The big yard sale this weekend went pretty well: I made about $105, mostly on crummy DVDs, CDs, and books. My two compatriots also took in a rather nice haul in the cause of getting rid of unwanted junk.
In the process, we observed some important lessons in marketing.
First, we had a nice division of labor working for us. I thought up ideas for the signage; Erin, the graphic designer, made the signage look great; and Kimberly, our "people person" engaged customers and, when necessary, hand sold many items for a good (by yard sale standards) price. Lesson: Identifying each other's strengths and deploying them appropriately is the essence of great teamwork.
I viewed my greatest challenge as selling old books with politically conservative themes to the commie pinko treehuggers of downtown Ann Arbor. I had a lot of books of all types for sale, but I believed these would not sell without some kind of special effort. So I separated them from all the others and put them in their own box with a simple sign, "Books for Republicans." Even without Erin's artistry, the sign worked wonders: There were just four books left unsold from a box that had been packed with paeans to Ronald Reagan, policy analyses from the Heritage Foundation, and other suchlike. I strongly believe had those books been just scattered throughout the rest of my literary offerings they would not have sold. Lesson: Suggestive copy is key.
A similar example arose when on Saturday I failed to sell three of my old Hawaiian shirts (and Kimberly her "Hawaii" t-shirt). On Sunday we decided to group those shirts with thematically similar items (swimming trunks, a beach towel, and some plastic tiki cups) and create a special sign: "Too broke for vacation? Check out our summer getaway table." The trunks, towel, and cups didn't sell, but at least all the shirts did. Lesson: Adding a touch of humor also can bring great results.
Kimberly had a container full of plastic combs she received from the widow of an old comb salesman, and she and Erin created a sign for it: "Free Gift with Purchase!" Almost without exception, people took their combs. Lesson: Incentives are a great idea; customers always love a freebie (or lagniappe, as they say in New Orleans).
And, finally, the best lesson of all: If someone offers you 35 cents for an awesome Fonzie t-shirt, laugh at him. You'll sell it for a dollar a few hours later.
Lessons in Yard Sale Marketing
Bad Ass Beer or Just Plain Bad Idea?
First, I'm not a fan of Kid Rock. I think he's unappealingly crass and I'm not fond of his idea of music. Part of me is appreciative that he uses his puzzlingly huge celebrity status in part to help boost Detroit, but another part of me usually just feels embarrassed that he's the face of Michigan for so many people. (Still, I admit the fogeys of the 1970s probably said the same thing about Ted Nugent and Alice Cooper.)
Well, as originally reported in February on my deceased blog, the Kid is working with Michigan Brewing in Webberville to create his own brand of what I am guessing can be described only as craft swill. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, he describes it this way:It just tastes like good American light beer, a regular beer and a light beer, an everyday beer ... we'd like to pair a shot of Jim Beam and one of my beers. Get off work, get a 22-ouncer and a shot, you’ll be all right.
He goes on to say it "actually tastes good, it has no aftertaste," which suggests to me he really does mean for this beer to compete with the watery, bland product of the megabrewers. (The obvious question of why America needs another one of those comes immediately to mind.)
Eyebrows are further raised when he discusses the marketing for his "Bad Ass Beer," which is typically Kid Rockean in its white trashy awfulness:There's one where it looks like the Budweiser horses, and they're all up in the air, just freaked out, like they went haywire, and whatever they ride on is smashed up, and it just has my beer sitting in the front, it says "Bad Ass." ... We've got another one with the Bad Ass beer simulating like it's fucking the St. Pauli's girl.
Depressingly, he attributes these ideas to a creative agency he's working with (although it's apparently a guy who lives next to him). Yikes.
The big Bad Ass Beer rollout is targeted for Labor Day, according to the head Bad Ass. I may have to pick up a sixpack myself and stow it away as a collector's item, because I can't imagine this will be much more successful than was, say, Billy Beer. On the other hand, Kid Rock understands his audience way better than I do, so who the heck really knows?
The Future of Traditional Journalism in Ann Arbor
"I have seen the future, and it works."
That's a paraphrase from Lincoln Steffens, an American journalist who, upon his return from a 1921 visit to the newly born Soviet Union, enthused over the efficiency of a society based upon state compulsion.
We now know how that all turned out.
But that Steffens quotation came to mind when I dropped in on an April 2 "community meeting" organized by the three principals of AnnArbor.com, the successor to the soon-to-be-defunct Ann Arbor News, which announced that it would cease publication in July.
In the same way traditional journalist Steffens misjudged the true nature of the Soviet regime, traditional journalism as a whole has misjudged the changing nature of the craft and the market for it.
Economic reality is now forcing the hands of many newspapers, not just the Ann Arbor News. The bottom line – and the average age of the audience at the AnnArbor.com forum supported this conclusion – is that almost nobody under the age of 40 really reads newspapers anymore. They still get news, but they've abandoned the local "fishwrapper" in droves.
Much to their credit, AnnArbor.com's principals, Matt Kraner, Tony Dearing, and Laurel Champion (pictured above), clearly understand that the old business model is unsustainable. The $64,000 question, of course, is: What model is sustainable? Or put another way: What do people want, how can we deliver it to them, and how can we make it profitable to do so?
Most of the audience questions at the forum were naturally posed by the older folks and seemed to focus on what I would consider peripheral issues. If I could loosely summarize them in a single pithy question, it would be something like "I understand there's this Internet thing you're moving to, and it's OK as far as it goes, but how will I get a daily newspaper?" The idea that the daily newspaper is dead did not and would not sink in.
My own opinion is that the popularity of the Internet with younger folks is not the only reason for the demise of newspapers; the previously alluded-to journalistic misjudgment plays a role as well. But that's a much longer subject for another day. For now, I think it's a positive step that Mr. Kraner, Mr. Dearing, and Ms. Champion are embracing the possibilities offered by the Internet and the reality of a market that has moved on from traditional newsprint, at least in its current form.
Their task of essentially marrying the old with the new will be a tough one, and I'm not sure yet they appreciate just how tough. But Ann Arbor has a great number of independent, community-minded writers and bloggers (including yours truly, natch) who will be pulling for AnnArbor.com to succeed – and would be happy to help it achieve that success.
Update: Former Ann Arbor News sportswriter Jim Carty keeps a blog, and he published some thoughts from another journalist who attended an AnnArbor.com forum. They are worth checking out.
