Free! Sex! Money! Sale!

Today is Auntie Day again.  That meant a trip down to Orchard Road and some shopping around again.  This was a rather ‘fruitful’ trip as Mango was having an ‘up to 50% off Sale’.  Now those words really excited me!  I went to not one, but two Mango stores and let’s just say, I bought quite a number of mangoes.  One excuse that I gave myself was – hey, Spain won Euro 2008, so why not get some Spanish fashion to celebrate with them?

Then I had a thought - if those few words 50% off, Sale hadn’t caught my eye, I wouldn’t have stepped into the store in the first place, Euro 2008 champion or not.  Am I a cheapskate?  Maybe, but retailers are smart people, they know how to attract consumers like me.

It also got me thinking about which words excite what kind of people.  I would think the number one word that gets most adult (and teenager) attention is the word SEX.   Just look at the covers of men’s and women’s magazines and see how many of them have the word Sex on their covers.  Does sex really sell?  I suppose so; else you wouldn’t see the word so often on the covers of these magazines.

I suppose men and women are excited by different words or phrases.  And some words, like SEX and MONEY, probably have universal appeal.

As far as I know, Big Guy for one, gets excited when anyone mentions Liverpool (FC), England (in the context of football), F1 racing and other sports that he does not do; but keep tabs on like the police would keep tabs on a suspect. 

And men being men, will probably get excited at words like naked, nude and other words that connote the same meaning.

Little Guy, who is still learning how to read, gets excited when he sees Toys ‘R’ Us in print.  He probably recognizes it as a picture or a graphic, if you know what I mean.

One word that always gets people’s antennae up is FREE!  I know that, as I’ve given away things before by listing them as FREE! .  The e-mails come in within minutes for such free items, compared to one or two, or sometimes none (for days), for items that I put on sale.  I’ve also read about frenzied people queuing or fighting over free stuff.

So can you imagine what FREE SEX! could cause?