Social Media (and Life) Win: OshKosh B’gosh

Here is a little heartwarming social media win for the holidays. (Hat tip to Lanie Sewell for sharing this with me.)

OskKosh B’gosh hired an agency to get talent for their holiday ad sets. Seems pretty innocuous, right? The Nash family went to audition their child for the part. One of the unique things about the Nash family is that their son, Asher, has down syndrome.

The Nash family found out later that Asher was not selected for the shoot and reportedly was told that the agency was not told to look specifically for children with special needs. Ouch.

A facebook group called, Kids with Down Syndrome, caught wind of this and shared a post talking about Asher’s rejection and it went viral. 120k shares and 104k reactions on Facebook.

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Now to be clear and the Nash family pointed this out as well, it was not OshKosh rejecting the child it was the modeling agency. But OshKosh was still probably going to take the brunt of this as well because they are the big name associated with the story.

This shows the power of social media to connect people. In years passed a family would have just had to deal with the rejection and possibly have a small pool of support in their immediate family and community. In the social media era, 120 thousand people who are about this can get together and work for change

What was headed to be a social media loss for OskKosh turned into a win. OskKosh reached out to the Nash family and worked out a deal to feature Asher in their holiday campaigns. How great! They got a second round of press attention for featuring Asher and their post with him on facebook has been at least 5 times as popular as the average post on their page.

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This is also a win for humanity. Featuring children with conditions like Asher in media like this can help to show the world that Asher is just another kid with a big smile and hopes and dreams. I hope we can see more of his smiling face in future OskKosh campaigns!

The 4 P’s of Marketing: Place

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We have already talked about the three other P’s: product, price, and promotion. We come to the last P: place. Place has to do with the distribution of the product. Do you know how you are going to sell your product?

We live in probably the greatest time in human history to sell a product because there are so many places available! The internet has made the world more accessible to the unconnected, we no longer need the gate keepers. You no longer need to get Walmart to buy the product or GE to decide they want to buy your design. The internet has changed the game. If you are thinking about selling something here is a quick list of ideas to get started:

  1. Etsy: It’s an online craft market. Find an uncrowded product and start selling or just make yours better than everyone else. Here are some friends who are doing great on Etsy.
  2. Pop-Up Shop: Use an empty store front for a weekend or a week to sell your product. Use the internet to find like-minded people to come visit. If you are in Jackson, you know all about these folks. 
  3. Patreon: If you want to be a content creator, this is a great way to start getting paid. You could be cool of CGP Grey and make $15k per video.
  4. Kickstarter: Kickstarter can help you ensure people want to buy your product before you drop lots of capital into getting started.
  5. Facebook Page Sales: Make something? Post it on facebook and message back and forth for the transaction.
  6. Ecommerce Store: They are getting easier and easier to make and then your product is available to the whole world!
  7. Ebay: Already built in E-commerce store and traffic. Great place to start selling stuff.You do not need permission to start! The internet age has brought new places to sell your product right now.