Marketing boring products succeeds by inventing an entertaining illness-and-recovery framing

Evidence

Patrick was challenged with the difficult task of getting media coverage for the boring business of storage. “How do you sell empty space and cardboard boxes?” he asked me. By bringing me into the mix, he had hoped I could find a funny solution to his problem. … And humor I did deliver. I used my writing, performing, wardrobe-styling talents, and all the knowledge and work experience I learned in the field and came up with the alter ego: Iona Place, the Diva of De-Cluttering. … 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” … 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, 183

Categorization

• SEED: Strong material for an essay on how parodying self-help/12-step language became a commercial content strategy for mundane products.
• XREF: The invented malady names and recovery-model framing echo how wellness culture turns ordinary conditions into diseases; ties to themes in the grafting/metaphor worldbuilding reading. — connects to: Marketing a dry product succeeds by rebranding it as a hilarious personal condition — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs: A Guide to Making It in Show…, 186; Advertising shifted from promising cures to selling consumers a better version of themselves — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 213; Advertising could sell solutions to problems consumers did not know they had — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 189 (+1 more)

Related

• Marketing a dry product succeeds by rebranding it as a hilarious personal condition (similarity 0.90)

Broader Connections

• Marketing a dry product succeeds by rebranding it as a hilarious personal condition #corroborates (0.95) — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs, 186
• Advertising could sell solutions to problems consumers did not know they had #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 189
• Advertising shifted from promising cures to selling consumers a better version of themselves #complicates (0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 213
• Advertising shifted from selling product qualities to selling user identity #complicates (0.70) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 550