By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an exercise to challenge your problem solving skills. Reading time: 2:45

You are the marketing director for a major producer of bath soap. Sales are lagging particularly among consumers with young children.

Research shows that children perceive that the bath soap will burn their eyes. Yet the facts are clear: the opposite is true.

Tests confirm that the soap will NOT burn their eyes. Yet the perception persists and sales continue to lag. What do you do to enhance sales of this bath soap particularly to consumers with young children?

You lead. Creatively. Just like Edward Bernays did in the 1920s to help
Procter & Gamble sell more bars of Ivory soap.

Bernays, the father of the public relations profession, donated large cakes of the soap to art schools in 1925 to use in sculpture competitions sponsored by Procter & Gamble.

Invariably young sculptors would inadvertently put their soap-covered fingers in their eyes. Then they personally discovered that the soap did not burn their eyes.

Soap sales for bath washing (and art) zoomed after that leadership decision to spike their creative problem-solving juice. Continue reading →