Smart marketers work hard to give customers timely satisfaction or create new demand. With igloos. Many igloos.
Igloo, igloo, igloo. Funny word if you type it a lot.
Igloos are popping up like honeycomb mushrooms on rooftops, in Treasury Gardens for White Night Reimagined, in bars and I'm sure in one or two living rooms. What has happened? Who is doing the PR for Igloos R Us? They are doing a great job.
Before we get into my profound and useless thoughts on the igloo matter, I need to share a little secret. I'm currently watching a little bit too much YouTube. Like a lot too much. Many of the people I watch like Jenna Marbles are masters of being silly (yet her least performing videos garner more views than last year's AFL Grand Final).
But some of the secret videos, the ones I haven't told anyone I watch includes spending loads of time watching videos from various Mormon Home Schooling Home Makers with Many Children. I virtually clean their houses with them, I grocery shop with them, we do 17 loads of laundry together and OH BOY do I love it when we cook and freeze 50 dinners together.
I'm also into extreme couponers, dumpster divers, gun totin' Trump lovers (I'm trying to understand), and if I want to torture myself and need some misophonia fuelled energy, I'll watch a mukbang or two. Sidenote: did you know mukbangs are such a big thing now that W Hotels have launched a special mukbang room? It comes with a Sip 'n' Slurp menu, lighting and a microphone stand so you can livestream yourself eating.
Anyhoo back to the Mormon Moms. The point I want to make is that someone told these ladies that it's absolutely mandatory, like "yea-shall-be-banished-from-your-LDS chapter-unless-you-do-this" type mandatory to decorate one's home inside and out for every season and every major holiday.
In droves they head to Walmart, Home Depot and (cue angel's playing trumpets music) The Dollar Store to fill their carts high with seasonal decorations. At the end of each season they pack it all away storage tubs and lovingly label them things like "Fall transition but not quite Halloween" and stash them in their vast basements. However Marie Kondo has become a thing, and I now fear the tips and landfill plots of America are festooned with a joyful vomit of tinsel, sunflowers, 4th of July buttons, faux cobwebs and Ho Ho Ho signs.
Full disclosure: I don't even put up a Christmas tree - I think it's dumb; we don't have fir trees in Australia and it's not snowy. One year I spray painted a dead gum branch with some silver paint and stuck in an ancient Dutch gin bottle. But they were happier times.
Before we pooh pooh this frivolity too much, the seasonal home chachki market is predicted to generate US$26 billion dollars in revenue this year - with an average growth of 2.3% from 2014, which is above the average per capita income growth.
A market has been born.
So what are we doing to create a market or established a marketing platform in Australia? Enter the Igloo Renaissance.
Never shy to embrace a trend, the How Comms team visited the Fed Square Winter Village in Melbourne and enjoyed our time in an igloo. We even vlogged on it. like MF YouTube professionals.
My incredibly talented colleague Doris Li points out that winter in Australia is the peak travel period for Chinese people and they are increasingly wanting unique and fabulous experiences to enjoy.
So to the marketers of Australia I ask "what kind of market can we create?" How can we keep creating new and fabulous experiences that excite and inspire both locals and visitors?
Let's all gather in an igloo and brainstorm.