Ad agencies and marketers continue to live in a parallel universe…

09 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, B2B Marketing, Branding, Marketing, Social Media, Thought Leadership

Tags

advertising, B2B Marketing, branding, marketing, social media

Research released this week by ThinkTV claimed “people working for advertising agencies are out of touch, childless, share-housing, farmers’ market-loving, workaholic gym junkies, who overestimate the impact of social media and the internet on normal Australians.”

Me thinks it’s a pretty accurate persona, to use the modern vernacular.

Of course, the consequence of the frame of reference from which agency types view the world, is how it influences their creative and media decisions in quite biased and dangerous ways.

I was on the end of this type of thinking when talking with a marketer in charge of selling “enterprise solutions” for a telco. In layman’s terms this means she flogs large phone systems to big companies through consultative selling. The reason she was asking my advice was the fact her sales were tanking and she couldn’t get leads from her digital marketing in LinkedIn and banner ads on other sites. True dear reader.

I was showing her some interactive 3D mail examples from US telcos that worked really well to generate qualified leads, particularly when supported with telephone follow-up. She stared at me bug-eyed and said “mail and telephone for B2B marketing are just not on my radar, everything’s digital these days and the agency would never go for it“.

I was taken aback, because as she spoke, I saw something flapping outside her window.

Everything’s just digital these days

The real problem with this advertising agency parallel universe is that it’s not new. The industry has lived in it for decades and not learned from its mistakes. I remember a survey in the 1980’s that demonstrated how out of touch the people who worked in advertising agencies really were.

One revelation was that agency people assumed everyone leased cars and bought their groceries on their fuel card in Shell Shops and 7/Eleven stores. Why go to Woolies?

I also had a marketing assistant at that time, who eventually became a partner in an ad agency (must have been the training). She lived in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and abjectly refused to travel west of George Street in the city. “the only time I go west is to get to the polo and then someone drives me“, she proudly exclaimed.

So here is the latest parallel universe of Adland – it goes part of the way to explaining the massive amounts of money being wasted in digital marketing channels.

The key is as follows – view the charts and weep:

Adland = Yellow
Adland’s estimate of public use = Dark blue
The public’s real use = Light blue

This article in yesterday’s press let the facts speak for themselves. For example, when asked to estimate how many people watch Netflix weekly, Adland said 80%. Yet apparently only 28% of “normal” people use Netflix weekly.

Gotta go now and do my weekly mentoring of young agency talent. Where’s my Tardis?

More than ever before, customers want to be sold too…

28 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, B2B Marketing, Branding, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Remarketing, Sales, Social Media, social selling, Thought Leadership

≈ 1 Comment

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B2B Marketing, content marketing, customer service, digital, digital marketing, email marketing, marketing, remarketing, Sales, social media, social selling, Thought Leadership

There is some serious B.S. being peddled claiming human DNA has miraculously changed in the last few years. The peddlers (known as content marketers) claim people don’t want to be sold anything anymore. They claim businesses that try to sell things to their customers and prospects will fail.

I’m not kidding, such absurd claims are being made at marketing seminars – if it wasn’t so sad it would be hilarious.

The claim of course, is complete rubbish and without supporting evidence.

content marketers shoveling content

The plain fact is this – people love to be sold to by good salespeople. And when they have a great sales experience they rave about it and call it “excellent customer service”. They tell friends at social functions and on social media. Some marketers even label them advocates.

Great sales technique doesn’t make the customer uncomfortable. It doesn’t sound “salesy” – to use an emerging piece of jargon. A good sales person is highly regarded by customers. And we all have our favourites, whether they be at our local cafe, clothing store, pub, hairdresser, mechanic, IT supplier, butcher, baker or grocer.

But when it comes to lousy salespeople or poor sales messages, people share a universal dislike. Since the beginning of time, people have disliked them – it is not a new sentiment just because of the internet or claims by content marketers.

How many times have you threatened to take your business elsewhere because a salesperson wasn’t available to serve you? We all love salespeople.

So to push a self-interest content marketing barrow and state all a marketer has to do is publish more and more non-sales information and the world will flock to your door, is pure fantasy. The content marketers may be smoking the wacky tobacky, but the punters aren’t having a bar of it.

Are content marketers smoking the wacky tobacky?

The common thread among modern consumers is they are time-poor and suffer from severe infobesity – much of this caused by useless content marketing messages that don’t give people a reason to act, or consider a brand. Content for content’s sake. Yet the last thing people want in their busy lives is more content.

