Tattoos and Chocolates

My son is 7 years old. He loves chocolates. He also have an unhealthy liking for tattoos. Those stick-on fake ones. Sometimes he looks like he’s been slapped with a wet Sunday Times. You don’t know if you should talk to him or read him!

Although he loves chocolates, he will not be able to contain his disappointment if you buy him the biggest slab of Cadbury’s chocolate that you could lay your hands on. Oh no. If you want him happy, you need to buy him one of those Black Cat chocolates or a New Look. Why? They’ve got those crappy stick-on tattoos in the wrapper, baby! And he LOVES those!

After reading Dave’s brilliant post on Stormhoek humanizing wine, it reminded me how important it is to “put tattoos in your chocolate’s wrapper”! Doing that seemingly insignificant little thing that happens to influence minds when they are buying chocolates! Stormhoek do that with their involvement in social events. When last did you have an informal braai at Nederburg with some free-drink-as-much-as-you-can-handle wine? When last did they sponsor free wine for an event you are organizing? Probably never!

ISP’s have been doing it for AGES! Offering email addresses with a dial-up/adsl package. How insignificant? Not to the guy buying the product! For us yes. We look at things like bandwidth. For the non-technical guy, email accounts matter. Tattoos in a wrapper!

There are lots and lots of examples. Sometimes we tend to forget to do it though. It is vitally important although seemingly insignificant. Never forget that!

(PS: Could find links to Cadbury’s chocolates, but not New Look or Black Cat! This image of the peanut butter jar is the best I can do! Swak…)

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6 Comments to "Tattoos and Chocolates"

• Dave Duarte said: On 03/26/2007 at 6:31 pm

  Stii… You’re spot on mate!

  Have you checked Seth Godin’s book “Free Prize Inside”?

• Steve Hayes said: On 03/27/2007 at 5:36 am

  I stopped buying Baslck Cat peanut butter when they started making the plastic American stuff, with added sugar and carcinogens.

  Thank God for Thokoman — no sugar, no carcinogens, no tattoos, just god ol’ peanut butter that gets oil on top if you leave it standing — the real McCoy!

• Charl van Niekerk said: On 03/27/2007 at 7:36 am

  My mom was researching some of this stuff a while ago for her PhD. Apparently there’s two different things: real value and perceived value. The former doesn’t matter; the latter lays the rules for the game. Sometimes you can more easily sell something costing R2 as R5 than something costing R6 as R5. It’s a pity my mom has too many books, otherwise I would have tried to find it and give some quotes.

• Charl van Niekerk said: On 03/27/2007 at 7:38 am

  Oh yeah, and about Nederburg, they will rather spend millions on stupid TV ads instead of getting involved in the community. Anybody can place a TV ad, but it’s a lot more work and a lot more rewarding to do it The Right Way (TM) like Stormhoek. I can tell you, for the price of one simple little TV ad almost nobody will remember you can sponsor a huge amount of social gatherings!!!

• pictures » Tattoos and Chocolates said: On 04/06/2007 at 8:45 am

  [...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAfter reading Dave’s brilliant post on Stormhoek humanizing wine, it reminded me how important it is to “put tattoos in your chocolate’s wrapper”! Doing that seemingly insignificant little thing that happens to influence minds when they … [...]

• fairy tattoos said: On 05/03/2007 at 5:39 am

  You can keep kids away from tattoos but from chocolates it can be difficult!!

Spit it out!

Filed in: Marketing by: Stii