Well, it’s product specific
But this is a great advertisement. Thanks, Ken:
All Marketers...
Piles and piles
Costco fever, this time at my local Stew Leonard’s. It’s not clear to me that the price on these socks and snacks (of course, socks and snacks, right next to each other!) is particularly good. And there’s certainly no reason to stack them up in such a huge pile.
Except there is. The reason is that the stack is lying to you, telling you a story about volume and value and urgency. This must be a great deal! They bought so many! They’ve got to clear them out! (and then, paradoxically, “They might run out soon!”)
The punchline: this works because people like us like it. It makes us feel good to buy what feels like a bargain, even if it’s not.
Blogs make everyone louder
And it’s effecting (at least around the edges) everything from business to churches to politics. Link: BBC NEWS | Technology | Global blogger action day called.
My question, which I have no answer for, is what happens when the volume goes up to 11? When there is just too much noise? Does it all get filtered? Who filters?
A new blog every six seconds, they say. Is there a new blog reader every six seconds as well? It continues to get interesting.
All Marketers...
To serve you better?
No promotion lasts forever. Got that. But when you end a promotion and start a new one, why lie about it? The reason that the unredeemed points become worthless is not because they’re taking up valuable room and need to be moved out the way for an even better program. Consumers are too smart for this. They usually ignore it, or, if they do notice it, they just get more cynical.
All Marketers...
6 million stickers.
Today’s entry in the marketing stupidity hall of fame is for Simon Malls | More Choices – Simon.com. (note the ironic web site name). Simon runs shopping malls.
Last year, Simon sold 6 million “Giftcards”. That’s a gift certificate that looks like a credit card. This is great news for them. Why? Because 4 to 20% of all gift certificates are never redeemed–which means that if you figure the average one is for $20, they’re making as much as $12,000,000 in profit with no effort.
Is that enough for Simon? No way. The Simon card is boobytrapped. After six months, Simon starts deducting $2.50 each month. Which means that if you don’t use your card right away, it becomes worthless. The astonishing thing on top of all the other astonishing things is that Simon should want you to not use your card right away… they get the interest on the money!
Simon added all sorts of other stupid features, like an expiration date (cash doesn’t expire!) and other fine print charges.
So anyway, Simon got caught. Eliot Spitzer, NY Attorney General, is suing them. Instead of saying, “Hey, this is a dumb policy, let’s just overhaul the thing,” Simon is fighting back, arguing jurisdiction, putting little stickers on the back of the cards, claiming that now it’s okay.
No, it’s not okay. It’s dumb and it’s deceitful. It’s dumb because it involves tricking customers (and their friends, the gift recipients). It creates nothing but negative conversations.
Joe Taylor gets it right about little steps
Great essay about doing little things better than everyone else: spinme.com: Slow-Cooked Success.
Sooner or later, it’s about better
Google maps (Google Maps ) is just plain better than mapquest or yahoo maps. So much better it’s remarkable. So much better that it doesn’t make sense to use anything else.
This is worth remembering. Your first choice is always to be so much better that all the marketing hype is secondary.
Phil Lempert on RFID
This little thing is the next big thing: Xtreme Retail 23 Home.
In search of the big win
It’s no accident that so many Americans are turning to life-threatening surgery to solve life-long weight problems.
This is precisely the same mindset that leads marketers to buy more SuperBowl ads instead of investing to fix customer service or to intelligently do online marketing.
Big fixes are sudden, certain and precise. They represent instant solutions to long-term problems.
The thing is, they are usually less reliable, more expensive and more painful than a more organic, slower solution.
As long as we need to show the boss (or our shareholders) that we’re taking dynamic action, then the big gesture will remain supreme. Amazingly, the winners seem to be those that test and measure, live for the long haul and embrace small solutions that are easy to adjust.
Today’s whiteboard session
It was a terrific day in Irvington. Folks from the UK and Florida and New York and even Brooklyn came to spend the day.
Hope to see you at the next one, to be posted in a few weeks.
