Archive for December, 2008

I’m struck, this morning, by the behavior of lame duck Presidents in their final months in office. Today, President Bush gave the American auto industry a bailout, enabling the Big Three automakers to continue their unsustainable business practices for three more months, rather than actually doing anything that would help solve the problem. He said that he’d imagined what it would be like if he were going into office in January, and stated that he didn’t think it was fair to burden the incoming Obama administration with a crisis right off the bat.

Hogwash. Read the rest of this entry »

Back when Comedy Central first went on the air, the Smothers Brothers hosted a Young Comedians show. They did bits in-between the new comics. One running gag throughout was Tom’s (presumed) lack of understanding of the idea of a rhetorical question. Dick asked, “How many man-hours do you think it took to build the railroad that opened up the West?” Tom tried to come up with an answer, until Dick explained, “It was a rhetorical question…you don’t answer it…you just think about it.”

At the end of the show, Dick pulled out a 35mm camera, ostensibly to take pictures of all the young commedians. After snapping a few pics, he opened up the back of the camera and pulled film out of the canister, exposing it, as if it was a Polaroid instant-film camera. Dick sighed, and told Tommy that he’d ruined the film, explaining that 35mm camera film has to be developed, and if exposed to light, it ruins the pictures.

Tommy smiled, and said, “No…it’s a rhetorical camera…you don’t need pictures.”

It was a funny bit, and it points out the dilemma here – the title of this post is – and isn’t – a rhetorical question. Read the rest of this entry »

In this uncertain economic climate, many retailers are immediately going to the one thing they are sure that works – cutting prices. And they are marketing that fact, trumpeting it from the rooftops – “We’re Cheaper Than the Competition!”

If that’s not the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard, it’s in the top five.

Repeat after me campers: COMPETING ON PRICE NEVER WORKS.

Say it. Repeat it. Learn it. Believe it. Why? Because there’s always somebody willing to go lower on prices than you are. It’s true. No matter how much you cut, there’s always going to be somebody that is willing to undercut you. Even worse, it turns out that low prices are addictive. Like rebates, red tag sales, employee pricing for everyone and so forth, cut your prices and people will expect it. Raise them back, and customers will simply wait for you to cut ‘em again. And you will. To survive.

So if cutting your price is a sucker bet, what will work?

Service. Customer relationships. Building trust. Innovation. Unique products. Loving your customers and treating them with respect. Pick one. Pick two. Better still, pick ‘em all.

So the nex time you’re tempted to cut prices, stop, think, and don’t do it. And if you do cut your prices, for pity’s sake, don’t brag about it. Unless you like losing margin, forever.

Most people don’t do a lot of thinking, especially about current events. It’s true. Zogby did a survey of Obama voters, and a vast majority of them had no idea that the Dems were in charge of Congress. Because so few people do their own thinking, many people simply defer to the news media, and believe whatever pablum they are spoon-fed. This becomes something of a problem, simply because (unlike the consipracy theorists would have us believe) there is no monolithic organization dictating policy. Instead, we have a bunch of groups and individuals out there, whipping up the muddled asses…um, huddled masses, for their own, shortsighted aims. The result is that the media, trying to whip people up into a frenzy (to insure the election of Obama) latch onto the economy, and do such a good job scaring everybody, that we end up with an economy that is in worse shape than it would be otherwise. (Hard to believe, but true.)

So how do you market to sheeple? Read the rest of this entry »

The gold standard in crisis marketing is the response to the Tylenol poisonings. The way Johnson & Johnson dealt with the crisis and it’s aftermath is now taught in university-level courses as the right way to deal with a crisis that threatens your company and your cash cow product. 

