Not in YOUR mind or even your customers’ minds, but in the minds of that 85% who haven’t shopped consignment or resale? What do your potential clients think of your business…and is that impression, that perception, all you wish it could be? Here’s a great example of how to influence the perception of your shop by those who haven’t been in…or been in recently:
Young & Laramore, an Indianapolis agency, helped devise the campaign to position Goodwill stores less as charity and more as discount retail. This meant changing the perception of potential shoppers who might think of Goodwill as a place where poor people bought castoffs, not as a competitor to Wal-Mart. Since then, Young & Laramore helped create two dozen TV spots, mostly lighthearted and upbeat and often featuring an amiable young guy in a Goodwill uniform. The Goodwill Guy picks through donations bearing brand names like Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan or tells the “scary story” of the woman who missed out on the perfect bolero jacket because she didn’t buy it on the spot. In some of the ads, the Goodwill Guy presents more traditional charitable messages about how your donations help those less fortunate, but always with a light tone. Perhaps the most cunning of the ads combines these ideas, making a case that shopping (at a Goodwill store, anyway) is in and of itself an act of charity.
(NYTimes article 10-31-08)
Message in this: position yourself.
Even if you cannot afford a series of TV ads like those used in the example above, you can develop and foster the “message” you get out to the public in all the ways you use.
Parallel ideas:
- Trunk show for you?
- Are you hunkering or soaring?
- Keeping them regular
- Of-newsltrs I receive, didn’t see a single shop take this idea and run with it.
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 