I recently joined a news group focusing on sales – and one post got me thinking, talking about controversy as a sales tactic – and especially the ‘Rich Jerk’ and how everyone had an opinion about the guy – and bought.

I’m not a big fan of controversy, but I understand how it can get results. And while the Rich jerk showed one form of controversy (I’m better than you, so you wanna be me?) there’s others:

• A few years back little Tommy/Timmy/Jimmy needed to break the guiness book of records for emails received, so everyone supported him by sending a chain email. Timmy didn’t exist, but an email harvesting company did, likely laughing at how easy it was to get millions of addresses.
• On a different forum, one fellow started badmouthing another – so much so that others sympathized with the first person and bought his product in droves. While it may have been legitimate, if it wasn’t it was a neat trick to boost sales (see my blog entry on it)
• Because of being in a seperate timezone, there’s rumors that Hawaii alone may have up to 33% of the votes on American Idol, and people are crying foul at this ‘obvious’ evidence of tampering (when in fact the A.I. people can do what they want legally) – and everyone tunes in…

And those are just the tip of the iceberg – stir things up, appeal to whatever emotion you want, and watch the results come in. You may leave a little piece of your soul at the door, however…