by TonyB on February 28, 2011
OK, so we know this is a little old, but it recently showed up as a marketing case study, and we just had to share the Bic Prank with all you who may not have seen it.
The story is this: BIC Cristal is a top-selling pen all around the world, with more than 100 billion sold as of 2004, but apparently writers in Germany weren’t getting the message. Bic decided to step up its marketing there, but with a low budget, there was only so much that could be done.
Some marketing genius came up with an idea for what became the Bic Prank. Read More –>
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by TonyB on February 22, 2010
For our American readers, a pen is usually just a pen. But those of you in the UK know that cheap ballpoints are often referred to as “biros.” If you’ve ever wondered about the reason for that, it’s this:
The first ballpoint pen, utilizing a steel ball bearing held in place by a socket, was developed in the late 19th century by a man named John Loud. Unfortunately, his invention didn’t work too well on paper and was used mainly for marking leather, according to a report from the BBC.
A few others tried without much success over the next several years to make similar pens.
Then, in the 1930s, a newspaper editor in Budapest named Laszlo Biro decided he’d had it with trying to use fountain pens in his work. He apparently felt that fountain pen ink took too long to dry and was easily smeared when taking notes at the fast pace of a journalist. But, Biro noticed that the ink that was used to print the newspaper dried very quickly. Read More –>
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