Truth is stranger than fiction

[Kasept]

When I was doing a lot of sales and marketing work, I had to do a presentation for a tech product. It was in front of a group and I had to get them excited about how to sell a boring slide projector. Here's what I said:

"Technology is a glittering lure. But, there is the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product. My first job, I was in-house at a fur company, with this old-pro copywriter, a Greek named Teddy. Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is new. Creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of calamine lotion."

At this point, they seemed intrigued, so I began including slides of sweet and oddly sad scenes of my life in the presentation...

"Teddy talked about a deeper bond with the product. Nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound”. It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards, takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel. It’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels. Round and around, and back home again. To a place where we know we are loved."

I got the sale.