You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April, 2007.
A little background on the award: In my travels when I casually meet people (on a plane, in a bar, elevator) and they ask what I do, I always reply “I’m a marketing consultant.” More and more people react to that job title as if I had said “I’m a lawyer” or worse yet, “I’m in politics.” Why? Well to quote my good friend Steve Bang, “The definition of marketing - creating the illusion we care.” Marketing has become a joke. I’ve even had people ask me if I “create lies” for companies.
That’s why I refer to myself as a “Culture Consultant” to my clients. I won’t frost pigs. I know plenty of people who do. But I just can’t do it.
Frosting a Pig means you develop a clever marketing campaign without any knowledge (or care) whatsoever if the company can execute it.
A legendary example of this?
Delta, we’re ready when YOU are.
The ad says we are on time — the experience? Not so much. Thus, the frosted pig.
So let’s get on with the award.
WINNER: FedEx Kinko’s
CAMPAIGN: No more all nighters.
TELEVISION AD: After the “boss” asks for what seems like an impossible deadline on a project, one of the worker bees says, “Well, I guess we’re gonna pull an all-nighter” and proceeds to drink coffee straight from the pot. Then an enlightened co-worker says, “No, I already contacted FedEx Kinko’s online and they are going to print it, bind it and deliver it on time!” It’s really cute.
GUERILLA CAMPAIGN: No more all nighters.
EMAIL: Subject: Get Peace of Mind with FedEx Kinko’s Print Online
WEBSITE complete with bribe
IN-STORE MERCHANDISE: Big life-size cardboard cut-out of the guy drinking (and spilling) the pot of coffee from the commercial.
ACTUAL EXPERIENCE: Last week I flew all day to Philadelphia from Seattle. My flight was delayed which didn’t give me as much time as I wanted to get to Kinko’s for my presentation the next day. Perfect timing. FedEx Kinko’s sent me an email reminding me of their “no more all-niters” campaign. Brilliant.
I uploaded my document. Received an email confirmation at 9:45 pm that they received my order. When I awoke the next morning I had an email confirmation sent at 5:56am that said:
Thank you for choosing FedEx Kinko’s. This mail confirms that we have completed your order and delivered it based on your instructions. (I am going to pick it up at the store in the Philadelphia Convention Center at 9am).
Here’s where the whole process breaks down. When I enter the store I can see the first problem. One employee in site and four people in line. The woman at the front of the line apparently is arguing over WHO is paying for the job. The FedEx Kinko’s clerk keeps handing her the phone - back and forth - you get the picture. Finally another clerk comes up and asks to help the next person. Apparently these other folks have been helped (one mentioned that he was waiting for them to RE-DO his job) and are just patiently waiting for their orders to be completed so they usher me to the front.
I give the clerk my name, offer to give him my order number. No problem he says, he found it. Then he walks over to this copy machine and holds up a stack of copies and replies, “Says here the order isn’t supposed to be ready until 10am.” (it’s 9:30am) “No” I reply “I asked for the order to be done at 9am and received an email at 7am saying the job was done.”
They made the copies, but they had not bound them into pretty presentation packets for my client. I had to wait while he drilled the holes and bound them. Took almost half an hour.
End result. I was late for my presentation. A presentation for a potentially huge client for this self-employed person who spent her small company’s money to fly all the way from Seattle to make a good impression.
I use FedEx Kinko’s a ton in my business. They don’t have a great track record with me for accuracy and I find myself giving them more time than they need to get things right. On this trip I didn’t have that luxury. I fully intended to pull an “all-niter” at Fedex Kinko’s and do the job myself. But their advertisement gave me hope.
Thanks FedEx Kinko]s for frosting the pig and proving that marketing is a lie.
Brand is your reputation. If you have a bad one, all the marketing in the world isn’t going to help you.
Are politicians exempt from observing the National Do Not Call Registry? I got a “call” yesterday from Mayor Nichols. The Mayor of Seattle. It was the world’s longest recording that had the gall to repeat itself, filling up my voicemail and generally pissing me off.
If they are allowed to do this — just think of what this next presidential race will be like. We will come home each night with the message waiting light furiously blinking. “Hello, this is Hillary Clinton…..or Barack Obama….or Mitt Romney….or Mayor Giulania”
Oh help. Politicians need to learn that what they are doing is “marketing” themselves, and in a modern marketing world, you cannot call us. Go do something good and let me read about it.
“It’ll change your life.” That’s the line from Garden State that really launched the Shins into radio orbit. Today they are the iTunes Exclusive Live Sessions artists.
I do love the Shins. I really love the cover art — but I have to say AGAIN (see my archived rant from December ‘06 VH-WHY!?!?!) women cannot do this and be commerically successful. Why?
What does America Idolize? Not Sanjaya apparently. But come on……
According to Wikipedia (so it must be true) the phrase “To have one’s cake, and eat it too” is to want more than one can handle or deserve, or to try to have two incompatible things.
I have often thought of credit unions conversion to community charters (while still hanging onto a huge sponsor) in many cases as a perfect example of “having one’s cake and eating it too.”
If your credit union was founded by a sponsor, (common bond) that still exists, expanding to a community charter is risky. And yet, credit unions have done this in record numbers. Why? Because they can.
A relationship with your sponsor is just that - a relationship. It needs to be nurtured. When things happen that threaten the framework (like new management) we need to be extra careful to emphasize our history and why we are with them in the first place. We need to make sure their needs are being met before we turn all of our attention to the community.
In the state of Washington alone there are over 100 credit unions that now have the entire state as their field of membership. Yet they still serve big, viable groups like Boeing, Fire, City, Police, Microsoft, Teachers, Postal and Healthcare workers.
