Marketing Weenies get it right, occasionaly..... ------------------------------------------------- "...our AIS website was not very user-friendly, ......With this new site, we've gone from zero orders a month to about 150 to 160 orders a month." - Mike Reeves of Avionics International Supply, quoted in Avionics News magazine. Yet so many websites are not user friendly, and continue to be developed that way. (Including requiring the potential customer to make a software update to view the pages. Duh?). ---------------------------------------------- There are pros in the sales/marketing business, then there are the rest...... Canadian Tire's new 20/20 store program - wider aisles and more selection results in more sales revenue. Who would have thought of that? Not store managers in the Victoria area, who are making their aisles even worse, a couple of years after the program started, despite the results being publicized so well the web site talks at length of them! (It took a big corporate program to figure that out? Well, I suppose turning around the bureaucracy that was deliberately narrowing aisles is an achievement. And at least it is happening, slowly - but not in the Victoria area where many staff including a manager were unaware of the program.) (A common response to complaints is "we hope to get a new store next year" or at least "we're going to renovate this fall". Sounds like an excuse by lazy managers. And what expectation is there that the new/renovated store will be much better - if they "just don't get it", why would they do different then? (B.C. Ferries didn't when they changed the cafeteria food lineup at Shwartz Bay terminal. Despite adding fancy signage somehow they omitted prices of some products and general communication of the full range of products. If customers don't know something is available, will all of them ask about it? Or will they be more motivated to avoid the facility and bring their own food and drink?) ----------------------------------------------------- On Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, retail stores get a 10 to 15% price premium for milk with "Island" in the label, even though it may come from the same plant and potentially from the same cows. (Since both major brand names have plants on and off the island, each now producing two labels - one with Island prominent in the label, one without, with company identification such that it is not clear they are the same entity at root. Sometimes brands carry the name of a related corporate entity - Parmalat is on some containers, and Agripur is on the sign at Island Farms' plant in Victoria (apparently a dairy cooperative headquartered in Quebec).). OK, I was wrong - pandering to xenophobes does work, at least in the short term. ---------------------------------------------------------- And playing on people's fears appears to work, given the popularity of water in bottles and jugs - in areas with good municipal water systems, like most of the rainy coast north of California. I know of poor people who were buying gallons of water in the grocery store when they could have safely drunk from the tap. ---------------------------------------------------------- Vagueness is common. Two examples: - Rockwell Collins Avionics company ran full page ads that meant nothing unless you knew the division had been spun off as a separate company, then you might _guess_ the ad was saying something about that. - B.C. Ferries promotional posters in terminals were often so vague they had no meaning to readers. (And B.C. Ferries should get a prize for over-hyping modest overdue terminal improvements.) --------------------------------------------------------- And some days in haste and concentrating on appearance basic communication is missed. Examples from food products: - Planning to buy some tomato sauce, I spotted a can on the clearout rack. But it wasn't obvious what the product was (tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste....). It took reading of the fine print and some thinking to figure that out. No wonder the product didn't sell. - Something in a very attractive bottle was being discounted in the dairy department. See if you know what is special about this product that might justify the high price presumed from its special packaging. http://www.keithsketchley.com/bottle.jpg (It is soy-based, not milk based. No clue to that unless you study the fine print or are familiar with the logo of SoyNice products, of which this is an obscure version.) - Looking for coffee filters, I had difficulty seeing any 4-cup size on the shelf. Perservering. I noticed a Jr. suffix on an otherwise identical label on the box, so presumed that was the size I wanted. Later I showed that box to two friends - in the 30 seconds I assume some customers are willing to spend trying to figure the product out before moving on, they couldn't figure out what size was in the box (their eyes/brain overlooked the Jr. word). - A motel had nicely coloured single-use packages with Nabob brand name prominent, beside the coffee maker. One Brown, one a pretty Blue. What's the difference? The really fine print identifies one as regular the other as decaffinated. Coffee that is, not tea. --------------------------------------------------------- Ergonomics missed: Picking up a large jug of milk, in the jug design common in Canada and the US, I noticed it was difficult to reach the handle of one brand. The typical handle is recessed in one corner. Normally the jugs are placed with the handle to the side but toward the potential customer, but still quite reachable. But the sellers of that brand had changed their label to a side with more space, necessitating placement with the handle further away from the customer. The manager of the dairy department of one store told me that sales of that brand dropped immediately after those jugs were introduced. (OK, shoppers may have gotten