Lindsey’s Daily Deal: Order Seltzer—Get Salsa, Year 2137 and Violet Beauregarde’s Dream Gum

By Lindsey Campbell, Captains of Industry

Hey Captains’ readers,

Here’s your Wednesday Deal:

1. They order seltzer, but get salsa

Even if you’ve never battled a soup Nazi, determined if someone is sponge worthy, or dealt with a broccoli-hating arch nemesis like Newman, almost everyone has at least felt as though they’ve lived through their own real-life Seinfeld episode. In fact, Carlos Hidalgo of MarketingProfs thought he was in Season 4’s “The Script” just the other day. In the episode, Jerry and George discuss how difficult it must be for a Spanish speaking person to order seltzer because their accent would make the word sound like “salsa.” So any time they ask for seltzer, they’d get salsa. Very infuriating. However, Hidalgo explains that the same problem happens everyday with marketers and sales people. Why? Because when marketers say “sales lead,” the sales people hear something completely different and vice versa. In fact, both groups struggle so much with their communication with one another that they not only waste their own valuable time, but precious sales leads as well. Unfortunately for us real-life people, we can’t solve this problem in 30 minutes like Jerry and the gang, but Hidalgo suggests a great place to start is by clearly defining the stages of a buyer’s journey so that marketing and sales professionals alike can ensure that they don’t waste their marketing budget by ignoring potential leads. All it’ll take is a sit down or two to hash out what words like: Response, Valid Response, Marketing Qualified Lead, Sales Accepted Lead, Sales Qualified Lead, Closed Deal and Customer, mean to your company. This way, when you order seltzer, you get seltzer. Or no soup for you!

2. Year 2137

According to straight-laced Onion News Network correspondent, Baratunde Thurston, in the year 2137, our news won’t involve social media like it does today. Mostly because journalists and correspondents will figure out that our news organizations should really be run in a one-way conversation-type manner. This means that journalists will have to dig for the answers themselves rather than asking the public what should be done about the world’s problems and major disasters. Eh, I think what Thurston is trying to say in his oh-so-subtle Onion-like fashion, is that there’s a place for social media, but the news isn’t it. Oh, and the “burn down” that Thurston discovered from future news broadcasts blows up most news stations and many various species, well, except for a few feral humans and cats. So we don’t really have to worry about all of this anyway. Whew.

3. Stride tries to make Violet Beauregarde’s dream come true

We all know Violet from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s was completely obsessed with chewing gum—in fact, she held the world record. And when Violet visited Willy Wonka’s candy factory back in 1971, she thought she hit the jackpot when she discovered Wonka had invented a gum that contains an entire three-course dinner: tomato soup, roast beef and blueberry pie. But rather than heading his warning that the gum was not yet ready for human consumption, she popped the gum in her mouth, and started chewing. And it wasn’t long until Violet turned, well, violet.

After she was properly juiced back to her normal proportions, we can only assume that Violet continues to chew with the best of ‘em. And if her chompers are up for it, Stride recently released a new gum called Shift that changes from one flavor to another while chewing—very similar to Wonka’s idea. But, unlike Wonka’s gum, no one will turn into a blueberry and have to be rolled away by a pair of Oompa Loompas. However, after watching the latest Stride Shift commercial, complete with mental breakdowns and throwing pitchers of water on people, chewing Stride gum seems a bit scarier  than turning into a human blueberry. If that’s possible.

I don’t like the look of it.

Oompa Loompa Doompadee Do,

Captain Lindsey