Arby’s Makes A Meat Carrot And Other News – Sales Lead Digest

This week I was distracted by sensational news releases, but that’s part of being a marketer I think. Something happens, we react, and we want to look into why it happened and see if it works to promote something. This week we get the Arby’s meat carrot, a new professional sports league, an elegant solution to a problem we all share and an old school idea for unlocking creativity. Enjoy!

This weeks sales and marketing news:

Arby’s is making carrots out of meat. Yes, meat

“‘People love meat already. What Americans have a harder time doing is enjoying vegetables,’ he says. ‘So we said, ‘If they can make meat out of vegetables, why can’t we make vegetables out of meat?’”
I admit that I fall for all of these stories because, well, I’m in love with marketing and stories that make you go Ooh! or Ugh! with little room in the middle. The question I ask myself when these stories come out is are we doing a good enough job of defining ourselves by our enemies? The idea that people know what you stand for when they see what you stand against is powerful. Arby’s is against vegetables. That must mean I can count on them for meat. Let’s spend some time thinking about what we’re against, it’s a good exercise. 
Arby’s: We have the Meats

Cornhole (yes, cornhole) is going pro

“My guide to this evening’s competition is 23-year-old Tyler Poythress, a FedEx employee from nearby Wilson, North Carolina. Poythress is a friendly and unfailingly polite young man with the lean build of a high school baseball pitcher, which he was. He’s also one of the few people in the country who can call himself a professional cornhole player.
Whatever its origins, modern proponents of the game agree that cornhole has a fundamental marketing problem: its name. As an American idiom, ‘cornhole’ has several unfortunate connotations — check the crowdsourced word warehouse Urban Dictionary for a half-dozen evocative, not-safe-for-work definitions.”
Marketers uncover hidden value and create new markets, including new professional sports it seems! I read this story and immediately sent it to a friend who told me that his first semester in college he dropped out to become a professional shuffleboard player because “I was convinced it was the sport of the future.” It turns out he picked the wrong bar game and was only 30 years too soon. If your brand has a long-term horizon, maybe it’s time to invest in corn hole sponsorship? 
National Cornhole League

Millennials Are Finally Getting The Giant Roll Of Toilet Paper They Deserve

“Ultimately, he knew the next person to use the bathroom would be his wife, who would be annoyed to find a nearly kicked roll.
But the germ of an idea was planted: What if they made a toilet paper roll that was…UNIMAGINABLY HUGE.”
I’ve gotten a lot of reaction out of sending this to my college aged boys. Again, a great example of knowing your market and solving a problem. I’d take this on just because I think buying toilet paper is one of the most unreasonably difficult decisions I make on a monthly basis. It’s an Occam’s Razor solution – the shortest route is the best. If the user hates an empty roll of paper each week, make it so the roll lasts 3-4 months. How simple is your solution to a pressing problem?
Love is never having to say “I need toilet paper!”

Old-School Writing Tools Will Boost Your Creativity, Concentration-and Speed

“It’s counterintuitive, but sometimes the fastest route to great work involves taking the slow road. Or at least that is the contention of many great writers who rely on old-timey tools to produce the literature of postmodernity.”
I’ve been a long time advocate of the physical tied to the mental improving memory functions and now it seems there is evidence it impacts your creativity too. I was just at a workshop and it was interesting to see what happens to creativity when people used markers and colored pencils to work through problems. We’re tactile and as these devices get more entrenched in our daily lives, we’re going to need to plan for non-digital experiences. It’s a new luxury of sorts – the time to use analog devices or hand-write for work. Next week, look for an old typewriter and just consider how it would integrate into your workload. It’s an interesting proposition. 
Old typewriters are the new Mac Book Airs

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