The Mall of America offers marketing insight

I brought my daughter and one of her best friends up to Minneapolis and the Mall of America.  I know, I know.  I keep telling you — I am dumber than I look!

For those of you who have not visited the nation’s largest mall, it has an amusement park of sorts right in the middle.  So while the girls were in line to go on a contraption designed to lodge their stomach in their throats, I was doing one of my favorite things, observing life as it meandered by. 

I found a bench where I could see the girls and do some people watching.  The bench happened to be right next to one of those "smash a penny" and imbed some picture on it for a souvenir.  I glanced and noticed that the penny memento would cost you 51 cents.  I shook my head, thinking they probably never have to empty out the cash box on that machine.  Who in the world would spend 50 cents to mutilate a penny, only to toss it into their underwear drawer when they got home?

I sat there for about 15 minutes.  In that span of time, 5 different sets of people gleefully got their penny souvenirs.  Shows you what I know!

What a great marketing reminder.  Just because we do or don’t like something does not mean our target audience feels the same way.  We must resist putting ourselves into the potential customers’ shoes.  Or, we can imagine that everyone is just like us AND accept the fact that we’re going to miss out on selling a lot of pennies!