They’re all dead Jim.

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Well had a surreal day today. I attended the APIA expo in Greenlane, expecting throngs of people, and the place was deserted. I knew almost everybody there because it was primarily exhibitors, no public. In fact it was almost scary that I couldn’t walk from one stall to the next without knowing the exhibitor personally.

I thought how sad it was that an opportunity for people to learn about investment had not been advertised more widely to attract people. Opportunities to transform one’s life lay idle due to poor and absent promotion.
This made me think about things like lease options where the success or failure generally is decided by ones willingness to spend money up front advertising to find tenant buyers. You know we sometimes think that what we have is so good that somehow everybody will magically find out and take advantage of it. Today was proof of that not being true.

So after about 15 minutes to meet every exhibitor and hear them all complain about no people and the excessive cost of the stalls, we next went to the Line7 clearance sale also on site. Here was another opportunity devoid of patrons. Only this time that was a good thing for us as we spent 4 hours there buying clothes. I’ve never seen Raewyn’s eyes so glazed over with bargain fever.

The finally as we are trying to leave there was a fragrance sale also on site that had been properly promoted. The place was heaving. The bargains were amazing, like 75% off amazing.

So I drove away thinking how sad it is that our lives are now dictated by our ability to market well, rather than just the quality of what we offer. The expo was a total disaster in terms of numbers of people, as was the line7 sale, yet both had so much to offer. The perfume sale, simply through good marketing, was roaring along, even though it was arguably the least important of the 3 products on offer.

So thought for the day, sometimes image is everything. You have to sell the sizzle to get anybody to taste a real sausage!!