How are you using your own products to establish credibility?

Most people call it walking the talk. However your express it, one way companies establish credibility is by showing that they believe in their products enough to use them themselves. In fact, one of the problems that many companies have is that they know much more about how to make their products than they do about how they work in the real world.

Below, you’ll find a short video of Richard Davis founder of Second Chance. Richard goes to extremes to establish credibility for his company and the bullet-proof vests they manufacture. Do not try this at home:

Using bullets to establish credibility has been bubbling up in popular culture for some time. Perhaps you’ll recall Johnny Knoxville’s Jackass stunt with which he proved he was the biggest jackass of them all:

Before either of the above two examples, there was an artist named Chris Burden who created an art piece in which a friend shot him in the arm …. he was not wearing a vest, nor was he shot with a bean bag. Chris stepped up the plate for a real bullet in the arm. The piece is called SHOOT:

Now just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that you should use bullets to establish your credibility. But, if these folks are willing to take a bullet for what they believe in, you should be able to make a serious commitment. If you’re a marketer, you should be using your own products and sharing stories about the experience. If you’re working with products that you don’t have a need for (let’s say you make pill bottles, but don’t have to take any medication) you should still use them to hold gum, toothpicks, usb drives, or something. Get every employee to use them for a week and tell that story!

I’ve talked about how many of the best marketing ideas come out of the arts, it’s because you’ve got to get creative. I’d love to hear stories about how you’ve been using your own product to establish credibility.

The other night I was drinking with a friend at a local bar, when I saw something that made me laugh because it was a clever example of a marketing tactic designed to fit perfectly into an existing behavioral pattern. I’m calling it the homeless cigarette service.

Quick Background

In the US, it’s illegal to sell cigarettes individually or in packs of less than 20. As an aside, I’ve read of some research that shows you can affect consumption rates simply by altering the number of cigarettes in a pack, or by selling them individually.

Social Smokers Want Cigarettes But Don’t Want To Buy Them

Smoking is prohibited inside bars in California so people who smoke stand in front to enjoy cigarettes. Following this, social smokers gravitate to the same area to “bum” cigarettes off the smokers who actually buy them. One consequence of this is that there is often an awkward moment when the social smoker comes outside and scans the sidewalk for a prospective donor.

The Opportunity Space

That awkward moment holds promise for the right service. In this case, a homeless man was sitting in front of the bar smoking and waiting for social smokers to come out. When they did, he’d simply offer them a cigarette for free. There would often already be someone smoking next to him who he’d given a cigarette.

Of course, you can imagine where this is going. Most of the people to whom he gave a cigarette ended up giving him a dollar before they went back into the bar. And because there was a steady stream of participants there was an established practice of giving him a dollar on the way back in.

Some Quick Math

I’m using some round numbers here, but you’ll get the idea. If the man pays $5 for the pack of cigarettes and gives away 15 out of the twenty in the pack and receives $15 in donations during this process, then he’s showing $10 of gross profit per pack. Or to put it another way, each cigarette costs a quarter which means that he’s got 66.6% gross margin. Now if he can go through a pack every hour for a period of four hours, then he’ll make $160 a night. Let’s assume he does this only on the three most popular nights, in which case he’ll make $480 a week, $1920 a month, or $23,040 a year. While this business is clearly not scalable, it seems like a pretty good gig if you’ve got zero overhead. And, if you consider that he could purchase cigarettes much more cheaply in bulk, and that he could work more nights a week, things start looking pretty rosy.

A Bit Of Psychology

Part of what I find fascinating about all this is the fact that the service is not just about distributing cigarettes to a specific community. The homeless man was successful because he was serving a psychological need. Consider the fact that many social smokers experience a feeling of guilt around even having a cigarette because many social smokers are really lapsed former smokers. Additionally, there may be some guilt around asking friends or strangers for something for free.

The unique conceit of the homeless cigarette service model is that it’s possible to satisfy those feelings of guilt by making a donation at the end of the experience. Further, there’s a sense of relief knowing that there is an established guilt free social order, or behavior, around the practice.. Finally, participants are giving money to a homeless person, which may make them feel good in and of itself. Conversely, for those people who are wary of giving money to homeless people, because they don’t think it’s an effective way of changing the system that drives homelessness, there’s a sense of permission because they’re receiving a service.