Create (and Sell) a Product That Can't Be Sold
Create (and Sell) a Product That Can't Be Sold is an applied improvisation exercise in which groups design and pitch a product that is inherently unsellable: ethically problematic, physically impossible, commercially absurd, or so niche as to have no viable market. Groups develop the product concept, a marketing campaign with slogan and target demographic, and present the full pitch to the group. The exercise develops creative thinking, persuasive communication, and comfort with absurdity.
Structure
Setup
Participants form groups of three to five. Each group receives (or chooses) an unsellable product concept, or generates one through a brief ideation round. Unsellable products may be assigned by the facilitator or generated through prompts: "a product that makes things worse," "a product for one specific person in the world," "a product that is illegal in all known jurisdictions."
Development Phase
Groups have ten to fifteen minutes to develop: the product's name, its specific features and benefits (described sincerely), its target customer, a marketing slogan, and a brief sales pitch. The key instruction is to find genuine benefits and a sincere pitch angle, however absurd the product.
The Pitch
Each group presents their product pitch to the full group as if they genuinely believe in it and expect sales. Audience groups listen and, after each pitch, may ask questions that the presenting group must answer in character.
Conclusion
The facilitator opens a debrief after all pitches.
How to Teach It
Objectives
Create (and Sell) a Product That Can't Be Sold targets creative ideation, the ability to find and articulate genuine value in unexpected places, and persuasive communication under an absurd constraint. The absurdity gives participants permission to play; the pitch requirement ensures they engage seriously with communication craft.
How to Explain It
"Your group's job is to design a product that should not exist and then convince us to buy it. Approach the pitch with complete sincerity. Find the real benefits of your impossible product. Do not break character during the pitch."
Common Pitfalls
Groups sometimes treat the exercise as a pure comedy exercise, producing a pitch that winks at the audience rather than persuading them. The most interesting pitches commit fully to the logic of the product. Sidocoach during development: "What problem does this actually solve? Who actually needs this? Convince me."
In Applied Settings
Learning Objectives
In applied settings, the exercise develops creative confidence, lateral thinking, and the ability to find and communicate genuine value in non-obvious places. It challenges the assumption that good ideas are obvious ones and that difficult-to-communicate products or services cannot be framed compellingly. Participants develop the skill of finding the angle that makes the apparently unsellable interesting.
Workplace Transfer
Organizational contexts that benefit from this skill include product development, marketing, internal communications, change management (where the "product" being sold is an unpopular new initiative), and any role that requires persuading skeptical audiences. The exercise provides safe practice in the persuasive moves that make difficult arguments land: finding genuine benefits, understanding the audience's perspective, and communicating with conviction.
Facilitation Context
The exercise is used in innovation workshops, marketing and communications training, leadership development, and team creativity programs. It works well as an energizing mid-session activity that produces enough comedy to maintain group energy while developing real communication skills.
Debrief Framing
Facilitators ask: "What did you discover about the product while you were pitching it? Was it actually unsellable? What made the most persuasive pitches work? Where in your actual work do you have to sell something that is genuinely hard to sell?"
Skills Developed
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Related Exercises
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We Can Sell Anything is an applied exercise in which participants improvise a sales pitch for an absurd, useless, or impossible product, training persuasion, benefit framing, confident delivery, and the ability to find genuine value in unlikely material.
Bad Ad Product Game
Groups create a product and ad campaign for something that does everything wrong. By revolving an object to view its weird sides, players discover creativity through inversion.
Fake Ads
Fake Ads is an applied improv exercise in which small teams create and perform a thirty-second television advertisement for an imaginary, impossible, or absurd product, including a dramatized pitch and an original jingle. The exercise uses the familiar format of commercial advertising as a scaffold for rapid creative collaboration, idea generation, and performance under time pressure.
Generate New Ideas
Generate New Ideas is an applied improv exercise in which a group collectively invents a product from scratch -- naming it, developing taglines and jingles, assigning a celebrity spokesperson, and creating a brief promotional pitch -- through a rapid, collaborative ideation process. The exercise uses the product-invention framework as a vehicle for practicing group creativity, spontaneous Yes-And building, and comfort with presenting unfinished ideas with confidence.
Imaginary Ad Game
Imaginary Ad Game is a creative applied exercise in which groups create a complete advertising campaign for a product that does not exist -- then present it with the confident enthusiasm of a real pitch. Participants name the product, invent its features and benefits, create a tagline, and present the campaign as though the product were entirely real and the benefits entirely compelling. The exercise trains creative confidence, the ability to advocate for an idea before it is fully formed, and the improvisational skill of amplifying imagined value.
The Lineage
Explore the schools and structures that influenced or evolved from Create (and Sell) a Product That Can't Be Sold.
Improv Yourself (Joseph A. Keefe)
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Create (and Sell) a Product That Can't Be Sold. Retrieved September 28, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/exercises/create-and-sell-a-product-that-cant-be-sold
The Improv Archive. "Create (and Sell) a Product That Can't Be Sold." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/exercises/create-and-sell-a-product-that-cant-be-sold.
The Improv Archive. "Create (and Sell) a Product That Can't Be Sold." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/exercises/create-and-sell-a-product-that-cant-be-sold. Accessed September 28, 2026.
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