…when there’s a plausible reason.
Walking around the City yesterday, I noticed an interesting piece of copywriting in a display ad for Kellogg’s “Special K”.
Now, at the beginning of the year many people make new resolutions to lose weight or get fit.
And Kellogg’s take advantage of this in their advertising at the beginning of the year (they have a Special K “2 Week Challenge”, for example).
But, of course, most people’s resolutions rarely last beyond the first week of the year.
So, I thought it was a clever piece of copywriting from Kellogg to use the headline…
“It’s not too late to make a New Year resolution!”
…in the display ad for Special K that I noticed.
Because, around this time I would guess that many people are thinking “Oh well, I’ve blown it” and perhaps feeling a little guilty.
But this gentle reminder (after all, we’re not too far into the year) could well nudge a few people to take action.
It extends the life of Kellogg’s New Year promotion.
And, it also kind of “lets people off the hook” a little if they haven’t (yet) followed through on a resolution.
You’re giving people a second chance.
You could use this idea to extend many New Year promotions.
More generally, if there’s a valid reason for giving people another opportunity (please, avoid the cheesy “Our server crashed, so we’re extending the offer” nonsense…unless your server really did crash!) then it’s always worth doing so in my experience.
Just make sure you don’t disadvantage your clients who already took up your offer (people hate it if they think someone else got a better deal).