How Green Is Your Lettuce?

Answer me this: In one word, just one single word, tell me what is the color of lettuce. Now don't ask me what kind of lettuce--you would be obfuscating my question with minutia. It's a simple question, "What is the color of lettuce?"

Now, my girlfriend has a niece who is 5 years old. I picked up a 48-pack of Crayola crayons and a handful of "Little Princess" coloring books just to entertain her when her mom brings her by. It works well and it keeps the little bugger from terrorizing our cats.

Just now I opened the box of crayons (ya know they smell so good) and pulled out the following colors: granny smith apple, green-yellow, spring-green, olive green, sea green, and yellow-green.

I mention these colors because I don't want you to use any of these names to answer my original question. I want a one-word answer--just one word. Write it down on a piece of paper and save it for 60 seconds.

No! I'm not going to continue, because you didn't write it down, did you?

Okay, that's better. Thank you!

So I take the little lady out for dinner the other night, and I ordered a seafood combo plate--Cajun spicey salmon, crab-meat stuffed mushroom caps, and jumbo shrimp. "D" got the prime rib. Now, I never complain about food, and I've never asked for the server to take something off my bill because it was tough, raw, or still moving, but I have my limits.

I look at my salad with my devilishly charming green eyes and my girlfriend asks, "Is something wrong with your salad?" I replied, "I don't know, is this my salad?"

I opened up my menu and looked at the picture of the salad plate I ordered. Then I looked at my salad. I mean, the photo was of a salad with all tender, young, green leaves and it looked so yummy. But what was before me was white, yellow, punctuated with just the very faintest hint of light green on a few edges.

A manager walked by and was kind enough to ask if we were enjoying our dinner. Now my kids both worked as servers in restaurants when they were in school, and I know getting food to the customer isn't at all as easy as one might think--but I had to remark.

"Well, I'm looking at the picture of my salad in the menu and it looks great. But what I see on my plate seems to be of another species of plant altogether. I mean no disrespect, but I seem to have gotten the root and stem, but no leaves!"

I pointed to the picture and then to my salad.

And I hate to nag about my food, but really, I do expect what is served to look at least like it came from the same planet as what is shown in the menu. The manager was very nice and agreed. He brought me a new salad and it was mainly the color I expected it to be--GREEN!

I know there are a lot of affiliate marketers here on the WF, but many of us also develop our own products. When I asked you earlier about the color of lettuce, I was really using the lettuce as a metaphor for your products--and mine!

When we create a product and develop a sales page, the tendency is always to present it in the best light possible. Where to draw the line in terms of hype, and yes--I am using the "h" word because we all do that--we hype our products.

What I am suggesting to all of us (including myself) is to ask ourselves, "How green is my lettuce?" In other words, how close is our product in relation to the description of it in our sales pages? And I'm not suggesting that anyone here doesn't develop "green" products, I only suggest that as ethical marketers we all attempt to keep our lettuce green and give our customers not what they expect, but much, much more. Just a thought. I will personally try to stay green