Human beings are the laziest species on the planet – we always seek the path of least resistance. One of the key reasons apps are so popular for example, is their ease of use. So marketers have to make it as easy as possible for people to buy – which is why giving punters incentives, offers, propositions and reasons to “buy now” are key to getting sales.

To quote my old boss, David Ogilvy, “you cannot bore people into buying“. Yet content marketers are adamant you can. Waste more of people’s valuable time and you’re guaranteed to sell them more, they preach to the gullible.

Let’s examine some facts shall we:

The single biggest innovation in online shopping was an in-your-face sales tool. It was invented by Amazon – and customers love it! They call it customer service, because that’s what great selling is all about – serving customers and prospects well. The technique is now used on all major transaction websites.

Here’s an example with which you are all familiar – you visit Amazon and click on a book you are considering buying. The site then tells you “customers who bought this item also bought…”

Look out, Amazon is daring to “sell things”…

Even “Facebook with a necktie” (known as LinkedIn) uses this technique. When you view a person’s profile, you are prompted with a message “People also viewed” and there is a list of people’s mug shots linking to their profiles. This is a sales technique as old as retail selling – suggesting alternatives to get customers to buy at least one option. It’s a sales tool, not a non-sales tool.

Companies have always published non-sales information, it is not a new invention. And they made the information available at every point possible along the “customer journey”. Sorry, I had to drop the journey buzzword at least once. Some of you ancient marketers will remember such non-sales content as brochures, websites, booklets, newsletters, educational videos, signage, on-pack instructions, seminars, user manuals – the list goes on.

This is all designed to assist customers and prospects to make buying decisions, or as after sales service. Why would the punters want more ‘information’?

Yet the content marketers are claiming the whole world has changed just because people can do some online research before buying. This is stretching credibility beyond truth. Just because a marketer can reach a prospective customer in more places than ever before, does not automatically translate into “don’t sell to consumers, just post information as much as possible“.

wanna read content rather than buy a product?

By all means, help build your brand by publishing relevant content that cost-effectively drives people to a sale, or keeps them coming back after they’ve bought. But make it easy for the punters to buy – they are already inundated with infobesity and can’t be bothered doing all the work themselves.

So please, you self-interested content marketers, stop the lying about content marketing and making fake claims all a brand has to do to succeed, is publish non-sales content. It’s dishonest. Brands have always published non-sales content, as well as sales content – and it’s the sales content that has the biggest impact on the business and always will.

I’m going on a customer journey to get a drink of water from the kitchen. Better check some influencers to see what non-sales content they have, so I can make my buying decision – do I get cold water from the fridge, just run water from the tap, or maybe drink sparkling water from a bottle? After all, I want to ensure my water-drinking customer experience journey is the best it can be…

Does Marketo believe all marketers are idiots…

02 Tuesday Feb 2016

Posted by Malcolm Auld in B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Social Media, Telemarketing

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

B2B Marketing, content marketing, copywriting, Dave Chaffey, digital marketing, direct marketing, email marketing, marketing automation, Marketo, telemarketing

Some of you may have seen this subject line recently. It’s a Newsflash so it must be important:

It’s from Marketo and it’s close to being the most insulting subject line ever written about marketers. Either that or it reveals the Marketo team is comprised of fools.

Hands-up all of you who thought email was dead or gravely ill for that matter? Who among you no longer uses email to communicate with customers, because you thought email was dead?

Were you as relieved as I was to discover from Marketo that “email is not dead“? I suspect very few of you even believed the headline. It’s the equivalent of saying “the atmosphere still exists around planet Earth“. Of course it does and of course email is not dead – what fool would make such a claim?

Here’s the supporting paragraph:

Marketers are spoilt for choice when it comes to digital marketing channels. Programmatic, social, mobile apps… the list goes on. Despite all the latest and greatest, tried-and-tested tactics still have their place in any marketing strategy this year: when it comes to true audience engagement, email is still king.

It’s true, marketers are spoiled for choice – and tried and tested tactics still have their place in any marketing strategy. And when it comes to true audience engagement (whatever that even means) nothing beats face-to-face selling, telephone, direct mail and then of course email – the science proved it years ago. So while email may not be king, it’s certainly close in the pecking order beneath the throne.

Curiously Marketo is addicted to email – it’s the primary way they communicate directly with subscribers. They certainly don’t call their subscribers on the phone – despite the obvious profits in doing so.

So let’s consider why they published such a headline.

