“Spring has officially arrived.” So says the spam email I received from Brian at Phenix Investigations this morning. “It’s time to think about using surveillance to deal with employee-related issues.”
I don’t know Brian and have never heard of Phenix Investigations until today, but I did find it a rather curious email. For starters, spring officially arrived about five months ago. And frankly, I can’t think of a worse idea at any time of the year than spying on my employees, especially in the current business environment.
My curiosity moves me to do a little investigating on my own.
One of the most profitable and sustaining business models is the razor and the blade concept. In this model, there exists a synergistic coupling of two compatible products, one dependent upon the other, requiring a capital purchase (the razor) and then the continuing need for necessary consumable products (the blade), which is of course where all the money is.
The key to sustaining this model is the continued reinvention of both the razor and the blade. As consumers, we know this. Yet, because of our need to always have the next new thing, we invariably get sucked into the razor and blade syndrome.
Imagine my good luck at receiving a credit adjustment in the mail for $161.64.
Not knowing exactly what a credit adjustment is, I rip open the nondescript, official looking envelope to find that I have been included in a select group of individuals chosen for a special publisher’s offer on a three-year subscription to Motor Trend magazine — an offer not available to the general public.
The regular subscription price is $179.64, but with my special credit adjustment of $161.64, the price is only $6 per year. Wow.
Recently I received an offer for a new personal productivity application called “RescueTime” that claims to help me better manage my time by tracking my everyday activities, at work and in my personal life, thus making me a more productive person.
I’m all for self-improvement but this seems a little invasive, like self-imposed Big Brotherhood, looking over my shoulder at everything I’m doing.
Okay, I get that Google has changed the world and the way business is done, and their leading-edge apps are leveling the playing field for smaller companies; but, if they’re going to employ traditional media to market those apps, they might want to bring in someone who knows what they’re doing. It’s an embarrassment, or it should be. Either they don’t realize this, or they’ve become too arrogant to care.
I don’t know about you, but I’m finding it very interesting to watch what appears to be a desperation move (or is it a Kamikaze mission?) by Domino’s Pizza, as the company has launched an aggressive mea culpa campaign using traditional advertising and social media, including a high visibility video on YouTube, in an attempt to resuscitate its dying brand. The campaign is essentially an admission that their pizza sucks — at least in the minds of customers. Domino’s has listened and is responding with a complete overhaul of the product.
Domino’s president Patrick Doyle speaks to us from his corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor about how painful it was to hear focus group participants describe how bad his pizza is; the crust tastes like cardboard, the sauce like ketchup, the cheese tasteless and processed. The average frozen pizza is far superior. A vocal leader in the focus group sessions, a woman named Adrian, proclaims it to be the worst excuse for pizza she’s ever seen. Ouch. That’s not a wound, it’s a head shot.
With advertising saturation levels at a tipping point in just about every medium, both offline and online, where do advertisers go from here? Well, there’s a new ad medium that promises to break through the clutter, getting to captive audiences in a highly intimate environment: the bathroom. So now your business can reach new prospective customers while they’re doing their business.
All we need to do is replace all our existing toilets with the WOW Toilet.
It’s a universal retrofitted transparent toilet tank engineered with a space in the front to insert an advertising image or poster that is clearly displayed to users who have nothing else to look at. With more than 1.2 billion toilets in the U.S., this represents a massive new opportunity just waiting to be exploited as every one of them can be transformed into a billboard, turning otherwise wasted space into ad revenue and offering advertisers millions of potential impressions… or is it exposures?
And now, in the category of worst practices for online direct marketing, the winner is: the Survival Seed Bank.
This seems like something right out of the back of a catalog mail order advertisement for bomb shelters back in the 1950s. In this case it’s targeted at a growing population of survivalists who believe the end is near, and the first thing to go will be our food supply.
The worst part is it appears to be working, which validates the premise of marketing best practices — that emotion drives response more effectively than rational consideration, with the two most powerful emotions being fear and greed (both of which come into play in this campaign).
Filed under: Marketing Models | Tags: email, gimmicks, mass marketing, spamming
My new friend Chuck Falco, who is with an “Internet marketing firm” in Chicago called the Hyper Text Group, has been corresponding with me for the past couple of months. I’ve never met Chuck, nor have I heard of his company, but he keeps sending me messages trying to sell me email lists — not just the lists, he’s offering to manage “highly targeted” campaigns for me, using their exclusive Hyper Mail software. He claims they have 85 million opt-in consumer email addresses, updated as of July 20, 2009, and can tailor a “niche market” list that’s just right for my needs. It’s hard to fathom that so many people have given Chuck permission to sell their names and email addresses on the Internet to anyone possessing a credit card.
“With a click of the mouse,” Chuck says, “I can mail out millions of targeted emails.” It’s a pretty big target.
Is this a trick? It certainly won’t be construed as a treat. And no amount of marketing spin is going to sell this idea to the kids.
A company called Tetra Pak that produces shelf-stable single serve cartons of milk has launched a social media campaign through Twitter and Facebook urging people to “give something healthy to the little monsters” this Halloween. What they’re suggesting is we hand out little cartons of milk rather than candy. That’ll go over like a lead balloon. Why not just give away raw vegetables?
The posts are intended to lure us to www.trickortreatme.com where we are offered a discount coupon good at any participating retailer. Here’s the viral marketing part: we’re also asked to tell our friends about this great idea through a number of social media links provided. There’s also an option to leave a comment, though nobody has. Obviously there are some pretty sharp minds at work in the marketing department out at Tetra Pak USA, who claim to have “the experience and the flow of ideas to help us exploit the magic of milk.”
