Great Sales and Marketing Ideas: I am reading labels again

I like the trend I am seeing in marketing copy for products today. Gone are days of boring promises that a product will do this or that.

That's old school.

New school today is all about the story.

Yesterday, while out for a ride on my bike I stopped for some fuel. Both for myself and my bike. As I perused the cooler filled with energy drinks and the usual gatorade type-super-carbo sports drinks. I came across Vitamin Water. It looked so un-pretentious in its simple two color label-as opposed to the flash and glam that seem to be the norm for sports drinks. So I picked it up. And on the back was story.

"in soccer (excuse us mexico, spain, and italy, we mean 'futbol'), there isn't a more exciting moment than when the announcer screams 'goooooooooal' (yelling 'oooffffsiddde' never quite caught on).

with that said, we added b vitamins and guarana to give you an extra kick (pun intended). so now when your watching soccer, playing soccer, coaching soccer, driving kids to soccer or doing anything that starts with 'socc' and ends with 'er', you too can have the energy of a raving lunatic to yell 'goooooooooal.'"

Now I don't listen to too much futbol as an American, but I know what they are talking about. And the few times I have listened to futbol its quite exciting when a goal is scored.

So for $1.69 + tax I got an exciting little vignet in my head to think about as I passed the two minutes it took to drink my Vitamin water. Perfect. In the 84 words they carefully placed on the bottle only 12 actually spoke to its benefit! And did so in a beautiful way.

Do I know what guarana is? Nope. I am just glad that someone does and they tell me it gives me a kick.
Works for me.
I don't need the encyclopedia version-just the Cliff notes version will be fine. And if you frame it in a good story so that I can remember it- all the better. Now every time I see guarana as an ingredient I will think kick.

And while I am thinking about places to find inspirational copy. I have to point out woot.com. It's a great little site that only offers one item for sale everyday. That's it, just one item. And when it sells out you can check tomorrow for a new item. But more importantly, its the copy that sells the items. Depending on the day, it can be anything form a cooking set to flash drive. But one constant is the story they tell you, the story that makes you want to buy the product.

Here's an Idea for you

Telling a story isn't a new idea. Fables have been around for years (remember Aesop). And the idea that consumers need to be told a story isn't a new idea either (Seth Godin-the modern day Aesop brought it to my attention). But in a time of ever increasing sales goals, and demanding margins what ever happened to the story?
I suggest you start telling more stories with your product. That way consumers like me can pass the story on to our friends-and on to their friends- and so on. By giving me (the consumer) a story, I feel more connected to the product and thus more likely to recommend the product.

So next time you stumped for good copy. Run out to the store and pick up a bottle of Vitamin Water and go Woot.com. In nothing short of a few minutes you will be revitalized and inspired to write good copy. And you might get a great deal on a universal notebook dock, or maybe t-shirt.