Option 1 – They believe all marketers are idiots and stopped using email for marketing purposes. As you and I know dear reader, marketers have never stopped inundating inboxes with marketing messages and won’t stop any time soon, so it can’t be this option.

Option 2 – The Marketo team members are stupid, as they thought email was dead and they stopped using it for their marketing purposes, when every other brand in the world continued to use it. I don’t think they are stupid and they certainly haven’t stopped using email if my inbox is anything to go by, so it can’t be this option.

Option 3 – Maybe a junior with no experience wrote the headline? As you can tell, I’m grasping for explanations. There is no sensible reason for making such a nebulous claim – unless the Marketo marketing team is just plain lazy and decided to be sensationalist to sell their webinar? I’m leaning toward this option.

The problem with using a sensationalist headline, is it must be believable if it is to work – like the headline in this blog. And given most marketers, including Marketo’s team, don’t believe email is dead, this headline makes no sense whatsoever and insults even the most mediocre marketer.

If you are interested in catching up on the latest in email marketing then you may want to join the webinar. Dave Chaffey is well worth listening too – he’s a very smart marketer. Though I suggest he would have written a different headline. Here’s the link to the event – so my good friends at Marketo get a free plug:)

But the headline does reveal the number one truth of content marketing – any fool can type crap and sadly many fools do…

Woolies CEO resigns, but sales are the least of their problems…

17 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, BIG DATA, Branding, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Telemarketing

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

advertising, B2B Marketing, branding, Coles, customer service, marketing, online marketing, social media, Woolies

Is it any wonder the Woolies head checkout operator is resigning? It was announced in the press today the CEO is falling on his sword after a deterioration in sales.

But the sales are the symptom, not the problem. You may have seen this article about a major data breach.

Apparently a human caused a computer to send an email to more than 1,000 customers – because computers don’t just send emails like this of their own accord. The problem from this simple error, is the email included an excel spread sheet with the names and email address of thousands of customers and a downloadable link to 7,941 vouchers, worth a total of $1,308,505.

If you read the article you’ll see how some customers had purchased their vouchers, but when they went to use them at the check-out, they had been cancelled by Woolworths, leaving the poor customers publicly humiliated and a tad upset.

Here’s what one customer said: “They took my money from my credit card and told me I was using stolen cards. I could not take the trolley of groceries home as I did not have enough money to pay. I tried to call Woolworths but no one picked up the phone. I have had a very very horrible day.”

To say this data breach is a disaster is an understatement. And it demonstrates how managing your small data – let alone your BIG DATA – can be very costly if you get it wrong.

It also reflects another problem of modern business. The attitude of big brands: it’s one of complete disrespect and disdain for customers. They refuse to provide humans to serve customers when those said customers require help. You’d think these brands would know a customer – those people who pay the salaries of the executives, like the CEO. Why don’t these companies get it?

I was in Woolies, or was it Coles last week? I struggle to remember because they are identical in design, have the same soulless atmosphere and a complete lack of service.

I was trying to find a particular product, but couldn’t find any particular staff to help me. Like an explorer in uncharted territory, I searched aisle after aisle for someone who was obviously an employee, who could provide directions. I did find a bloke stacking bread, but he said he said he wasn’t an employee, he just put the bread on shelves. Obviously some sort of volunteer, slave, intern or work experience lad?

I tried the checkout but the queues were too clogged to attract attention. Eventually I found someone who suggested I try three quarters of the way down aisle 19 – supported by a “good luck mate” comment.

Play swap the logo

Woolies or Coles – they both look the same?

Spot the customer service staff…

Just like real estate agents, you could swap the logos between the Woolies and Coles stores and you wouldn’t notice a difference.

The data disaster was followed closely by the Woolies Website Wreck

You can read about it here. Unlike the majority of humans, marketers get excited about marketing – which is understandable but rarely fruitful. The language gives it away. Woolies spent money telling the public how excited they were about a new website. Life must be dull in grocery land if that’s what floats your boat.

The problem for Woolies was the lack of response to the feedback provided by customers – despite encouraging it.

The best they could manage was to reply with a social media post:

Worse still was the comment to the media:

“Woolworths online serves thousands of customers every day. We have been making changes to our site and gradually rolling them out across the country… these changes also mean customers pay exactly the same price in store as they do online.”

This demonstrates a complete disconnect with their customers. The problem Woolies caused, had nothing to do with cost of goods. It had everything to do with the cost of convenience – the website wasn’t working, so any convenience gained from shopping online was lost. Bugger the price of beans.

