Fewtureweb

I noticed a 50% sale at a leather store and walked in with a firm “not buying, only trying” agenda. Browsed over to the men’s section and pulled a jacket off the rack. I was about to try it on when a voice said “sir you can try it on over there.” It’s a smiling lady pointing to a wall with a lot of mirrors.

I walk over to mirrorland (there are six of them) and she comes by. I’m expecting her to ask if I need help and ready to deploy the “oh I’m good” line.

Except she does not ask. She grabs the two jackets and starts helping me. And I’m thinking in my head “lady you are wasting your time.” But I also kind of like it.

As I put the first jacket on, it does not fit. Second one does not fit either. I notice she had disappeared. I’m back to a non-defensive posture and start browsing again, thinking I’ll be out of there without buying.

The lady comes back and I ask her “do you have something in a smaller size?” pretty sure that she would not. She finds one in my size. Gah! Now I have to try it on.

I walk back to mirrorland and this time the jacket fits perfectly. She chimes in that it looks great. It puts a smile on my face. I like the jacket except for all the fur around the collar. I tell her that. She walks away and comes back with one without all the fur. This is not going according to plan.

She leaves me alone again. I try out the latest jacket and it looks great! I stood there for the next 10 minutes trying to figure out how NOT to buy the jacket, interspersed with fantasies of all the awesome magic it would bring to my life.

By now the hard as ice “not buying, only trying” agenda is starting to melt. But I pretend its not. Lady comes back. I ask her how much it is with tax, thinking this is my way out. She says she’ll take care of me and gives me an additional discount. SOLD! Lady just shattered my agenda.

All the mental focus and all the strategizing could not compete with this lady and the awesome jacket. I left the store feeling great. What a jacket! What a deal! Damn, she was good!

The "not buying only trying" jacket

Here is a gem – a video of Steve Jobs explaining what the Apple brand is about (see below). The timing is key. It’s from 1997, when Jobs returned back to Apple as CEO. It’s also when the “Think Different” campaign was released by Apple.

The “Think Different” campaign was born during a time when Apple was at the brink of bankruptcy. Steve Jobs was making severe cuts just to ensure Apple’s survival. In the midst of such gloom, he desperately wanted to remind people of Apple’s past greatness and what it could become again.

Apple brought in Chiat\Day, the same firm that created the 1984 commercial for Apple. The Chiat\Day team’s analysis pointed that Apple was a company that did not follow the rules, that went its own way, that thought differently. And from that the “Think Different” concept was born.

Once they had the concept, it was a matter of developing the creative. The creative had to connect with the audience AND remain true to the Apple spirit. And they did. The ad became yet another massive success for Apple.

Back in 1970 or maybe even earlier, an old bank named Crocker Bank had a lot of old customers who were slowly dying away. Crocker Bank had a problem, they were not getting any younger customers to replace the older ones.

So they went and hired Hal Riney, a San Francisco adman.

The commercials that Riney created were based on the tagline: “You’ve got a long way to go. And we’d like to help you get there.”

The commercials were a big hit. The bank ended up getting throngs of young customers.

Why did this commercial work so well? As Riney himself tells it: ”All we were doing was reflecting on people’s lives and doing it in a way that touched their audience.”

I heard Pearl Jam song “Just Breathe” during the credit rolls of the excellent documentary about the real horse whisperer – Buck Brennaman.

Reading the lyrics it seems the song is about losing a loved one, which it is. But I prefer the way Vedder describes it.

It is “as close to a love song as we’ve ever gotten.” He added to the Toronto Globe and Mail: “There’s never a dull moment on the road – every day it’s something. Maybe that’s why my goal is the dull moment. That’s what this song is: It’s saying, ‘Just stop, and be together. Don’t talk now, just breathe and feel each other’s presence – now that the kids are in bed.’”

I found out about a site called Storify that makes it easy to create stories by allowing you to drag and drop links, images and other content from various websites. It really is quite simple. Below is the story I created in 10 minutes.