The day after I read a news story about a man being arrested in Florida for having an “I Eat Ass Decal” on his truck. I thought it would be a savvy way to make some money. I do have this decal machine just sitting here.
My thinking was to make something slightly more eloquent than the available I Eat Ass decals and stickers on the market. So I found a font I liked and quickly produced a batch of decals. In the shadow of this news story, this was bound to make a substantial amount of money…. an easy sell, that is if I act quickly to get the product up for sale, maybe some photos, marketing, advertising, and all that other stuff. That was like a month or so ago.
While the news story buzz kind of died down and I probably missed out on some quick sale, I still think there’s a great demand for these decals.
People seemed to enjoy the decals and I’ve given a lot away. In this customer research, I realized that some people didn’t really like the I Eat Ass decals and that I might be able to reach a larger audience creating another decal. Someone suggested that I do a “You are Beautiful” decal and said that people like to be reminded of that, I agreed.
In order to maximize time and resources, it made the most sense for me to get rid of the “are” in You are Beautiful. The resulting “You Beautiful” decal still makes sense and I learned the linguistic term for this is called a copula deletion or zero copula. It works and also allows me to make a decal that would fit into the 6” envelopes I already owned making shipping a lot easier. It also cut back on production time for the decals and I think looked better too.
I’m guessing anyone offended or upset with the I Eat Ass decal will most likely purchase a You Beautiful decal. This is known as a “double bind”, creating a false sense of choice… similar to when you go car shopping and the salesperson asks if you will be paying with cash or a card but intentionally excludes other options.
The two decals are both available online.