A MARKETING LESSON FROM "THE WALTONS"

I am known to watch several episodes of The Waltons on Sunday afternoons when the show takes its turn in INSP network's Sunday marathon rotation. I wasn't really old enough to watch it when it aired weekly and I'm not sure I would've been interested had I been. But, now, I enjoy watching and reading about times of long ago and with John Boy being a writer, I can relate to his character.

But the last time I watched, I also got a lesson in marketing. Elizabeth and her friend set up a lemonade stand outside of Godsey's General Store. They offered pink lemonade and regular, yellow lemonade for the same price: 5 cents per glass. But neither sold well.

Then Grandpa Zeb had an idea. He lowered the price of the pink lemonade and deemed it only for women and children. He then added a bit of the "recipe" to the yellow lemonade. He also set about letting people know about the special lemonade for men. Of course, after that, the kids could barely keep up with production; the yellow lemonade drained out almost as fast as they could pour it.

This is a great demonstration of how things need to work together in marketing to make a product successful. It sometimes takes some experimenting and tweaking. In this case, it was the product that needed the most revision. Once that was done and a few people learned about the delicious yellow lemonade, word spread and sales took off.

It's amazing what you can learn (or reinforce what you've already learned) just by watching old time TV on Sunday afternoons...

May all your lemons be made into special-"recipe" spiked lemonade!

-The Wordsy Woman