“I’ll tell you what brilliance in advertising is: 99 cents. Somebody thought of that.” ~ Roger Sterling – Mad Men
Dear subscriber,
Below are a few little-known facts about the number 99 I bet you didn’t know.
*The atomic number for Einsteinium is 99. Named after Albert Einstein.
*According to Rolling Stone, when recording his hit single “1999,” Prince would go all day and all night without rest, turning down food for fear that it would make him sleepy! (He was one weird cat, eh?)
*The only number retired league-wide in the National Hockey League is 99, in honor of Wayne Gretzky. (Respect)
*Joan Rivers had 99 Facelifts (maybe more)
*Jay Z has 99 problems and a bitch ain’t one (I think Beyonce’s sister would beg to differ)
*Jay Z was inspired to write his 99 problems song after reading the following Ben Franklin quote: “I hath ninety-nine difficulties but nary a wench among them.”
*Papa Maverick has ninety-nine problems but a pitch ain’t one.
Okay, dear subscriber, back to Roger Sterling’s quote.
Yes, indeed, the “99 cents” pricing strategy is brilliant, and the guy who thought of it must have been an expert in economic psychology, right? Not the case. In fact, the guy who came up with that clever pricing strategy discovered it almost by dumb luck.
Here’s the story:
In the early 1960s, a dude named Dave Gold owned a tiny liquor store in downtown Los Angeles that wasn’t doing so goodly. One day, after consuming a liquid lunch and when business was so quiet you could hear a rat pissing on cotton, Dave was kicking around an empty can around his store while desperately trying to come up with a plan to ignite some business. And that’s when he got the crazy idea to set the price of all his bottles of wine at a fixed price of 99 cents.
And he did.
And… to Dave Gold’s great surprise…
… The Bottles of Wine Disappeared Faster Than a
Pack of Smokes at an AA Meeting!
Dave Gold had unwittingly stumbled upon a quirk in human psychology:
When people see the number 99 on a price tag, they round down, not up!
For example, people subconsciously see $3.99 as $3 and not $4.
“Whenever I’d put wine or cheese on sale for $1.02 or 98 cents, it never sold out,” Gold said once in an interview. “When I put a 99 cent sign on anything, it was gone in no time. I realized it was a magic number.
Yup, Dave Gold was so impressed by this “99 cents” pricing strategy that he started opening up stores that only sold items at 99 cents, and thus creating the now popular 99 Cents Only Store retail chain.
The lesson here?
There are three:
(1) Business owners don’t experiment enough. You don’t. I don’t. Nobody does. We’re all playing it too safe. We are too scared (some more than others) to try unconventional methods because we are attached to conventional wisdom and best practices like phony on Jimmy Fallon. Best practices and conventional wisdom are to the business owner what a teddy bear and a bedtime story are to a child – comforting.
When’s the last time you tried doing something different in your business?
(2) Become a student of human behavior and psychology. I know I keep banging on about this, but dammit, that’s where you will get your biggest breakthroughs in the sales and marketing game.
If you have a strong understanding of why people do what they do, then you won’t have to guess as to how people will respond to your communications, you’ll know. Generally speaking, of course.
(3) If you find something that works, take a leaf out of Dave Gold’s 99 cent book and…
… Milk It For All Its Worth
And Then Some!
How long should you exploit a winning technique or method or product? You should keep exploiting that sucker until the sun burns out or until whatever it is you’re exploiting stops working.
Okay, there’s a grocery cart full of food for thought there.
Now, before you beat feet, if you feel like you need to whip your copywriting chops into shape, then you might want to mosey on down here: https://kelvindorsey.com/5-hour-copy-course/
Your friend,
Kelvin
EmailMarketing Maverick