used to the awkwardness, eventually. Oddly though, I now see that brand with a smaller label but still on the larger side. Duh? "They just don't get it"?) --------------------------------------------------------- Overall the messages are: - think through what you are doing, in the full picture - if you don't do a good job for the potential customer, someone else might be wiser --------------------------------------------------------- Ever notice how similar press releases seem these days? Its as though there is limited list of words allowed in press releases. "We are excited ..." is at the top of the list. (Does anyone ever say they are "proud"? I wouldn't expect them to say "relieved" as in "we are relieved to have finished the product so we can earn revenue from selling it" or "we are relieved to have obtained further financing so we can progress to actually producing the product to earn revenue from selling it". And buzz-speak is over-used, such as "roll out" of something new. (Hmm - doesn't sound like a good slogan for an airline, fine restaurant, .......) Silly me, I thought that a requirement for PR people was that they could write creatively. --------------------------------------------------------- And marketing people are no better. One large B.C. operation puts up billboards saying that improvements to its facilities will be "awesome and then some". Gosh, that sounds like a fireworks display or party dress, not the old facility they are making worthwhile but modest improvements to. (If they ever did rebuild the place how would they describe it, having used the extreme words up already? Would anyone believe them?) --------------------------------------------------------- Then there's pandering in the wrong direction. An advertisement for an automotive training centre shows cute young blond students. But the advertisement runs in a newspaper emphasizing aboriginal people - the First Nation Drum. If one wanted to connect with available readers, often individuals needing more self-confidence as to their ability and acceptance, some well beyond thirty years of age, some rather dumpy in girth, wouldn't one want to show some of them? Oddly, there is now a photo of one brown-skinned person in the ad - an attractive female whose facial shape suggests a genetic background typical of areas of Persia or India. (India as in "over there between Pakistan and Ceylon" which has nothing to do with the tribal audience of the publication who are legally "North American Indian" but the "Indian" label was misapplied by Europeans who couldn't tell one brown-skinned tribe from another.) --------------------------------------------------------- And city slogans continue to elicit mirth from readers: - Victoria B.C.'s "Downtown Victoria. It's a trip!" might pop up memories of the frequent news stories of substance abuse problems there, or that it takes effort to visit there so you have to make an expedition out of it (lack of parking, too much traffic, ....). Why won't they try to sell its attributes such as variety of shops and restaurants, historical features, .....? - The province of B.C. now officially uses something like "The best place on earth." By what criteria? Certainly not crime (especially high in the Vancouver area - guard your car) and congestion (Vancouver). - The new slogan introduced a few years ago by Seattle was so "nothing" in meaning and sense I don't remember it. No, I don't think taxpayers need to subsidize the expensive image consultants who peddle the efforts. (Typically some town grows a lot which gives them tax revenue, then they decide they really need a city hall fitting their new self-image or a slogan. Langford B.C. is the latest I've heard of jumping on the silly train - meanwhile funding of essentials like police lags the growth.) --------------------------------------------------------- Special mention for lack of thinking goes to an organization of sales and marketing executives that hosted an expensive speaker whose devious behaviour as a politician earned him the label "Slick Willie". ! --------------------------------------------------------- Why does such incompetent marketing behaviour occur? I say because the task is not precise and feedback is slow and obscured, so is much more open to interpretation than more technical tasks. Thus it depends much more on the values - or lack thereof - of the individuals and organization, and will be poor quality if subjectivism (whim) and internal politics are common. Quality is defined only by "impressive" not by results. (Though who would be impressed by some of the gimmicky features used in advertising, such as using the typeface that would be produced by a very used old typewriter? Typewriters are so old that Dan Rather's dishonest sources tried to fake a letter that would have been typed on an old typewriter, by using a computer font instead of finding a typewriter! (Likely the only people who were impressed are the advertising hacks responsible for the bad marketing, and the marketing managers who are out of touch with reality.) Worse, many people believe that manipulation is possible. I am amazed at the frequency of hearing that from staff on the retail floor. Yes, ideas taught in school today support that notion, but the free market place does not in the long term. The pros in sales and marketing have values, are in touch with the real market, and have high standards for communication - it shows in their work- and pay more attention to real potential customers. And in their sustained profitability. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Intellectual property of Kurmudgeon Keith Sketchley 2012.01.06) Legalities detailed on http://www.keithsketchley.com/ apply. Use of advice and information contained in this file is at your risk. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- BACK in your browser should return you to the page you came here from.