From a Small Change to a Big Difference
I can't remember a single day of my life when my father wasn't wearing a hat. To me, my father did just wear hats, he was hats. It was his passion. But this article is not about my family history or about all the fedoras and pork pies my father wore. It's about a small family business that grew in moderate increments over many years and then accelerated dramatically in the last two years for the most negligible reason.
This is a story about psychology, hats, and mannequin heads. In the end you will not just walk away knowing a bit more about my story, you will know something about business that, assuming you own or work in a store, will help you think about the way you do things.
Once upon a time in America people cared about quality. People wanted things to last long and work well and there is nothing wrong with that. The issue is the way items were pitched to consumers. Major companies would have professional doctors or builders vouch for their products and through this mode of advertising persuade people that they wanted these things. This advertising tactic was employed until the genius of Eddy Bernays really got hold of the market.
Being Freud's nephew Eddy Bernays applied psychoanalytic theory to marketing. He is aptly called the inventor of public relations of modern times. His idea and I know this is a bit of an oversimplification, was to pitch products to people not to their needs. I could spend a lot of time walking you through the concept of Bernays advertising but this is not the purpose of this article. I want to share with you have this concept helped my father's store in a dramatic way.
It is actually a very simple; my father spent a lot of time nailing hooks into the wall in neat rows all across the store before he opened. After which he hung all of the hats on all of the hooks, and as I said earlier, business increase in small increments over time. But I had the idea after learning about Bernays to replace the hooks with shelves and mannequin heads. Why? The psychology is simple; combine hats with attractive faces and they become more appealing. This is what we did, and as I said before have seen dramatic increase of sales because of it. If you can connect what you are selling to innate instinctive desires in the eyes of your potential clients, you're golden.
Let me remind you once more, this is not some kind of crackpot theory; this is the work of one of the most profound thinkers in the history of the world applied to common practice. Try it and see for yourself.
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small change father wasnt wear hats big difference father spent small increments eddy bernays
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