Pub. 6 2018 Issue 3

www.uba.org 12 W hat do bananas and baking soda have to do with bank marketing? I thought you would never ask. Let’s start with bananas… If I were to hold up a bunch of bananas and ask an audience what they are, most would probably agree they are bananas. But if I held up a green banana and asked the same audience how many would buy this particular banana, less than half would raise their hands. And if I held up a banana that had already turned dark, even fewer would probably want to buy the banana. As you can see, we are not really selling bananas. We are selling banana skins. People buy bananas based on what the banana skin looks like. In light of this fact, a smart produce manager would market bananas in different ways, understanding that some people pre- fer ripe bananas, while others prefer green or darker bananas. Perhaps he could market the dark bananas alongside recipes for banana pudding and even place them next to the vanilla wafers. Maybe he could even add a headline like, “Ready for Grandma’s Banana Pudding?” He might market the green bananas to folks heading out on a vacation, with a headline like, “Traveling Bananas – they’ll be ripe when you get there!” A good marketer can take a product that many people think of as one thing and sell it in different ways. Now let’s talk about baking soda. This is a product that has been around for over a hundred years and there are thousands of ways to use it. A good marketer might list some of these many uses on the side of the package. You can brush your teeth with it, freshen your mouth, put it in cat litter to eliminate odors, clean pots and pans with it, eliminate odors in the refrigerator, use it as an antacid, polish silver with it, or even clean batteries. That’s how baking soda was marketed for years. BANANAS, BAKING SODA AND BANK MARKETING By Neal Reynolds, President, BankMarketingCenter.com