Getting desperately creative in the downturn

“I didn’t see as much frantic and desperate activity then as I do now,” said Levinson, author of the best-selling “Guerrilla Marketing” series. “This is stretching people to the utmost.”

And that has convinced many sellers to strip away their pride and privacy by divulging their personal troubles to the entire online marketplace, Levinson said. On the other hand, it’s not a half-bad marketing tactic.

“That puts a lot of people on (the seller’s) wavelength because a lot of people have their own tales of woe right now,” Levinson said. “They want to be able to reach somebody they can relate to” and who can, in turn, understand their suffering. Hints of that same consumer psychology can also be found in everything from retailers’ “going out of business” sales to the hand-written pleas held up by homeless people on city corners. Sympathy sells.

“It takes this kind of desperate economy,” Levinson said, “to create that kind of desperate creativity.”

Likewise, many entrepreneurs who smell blood in the financial waters are seeking to scoop up anxious consumers craving extra income. This explains the last layer of the “recession market” — scattered throughout eBay and Craigslist are hundreds of offers to help you launch your own “recession-proof business.” With just a phone call and a small investment, these entrepreneurs claim, you could be turning a profit by hawking foreign cars, preparing tax returns, towing stranded motorists or placing ads on Google. For $29,995, says one Craigslister, you can even start a lucrative “entertainment” enterprise that includes a Web site, software and DVDs. The business? Pornography.

Perhaps because the market is so flooded by these offers, however, just one person has responded to retiree John Holmes’ pitch to place people in a “recession-proof business” for only $5. The former owner of a car-detailing operation, Holmes pledges to teach clients how to make $10 to $20 an hour by running their own waterless car wash with very little overhead.

“It’s really a going business, but it surprises me that people aren’t even willing to at least investigate, to give a call and say, ‘Hey what have you got?’ It’s a mystery to me,” says Holmes, who lives in the Atlanta area. He speculates that while many people are hurting, much of this generation is too lazy to grind out a few hours of extra work to pay the bills.

“What I see a lot of is: ‘Will you give me a ride to the unemployment office?’ " Holmes says. “I get the sense they want to take the path of least resistance.”

“That’s sort of a cynical view,” responds Stephen Hoch, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.  He contends more folks aren’t flocking to the start-your-own-company offers in part because many consumers don’t believe they’re in any real financial trouble.

“A lot of people are still fooling themselves in thinking they’re immune somehow (from the crisis),” Hoch says. “Also, I think people are more skeptical about things (on the Internet).

“Then again, when it comes to skepticism vs. desperation, it’s not clear who wins there.”

If you ask Jenny, desperation wins.

Although she has agreed to include six Pete Rose baseball cards with her beloved Nolan Ryan, only one offer has come along so far, for $50. She declined. But she thinks the Hall-of-Fame right-hander can still deliver for her family.

“If I could sell the cards for at least $2,000, I could breathe easy for a while.” Jenny says. “We are riding on a wing and a prayer.”

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