You know you’re scraping the bottom of the customer service barrel when you rely on social media for customer relations. But it’s not surprising that senior executives have been duped to rely on social media – they offer nothing else.

So many companies force you to DIY problem solve, by searching and hunting on appallingly designed websites (where ‘contact us’ is almost hidden from view). The only way you can solve a problem is submit an email form and hope you hear back in a few days.

You can never find a telephone number to contact companies at any time of day. These companies want you to do business with them 7 days a week, either in retail stores or via websites, but they don’t want to provide customer service. Or if they do provide telephone support, you have to talk to a computer, press buttons, go around in circuitous loops and eventually get put on hold for ages listening to advertisements.

So those who can be bothered start trolling on social media and marketers mistakenly believe that’s where they need to be focusing. I’ve owned a supermarket – not the size of Woolies or Coles – but the principles for serving your customers do not involve remote random social media posts.

Maybe Woolies and Coles should just merge and become Coolies? It’s a rude and disparaging term for cheap labour. But given both stores are too cheap to provide labour to serve customers, neither give you a discount for self-serve checkout and all their ads brag about how cheap they are, it seems quite appropriate.

Gotta go – need to do the week’s grocery shopping. Online or in-store? I think I’ll support small business…

B2B B.S. bodes badly but bothers bugger-all bosses…

26 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by Malcolm Auld in B2B Marketing, Branding, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital, Email marketing, Marketing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

advertising, B2B Marketing, branding, content marketing, copywriting, customer engagement, email marketing

I received an email a couple of days ago from someone I don’t believe I know. He has the flash title of Head of Customer Engagement, at a company called nearmap. It started as follows:

Hi Malcolm,

I hope that you’re well.

I tried call earlier this week and your front desk asked me to send this email. As your company attended ADMA and so did we; I wanted to bring the below to your attention with a 20% discount and the first 3 months unlimited data package.

While I appreciate the sentiment about my health, the paragraph is a complete fantasy and almost illiterate.

I guess he uses spell checker – “I tried call”, as against “I tried to call” or “I tried calling”. Regardless, I did not get any call earlier in the week, as I don’t have a land line, only a mobile. And like everyone else with a mobile I can track my calls.

More significantly, as I currently work from a home office, I do not have a front desk – let alone one that can speak. And I’ve never known any sort of furniture that can communicate like humans. Are there some sort of new digital desks with the ability to answer phone calls, manage diaries and send emails? Look out human receptionists.

The next sentence intrigued me as well. He says my company attended ADMA. My company? Does that include the amazing talking furniture, the files, computers, bookkeeper, accountant and other staff? Did we all front-up to the office of ADMA’s CEO and hang out?

If as I assume, he means I attended the ADMA Forum, his small data is corrupt. I didn’t attend this year. But I’m pleased he did and hope it helped his customer engagement.

As for my attendance being the reason he “wanted to bring the below to your attention with a 20% discount and the first 3 months unlimited data package” I have no idea what the statement means. And the rest of the email gave me no clues either.

I won’t bore you dear reader with the rest of the message. Suffice to say the majority of it talked about his company. There was no attempt to determine if I was even a prospect. And there was no other mention of the “20% discount and 3 months unlimited data package”.

Though there was one sentence that peaked my curiosity and had me concerned I wasn’t up with my acronyms and jargon:

“Our PhotoMaps are served straight to your web browser via our website or alternatively via our WMS to use directly within your CAD/GIS as a mapping layer.”

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to drop a reference to GIS or WMS into a conversation, though I’m sure I will find a way?

He finished with: “Looking forward to hearing your thoughts so that we can set up a call to go through a full demo.”

Even that final sentence defies logic. Set up a call to go through a full demo? Is the demo over the phone? Is it a video call? Do we have to set up a call to set up the demo while on the call?

If this is the quality of direct marketing in the digital world, then we may as well give up now. You cannot build a business using lies. At least if you are going to lie, make an attempt to write with some clarity, so your message has some chance of being read.

Maybe our schools are to blame? You only have to mark a few university assignments to realise the literacy problems throughout our education system.

Of course the real question has to be where did he get my email address – I doubt ADMA would be giving away contact details without permission? And given I didn’t attend how could I be on their list of delegates?

Regardless, how does somebody with a job title of Head of Customer Engagement, get away with this appalling communication? It’s no wonder content marketing is getting such a high profile.

Just write stuff, don’t ask for the order and business will take care of itself.

I wonder if the Head of the Company knows how the business is engaging customers? Does anyone even care anymore?

