The Marketing Agency Talk

Halloween just past. Thanksgiving is a few weeks away. Christmas is just next month. The is the time of the year where you will accumulate enough debts to make you think you should get hold of some loans in January to pay off the mounting interests.

Like I said, don’t blame us folks in the advertising industry for creating the wonderful window displays, the moving commercials on the television or those beautifully printed brochure to entice you to buy, buy, buy. It’s our job to highlight the USPs of our clients so that they can differentiate from their competitors. If we could not do that, we would be out of jobs.

You don’t have to fall into the pit hole just because you have a penchant for shopping and your shopping list has more than 50 names. You just got to exercise some rationality here. Most shoppers buy with emotion and then justify with reasons later. By then, it is already too late. They had overspent. Many shoppers were enticed by the promotional message sof “buy one get one free” or “25% less when you buy 3″. They thought they were saving money. They were wrong. They were being baited to spend more. It’s not how much you save, it’s about how much you should spend. If you planned to get a nice shawl for Aunt Mary, get that one shawl. Walk away from the smiling sales consultant who is cajoling you to “buy two to get one free gift”. Unless you happened to have another Aunt Jane and Aunt Joan to give shawls to, don’t buy. You might just find those two shawls in your cupboard next Christmas!

Just because Christmas presents are usually small and affordable items do not mean that you should spent less time planning. You should plan what to spend and how to spend on small items like you do to the big ticket items, for example, the mortgages for your house and car. You will take time to check out the several banks to compare their fees and interests before you signed on the dotted line. You should do the same for your Christmas shopping. Check out the advertisements - whether online or off-line for the best bargain. A bargain is getting what you want at a price you are willing to pay for it - not a cent more.

Another trick is to keep your credit cards at home. It’s much, much harder to spend cold, hard cash. When you take out the bills from your wallet and start counting them, your rational mind will kick in and give you a smack. Your will probably put back some notes. If you really, really cannot do without credit cards, just bring one and bring that particular one with the lowest credit limit.

Christmas shopping should be a happy occasion. It should not be one that bring tears later.

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