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I hardly know anything about the advertising business, but I'd be a fool if I didn't try to get in on all the money.

Searching for a product with a pent-up need for marketing, I settled on table salt, which is rarely advertised. Using the best of my ability, I devised a massive marketing campaign for salt, and after a couple of days' work in December 2004, I had a professional-looking brochure that described my campaign. Jozo brand salt is made by the company Akzo Nobel, so I sent the brochure to their offices in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and, for completeness, Japan. I added my actual company name and address, so they could see that it was a serious and legitimate offer.

Their only answer was persistent attempts to fax me from a strange foreign phone number during the oddest possible hours. Unfortunately - and I'm really heartbroken over this - I have no fax machine.

IF ONLY I'D HAD A FAX, I COULD HAVE BEEN RICH BEYOND MY WILDEST DREAMS!

Sad and disillusioned, I've decided to publish the contents of the brochure on the web; perhaps I can yet become wealthy if I'm discovered by one of Akzo Nobel's competitors.

SALT - A marketing campaign for the 21st century

Dear Sir/Madam at Akzo Nobel Salt!

I write to you as a representative of the ad agency Plankton Design. Having analyzed the consumer market for salt, we've found a huge untapped potential. Thus, we have prepared a long-term marketing campaign that we now offer you the opportunity to benefit from. Although some of our suggestions may seem unconventional, everything is based on tried and tested methods that have helped sell other products for decades.

Perhaps you do not usually consult external ad agencies. We think that you will reconsider after having read the visionary ideas that we briefly explain in this brochure:

Diversification

A long line of industries increase their profits through product diversification. If the target audience can be split into several parts, e g by gender, then every household will have to buy more kinds of products, which will increase the profit. Just look at the marketing for toys or razors.

• An obvious first step would be to produce "Salt For Kids". Parents constantly have bad conscience and if they can be made to believe that Salt For Kids is better suited to their children's needs, millions of families will buy it in addition to the common table salt. Please note that there is no need to change the contents of the salt - only the packaging. Salt For Kids should be slightly more expensive than common salt.

• A second step would be gender-divided marketing. We've designed two new salt packages that look exclusive, while at the same time looking so stereotypically different that a man never would think of buying the pink feminine salt, and vice versa. The products should not be called e g "Girl salt", but instead have a name that evokes associations, such as "Finesse" or "Mach 3". The marketing should make use of physicians who stress that men's and women's bodies work differently and have different needs.

• An image of exclusivity makes it possible to charge a higher price. As few people are familiar with chemistry, a possible slogan would be: "Salt. Made from a secret recipe since 1820.".

• Another strategy for increasing sales could be to mix the salt with a slightly addictive substance, like caffeine or alcohol. To increase the temptation, you should use political lobbying to make sure that minors are prohibited from buying this type of salt.

• You need more kinds of salt-based candy. How about an Energy Bar with extra sodium?

• There are sugar cubes. Why are there no salt cubes?

Health

The marketing must emphasize the positive health effects of salt consumption. Much food is sold by mentioning that it is low-fat, low-carb, vegetarian, or that no animals were harmed during the production. Salt already has all these benefits! You only need to make people think about it.

An often ignored fact is that the propagation of nerve impulses in the brain is entirely dependent on sodium ions, and you take in sodium through salt. In the short term, you should emphasize the importance of salt for intelligence. In the long term, the advertising should create a strong and subconscious connection between salt deficiency and stupidity/criminal behavior.

You should support medical research that portrays salt in a good light, both by supporting individual scientists, and by helping spread the right studies to the media. In medical science, there are always grey areas and mutually contradicting studies. It is in your interest to promote those studies that support increased salt consumption. In the long term, you need to make salt deficiency seem like an important social problem, and to achieve that, you need to make people believe that you have solid and unanimous support from scientists and physicians.

Advertising

Television advertising is an indispensable part of our campaign. To reach all target audiences, several separate ad campaigns will be needed:

To spread the message about the health effects, we need short, "scientific" TV spots that contain physicians, diagrams and white lab coats. The importance of salt for the brain should be emphasized. Not consuming large amounts of salt should be seen as suspicious. (See the picture).

• Much advertising should be targeted towards the growing generation, which is the future, at least from a salt consumption perspective. Create a subconscious connection between salt and pleasure! Show happy teenagers playing beach volleyball while eating pure salt lumps. The slogan could be: "It tastes good straight out of the bag!"

• Give out free samples for people to taste in grocery stores.

• What better gift to give your loved ones for Christmas, than salt? Push for this point of view using large wall ads.

• In the long term (4-6 years), once you've managed to associate criminal behavior with salt deficiency, you could run TV spots that show tough cops catching criminals. (We've prepared storyboards). Slogan: "EAT JOZO, BOZO!"

• In the very long term (7-10 years), you should take over a newspaper or a news show, and continue as usual, but with a subtle bias towards explaining all health or social problems as resulting from salt deficiency.

Community

The most important thing is to reach out to kids and teenagers. Salt should have strong positive connotations, and by eating salt, it should feel as if you became part of a family or a community.

For younger children, we've created the characters "Salt Boy and Salt Girl"^TM. They are drawn in the manga style that is extremely popular among today's kids. Salt Boy and Salt Girl are on the side of the kids, and fight snails using their salt cellars.

There is no limit to what you could do with these characters - toys, action figures, card games or animated cartoons. The characters should be displayed prominently in Salt News^TM, the membership magazine for The Salt Club^TM, which arranges fun activities for kids and which teaches them the importance of eating salt.

In the very long term: Would it perhaps be possible to institute mandatory salt supplements for every school child?

We hope for a quick reply and a profitable collaboration. Consider that you have everything to win by accepting our offer, and much to lose if we would offer the same campaign to your competitors!

Martin Rebas
Art Director / President, Plankton Design