If you read the last blog post, you know that my nine-year-old niece, Ellie, would like to sell the idea of the hot chocolate unibrow to earn money for some items and activities she'd like to get on with, as she's not getting a whole lot of support from her mother. I told her that the best way to proceed with a big mission like this is to write a business plan so everyone agrees on the direction we are taking. 

Ellie agreed and asked me if I could write one. I frowned and explained to her that, because it's a business plan and not a plan for say a birthday party or something of that nature, I would need for her to ask me to "drill down" on it. I also cautioned her that I expected relaxed but professional on Casual Fridays.

Strategic Business Plan
for the selling of
Hot Chocolate Unibrow Idea

Objective:

Earn money to:  

• Redo Ellie's bedroom
• Acquire several iTunes gift cards 
• Set aside funds for a charity for earmarks

Strategy:

Sell idea for hot chocolate unibrow (HCU) to a manufacturer of instant cocoa products for use in its marketing programs, á la the milk mustache device used in the California Milk Processor Board's "got milk" campaign. 

Tactics:

Connie will write blogs and use facebook to promote the HCU concept, building awareness that will lead to traction that will lead to trending that will lead to thing-ness. 

See if Margot and Greta will do hot chocolate unibrows at their college dining halls over the next few weeks. Institutions of higher learning are hot beds for cultivating exciting new ideas.

If she can find rides, Ellie will hang out at various ice rink concession stands wearing hot chocolate unibrows, casually. When people point to it, she will laugh and say, "I know, right?" 

Once the HCU concept emerges as a popular trend, our team will meet with hot chocolate companies in their boardrooms. We will get dressed up and present our idea of increasing market share by using HCUs in their advertising. We will then ask for a compensation package worth hundreds of dollars. 

• Use charts and other things like that to show instant cocoa executives how the "got milk" campaign changed attitudes and increased consumer awareness that it's okay to drink liquid secreted by the mammary glands of another species. Use eye rolls and other eye movements to imply that the HCU idea will be even more successful, as they are about to see. 

• Through role play, float the idea that milk mustaches are super gross, even on Giselle Bundchen. Make a case that HCUs are only kind of gross; hence consumers will be even more likely to put hot chocolate in their cocoa holes.

• Show time-lapse photography demonstrating that hot chocolate unibrows provide a higher level of on-face staying power than milk mustaches, which are closer to people's mouths where licking can happen. 

• Break into small groups. Serve piping hot cocoa and demonstrate that HCUs are a perfectly safe thing for kids and young adults. This is because a face's unsung hero called the human tongue would be forced to suffer hot chocolate's unyielding heat before the forehead could ever be scalded. Conduct trust falls to reinforce the idea of security.

• Reunite the group. Use weather map technology to show areas of the world where unibrows are considered attractive. Suggest 2015 Azerbaijan roll out.