The “impulse buy,” that consumer decision to simply wake up one morning and decide to spend the kid’s college fund on a new car – or, less flamboyantly, to buy a six-pack of imported beer on a grocery store run for a dozen eggs – remains an elusive marketing mystery.
It seemed easier in the old days. Banks would offer up a toaster in return for you switching your accounts – and consumers would come running.
The impulse is presumed, whether or not the evidence is conclusive that the marketing ploy will trigger a response. Realtors continue to mull whether open houses truly inspire the casual looker to gobble up a new property, especially at the high end. Free samples of this and that at the local food store? The subplot: Impulsive snackers will race to the shelves and stock up.
Even on a rather profound scale, the impulse may make the world go round. There are some who believe the victory of U.S. Sen. Scott Brown was a massive display of impulse. Tired of Kennedy fever. Tired of always voting for the Democrat. Let’s take a fling and vote for this “Brown” guy.
Which brings us to the challenge facing Banker & Tradesman. How can this venerable publication take advantage of the impulse buy? It is, after all, a subscription-based publication. That does not lend itself to a crazed moment when all else falls into irrelevancy, while you seek out a copy of B&T, whether in the flesh or online.
When such questions arise, the best bet is often to evaluate the competition; to divine what others do, so that you might do it, too – preferably, offshore in a small Chinese village.
The publications that best take advantage of the impulse itch are the supermarket tabloids, which often sit there at the checkout counter, blasting away with giant, front-page headlines much more likely to trigger an impulse buy than news about capitalized subsidiaries of offshore holding companies, minus tangible capital, assuming Treasury yields have risen.
Space, To Grow
For instance, the identification of seemingly normal Americans who are actually secret space aliens is a common theme in the supermarket tabloids – which is pretty hard to ignore, if you have suspicions about your mother-in-law or the director of human resources. A few years back, one of the tabloids outed U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd as a space alien, which, as it turns out, he admitted was true.
That might explain the Martian quality of some of the Dodd-Frank regulatory reforms.
At B&T, we must recognize that this kind of investigative journalism sells papers – impulsive purchases that could be encouraged by kids selling copies of B&T on the streets, shouting, “extra, extra, read all about it, MIT scientist discovers space aliens in the commonwealth and beyond.”
That’s true, by the way. The frightening director of MIT’s Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory disclosed in The New York Times that “aliens are the cold dark matter that makes up 23 percent of the energy of the universe. Adept at cloaking themselves, they are invisible…we are unlikely to detect them directly.”
Assuming this guy (Seth Lloyd) is not himself a commuter from Mars or Pluto, he could be thrust upon the front-page readers of B&T, pushing aside less important stories about the sorry state of commercial real estate. The demand for the paper would have folks lined up around the block of every convenience store where B&T is sold. (Which, by the way, is none. At least not on this planet.)
This kind of news is not alien (so to speak) to the central purpose of Banker & Tradesman, which is to wow you with financial and real estate news and a cute photo of Cohen the Columnist. Seth Lloyd (he of the Extreme Quantum Theory) has noted that “while not actively hostile, the aliens would prefer not to live in our neighborhood.” See? This is a real estate trend perfectly appropriate for B&T, with just enough of a space alien twist to trigger impulse buys.
My favorite local bank just added cookies and coffee to the front lobby. I think I’m going to refinance my house and let the nice banker sell me an annuity or something. It’s just an impulse I have. Washed down with coffee.
