It was exactly a month and one day ago that I fell into one of the most basic of advertising tricks ever - the freebie trick.
Back story: My family and I had taken a week vacation out to Santa Barbara in mid July and stayed at a beautiful rental house with an ocean view which was gorgeous. We had done everything from kayaking (from which I got horribly sea sick), horse back riding, sight seeing, and of course eating. Lots and lots of eating. Most of our eating and sight seeing was along State Street, and that was when we were encountered.
The story: There standing at the entrance of a crisp white store stood two ladies in black, handing out free lotion samples. One of them reached out a bag to me and said, "Here, take a free sample and try it. You never know you might like it." The bag was basically in my face so I unthinkingly took it. The bait.
The lady then said, "Take one for your mom too," my mom who had smartly ignored them in the first place, but I wasn't thinking; I just wanted to be polite. So I pulled my mom back. Then the sales pitch: "Can I ask you really quickly, which skin care product do you use?" in which we replied, "Neutrogena." We bit the bait.
"Come ladies, I have something I want to show you."
And from that point on, my mom and I were at the point of no return. We were hooked and this sales lady was reeling us into this white store that was spacious and chic. We were sat down and the lady began talking to us, advertising how skin gets dirty and the only way to clean it was to remove the dead skin so that our pores could breathe and a bunch of other logical but not scientifically proven statements.
My mom was the lab rat in this product testing. This lady started rubbing some sparkly white cream on my mom's one hand (Why do they do it on one side and not the other? Like, cool I see the difference. Just do the other side so I don't walk around looking half nice, half crappy.) and wow! Would you look at that; her dead skin is coming right off! Not only that, but my mom's skin was brighter and whiter and it was great and she was mildly happy and I was mildly happy. It was great. Price tag? $450 for this bad boy.
Not so great.
But wait! Just you wait because does this one and only lady have a special offer for you and just you! The store just opened (three months ago) and there's a sale going on so the cream is about $400 BUT WAIT she's the manager of the store. She's going to give us a secret manager's discount. The cream is now $300!!! And she's going to throw in this one cream called a snow cream which was originally like $275 for free. YES, you heard right. Free stuff. The thing that got my mom and I into this whole situation. That's not all, folks. She'll even throw in two facial massages for us the following day. She basically just made over-priced become regular-priced by doing all this, but as gullible as we were, my mom and I fell for it. We bought it. Right after check out, she gave us a huge jar of shea butter as a gift, and this jar is heavy. It might be another sales trick but I certainly thought it was nice.
So what is the point of this blog? Well, I am going to be your guinea pigs and test this oh so amazing innovation for you. Whether anyone reads this or not, doesn't affect me. It is for me to see if it works. I just hope that if someone comes across this blog before making such an expensive purchase, I can offer some insight on the truth and the BS. Best wishes.
"If you're not struggling, you're not doing it right."
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