How to sell a $4 product for $500
September 5, 2021
In this episode, we talk about how to present content to make it worth more.
One of my business school experiences included doing this business consulting competition. And for this competition, was hosted by Boston Science, I think it was Boston Science, can't remember. It was hosted by Boston Scientific. There we go. It was hosted by Boston Scientific and I was teamed up with a few people from the public Health School as well as the Biomedical Engineering School. So this was at johns Hopkins, which is strong for medicine.
So we were doing this competition and I remember going to the competition and watching every other group up on stage. And what I learned is that every single school, every single group, it didn't matter what school they went to, it could have been Berkeley, it could have been whatever, it didn't matter what school they went to. Every single group came up with the same answers because the thing is if you use those MBA frameworks, you're going to come up with the same answers, right? In terms of market sizing and risk evaluation and things like that.
So every single group had the same answers and because every single group had the same answers, how did the judges pick who the winner is? So this was an actual debate that we had within our cohort because the question was you know, what sells better, is it the aesthetics or is it the actual content? And the thing is I'm gonna tell you right now because my background is in consumer decision-making 100%. It is more the sizzle that sells than the actual content, the actual steak. In terms of the concept, if you look at all the different people who competed in this competition, they all have the same answers, right? So everyone had the same answer, what set our team apart?
So one of the things that I purposely did is I made sure that we were the second ones to go and there were two reasons for this. One, because of the timing. So the time itself was important because the very first cohort that goes up, the judges are going to be a little bit more demanding. It's very early in the morning. There's still grumpy and just being first is not good. So there's several different things, several different ways you can think about this if you are first, you do get this effect, where you're more memorable because people will remember things at the beginning and they remember things at the end but they won't remember things in the middle.
So what I did want to do is I didn't want to be one of the first, but I didn't want to be the first. We wanted to be the second people and I remember the slot that we had was 11 a.m. and that was very important. The second thing is the actual aesthetics of the presentation. So in our consumer decision-making classes, we talked about this one study where they showed that hot chocolate actually tastes more chocolatey when served in an orange cup. So even if it's the same hot chocolate, just the color of the cup, the way you present the hot chocolate changes how we actually perceive how the hot chocolate tastes.
So isn't that amazing? So if you think about it, does content matter? Or as a marketer, I'm going to tell you, it doesn't matter. What really matters. Is the sizzle. What matters is the aesthetics. What matters is the presentation. If you have good marketing, you are able to present something in a way that you could probably sell for, where other people are selling for $4, you could probably sell it for $500, just because you're presenting it in a way that makes it more chocolatey. So I hope that adds some food for thought on whether content is more important or how it's actually presented. If you're gonna ask me, it's definitely how it's presented. This is Robin Copernicus. Boom bam. I'm out.
Continue your journey with me on my other channels:
So we were doing this competition and I remember going to the competition and watching every other group up on stage. And what I learned is that every single school, every single group, it didn't matter what school they went to, it could have been Berkeley, it could have been whatever, it didn't matter what school they went to. Every single group came up with the same answers because the thing is if you use those MBA frameworks, you're going to come up with the same answers, right? In terms of market sizing and risk evaluation and things like that.
So every single group had the same answers and because every single group had the same answers, how did the judges pick who the winner is? So this was an actual debate that we had within our cohort because the question was you know, what sells better, is it the aesthetics or is it the actual content? And the thing is I'm gonna tell you right now because my background is in consumer decision-making 100%. It is more the sizzle that sells than the actual content, the actual steak. In terms of the concept, if you look at all the different people who competed in this competition, they all have the same answers, right? So everyone had the same answer, what set our team apart?
So one of the things that I purposely did is I made sure that we were the second ones to go and there were two reasons for this. One, because of the timing. So the time itself was important because the very first cohort that goes up, the judges are going to be a little bit more demanding. It's very early in the morning. There's still grumpy and just being first is not good. So there's several different things, several different ways you can think about this if you are first, you do get this effect, where you're more memorable because people will remember things at the beginning and they remember things at the end but they won't remember things in the middle.
So what I did want to do is I didn't want to be one of the first, but I didn't want to be the first. We wanted to be the second people and I remember the slot that we had was 11 a.m. and that was very important. The second thing is the actual aesthetics of the presentation. So in our consumer decision-making classes, we talked about this one study where they showed that hot chocolate actually tastes more chocolatey when served in an orange cup. So even if it's the same hot chocolate, just the color of the cup, the way you present the hot chocolate changes how we actually perceive how the hot chocolate tastes.
So isn't that amazing? So if you think about it, does content matter? Or as a marketer, I'm going to tell you, it doesn't matter. What really matters. Is the sizzle. What matters is the aesthetics. What matters is the presentation. If you have good marketing, you are able to present something in a way that you could probably sell for, where other people are selling for $4, you could probably sell it for $500, just because you're presenting it in a way that makes it more chocolatey. So I hope that adds some food for thought on whether content is more important or how it's actually presented. If you're gonna ask me, it's definitely how it's presented. This is Robin Copernicus. Boom bam. I'm out.
Continue your journey with me on my other channels:
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