I can’t wait for the omni-channel follow-up…

Careful, you’ll go blind…

03 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by Malcolm Auld in B2B Marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing

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B2B Marketing, direct marketing, marketing

Part 3

Continuing with the series about 3-D mailings and building evacuations. Today we’ll discuss the risks associated with the seemingly innocuous mail tube.

For my sins way back when, I worked on the American Express account in NY and Oz. So am quite familiar with the brand and its direct marketing.

This campaign was created by my colleagues. It won an industry award for response rates. Yet at the same time it cost Amex some of their best customers.

That’s something you don’t see on award entry forms do you – a question asking “how many of your customers did you lose as a result of your marketing activity?”

The mailing was simply an A2 poster delivered in a mail tube. And it was mailed to the top 5% of customers in terms of average card spend.

The diagram is not a crime scene as some have asked me over the years. It’s an illustration of a heterosexual couple lying on sun beds.

The offer is simple – book one person for a holiday on Hayman Island and your partner can join you at half price (using your Amex to pay of course). The response was outstanding for the most part and all the available rooms were booked within a few days of the mailing.

But take a minute to think about this dear reader. If your postal address is a post box, not a street address, how do you know if a mail tube has been sent to you?

You guessed it – you receive a note from Australia Post advising you to visit the post office in their business hours.

When do you think these VIP customers go to work and return home? Probably like you, they are early starters and late finishers. So those who received their mail via a post box, were forced to make a special trip, or sent their secretaries to collect the parcel that awaited them.

When they discovered the mail tube only contained advertising material, some of these customers were so angry they cut up their cards and sent them back. These top value customers relinquished their membership. (The lesson of course is to only mail 3-D packs to street addresses, simple really)

The mailing both made and lost money for Amex, and who knows what the lifetime value of those who cancelled their cards was really worth? But hey, it did win an award…

Once again a testimony to the power direct marketing can have on your brand.

Here’s another tip: always remember to make it clear to the prospect what they are supposed to do (or not do) with the mailpack. They don’t attend the original briefing, so in certain circumstances, they need instructions on how to open the 3-D mailing. Here’s why:

One Sydney DM agency created a mailpack that nearly blinded a couple of prospects when they tried to open the mail tube. The pack contained a genuine hunting arrow with a razor-sharp metal tip designed to kill when fired from a crossbow.

The agency had an arrow in its logo so it seemed like a good idea to use one in the pack as an involvement device to highlight the agency’s targeting powers, or some such message – you can imagine the copy.

When one prospect received the mailing, he discovered that the contents were jammed in the mail tube. So he held the tube up to his eye to see what was causing the blockage. My bet dear reader, is you just flinched.

As you imagined, the arrow flew out, narrowly missed his eye and embedded itself in his chair next to his head. It nearly blinded him. Great for gaining attention, but not so good for getting the sale!

Apart from the obvious fact that you should never include anything in a mailpack which could cause harm to anyone handling it, it’s also a good idea to give your prospect some idea of how the mailpack works and how you want them to interact with it, if it in fact contains life-threatening goods.

I could go on… and I will, with just one more example.

A print company thought they had a great idea. They sent a live ferret in a cage to prospects, who were very senior decision-makers, with a note that said something like “we’ll ferret out the best print deal for you”. True story.

One manager told me they called the RSPCA to take the ferret away, as it had become a feral ferret and was hissing and spinning around the cage in a distressed state. The sales representative from the print company tried in vain for 3 days to make contact with the decision-maker. When he finally did get in touch, he was rather distressed himself about the welfare of his ferret.

He was also told in no uncertain terms what to do with his print services – something similar to the laser gun advice I received.

An epic fail to use the modern vernacular, but a hell of a lot more fun than the digital world, where you just send an email and ask the recipient to click here.

Which reminds me, I haven’t checked the mail yet today…

You want to stick the laser gun where?

02 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by Malcolm Auld in B2B Marketing, Branding, Direct Marketing, Marketing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

B2B Marketing, branding, direct marketing, marketing

Part 2

Further to last Friday’s blog, here’s another story of good intentions gone bad – and building evacuations. The case of a marketer, a mailing, a laser gun, a public servant and my posterior.

3-D mailpacks are an excellent creative solution when you have a high quality list with a relevant offer and are prepared to invest in generating a lead or a sale. They work because they are tactile and have perceived tangible value. And they really break through the clutter in the digital world.

