From CMYK to PPC - Confessions of a Reformed Retail Warrior

2001, Future Shop. Merivale - My first Boxing Day in the Trenches....        

Ah, Boxing Day. Remember it? Not like you remember where you put your phone five minutes ago, but remember it? The bone-chilling Ottawa cold, the seething mass of humanity, the intoxicating aroma of retail desperation mixed with a hint of pine from the freshly cut trees still clinging to Christmas?

I sure as heck do. I was right there in the thick of it. Future Shop. My first experience of the insantiy was standing on a pile of door crasher TV's first thing in the morning, with a throng of over 100 blearly eyed individuals surrounding. Each one of them clamouring for one of the few $100 DVD players that had been marked at 60% - and were of a brand that were sure to fall apart by spring.

Then Audiotronic - considerably more civilized in every respect crowd wise on Boxing Day, where we could talk, and ascertain what a client REALLY needed, more than just move boxes out the door bigger than we were, only to explain that they weren't going to fit the 50" tv into their Civic Hatchback.

Home Theatre Sales, baby. We were slinging 5.1 surround sound systems that could make your fillings vibrate and plasma TVs that cost more than my first car (and weighed about the same).

The GOLDEN AGE, my friends.        

Boxing Day was our Super Bowl, our Stanley Cup, our... well, you get the idea. And how did we drum up business in those pre-algorithm days? Forget your fancy targeted ads and social media influencers. We had flyers.

Reams of them. Enough newsprint to cover the field at Lansdowne. We'd unleash them in the paper a day or two before, full-page spreads in the Citizen, the back cover of the Sun – a veritable blitzkrieg of bargains in glorious Techni-CMYK.

Then came the radio jingles, burned into your brain whether you liked it or not. And the TV spots! With the obligatory laser sound effects and that narrator who always sounded like he'd recorded it at 3 AM after his fifth Red Bull – short, sweet, and designed to lure you from your turkey coma and into our fluorescent-lit den of hyper-consumerism.

Ready to drop a months pay on that 42" plasma that was magically $500 cheaper than it was on Christmas Eve. We were practically printing our own money!

We'd prep for weeks. Endless meetings about "attachment rates" – corporate speak for "sell more stuff." Cables, speaker stands, surge protectors... and the king of them all: the Extended Warranty.

Oh, the extended warranty, the "peace of mind" that happened to line our pockets. We were trained to push them harder than a used car salesman on a quota, for good reason, it made us a killing!

"Of course, no Boxing Day spiel was complete without a mention of Monster Cable. Those gold-plated, oxygen-free, diamond-encrusted (okay, maybe not) cables that cost more than a small country's GDP.

Since you're getting such a high-end display, it makes sense to pair it with a cable that can keep up. This one will protect the signal integrity, so you'll enjoy the best possible picture quality and really see the difference your investment makes.

We'd say, with a straight face.

And to be fair, there was some truth to it. As Nelson Pass pointed out in his article "Speaker Cables: Science or Snake Oil," resistance, inductance, and capacitance do play a role in how a cable interacts with your amplifier and speakers.

Could you get similar results with less expensive cable? Probably. I mean, I'm not going to diss on the research - even if it was done in 1980, his findings still hold true today.

Were we overselling the benefits to the average customer? Almost certainly. Back then, heavy gauge, low-resistance cables like Monster, or specialized low-inductance designs like Polk Audio's, could make a difference, especially with longer cable runs or certain amplifier/speaker combinations.

But let's be honest, for most setups, the audible difference was likely minimal.

Still, we sold those Monster Cables like they were going out of style. And hey, a sale's a sale, right? (At 30-50% margins!)

Besides, those things looked impressive, and sometimes, the placebo effect is half the battle in high-end audio. Meanwhile knowing full well their speakers would sound the same if they'd used coat hangers and electrical tape.

(Audiophiles out there getting your pitchforks out - it's true no matter how much you need to lie to yourself to justify the upgrade - the differences are negligable. Spend the money on acoustic treatment instead!)        

But I digress...

The doors would open at some ungodly hour (6 AM, if memory serves), and the horde would pour in, fueled by Tim Hortons and the promise of door-crasher deals. It was glorious chaos.

But here's the thing:

As a marketer today, looking back? I'm kind of in awe of that old-school approach. It was a blunt instrument, sure.

We were carpet-bombing the city with flyers and hoping for the best. But there was a certain artistry to it, a simplicity. You had a limited number of tools – print, radio, TV – and you had to make them sing.

Now, it's a whole different world. SEM, SMM, PPC, programmatic advertising... it's like comparing a musket to a laser-guided missile.

We can target customers with surgical precision, based on their browsing history, their social media activity, their location, even their blood type (okay, maybe not their blood type... yet).

It's amazing, really. The data we have, the insights, the ability to optimize campaigns in real-time. Using tools the general public isn't even aware of, or only has been badly demonstrated on cerialized overacted weekly tv dramas.

It's a marketer's DREAM.

And yet... a part of me misses those flyer-powered days....

The sheer physicality of it all. The challenge of crafting a message that would cut through the noise and resonate with a mass audience, without knowing exactly who that audience was. There was an excitement to it.

A gamble.

But I remember the glory days:

The camaraderie.

The adrenaline.

The sheer, unadulterated THRILL of the sale!

I remember a time when a flyer, a dream, and a well-placed extended warranty pitch could make you feel like a king, at least until the next commission cheque.

So, pour one out for the Boxing Days of yore, my friends.

For the Monster Cables, the plasma dreams, the extended warranties, and the lost art of the mass-market hard sell.

It was a wild, ridiculous, and beautifully chaotic ride.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go find my old DVD of The Matrix, crank up the surround sound on my Klipsch Reference Series speakers and Denon receiver – you know, the good stuff, in glorious 7.1. (because, let's face it, post-2005, 7 channels were always better than 5, more speakers, more better shrugs) Watch the Lobby Scene a dozen times - and see if I can still sell myself on that 12" subwoofer - just for old time's sake.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll ponder this:  Am I actually getting nostalgic for a bygone era that will never return? 

Does that officially make me old? 

Or just a marketer who appreciates a good story, no matter how it's told? 

Hmm...        

Signed,

A Reformed Retail Warrior turned master marketer