Do you have children? I do. Two of them, Amie, age 6 and Jude age 4.
If you have young children like me, you’ll recognise what I’m about to talk about. If your children have now grown up, you might still remember this. If you don’t have children, you can only imagine the chaos of this daily event.
Yes, I’m talking about the daily stress that is the breakfast-routine-&-school-run.
Sorry parents (and non parents) for discussing this exasperating daily trail but bear with me, there’s a good reason for bringing this up.
Now, my kids like to keep me on my toes at breakfast time. One week it’s cereal, then porridge. And now it’s toast. Toast every morning. Toast with peanut butter, toast with honey, toast with nothing on it…. But every single morning for weeks it been toast, toast and more toast.
I always cut the slice of toast into two halves on the plate. And as usual they happily eat their way through the first piece. The first piece isn’t the problem.
It’s the second piece of toast that is the problem.
By the time they start on that second piece of toast they have lost interest in breakfast and have usually starting messing around. Singing, throwing things, beating each other around the head… The usual stuff.
That second piece of toast really does take a long time.
Often the second piece of toast never ever gets finished.
By this stage I am usually at my wits end, running late and desperate for them to finish breakfast, clean their teeth and generally stay on track to leave to the house without any tears or screaming.
Then last week, the strangest thing happened. I don’t even know why I suggested it: but I said… “How about toasted soldiers for breakfast?”
“Yeeeehhhh!!” They shout.
And what happened? They ate the lot.
No fuss, no messing around. Every crumb disappeared.
And so it has happened every day since… Every piece goes, every single bit gets eaten. Every morning.
How can this possibly work? I mean, let’s face it, toasted soldiers is surely just another way of presenting a slice of toast? It is essentially the same boring piece of toast, but cut into thinner slices.
In business terms: It is the same quality product (one slice of wholemeal, whole grain toast). The product has not been changed or enhanced. There are no new features added (no new spreads). Yet, changing the marketing and presentation of this product has increased the response rate by about 50%.
Do you have a product or service that is not doing as well as it could?
Perhaps it is not because the product isnt good quality? Perhaps it hasn’t been presented effectively to the right customer?
Weetabix know this. They have just launched a new range of marketing aimed at children.
Weetabix faces. Sounds fun doesn’t it?
It is exactly the same Weetabix product, no change. Just the additional suggestion of adding fruit to make different fun characters.
It is really very clever, as they haven’t added anything all. Nothing. You, the consumer would actually have to buy the fruit to make these faces.
But it has already cause a big stir in our house and no doubt Weetabix will see sales increase over the next few months as kids around the country ask for Weetabix faces for breakfast.
How could you present your product or services differently to increase sales?
