• New York Times, Monday, December 18, 2006 11:45 AM

Two years back, office-supply retailer Staples began a new ad campaign that, says marketing executive Shira Goodman, was designed to push the notion that its stores are an especially easy place to shop. "All of our ad gurus got together and said: 'How do we make this amorphous concept of "easy" very tangible, so our consumers can really hang on to it?'," Goodman says. The answer: A series of TV spots where people perform tedious or onerous tasks instantly by pressing a big red button that says "Easy." But now there is consumer demand for the prop itself. Seven months after the commercials rolled out, the Easy Button ended up on the shelves, priced at $4.99--and Goodman claims they have sold nearly 1.5 million of them so far. While the real Easy Button does not magically solve problems, when pushed it issues Staples' slogan: "That was easy!" And at a time when many people insist that the pitch-saturated public is fed up with marketing in all forms, writer Rob Walker notes that "it seems peculiar that hundreds of thousands of consumers would actually pay to own a physical hunk of advertising."

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