Sitting here, standing here, pacing here… trying to come up
with a fresh story for a product that is not new, not needed and, truthfully,
cannot work as claimed by the manufacturer.
The marketer's dilemma in a nutshell.
This product will fail: 25 years experience and basic common
sense tell me. Still, I am reluctant to express my severely negative doubts.
Isn’t the American Way to push ahead and give it your best shot, damn the torpedoes and all that
Dr. Phil kind of stuff?
I can hear the client’s responses: “Oh, so you CAN’T do it,”
or “I thought you were a CREATIVE writer,” or “you only want to work on
products that are a slam dunk,” and best of all, “this may look like just
another acne cream but this one REALLY WORKS!”
I’m not clairvoyant… and I’ve read enough about quantum
mechanics to know that all we can offer are probabilities, not certainties… the
wave function hasn’t collapsed… the electron is probably here but not definitely here… using Planck's Constant, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and the FTC's penchant for discouraging false advertising, I put the probability of this product succeeding at 1 in 1,000.
Life’s too short and writing talent too fickle to risk either
on something that’s very, very likely to fail; yet part of me wants to give it
a try: like taking a barrel over Niagara Falls for the pure hell of it.
“This product will change your life!”
Ahhhhhhhh, it’s coming now….
“The first and only acne cream specifically formulated to give you a smoother, clearer, sexier complexion…”
Yes, the end is in sight… but the end of what?
