I was over on Sonlight's Facebook page and the ad caught my eye:
Facebook Advertising
'I didn't know we were advertising on Facebook,' was my first thought.
'I need to grab an image of that for my blog,' was my second thought.
Yes: If you haven't become a fan of Sonlight on Facebook yet, you should. I mean, seriously! Do you see who else is a fan of Sonlight in the ad above? That's right... Luke A. Holzmann himself. If that doesn't bring in oodles of people, nothing will. <smile>
Advertising is such an odd thing. I really like good ads, but I mostly despise marketing. Not because I don't believe in helping people find things that will help them, but because most marketing I encounter isn't about that. Just listen to marketing "gurus" and you too can begin to feel sick every time you think of advertising. In fact, except for the Superbowl--where the only reasons to watch are the food at the parties and the commercials--we've trained ourselves to tune out advertising.
So what if a company suddenly stopped marketing to people?
Would we find what we need and those little things that bless our lives and are well worth the dollars we spend on them? Would we just be inundated with other messages and end up purchasing something that wasn't as good of a fit for us? How would the word be spread about something that was super important if we no longer marketed?
Word of mouth carried Sonlight for many years, but then others started to run with our idea. Suddenly it became important to remind people that Sonlight exists, is excellent, and offers your family something stupendous that others--even direct knock-offs--don't even come close to matching!
But... yuck! Doesn't that just reek of "marketing"?
Sonlight's position on marketing is that marketing is about "customer-ing" instead of making money. We want to help people who will be blessed by Sonlight to try us out. And that's why I absolutely love Sonlight's Rewards program. For the first time we can thank you for sharing your love of Sonlight with others. I know I tend to hear about the greatest things from friends. But they tend to hear it from someone else, who heard it from someone who saw an ad, an article or a blog post about it.
So: Spread the word!
~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Surrogate Father
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