Alpha Consumer

After hearing about a friend who got tricked into thinking a letter in the mail was an Inauguration Day ticket, I discovered a variety of Jan. 20-related scams. First, beware of the fake tickets. The Inaugural Committee has warned consumers against buying tickets from third-party sellers. Since the tickets, which are free and handed out by members of Congress, require in-person pick-up close to the date of the Inauguration, anyone claiming to have tickets to sell is not telling the truth, the committee says. "We urge the public to view any offers of tickets for sale with great skepticism," says staff director Howard Gantman. Websites including eBay and StubHub have officially banned the sale of tickets.

While scalped tickets for ice hockey and other sports games are easy to find in Washington, they aren't a reliable option for Inauguration day, warns the Better Business Bureau. Scalpers may not be able to get enough tickets to sale, and lawmakers are also considering whether to make the act illegal.

Other scams include:

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My friend Zack generated some controversy when he shared his method of living on $7 a day last year. Some people didn't believe him and others thought $7 a day sounded like a lot of money. Zack says his goal was never to "beat" $7 a day, as some readers had suggested.

Since it has been about 10 months since that post, I asked Zack for an update. He's still living in New York with his girlfriend and practicing the same frugal techniques as before. Here are his three main rules:

• Bring lunch to work whenever possible. This means cooking larger meals for dinner and using leftovers. Zack estimates that leftovers usually cost at most a couple dollars per meal. You can't buy lunch in New York City for less than $5, and typically it's more like $8. So you're more than doubling or tripling your lunch spending every time you go out. If you go out to lunch just one less day a week, that's $24 after one month (in Zack's scenario) and nearly $50 after two months. That could pay for a date at a nice restaurant. (And bringing lunch doesn't have to be unappetizing. Zack buys high-quality bread, like the Texas Toast at Trader Joe's, which tastes so good that he looks forward to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.)

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For native Washingtonians and visitors alike, Inauguration Day is likely to be crowded, hectic, and short on key supplies. With as many as 2 million people expected to descend on the capital, there will probably be long lines at ATMs, runs on beer, and shortages of useful items such as adult diapers, which some viewers plan to wear given the limited bathroom facilities.

That means consumers should stock up just as they would before a big tornado. Here are 6 things you should have in hand before Jan. 20:

• Gas. While private vehicle use will be restricted on Inauguration Day itself, bus fleets, limos, and private cars will be shipping large numbers of people into the city and surrounding area in the days leading up to Jan. 20. That could mean long lines at gas stations for anyone who needs to fill up.

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In Rubies in the Orchard, Lynda Resnick explains how she turned POM Wonderful, Fiji Water, and Teleflora into household names. As I was reading the book, I was struck by how much rested on flashes of creativity combined with hard work. (Using a heart symbol for the "O" in POM immediately told people about the drink's heart-healthy benefits, for example.)

Resnick answered my questions about her work in a recent E-mail exchange:

How do you define what marketing is -- are you convincing people to want something they don't necessarily need?

Marketing is everything a company does to acquire customers and maintain a relationship with them. For example, if you look at marketing as a wheel on a bike, each spoke is a specific component that can be used to sell a product or service. It could include sales, strategy, advertising, public relations, package design, customer service and event promotion. Marketing, if used successfully, can win the hearts and minds of a consumer to your product or service.

However, you can’t use marketing to convince someone to want something they don’t need. What you can do with marketing is convince that person to want something they didn’t know they needed.

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