake Winnipesauke This Way →

Here’s a good idea. Let’s stick Jr. in the garage, with a red hot poker and a piece of soft wood and see if we can get a personalized plaque for our front door before he:
A. Burns the house down, including the front door.
B. Burns himself, requiring years of plastic surgery and psychiatric therapy.

I remember the first time the “Wish Book” was placed in my lap and I was told to pick out three things that I could wish for, for Christmas. The family tradition was that I was supposed to circle them and brand them with my moniker; I was way too little to have learned how to write at the time, and way too little to have lifted that heavy catalogue out of my lap. If there had been an emergency I would have been trapped.