The United States is a nation of inventors. Leave us alone with some tools for ten minutes and we’ll start inventing right then and there. We’ll invent so hard that we might sprain something in the process. But that’s a risk we’ll have to take because we’re deeply, deeply committed to inventing a better mousetrap. We’re happiest when we can take the simple, elegant solution to a problem and replace it with a complicated, over-engineered solution to the same problem. If we can create new problems in the process, we’re absolutely ecstatic. New problems mean more new solutions and that means more business.
This is the theory that underlies some of our greatest inventions like the Flowbee, the ShamWow, and the sub-prime mortgage. Who would ever think that off-beat products like these could sell? Americans, that’s who. We think they’ll sell because of our single greatest invention; marketing.
Really.
The history of this country is the history of salesmanship. For example, in 1626, wily Dutch colonist Peter Minuit sold the natives on the idea of swapping Manhattan island for handful of trade goods. His clever approach to salesmanship is commemorated to this day by every Realtor who closes a one million-dollar deal on a two-bit, three-room, fourth-floor apartment on that same island.
The Founding Fathers took this one step farther by inventing a whole new country and then selling it to a whole bunch of colonists over the strenuous — and well-armed — objections of the British army. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, this kind of coordinated, country-wide marketing effort had been replaced by thousands of guys traveling across the landscapes in brightly-painted wagons selling patent medicines. These characters would roll into town, set up their wagon, and start the sales pitch.
“Ladies and gentlemen, do you suffer from periods of unconsciousness, particularly during the night after a hard day’s work? Do you find yourself struggling to remember the names and faces of the people you knew when you were a babe in arms? Have you ever lost something and been unable to find it? Do you find that when you skip meals your stomach rumbles? Any one of these is a sure symptom of impending catastrophic failure of your vitreous humor. I’ve seen the poor souls who have suffered this way and believe me when I say you don’t want to join them! Fortunately there’s Old Doc Washburn’s Patent Medicine. Whatever you have — dropsy, the grippe, scrofula, the vapors, jungle rot, dandy fever, poor man’s gout or housemaid’s knee — Old Doc Washburn’s Patent Medicine is the cure! The price of health and vitality is within your reach! Just one thin dime and you can feel like a kid again!”
Nowadays these guys don’t have a wagon, they just appear on your television set randomly and offer to solve problems you didn’t know you had with money you don’t want to spend. Of course, to get away with it, the solution they offer has to be something new and innovative. A guy can’t just show up on TV, wave a towel at the camera and say, “This is a towel. It absorbs fluids and wipes things up and I’m selling them for ten dollars apiece.”
Aside from the fact that this would leave about twenty-nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds of unfilled time in the average informercial, it wouldn’t sell anybody anything. As Americans we love things that are new and exciting and the best way to sell to us is to convince use that for a few bucks we can be members of the elite, cutting-edge of society. For example, imagine that you’re a manufacturer who happens to have a few hundred-thousand spare cheese graters in a warehouse somewhere. You could try to sell them the old-fashioned way, by negotiating sales agreements with thousands of retailers, paying to ship the graters across the country, getting them displayed prominently and hoping people walk by and spontaneously say, “Hey! I was just wishing that someone had invented something to grate cheese with! This looks like it’ll be perfect!”
If you want the easy way out, just hire a camera crew and a spokesman to create an upbeat, entertaining sales pitch and run it endlessly on TV. The key is to make your customers feel bad about themselves and then offer to save them with a brand new product.
“Are your homemade tacos disappointing because you’re using inch-thick slabs of cheese? Is your husband of twenty years threatening to leave if you don’t serve restaurant-quality food at every meal? Do you wish you could produce professionally-shredded cheddar in the privacy of your own home? Now you can, thanks to the amazing GrateShredder!
“Just slide a block of cheese across the surface of this finely manufactured culinary instrument and the precision-stamped cutting blades peel off perfect shredded cheddar every time! Manufactured of high-quality materials including plastic, metal, and adhesives, this heirloom-quality food preparation device is sure to become a family heirloom. You’ll be the envy of everyone in your neighborhood! Your children will advance two grades in school! Your hair will grow back! Your teeth will be whiter! Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back (minus a small handling and restocking fee). Order now! Operators are standing by with nothing better to do than take your money! Please call! We have about ten million of these to unload!”
Every time the ad aired, the money would come running to you like a lost puppy finding its way home from the wilderness. Not because your grater is better than any other, but because you found a better way to sell it.
As Americans, though, we’ve missed the obvious application of our most powerful accomplishment. What if we sold our ideals to the rest of the world by way of infomercials?
“Oppressive government got you down? Wish you had the freedom to speak your mind? Why not give Constitution-based Federal Republic a try!”
