Advertising Vet Vs. School Candy Sale

Sign I made to help sell candy for my son's school candy sale

As a kid I always hated the annual candy bar sale to raise money for the school. This was back in the day when it was still considered relatively safe for kids to walk without parental escort door to door to sell their candy. I was such an introvert this was akin to torture.

So, now a few decades later and my kids have to sell candy. I would no more send them door-to-door than I’d let them play with a rattlesnake loose in the house. So, what’s a kid to do? Well, they can hit up family and friends, or try to sell them at church but every kid does that so there’s “candy fatigue” if yours is not the first school out of the gate with the candy sale.

So, I end up taking the candy to work to sell. Here I am doing something I swore I’d never do again. I’m not as shy as I once was and I know that people at work get “hit up” for buying fundraising stuff almost as the people at church do.

So, being the veteran advertising/marketing designer/copywriter I am. I created a simple but very effective advertisement to help sell my son’s candy bars. I used some of the oldest tricks in the advertising repertoire: kids and playing on people’s emotions so they’re not simply buying 2nd rate candy but purchasing an emotion — in this case guilt.

The accompanying photo is my “ad” placed next to the candy bar box on our department’s common-use table.

Not too brag, but it was one of our best sales to date. If I can sell second rate candy to people trying to watch their weight, think of what I can do for you — especially if I put design with the copy I write.