More importantly they help get past a senior executive’s gatekeeper because they create a dilemma: the gatekeeper isn’t sure if the boss is expecting the package and so can’t make a decision to throw it out. And because 3-D mailpacks are out of the ordinary, they often evoke reactions and emotions not normally displayed in the working environment. So they can create a bit of fun.

However, creating a 3-D mailpack just for the sake of it, doesn’t guarantee success. Like any communication, it must be relevant to the prospect and communicate a benefit or a reason for a response. And you should research your mailpack with your prospects prior to creating the final product.

Which leads me to the time I was running Ogilvy & Mather Direct in the late 1980s. Our client was a leading office equipment brand. We were asked to create a lead generation campaign amongst senior information technology decision-makers. Our objective was to get people to respond for a demonstration of a top-of-the-range laser printer worth over $500,000 per unit. The offer was a $50,000 saving – a simple 10% discount.

So we created a 3-D mailpack, which included a toy laser gun nested in a box. The headline on the front of the box said “We’d like to shoot down some misconceptions you may have about the price of laser printers”

When you opened the lid of the box, you couldn’t resist grabbing the gun and firing it – complete with loud noise and accompanying flashing lights. The headline inside highlighted the saving of $50,000.

The intention was to involve prospects with the mailpack via the laser gun – a tenuous link to the laser printer we were flogging. To make sure there would be no problems mailing the packs, we had Australia Post test one through their postal system; it arrived in good condition with the laser gun still in place, so they gave it the thumbs up.

Given the test results, we rolled out the campaign and waited for the responses – and they were immediate. Unfortunately they weren’t the sort we desired. The prospects who received these mailpacks were very senior decision-makers and a number of them worked in some very sensitive industries, such as defense and export to the Middle East. In some of the mailpacks, the laser guns had come loose in the box and were already making noises when the box was delivered. This caused panic and building evacuations in a few companies and government departments.

In a mining town in Western Australia an X-ray machine detected the gun and the mailpack was isolated in the middle of a street. The Bomb Squad flew from Perth by helicopter (closely followed by a network news helicopter) to blow it up. The locals weren’t amused as part of the town had to be evacuated for the exercise. But we did get to watch our mailing explode on national news.

The head of a government-run department that deals with Iraq, Iran and other Middle East countries, rang the client and then rang me, after his office was evacuated. He told me in no uncertain terms where he wanted to stick the laser gun. Please use your imagination dear reader. Suffice to say I would have had difficulty walking and performing other normal daily functions.

Assume the position Mr Auld

In some cases where the mailpack had caused mass panic, companies threatened not to do business with our client again. While we did generate some positive leads, it’s safe to say that the campaign didn’t achieve its objective. Although a number of recipients wanted to know where we’d sourced the laser guns, so they could get some for their kids.

If we’d thought about it more carefully, we could have targeted this small and tightly defined market by simply writing a personalised letter with an offer — ‘Save $50,000 if you buy now!’. But hey, we were a creative agency, so we designed a creative mailpack.

The only good news was the client forgave us and we kept the business – after all, they had enthusiastically approved the mailing.

In Part 3 – my next post – we’ll discover the dangers posed by mailing tubes. If used incorrectly they can cause serious injury, as well as damage your brand…

The mailings that caused building evacuations, again…

30 Friday May 2014

Posted by Malcolm Auld in B2B Marketing, Branding, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Telemarketing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

B2B Marketing, branding, direct marketing, marketing

Part 1

Earlier this week a PR stunt for a new video game resulted in the Bomb Squad being called to Ninemsn’s offices. Apparently a black safe was delivered anonymously to the publisher’s office accompanied by a “suspicious” letter which told a reporter to “check your voice mail”.

But the reporter diddn’t have voice mail. The staff entered a pin code supplied with the safe, but it started to beep and did not open, so they thought it was an explosive device. You can picture the rest – or read about it here.

In 1982 we caused a similar problem in the security industry. I was National Marketing Manager for a number of TNT companies – one being TNT Security Guards. The (legitimate) security industry was union-dominated with high labour costs and the only difference between the different brand of security guards was the uniforms they wore. The pain of change was enormous and given the tight margins, the cost savings weren’t that big, so convincing prospects to change suppliers was not easy.

We decided the best way to demonstrate the strength of our security guards, was to demonstrate how useless the incumbent guards were. This turned out to be easier than we thought.

We conducted what is now called an omni-channel campaign – telemarketing, followed by 2-step direct mail, followed by telemarketing and a face-to-face presentation.

