"That's a very acute and concise summation of the situation, Katie," Merlin said.
"Okay, good. Thanks. Well, anyway, until you've got a way to stop the less pleasant effects of what he's doing, it seems to me that what you need to do is get people to choose your spells over his."
They all looked at one another and nodded. Merlin and Owen both smiled. "How do we do that?" one of the others asked me.
"Have you ever tried marketing?" Most of them looked blank, but one of the men grinned.
"Marketing is basically letting people know what you have to sell and getting that product to the right people," he said.
Merlin still looked blank, but he was new to this century. "Surely you've seen ads," I said. "Have you ever watched TV?"
Faces lit up all the way around the table, and I could see comprehension dawning in their eyes. "Those ads tell you why you're better off buying this car or shampoo or soap than you would be if you bought the other kind. That's based on market research, which is finding out what your customers are like—what do they need, what concerns them, what do they prefer? Then you create an ad that addresses those things, letting your customers know that what you're offering them is exactly whatthey need,
that it will solve their problems, and that you're the only one who can do so."
"So we tell our customers why they should choose our spells?" Merlin asked. He looked like a little kid who's just figured out how the multiplication table works and can't wait to multiply everything in sight. If I wasn't careful, MSI would be running a Super Bowl ad soon.
"Exactly! You might not want to come right out and say that your competitor is evil and his spells will do harm, but you do want to let people know why what you're selling is their best bet."
"If we can put a big dent in his sales, make it harder for him to get his spells into the market, we may be able to buy enough time to come up with a counterspell," Owen mused. "I like it. Great idea, Katie."
"So, we'll try marketing," Merlin said, rubbing his hands together. "How do we do that?"
"Let me guess, you don't have a marketing department," I said. Of course they didn't, not if I'd had to define the concept of marketing for them. "How have you made sales in the past? How have you let customers know what's available?"
They all looked at one another. "We have a sales department," the man who'd defined marketing said. He looked like a sales guy, not the kind wearing a plaid sport coat, but the kind who could convince someone to spend several thousand dollars on a diamond ring because otherwise they wouldn't be investing properly in their relationship. He was as good-looking as Owen, but in a slick, plastic way that I didn't find attractive. Come to think of it, he looked like a Ken doll brought to life. At this
company, I wouldn't rule out the possibility. "The salesbeings work with the retailers to let them know what we have available, and the retailers let their customers know.
There's been no alternative to our commercially produced spells, so we haven't needed to do much in the way of marketing."
"Not on a widespread level," Owen added. "There are a few niche products, and there's always been kitchen witchery, homemade spells people develop to suit their individual needs, but for centuries magical people have known that MSI spells are the best way to go. We take care of all that necessary and sometimes messy and dangerous trial and error."
"Could you do this marketing for us, Katie?" Merlin asked.
Oh boy. Now I was in over my head. I'd been responsible for marketing the family store, but even in our worst crises with competition, that had amounted to putting ads in the local weekly paper and mailing the occasional flyer to our customer list.
My job as a corporate marketing assistant had taught me very little aside from the process of getting brochures produced. But I had taken some marketing courses for my degree, and it seemed I was better qualified than anyone else in this crazy company. Magic immunity or not, I appeared to have my own brand of sorcery.
Maybe I wasn't so far out of Owen's league after all.
"I guess so," I said. "It's not going to be a major campaign, but anything is better than what you have—or haven't—been doing up to this point. The way I see it, the main thing you'll want to get across is what Owen said, that you've been the source for spells for centuries. How can anyone else compare? You can brag about how safe your spells are, and how they're extensively tested for effectiveness. Get in a subtle message that no newcomer can offer that, so naturally everyone will want to go with the tried-and-true provider instead of the upstart."