X-Message-Number: 12018 From: Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 14:29:58 EDT Subject: Mismarketing Say, guess what, Reader? As I was replying to Mr Platt elsewhere, lo, I noticed another sunlit commentary on my writings from the fellow pop up. Well, aren't we in luck! It seems he's knowledgable about marketing as well. Let's take a second and see if his insights are as penetrating on that subject as they are elsewhere. Mr Platt writes: <<Some attempts have been made to promote cryonics using orthodox methods. All have failed. Michael Cloud was going to double Alcor's membership; he had an impressive track record increasing membership in the Libertarian Party and had some good ideas. So far as I know, nothing happened. Before I entered cryonics, I'm told that a highly successful insurance agent decided he was going to sell cryonics in the same way he sold insurance. I understand he lost a LOT of money in this attempt. I myself applied traditional PR to cryonics when I devised a contest that was published in Omni magazine and promoted on radio and TV, generating thousands of information requests. I believe Alcor acquired some new members through this initiative, but a tiny number compared with the millions of people who heard about the contest one way or another. If we had been selling any "normal" product (such as vitamins, or healing crystals, to take one of your examples) we would have enjoyed a bonanza. Most companies would kill for this kind of exposure.Before arguing that the current state of the art of cryonics is immaterial, and we merely need some professional marketing, please study a little history of the field.>> Well, with a tutor such as yourself, Charles, my insight is growing with leaps and bounds. My God! I had no idea that the cryonics movement had done so much in the field of marketing! One guy from the Libertarian Party said he was going to up Alcor's membership, and 'so far as you know' didn't? What a breathtaking example of sustained dynamic group-marketing professional effort. And your post-game analysis! 'As far as I know' -- what conceptual precision! Then we have one (1) insurance agent giving it a shot, one -- or was it two? -- decades ago. Yet another staggering MBA-laden marshalling of massed marketing professionals! And he lost money nonetheless, you say? Gosh, he must be the only insurance salesman in the history of American Capitalism to do that. Could it be that his approach was wrong, his staff non-existent, his funding ill-directed, his marketing background nil? -- Nah. It was the dopey public. And you yourself, Charles! A contest in Omni! Gee, you're right. If you had been selling healing crystals, instead of giving away a free decapitation, you'd have raked those bucks up. Sound silly, folks? It should. Really, it's the silliest thing I've ever heard in my life. No marketing professionals; no marketing staff; no marketing backgrounds; no marketing studies; no marketing budget. Surprise! No marketing results! One guy called Cloud makes a promise, one guy called Platt does a contest, and one insurance salesman gives it a crack around the time of the recession. And these are the highlights of thirty years of cryonics marketing? Lord yes, we've exhausted all the possibilities in that area all right. I could exhaust all mine -- laughing. If it wasn't for the thought of all the people who might have had a chance in suspension and are now bones and soil. <<Ettinger's concept was promoted widely. He was on nationally networked talk shows. The first cryonics case was featured in (some editions of) LIFE magazine. MILLIONS of people learned about the concept of cryonics.>> Millions of people saw a serious and intelligent scholar wedged between Buddy Hackett and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Between one-liners from Buddy about Zsa-Zsa's frigidity and Buddy's own desire to have one particular organ remain stiff for centuries, this quiet college professor would painstakingly try to explain, say, molecular activity at liquid nitrogen temperatures, or biologist Jean Rostand's discovery that sperm and insects could be revived after freezing. -- "Sperm! Woo Woo!" -- Cut to a Tidy-Bowl commercial. Incredibly, the American people did not migrate en masse to the nearest Frigidire. How could this be, marvels Charles? Could it be the fact that there were no providers to provide services in '65? No 21CM to display its ice blockers? No professors of nanotechnology expaining how revival could be achieved? It's no surprise to me that no one signed up. The only surprise is how a scholar and author like Robert Ettinger had the will and perseverance to keep plugging away through all the nonsense and ignorance and cheap-minded disrespect to get us to the point we've achieved today. Yet another reason to honor the man and hear him out. Ah, but all we cutting-edge futurists are too busy following in Buddy and Zsa-Zsa's intellectual footsteps for that. <<Today, cryonics has become a part of pop culture, in movies and even in TV shows such as Futurama. If any normal product enjoyed such exposure, it would sell, sell, sell.">> Sure! Look at the Edsel. Heaven's Gate. Infanticide. Eight-track tapes. Castration. Lee Harvey Oswald -- hey, his action figure's coming out next Christmas. <<Cryonics does not [sell]. We are still in a situation where only a handful of people take it seriously. (A slightly larger handful, but still a handful.) Why? Because the product still doesn't exist and cannot be demonstrated.>> Kind of like the Second Coming, isn't it? Guess those 249,277,000 North American Christians (not to oh, a billion Catholics worldwide) must be faking it just to pull Charles Platt's leg. (And all because Alcor won't mail the Pope a free pamphlet. Tsk tsk tsk.) <<This is kind of basic, don't you think?>> Basic? I prefer the term 'primitive'. Mr Platt -- ten-year veteran of a New York marketing agency, I take it? -- is under the curious impression that 'exposure' is the be-all and end-all of marketing. If a lot of people are aware of a 'concept', why of course they'll buy it in droves! All you have to do is chant 'Edsel' on CBS and the gibbering buffoons will flock to you like leaping salmon. Futurama: now that's what I call irrefutably compelling scientific evidence. "Why, lookie there, Edna. That pizza boy cartoon fella on Futurama fell into a freezer and woke up in the year 3000!" "He did? Well, mercy, Jethro, let's call Charles Platt at CryoCare and pay $240,000 have our heads cut off!" "Ooh! That is a durn tootin' brilliant insight, honey-bunch! Say, you sure Pizza Hut can't do it for less? It worked on Futurama!" That a 'concept' is widespread, Charles, does not mean that it is attractive or compelling or correct or even existent. Sure, people know what 'cryonics' is. In 1850 they knew what a 'negro' was -- a simple-minded sub-species brighter than the chimp but not to be compared with the celestial heights attained by Whitey. Everybody knew that -- they were all dead wrong, but they knew it! It isn't that people 'know' what cryonics is, it's that what they 'know' is a idiotic caricature of cryonics, involving severed heads, wacko cultists, mind-boggling amounts of hard cash, all heavily sauteed with a kind of sci-fi anti-religious elitist technobabble that regards them and their views with contempt. Why doesn't this absurd misrepresentation sell? Take a wild guess. <<If you feel that fewer than 1000 signups worldwide, in 30 years is a success, there is not much point in continuing this discussion!>> After not 30 but 33 years, Christianity consisted of one dead Messiah, and twelve Jewish guys making themselves pretty durn scarce. They did at least have, by the merciful grace of God, one blessing: Charles Platt was not their marketing consultant. <> Yes. I am too. << Have you, in fact, ever tried to sell cryonics?>> Yup. << If so, how did it go? Did you sign up one person? Two, maybe? If so, I would say you are doing very well indeed.">> Say: "You are doing very well indeed, David." David Pascal www.cryonics.org www.davidpascal.com Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12018