inspire design

In a recent BBC horizon programme, Professor Lesley Regan, looked to create her ideal beauty cabinet. The programme featured prominently (in the interest of science you understand) a particular product from Boots, No7 Protect & Perfect Beauty Serum. On the Boots website this product now varies between being sold out and customers only being able to buy one, even though it’s 3 for 2 on the home page. This stuff has become like gold dust even though the programme aired nearly a month ago.

Yesterday my wife’s friend called her to tell her she was on her way to the local Boots because they’d called her to tell her it was in stock but to be quick! I’m not sure if they got any that way but later we moved onto ebay where there seems a healthy trade selling the product around 50% above the retail price. Meanwhile stock levels are so low they’re advertising the fact and customers are being steered towards other similar products one of which is also at a limited stock level.

All of this without TV advertising (not counting the horizon TV programme of course) selling a £16.75 product by word of mouth with a buzz through mothers who meet at a local primary school every morning. They all have permission to talk to each other and be influenced by each other, which is why many of them wear crocs as well. They all have permission to have a conversation and although television creates a subject for the conversation, tv advertising seems not to unless it really stands out and I can only think of a couple that do at the moment. Conversations like these with implicit permission happen all the time and if I wanted to sell a product or service this is where I would start, the virus might be slower to spread but I suspect it would have a longer lasting effect.