Psychology of Consumer Behaviour | Scoop.it

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

The Circus is coming to town for 2009





There's a famous quote that uses the idea of a circus that explains all about the differences between advertising, sales promotion, publicity and sales. It goes something like this:


"If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying "Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday," that's advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that's promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor's flower bed, that's publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that's public relations. If the town's citizens go to the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they'll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions, and ultimately they spend a lot of money at the circus, that's sales.”

I got to thinking that it really needs a little updating so with apologies to the original author, my revision.

"If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying "Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday," that's advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that's promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor's flower bed, that's publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that's public relations.

If you make the elephant run through the mayor’s flower bed, that’s guerrilla marketing. If you run a contest and ask everyone to create their own videos about circus animals running amok, that’s user generated content. If they post their videos and forward them to their friends, that’s viral marketing.

If they tweet their friends about the contest using Twitter, that's micro blogging.

If they post the videos or pictures on Facebook, that’s social networking. If you have used guerrilla marketing, user generated content, viral, blogging or a social network, that’s word of mouth.

If anyone has the time to go out to the town's circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they'll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions, and they spend money at the circus, that's sales.

But if no one wants to leave their computer to go to the circus, you’ll create a virtual world in maybe SecondLife. You won't need to feed or look after your animals; that's savings.The animals will be able to do all sorts of things that even circus animals can't do; that's creative. A monkey could even be an elephant online, no one would know; that's online. You’ll start at the beginning with your advertising sign and your elephant until finally the people follow and attend the virtual circus.

If no one wants to spend money at the virtual circus, you’ll post more advertisements and fancy products and track their every movement getting to the circus; you'll sell the information to others who will post more advertisements, that’s behavioral targeting. Those marketers will use the behavioral targeting to send you specific messages just for you; that's addressable advertising. You'll even get messages on your iPhone or Crackberry; that's mobile.

Google will take pictures of you in the virtual world; that will be Google virtual world. You'll access all this information about you from your terminal that contains no programs; that's cloud computing.

The circus will be free sort of. It's a bit cloudy.... you may find yourself still at home on your computer but suddenly in debt wondering if PT Barnum has just been to town.”

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