The Leftorium
As a regular watcher of the Simpsons, I was thinking about how marketing applies to one of the characters on the show.
For people who have no clue what I’m talking about, one of the characters on the Simpsons named Ned Flanders decides to give up his career as a pharmacist and open up a store just for left handed people. He named this store “The Leftorium”.
There was obviously some STP in this decision. He segmented his market down to his geographic area firstly which was the town of Springfield. Even further down, there was a very specific group of people that he had in mind as his target market. Seeing as how only 10% of the world is left handed, there was a very specific need that Ned was addressing with this idea for a store.
To Ned’s surprise, there was more of a need for this store than he thought. There were many cases where people wish they had a product suited for left handed people from scissors to can openers. These customers were more than happy to buy products from Ned because of the value that they were getting.
Ned did a good job of identifying a need, marketing through word of mouth, and providing value to customers. This just goes to show that marketing truly is everywhere, even in your favorite cartoon.