People are getting very strict in how they define "free."
Patrick Hurley writes,
"Hi Seth:
So I took my two kids to the Oakland Museum today to check out the Disney exhibit. Very informative. Everyone liked it.
We even got to have our picture taken in one the sailing ships from the Peter Pan ride courtesy of USA Today. Nice touch I thought. We were told that it would be waiting for us in my email box when we returned home.
Sure enough, there was a link (albeit in my junk folder). I clicked on it and ……………….. was taken to a survey. Sorry kids. Instant gratification delayed.
Okay, I thought, I’m a marketer. I can kind of understand and accept this, even though it absurdly "required" that I provide my income level and gave no option to decline. I completed the survey and……… was taken to a page notifying me that I’d have to pay a $1 "administrative fee" to the photo fulfillment company, Foto Fetch. That would have been a deal breaker but my kids really wanted the photo. I tracked down my wallet for my credit card, typed in all my personal data and got the photo.
My good feelings toward USA Today after this experience — gone. Wiped clean. The quid pro quo that I expected — me receiving a photo from the good folks at USA Today in exchange for possibly having some branding on the photo frame or receiving a special subscription offer — was instead a complete rouse. The file folder in my brain titled "USA Today" now has a sticky note on it with a sad face." [end of story…]
On a similar note, Gil got his "free" cell phone in the mail today. He knows it’s not really free, he had to sign up for a two year contract. BUT, also, just to make a few bucks, the box is stuffed with come-ons, offers and other subterfuge. Is it really worth the few cents they earn back?
Exactly how many times are you going to get tricked by a "free iPod" site?
Even when I was seven this irked me. "Mom," I’d say, "We really don’t get 33% more toothpaste free… we have to buy the toothpaste in order to get it."
And finally, today I got an email from a ten-year-old girl who had read Free Prize Inside. She was complaining because there really wasn’t a free prize inside the box.
The best free stuff is really and truly free. All you get in return is loyalty, consumer satisfaction and word of mouth.
June 27, 2006
Amy Cham sent me to the: Similarity Web.
Darren has a lens on his blog now, a very useful click magnet of resources for bloggers: A – Z of Professional Blogging.
Several people have pointed me to: CNN.com – Indian Web sites go with the flow – Jun 26, 2006.
Experts say using a combination of astrology and numerology, the ancient sciences will help you choose the right colors, font, placement of graphics and navigation bar to make the perfect Web site.
These, of course, are the very same experts who know the gender of Britney’s next kid. I missed that day in school when astrology got classified as a science.
But hey, it’s easier than working on the content.
June 26, 2006
When you first learned division, you were told it was against the law to divide by zero. As if something horrible would happen if you tried.
Check out the cover of this cookbook. There are way more than a million copies of the series in print. The key tagline? "Nothing is made from scratch."
Can you imagine ten years ago pitching that idea? It goes against everything a cookbook stands for. It’s inconsistent. An oxymoron. You’re a moron. That’s like dividing by…
Oh. It worked.
I love this: Dollar Bin | iStockphoto.com.
Cleaning out inventory? Making more room on the shelves?
Even in a world of unlimited inventory, humans can’t resist a garage sale.
In my travels, the group that wants to know the most about marketing, and seems to know the most about marketing (except, of course, for marketers) is engineers. Software engineers and programmers, to be specific.
Why? I think it’s because online marketing is particularly interesting and often allied with programming techniques. That and the fact that programmers toil long and hard and get bitter pretty quickly when some marketing dork screws up their efforts.
So, if there are ten things I’d tell you, Professor Engineer Software person, it would be this:
- Marketing is not rational. Programming is. Works the same way every time. Marketing doesn’t, almost in a Heisenbergian way. If it worked before, it probably won’t work again.
- Marketing is even more difficult to schedule than bug fixes. Marketing expenses are easily timed, of course, but the results are not. That’s because there’s a human at each end of the equation.
- Most marketers have no clue whatsoever what to do. So we do unoriginal things, or stall, or make promises we can’t keep.
- Just because Sergey is both a brilliant programmer and a brilliant marketer doesn’t mean that all brilliant programmers are good at marketing.
- People often prefer things that are inelegant, arcane or even broken. Except when they don’t.
- Truly brilliant coding is hard to quantify, demand or predict. Same is true with marketing.
- There is no number seven.
- Unlike mediocre programmers, mediocre marketers occasionally get lucky. When they do, they end up with a success they can brag about for a generation. But that doesn’t mean they know how to do it again.
- Just because some marketers are dorks doesn’t mean your marketer is a dork. Some programmers aren’t so great either. Be patient.
- Without marketing, all your great coding is worthless. Push your marketer to be brave and bold and remarkable. Do it every day. Your code is worth it.
How a composer on the other end of the earth (at least the other end from where I am) helps customers find him: the amber theatre.
Retailers that spend on real estate, win.
The most expensive real estate in my county is a mall filled with stores. And those stores are jammed with shoppers. Almost none of them fold, none of them appear to be struggling. Almost all of them are expensive.
Two blocks away, independent stores, stores that cheaped-out on their real estate investment, those guys are struggling.
Well, you’re not in retail, maybe, or you’re virtual, so what difference does this make to you?
Question: what’s your "real estate"?
For most of us, it’s people.
Expensive people are just like expensive real estate. If you invest in them, you may just find they pay off. Some businesses work as hard as they can to pay people as little as they can (witness the fights over the minimum wage). What sort of growing business wants the minimum wage? If your business is people-based, as opposed to machine-based, why wouldn’t you want people who command more than the minimum?
June 25, 2006
The most successful marketers tell two stories at the same time. A shiny one and a deep one.
The shiny story is easy to notice, easy to enjoy, easy to spread.
The deep story is fascinating, worth your time. It has texture and mystery and it lasts.
Consider The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. It’s more than 800 pages long. Dylan is shiny (sometimes). His songs get played on the radio or around the campfire. It’s not unusual for a teenager to hear an old Dylan song for the very first time and then add it to her iPod.
But Dylan’s also pretty deep. Hence the encyclopedia. Can you imagine an encyclopedia about… The Back Street Boys?
Most marketers choose to be just shiny. Deep, it seems, is way too much work.
June 23, 2006
