I dislike reality shows. I mean I passionately dislike them. If every reality show on tv went off the air I would consider that a good thing. And yet today as I was going through my daily blog reading I came across mention of Joel Comm’s The Next Internet Millionaire enough times that I had to watch and give it a chance. It’s an hour (50+ minutes) I could have spent doing something else. Did I mention I dislike reality tv. I dislike it just as much online as I do offline.
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What? Me mention something about Marketing Pilgrim’s SEO Scholarship Contest? I’ve done it before and I’m doing it again.

Andy Beal has collected all the essays from the two contests, edited them a bit, and put them all together in a free internet marketing ebook you can download.
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Don’t say the old lady screamed-bring her on and let her scream.
— Mark Twain

Mark Twain didn’t know it when he uttered the quote above, but his quote is the essence of what I was trying to get at the other day with my post about telling a romantic story to sell lingerie. Show, don’t tell. Instead of simply telling a visitor that your lingerie will make her feel sexy and turn up the romance in her relationship, create that experience for her on your site. If your site can create an atmosphere of romance and make her feel sexy she’s going to associate that feeling with your lingerie, which is the story she wants to hear.
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The reason all successful marketers tell stories is that consumers insist on it. Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story.
-Seth Godin from “All Marketers Are Liars“

Last week while trying to help someone with their site in a thread on Webmaster-Talk I started thinking about how telling a good story, the right story, leads to more sales. The site in question sells lingerie and as myself, the thread starter, and several other members of the forum began the usual back and forth I began to think what I would do if the site were mine. And what I would do is sell a story about romance.
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I believe subliminal advertising works, but does it really work this well?

I think we all make seemingly conscious decisions that we can’t explain and often the explanations reside in our subconscious mind. I think we all can be affected by images we come in contact with, but never consciously perceive. I think it operates in much the same way that advertisers hope we’ll associate a specific brand with a catchy jingle or how by seeing an ad over and over again we’ll eventually buy a product even if we haven’t seen that ad in quite some time.

But really, does it work anywhere as well as it does in this video? I’m thinking no.
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