| When Marketing Goes Wrong |
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You believe you have the "can't lose" idea. You even pat yourself on the back because of how brilliant you think the latest marketing campaign turned out. You just know customers are going to love it! Be careful! Even the biggest and "best" companies run afoul when they get too confident or do not actually test their campaign ideas on customers first. How do you make sure not to find yourself on a "Marketing Goes Wrong" list? Learn from others. The following examples are some of the best I could find to make our list of, "When Marketing Goes Wrong." 1. Can somebody give this guy a reality check? "If I can help people focus on preparedness ... then I hope I can help the country in some way." -- Former FEMA director Michael Brown, just two months after he resigned in the wake of his agency's failed response to Hurricane Katrina, announcing plans to start his own disaster-preparedness consulting firm. 2. Saving money by tossing the envelopes is one thing, but PLEASE show a brain cell or two... In a move to become more efficient and save printing and postage, New Jersey payroll services provider Automatic Data Processing sent postcards to more than 1,000 employees of Adecco Employment Services, a global human resources firm. Great idea, right? Not when the postcards were printed with the employees' Social Security numbers and instructions for accessing their private benefits information online. 3. Rule number one. Be careful when you get your information. Rule number two, check it. Blaming a mailing-list vendor for providing bad information, JPMorgan Chase was forced to apologize for sending a form letter about its credit card services to an Arab American man in California addressed to "Palestinian Bomber." 4. Rule number four. Don't mislead with an offer. Last January, Blockbuster kicked off a "no late fees" policy. The catch? If customers kept their movies more than a week past the due date, their credit cards were charged for the full purchase price; when they returned the items, their refund came minus a "restocking fee." By March the company settled with 47 states for $630,000 and agreed to pay refunds to consumers who felt misled. 5. Rule number four again, don't mislead even with what you think is a cute offer. Last April 1 (April Fools Day), the radio station KBDS in Los Angeles pranks a contest winner who is expecting a brand new Hummer H2. Instead, Shannon Castillo received a radio-controlled toy version of the H2. Castillo had hired a babysitter so she could go collect the prize, but when she sued the station, not for the child-care expenses -- instead for the $60,000 value of an actual Hummer. 6. Ah, there's a reason that direct mail is not as popular as it used to be... The Direct Marketing Association rolled out a campaign last year for a "Deceased Do-Not-Contact list" to stop calls to dead relatives. Great idea. Saves everyone the grief and extra expenses. I guess everyone but the dead. The Association decided to have a fee for preventing telemarketers from reaching to the grave: $1 per person. Can anyone say, "poor taste"? Brought to you by Samantha Rufo, President of nxtConcepts Need help implementing a new sales or marketing program? We've got two suggestions: |
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