Marketing a dry product succeeds by rebranding it as a hilarious personal condition

Evidence

I wrote a script based on the concept of clutter and disorganization being a disease and used a twelve-step program model for Iona’s twelve tips to getting organized. Patrick and I brainstormed and came up with kitsch names for the maladies like “jamitistis in your drawers” and “stuff infection” and I fed the interviewer one liners like, “I’m a graduate from the school of hard knick knacks” and I made jokes about my imaginary husband, Ines Place, and my twenty year old daughter, Anita Place. These punch lines all led to media coverage for Shurgard on several TV Talk shows and news segment in the major markets across the country. I made more money than I had ever earned acting or in any other day job. — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs, 186

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The stuff-infection/jamitistis invention parallels and pays off the article on framing problems through visceral metaphor, and the metaphor-intended joke therapy that made Mrs. Barbie’s garage an unspoken contested zone.
• SEED: Case study angle: how a personal-assistant hustle and performing background converted ordinary storage into nationwide media coverage through naming dysfunction comically.
• XREF: connects to: A name can create the phenomenon it labels by supplying a brand identity; A deliberately fictitious brand acquired real economic value through sheer recognition. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 370; Marketing boring products succeeds by inventing an entertaining illness-and-recovery framing — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs: A Guide to Making It in Show…, 183

Related

• Marketing boring products succeeds by inventing an entertaining illness-and-recovery framing (similarity 0.90)

Broader Connections

• A deliberately fictitious brand acquired real economic value through sheer recognition. #expands (0.75) — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 370
• A name can create the phenomenon it labels by supplying a brand identity #qualifies (0.72)