Once we had qualified our prospects by telephone, our sales representatives hand-delivered to each company an anonymous black box about the size of a small chocolate box. The box was handed to the security guard at the front of the building with instructions to deliver it personally to the security decision-maker. The security decision-maker’s name and title were labelled on the outside of the box.

The security guards dutifully obliged and delivered the boxes to the decision-makers. Upon receipt of the box, the decision-maker asked where it came from. The security guard was unable to answer, except to say that it had been delivered anonymously.

When the decision maker opened the box the message on the lid stated ‘Seeing is not necessarily believing’ and inside the box an optical illusion included the message ‘What you see isn’t necessarily what you get’. Reflecting the lack of security that let the box be delivered in the first place.

The following day our sales representatives delivered a similar box following the same procedures, except this box had a different optical illusion with the message ‘Looking closely at the facts makes sense’.

By the time the second box was delivered to some companies, all hell had broken loose. In a number of cases our representatives were frisked or held for questioning. Our competitors rang us to ask what we were up to, after they had tracked the number plates of one of our sales representative’s cars. Some offices had even been evacuated while the box was investigated for explosive devices.

But we had achieved our objective – proof that the security guards were not providing the service they were contracted to do. How else could an anonymous box arrive on the security decision-maker’s desk two days in a row?

The day after the second box was delivered we telephoned the security decision-makers for an appointment. Prior to this campaign we couldn’t get past the secretary. The follow-up calls resulted in a phenomenal 86 per cent appointment rate, for business worth millions of dollars. A hugely positive ROI.

Interestingly, about 14 years later my agency was asked to do some work for TNTGroup4. We conducted some informal telephone research and discovered there were still some people in the industry who were around when the above mailpack was delivered. Not only did they remember the mailpack, they also remembered that it came from TNT Security Guards — testimony to the power of direct marketing for building brands.

Since 9/11 the practice of delivering anonymous packages has all but disappeared – though as proven this week, the odd young marketer who hasn’t studied history will still make a naive mistake.

In Part 2 (my next post) I’ll share where a senior executive wanted to stick a laser gun as a result of direct mail gone wrong. It certainly wouldn’t have helped my posture…

The unconventional convention and other useless puns…

13 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, B2B Marketing, Branding, Marketing

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advertising, B2B Marketing, branding, direct marketing, mass marketing

A few years ago I was invited by a government tourism authority to speak at one of their conferences. I was to do a presentation on the event marketing industry, a category in which I have quite some experience.

To prepare, I reviewed 12 months of trade magazine advertising – there are 3 main publications – to see what the industry says about itself through its advertising. Or should I say “paid content” to keep up my digi-creds?

I scanned all sorts of ads for hotels, conference centres and other meeting venues. It was a fascinating exercise, so I presented as if I was from another planet and had just been appointed to a marketing role for a venue in the industry.

I explained to the audience that their computer keyboards had a key that computers on our planet didn’t have. It was a pun key and it had been used in specific ways.

First there was the ‘golf’ pun – here’s a few sample headlines, accompanied by various images of golf courses:

What is our role in one?
What better place to improve your staff’s drive…
Par for the course at…
We’ll go a fairway to impress at your conference
A conference venue on par with the world’s best

Four!

Then there was the ‘meet’ pun:

Meet here. Right now
Meet in the Pacific
Meet with us
Meet at the Sydney Boulevard

Then there was the ‘view’ pun accompanied by various views:

A different view to your conference
We’re currently rated amongst the best in the world. You should see our view of the future.
It’s our view that makes you think clearly!
Our view on meetings? You deserve a choice.
Here’s a new point of view on conferences
The Blue Mountains. We have a higher point of view.

Then there was the ‘break from convention’:

Just meet an hour north of Sydney and leave convention behind…
Break with convention and meet in our garden
Take a break from convention
Fly in the face of convention

And then of course there was the one you’ve never heard of “The unconventional convention”:

The unconventional convention centre
Resort to the unconventional
We may look unconventional
At the Carlton you’ll find our 5 star service decidedly unconventional

but conventional headlines…

shame our ads aren’t…

And there were a few just weird messages with images of people in suits floating in the ocean like this one:

if this is relaxed what does stressed look like?

By the time I finished showing the various advertisements much of audience was hiding under their seats in the fear I was about to show their ads. I even showed an ad by The Duxton hotel and one by The Sheraton hotel that were identical. Same size, same three original photos – an empty bedroom, an empty conference room and an empty table setting.

What the presentation revealed is what happens when people who don’t understand B2B marketing get control of the marketing budget. These are usually marketers who have only ever worked in brand advertising roles – they’ve never sold anything and don’t understand the consultative sales process.

