Notes

Attitude/Buyer

Joe ate a cheese stick and left for his third week of work at FertilizeTek Industries. It was a large company--Joe was always amazed that, at least at one time, there was such a demand for fertilizer. And not only fertilizer in general, but different KINDS of fertilizer: the FertilizeTek scientists had created over 300 types to date. Joe's job was to sell all that crap. He was an MIT marketing and economics major fresh out of undergrad school, and likely could have worked anywhere in the world, but FertilizeTek had offered him a ridiculous salary that he simply couldn't refuse. In the last year the company had dramatically bulked up their marketing department in a desperate attempt to save the company. In Joe, all the company's hope and money was vested. Was Joe burdened by this? Certainly. He started his car and arrived at his desk two minutes early.

In the last two weeks, Joe had simply spent his time taking in the sights and, more importantly, smells of the work environment. The offices were only twenty minutes away from the main production site, so he frequently made trips to and fro. Like most marketing majors, Joe knew that to sell a product, a marketer's ultimate goal, one had to understand the buyer's experience. But as an avant-garde economics philosopher, Joe believed that one needed to understand the buyer completely. He was in the process of integrating AI technology to accomplish this. Unfortunately, his bosses wanted to see results. He had a meeting in two minutes.

"Joe, the simple reality is that you haven't helped sales. In fact, sales have gone down even quicker when you got here, because we moved money from shipping to marketing to accommodate your enormous salary."
"Sir, I have just started to work on my program. I just haven't completed it yet. It involves assessing buyer attitudes."
Mr. Tree, the boss, thought this sounded scientific, and decided he would give Joe another couple weeks to sort out his marketing plan. Unbeknownst to him, Joe had no concrete idea of what this would entail and had largely made up the terminology. Nevertheless, The due date loomed, and the clock was ticking.

Two weeks later, Mr. Tree woke up on the Sunday before Joe's plan was due. He ate breakfast, and, as normal, went out to get the mail. He shuffled through it and almost threw it away, but the last card in the batch caught his attention. It was a picture of him. He chucked the rest and walked absentmindedly inside, reading the advertisement. He appeared to be relaxing in a mound of fertilizer. Type AA5, to be exact: Mr. Tree knew the type perfectly well, because her designed it. It was his signature blend of Elephant poop and Birch tree bark. Sure enough, the card title was "FertilizeTek: the PERSONAL fertilizer company." A little bit below the card was a description: "Frederick Tree, you have been assessed to be a dull witted man, generally slow of thought and speed in general, and your gardens are rather sparse but feature large foliage. Try Fertilizer type AA5. It's the one for you. And if you don't like it, return it for all your money back." Mr. Tree was flabbergasted. He ran to his computer and checked his mail: thousands of new messages. The sales account was exploding. He looked out the window: trucks were already on the street, dumping various fertilizers in people's yards. He looked back on his computer, and one specific email caught his attention. It was from Joe. It said one thing: "So, what do you think about the new buyer attitude assessment sales plan?"