What did J&J do right? First, they didn’t go into stonewalling mode. They aggressively dealt with the problem, taking not just the high road, but doing everything possible to insure the safety of the public at their own, considerable expense. To begin with, they pulled all the product from the shelves. Their share of the painkiller market dropped from 35% to 8%. In time, they relaunched the brand, with triple-safety seals to prevent product tampering, and mounted an aggressive P.R. and marketing campaign. The result? They bounced back within a year, to become the dominant brand in analgesics. Oddly, they never caught the poisoner. More oddly, it did no long-term damage to J&J or to the Tylenol brand. 

You could argue that a Governor or President is primarily a crisis manager, at least in this day and age. Of course, when you bring crises upon yourself, you’re either supremely confident – or supremely stupid. Read the rest of this entry »

Like American cars? I do. (Well…at least Jeeps.) Like American car makers? Me neither. To find a bigger bunch of clowns in charge, you’d have to look at…at…Congress. Of course, the question on everybody’s lips should be, why do American automobile makers make so many models that nobody wants, models that they couldn’t make money on, even if they DID sell well?

There’s a reason, a believe it or not, it’s not “executive incompetence.”

It’s Congress. Read the rest of this entry »

I am a sucker. Or at least I have been. And may be sometime again in the future. You probably have been, too. Let me explain…

Let’s say you’re in the market for a car. You lust after a new one. Doesn’t matter what brand or what model. You buy it. As you drive it off the lot, it automagically loses about 20% of it’s value, simply by moving from the “new” to “currently owned/technically used” column. Say your new vehicle costs $30K, not an unusual amount for a new whip. You’ve put down 20% of the cost of the vehicle, either by trade in, down payment, or both. You plan to finance $24K. Fair enough, but when you drove it off the lot, it lost 20% of it’s value. At this point, you’ve paid $6K for the privilege of driving some new wheels. Hope you’re happy. If you’re not, let me acquaint you with a new term to add to your lexicon: under water. This is the phrase lenders use when you owe more than the item you financed is worth. If you go to trade it in on something you like better, you’ll pay for that mistake for, oh, let’s say the next ten years or so. Read the rest of this entry »

I have a friend who’s a deputy sheriff in the Panhandle. He told us (when I took my classwork for my concealed carry permit) that if you should ever get into a conflict that requires police intervention (say, a self-defense shooting), the first person to call in is, by default, considered the victim, while the second person is the perp. In other words, it matters little who started it – if you’re not the first one on the phone with 911, you’re going to be answering to the cops as if you’re the bad guy.

In marketing, being first to the microphones can make a difference, but there’s considerably more nuance involved, than there is in a 911 call. In a police emergency, the police have several responsibilities – first to make sure the situation is no longer dangerous to anyone (themselves included), next to determine what happened, and third to detain and/or arrest any guilty parties. In a dispute that requires marketing, you’re usually trying to spin things so that your side looks righteous, and the other guy looks guilty as sin.

Case in point, the labor sit-in, where the window factory suddenly closed up shop, leaving their workers without earned vacation and severance pay. Read the rest of this entry »

Accountability. That’s not a word you hear bandied about in marketing very often, unless it’s used in the context of talking about invoices. It should be. As marketers, we’ve learned, through experience, that it’s often advantageous…or even necessary, to use a little razzle dazzle to sell a client on a marketing message. However, the problem with acting like some kind of Merlin is that when it’s time to deliver, you can’t sidestep your responsibility to accountable for your results. When you make somebody’s wallet disappear, they expect – even demand – that you finish the trick by revealing something even more impressive. Simply saying “abracadabra” and then acting as if it’s not your fault when there’s nothing in the hat is simply not gonna cut it. Not today. Not in THIS economy.

The problem can be distilled down to one word: metrics. Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of folks would have you believe that the inauguration of Obama heralds the dawn of a new Age. Fiddlesticks. I’ll tell you what hearkens to a new age – the global financial meltdown. With gasoline here in Amarillo hovering at $1.65 a gallon for the last week or so (and likely to head lower, if you believe the forecasts), financial markets in turmoil, and the stock market circling the drain, it’s a Brave New World out there. So what’s a marketer to do? Read the rest of this entry »