Recently a 50 plus year-old credit union (we’ll call them XCU because WTFCU is already taken) was notified by their sponsor (which apparently the CU now refers to as a Community Business Partner) that the credit union is no longer allowed to visit their employees. Period. The “No Soliciting!” sign has been hung up! Door slammed in their face. Why?
This is what they were told (I’m paraphrasing):Because XCU has a community charter where anyone in the area can join. This does not make it a unique benefit to their employees.
SIDEBAR: XCU screams loudly in all their marketing “Now everyone can join!”
This employer does have a relationship with ING because, “They are part of the employee benefit package.” When did the credit union STOP being an employee benefit? It’s one thing to say it, quite another to actually do it. They got distracted.
So while XCU was out begging for business with membership drives in the community that included a chance to win a car, the sponsor (founder) was being wooed by ING.
Be careful what you wish for — they have absolutely no choice now but to go into the cold hard competitive community and continue to beg for business. Sure, they can still serve this core group, but they can’t take them to dinner anymore. It’s kind of embarrassing.
Remember, brand is your reputation. If you have a bad one, all the marketing in the world isn’t going to help you. What are you doing today to protect your reputation?
It’s 2007. April of 2007. It’s time to stop putting clip art and stock art and crappy images on your marketing stuff. Stop it. Now.
In the past two months I’ve been on the road speaking to credit union marketers. In Wisconsin, Georgia and now Tennessee I’ve seen the same scary thing. We are all using the same stock art!
Since deregulation in the late 1970’s, credit unions have been desperately trying to get you to move your checking account (aka share draft) over to them. They will call it “free-er” and bribe people with iPods or cash to get you to switch over. We just HAVE to have your checking account.
What do you, the member, get in return? Perhaps the ugliest debit card (aka check card) you’ll ever own. How did this happen? One can only guess that the debit card vendors are not marketers and presented their client with the “page-o-stock-art” and suggested they take a minute to pick out the one they liked best. The VISA coordinator marched the page down the hall to the marketing person who took it to their board marketing committee and they decided to pick the least exciting and most literal image. The picture of the check with the pen poised over it. In grey.
I have seen this exact stock art image on at least a dozen DIFFERENT credit union’s debit cards in the past month. It’s embarrassing. We look so….. 1977.
Remember those members who would spend (what felt like) hours pouring over the selections for their checks? Should I get puppies or kittens? Why did they do that? Because they were going to be writing checks all over town and they wanted something that reflected their personality.
So why can’t we do this for the VISA check card? At the very least, let’s get a card that reflects the common bond of your credit union. If you serve teachers, maybe a cool old chalk board? Postal workers, the postal eagle? Firefighters, their cool logo ? If you serve a community, get a digital camera and go take a picture of something unique. But for heaven’s sake, please stop using stock art.
I gotta go watch the The Love Boat .
A couple of years ago I was in Australia speaking for the World Council of Credit Unions. One day I was walking through the neighborhoods of Sydney when I noticed stickers on mailboxes that all basically said the same thing, “NO JUNK MAIL” Some had the word junk mail in the red circle with the line through it, others had just the words, but clearly there was a movement afloat. Or so I thought.
The next day I asked one of the locals what was up with the junk mail protest. He said, “Oh, it’s no protest, it’s now the law. If you have that sticker on your mailbox the postman is obligated to return it to sender.”
I know what you’re thinking, and I said it. “How does HE (she) know that it’s junk mail?” This beautiful Australian just looked at me, put his hand on his hip and said, “Oh please…”
Guess what? There’s already been legislation introduced here in America to do the same. It didn’t pass, but it’s out there.
I asked a group of marketers last week what their response rate is on their direct mail efforts. Less than 1% seemed to be the average. OR, a 99% failure rate. Without a coupon or reply mechanism of some kind I asked these folks how they KNEW that their marketing efforts mattered? They really didn’t. Sure, we do the funny ROI math that says, BEFORE we spent X dollars on our postcard we have X in loan-of-the-month. AFTER we lowered the rate and spent those dollars on postcards, we had more loans-of-the-month. Therefore, we were successful. Really? I’m surprised we’re still allowed to get away with that.
Great service will generate great word of mouth, which in turn will grown your business. I know that sounds simple, but it’s true — especially in banking where, as Ken Blanchard put it, “Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low, and because nobody else is doing any better.” The bar is set pretty low. Customer service in the financial institution world (and I’m talking about all y’all here) in a word, sucks. The only way we think we can get business any more is to cheapen ourselves.
We have to stop begging for business. Now we have to earn it.
Oh, and if you want to read more about the movement to ban direct mail:http://www.newdream.org/emails/ta19.html
I’ve never really been an American Idol fan. This year it kind of peaked my interest when I heard that Seattle (my hometown) was labeled the Least Talented City in America.
Really? The home of Nordstrom, Eddie Bauer, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Starbucks, Costco, the only Science Fiction Museum and the Pike Place Fish Market — no talent? Oh……you’re talking about people who can sing Donna Summer songs. Never mind.
USA Today ran a story last week about the least talented city’s entrant Sanjaya Malakar. He’s made the top 9 apparently and that success could “subvert the show”!!
How? Because his singing is not that great. Excuse me, since when does THAT matter to commercially successful talent?
How do you think Bob Dylan would’ve done on the show? Or Neil Young (sorry Greg)? Rickie Lee Jones singing MacArthur Park?
There are many theories swirling around about his success. One is that Howard Stern has been appealing to listeners to vote for him - in hopes of destroying the show. I’d like to think some Seattle-ites are pissed off and trying to make a point. But the cool thing about it, is the common bond. Love it or hate it (the show) we all want to see Simon Cowell go away. Right?
Oh, maybe that’s just me.
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