To find truly creative marketing hooks, one needs to look no further than a TV home shopping channel. I’ve always thought that content writers should have to take a class specifically in the home-shopping brand of content creation: packed with imaginative wordplay and endless ideas on function.
I can think of few other examples where so much creativity goes into describing an item’s usefulness — real or created — on multiple levels. With their clothing alone, you hear phrases like transition piece, layering piece and slouchy but not sloppy a lot. You’re encouraged to up your cardigan game. The goal is effortless elegance, duh.
Two segments I watched recently involved some fairly nondescript woven tunics for women and a cross-body type of purse.
The tunics didn’t come in colors, they came in “color stories,” of urban grey, heather fog and heather lemongrass “which really live in the olive family.” It lives there. So that’s where you would forward its mail.
The tunics were billed as wardrobe essentials, naturally. You can tuck it in the front because it’s so sophisticated (their words). You can “zhush” it, or loosely push up the sleeves. “Everyone has to look elegant 24/7 because of Instagram” — they actually said that. Get onboard.
The host and designer’s descriptions of the purse, though, were truly impressive.
It was a little purse with a strap. That’s all.
It comes in colors which include rose gold, not just gold. And a shade of grey “because we’ve been talking so much about the importance of grey” — not the presidential elections or poverty or childhood violence. The designer takes you through the various pockets, how they can hold things like passports, because you’re a jetsetter like that. They show how you can remove the strap and use it as a clutch. And it doesn’t even need to be a purse. Use it as a wallet. That’s right, a wallet. You put the small bag in a big bag and suddenly, it’s a wallet.
From a marketing standpoint, tuning in to home-shopping channels is to witness poetry in motion.
Just like that fully fashioned top, sleek leggings and wearable heel-height boot you’re rocking.