Crastinate

I recently read an article which discusses how infomercials come up with products and then market them. The product development process revolves around finding a problem that people never realized they had. Let’s look at this new one that I recently saw for the Big City Slider Station. You probably never realized how much trouble you were having when trying to make hamburgers a good shape. That’s because you probably weren’t. Regardless, along comes a product that solves this non-existent problem.

The marketing behind these products are hysterical. Watch the video at the Big City Sliders site and notice how the colors are muted whenever they show the ridiculous incompetence of others trying to handle their meat. The whole thing creates this sense of urgency to buy their product. And sadly, it works really well. I find myself all the time wanting to buy the products they offer even though I know they’re rarely useful. I usually can hold myself back.

Now to a real problem that’s been solved. I went to my local Chase today to deposit a check and couldn’t find any deposit slips. I’ve heard that Chase has new ATMs that don’t need deposit slips but haven’t seen them for myself until today. All you need to do is insert the check into the designated slot and the check is instantly scanned. The ATM analyzes the writing and tells you how much the check is for. After confirmation, it is instantly deposited into your account. BRILLIANT! I never realized what a waste those deposit slips were. And how come I needed to write my account number on the deposit slip? Why couldn’t they read my account number from my ATM card?

The reason I bring this up is to point out the different and strange roads to success. Those informercials create the problem and then provide the solution. Chase solves an already existing problem. While I prefer companies that solve REAL problems, it’s hard to knock the ingenious in the infomercial approach. If you’re an entrepreneur, don’t just try to solve the problems people complain about. Let people know about the problems people never realized they had, and then provide them with the solution.

(Okay, I hate the informercial approach and think entrepreneurs should avoid this approach if possible. But hey, it works.)

Ely Rosenstock