When I fall for great marketing and advertising, I try to understand what it was that got me to buy a product or service especially when it would normally not appeal to me. Being in the web design and SEO industry, it is essential for my success that I constantly think strategically about marketing form, function and copy so that I can help our clients to prosper. Call me selfish, but I really only try to help them because I just do not want to hear a customer complain; it is apparently bad for your health to listen to someone share their dissatisfaction with you.

Since having happy clients keeps me happy, I make a concerted effort to make sure that the marketing solutions I share and implement are positively affecting their bottom lines. Sometimes my ideas come from the boring videos I watch online, or they may come from direct life experiences, which is what happened to me quite recently during a visit to Starbuck’s. 

After my recent trip to Starbuck’s, I was amazed they were able to capitalize on my love for autumn. Not only did their fall-themed drink menu get my money to just “fall” out of my wallet, but they were able to convince me that I absolutely loved a coffee beverage that I had never even tried before!  When I saw the sign for their fall Pumpkin Spiced Latte, it miraculously triggered my ingrained love for the colors, comfort and nostalgia that I associate with the season.

Upon walking into my local Starbuck’s I immediately had to have the pumpkin Spiced Latte; I was so excited that I ordered a large.  Even though I now live in Los Angeles, where there the leaves do not change color and it never rains, this latte brought me back to great memories of corn mazes, apple picking, pumpkin patches of my childhood in upstate New York and the beautiful New England campuses where I attended college and graduate school. At this point in my story you are probably expecting me to say that I loved the drink and that I wished I could order it all year round. Fortunately for my wallet that is not the case—the drink was far too sweet for me to drink more than a quarter of it and I am pretty sure there was no caffeine in it either, which is why I go to Starbuck’s in the first place. Although I didn’t drink most of the sugar high concoction, when I went to the Starbuck’s website today, I realized that I still wanted to drink that latte and probably would “need” to get a pumpkin muffin to go with it! 

Whoever is doing the fall advertising campaign for Starbuck’s understands how to use the law of scarcity to create a want or even a need in a customer for an overpriced product that will increase his or her jean size over time. We cannot get pumpkin drinks all year round, and if we could they might not seem so special. We all love a little change in our lives even when we don’t have actual seasons to mark these changes in our external world. It is autumn (as I know it) only in the stores in Southern California and on websites out here, but I somehow am able to be convinced that I need some pumpkin and spice to stay warm on an 80-degree morning.

The lesson to be learned from my experience is that businesses need to be using the law of scarcity and the appeal of home and nostalgia to be selling their products or services. If you are selling meatloaf, by all means show a picture of a grandma making it by a stove surrounded by really cute toddlers. Then, offer a discount on it for a limited period of time, whether it is a sale to celebrate the full moon, customer appreciation day, or a seasonal discount, you increase the appeal of your meatloaf by making the deal look too good to be missed and by taking your client down memory lane.