| |
In the
Media
Scary
Stories
Appeared in Today's Image, October 2003
Urban tanning myths can be business killers, but a proactive
approach can stop them cold.
By
Julie Sturgeon
Halloween is coming—has your tanning salon been
inundated by graveyard stories of urban tanning myth victims? We’re
talking about profit-destroying tales that just won’t die, like the old
chestnut that Procter & Gamble gives its money to the devil, or that
Neiman Marcus evilly charged some poor restaurant patron $500 for a cookie
recipe.
“You almost never hear an urban myth about something
good—that isn’t interesting,” says Maura Schreier-Fleming, president of
Dallas-based Best@Selling. “It’s always something bizarre or unusual that
piques the imagination. Most people are born gossips. We love to hear
stories about other people or situations—even more so if those stories are
slightly dangerous or bad.”
The problem is, which goofy idea about
tanning that you hear today will be tomorrow’s Internet e-mail that has
everyone gasping and hitting the “forward” button? Often, you won’t be
able to tell the difference until it reaches those dangerous global
proportions, Schreier-Fleming admits. The only way to keep these myths
from scaring your clients is to examine them in the clear light of day and
expose them for the tall tales they are.
Submitted
for your approval is a gallery of some of today’s most prevalent urban
tanning myths, as well as some real strategies for dealing with
them.
This article
first appeared in Today’s Image, October 2003.
|
|
