Word: product
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When his TV jobs folded, Barry became Fragrance's executive vice president, invested another $50,000, and went to work to sell his product. He persuaded the American Botany Corp., biggest U.S. maker of plastic flowers, to try the pellets. The company now buys 2,000 lbs. a month to scent 1,200,000 flowers with a fragrance that is said to last more than four months. Barry signed Texas Plastics Inc. of Elsa, Tex. to scent its plastic bags. The response was so good that it is planning to turn out some 100 million scented bags this year...
Barry sees the time coming when almost all polyethylene bags will be scented to match the product enclosed, even to spinach, orange and other odors for foods. There is even a better scent for mousetraps: one Midwestern maker has ordered pellets to give his traps the scent of chocolate or bacon, which mice prefer to cheese...
...from being a gullible prey for the adman's every gimmick, the African checks into quality and price before plunking down his hard-earned money, can be fanatically loyal to a product once he is won over. But his sense of values, his different cultural life, and his ignorance of many Western habits all conspire to make him a customer to test the ingenuity of the Madison Avenue adman. Hut-to-hut market research, for example, does not seem to work. A recent survey for brilliantine among upper-income Nigerians ($280 to $1,400 a year) showed that...
...Cheesecake. Since the great majority of Africans are illiterate, the illustration is what sells the product. What matters most is how the African himself is presented. He resents being pictured with G string and spears, yet does not want anyone to suggest that he merely apes the Europeans. Most ads. therefore, picture him as what he would like to see himself as: the African of tomorrow, lightskinned, well-dressed, usually in comfortable surroundings. Coca-Cola successfully uses testimonials from U.S. Negro athletes, Lux from U.S. Negro actresses. One ad firm sold cigarettes in villages with the slogan: "Men about town...
Sometimes companies are surprised at their success, only to discover that Africans have found an unsuspected use for their product. Parker, which dominates the West African ink market, recently noted that its sales had rocketed and retailers were asking for gallon bottles. Parker finally discovered that its popularity was due to a thirst for education: pregnant mothers were drinking ink in the hope that their children would be born knowing how to write. Other companies have found shoe polish used as face cream, soap as fish bait, hair cream as sandwich spread...