Traditional brand ads do not work as the primary communication in B2B marketing. They are a last resort only if you have loads of budget to waste, or are not interested in generating leads or accountability.

And you can always tell copywriters who don’t know how to sell. They rely on a pun in the headline in the vain hope the ‘creativity’ will somehow break through the clutter and magically create a rush of business. They think that going ‘beyond convention’ makes the ad interesting.

One of the better ads that demonstrated the marketing team understood customers was this one:

Unfortunately the offer was buried in the paragraphs. But it tapped into the problem faced by executive staff who are tasked with organising events on top of their usual workload. Though I doubt these people read event industry trade publications.

B2B marketing requires highly targeted personal messages with an offer or proposition to encourage response. It’s the classic way of direct marketing that works – mass marketing doesn’t. Leads need to be generated for face-to-face meetings, familiarisations, trade show attendance and relationship development. The sales process can take a couple of years.

These DM skills are rarely learned working in consumer brand advertising departments. Events marketing is entirely different to hotel accommodation marketing. Yet time and again marketers waste money on conventional hotel advertising hoping for an unconventional result for their events department.

Looks like my keyboard does have that pun button afterall.

Call-girl centre or call centre?

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by Malcolm Auld in B2B Marketing, Direct Marketing, Telemarketing

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B2B Marketing, direct marketing, telemarekting

What makes a good outbound telemarketer? It’s a question I’ve heard asked for years, with some fascinating answers.

One manager claimed outrageously that a person’s weight was a factor in their telemarketing skills.

The smart people at Cellarmasters Wines found that actors were some of their best telemarketers. There were a number of reasons for this:

All actors have three words in front of their job description: “out of work” – so there were plenty available to work, who lived locally in the eastern suburbs of Sydney.
They preferred part-time work as they needed the flexibility to go to auditions at short notice.
They saw the job as an acting role and weren’t afraid of rejection, it was just part of the act, so to speak.
They felt they were benefiting from the job in two ways – it helped their acting skills and it put food on the table (along with wine I assume).

Quite some years ago, I opened my first telemarketing division, as part of a B2B sales lead process in our marketing team. One lady (let’s call her Liz) stood out above all others in terms of closing appointments. After Liz had been with us for about a year, a staff member suggested that Liz was working another job – as an escort at a well-known city brothel. I had no idea how this person knew this, but she swore it was true.

The brothel was one of those illegal ones that operated in full view of the public, because the Madame threatened to reveal her client list if it was shut down – and that would have been catastrophic for the government and certain businesses who had accounts at the establishment.

After some deliberation, I took Liz for a coffee and a chat. This was not an area in which I’d had any management training and couldn’t find anything in the “101 HR Manual” to assist me. So I just winged it.

Liz admitted she did have another job (her primary job) and in fact her employment with our company was her secondary job. I was a tad disappointed. But our job provided legitimacy for her to justify her income. And it was only 4 to 6 hours per day, 3 days a week.

She explained how she came to work as an escort, working only for diplomats and politicians – and only on call-out from the brothel. She’d never worked the streets, only the ‘premium’ end of the business. And she was married to one of her former clients.

Liz was not embarrassed about it and obviously made good money, because in the early 1980’s she drove a sports car with personalised number plates and a car phone – this was when the only people with car phones were the security services.

Liz said candidly, but with a grin; “Malcolm, I can talk the pants off anyone – it’s why I’m so good at telemarketing”. I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I just nodded like one of those toy dogs in the back of cars. It was one of the few times an “open-mouth expressionless gawk” served as the best management tool.

Liz worked with us for a few years. I have no idea where she is now – I suspect retired and probably in good financial shape.

These days it’s even harder to get telemarketing to work, regardless of the skills of the staff, because people hide behind technology. They use voicemail to filter calls and given that good manners are not part of management training any more, most people don’t bother returning unsolicited calls. The right-party hit rates are declining as telemarketers spend more time talking to machines than to humans.

People hide behind voicemail

Maybe this will change when every phone call is a video call – that will make for interesting recruitment policies.

Gotta run, there’s the phone. Or should I let it go to voicemail?

The Malcolm Auld Blog

~ Marketing Musings and More…

Tag Archives: B2B Marketing

B2B B.S. bodes badly but bothers bugger-all bosses…

Careful, you’ll go blind…

You want to stick the laser gun where?

The mailings that caused building evacuations, again…

The unconventional convention and other useless puns…

Call-girl centre or call centre?

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