My elementary school held an annual magazine drive. I still remember the lady – the same lady every year – who would set up in our school cafeteria, wearing a pantsuit and fancy headset microphone to get us HYPED on selling magazine subscriptions. It was during this highly anticipated rally that she would reveal the Weepuls for the year.
For those of you who don’t know, Weepuls are puffballs with googly eyes. And they are amazing.
We’d set our sweet little hearts on collecting them all, while quietly plotting to hustle our grandparents and crush our classmates in the process. You only had to sell a few magazine subscriptions to earn your first… and then your second… and so on. A school employee would come around to the classrooms every two days with a cart full of Weepuls, and call children from a list to come claim their prizes. We’d clip them to our bookbags or let them dangle from our uniform jumpers in a chain. They were fun collectibles and they were visible status symbols that clearly said, “I’m winning.”
I’m a parent now, and fundraisers look much different. My daughter’s fundraiser this year offers field trips and “big prizes.” Great rewards, but most kids won’t get them, and there’s no quick win to keep them engaged. All the prizes come at the end, when motivation to sell no longer matters.
The marketer in me misses the Weepul strategy. It was brilliant psychology.
People don’t just need a grand payoff at the end. They need small, visible wins along the way to stay motivated.
Do you offer your customers and employees “Weepuls”? What are they?
