Tag Archives: Advertising and Marketing

February 1, 2019 · 10:35 am

The One True Holiday

It’s Foodie Friday and it’s the eve of the annual national holiday called the Super Bowl. It’s America’s only true national holiday in my book. Oh sure – most Americans celebrate Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day and Veteran’s Day and even Thanksgiving, but none of those have the vast majority of the country focused on exactly the same thing at the same time. Only the Super Bowl does that.

Along with the game goes the food. Or, rather, THE FOOD, since inevitably there is a lot of it. Even those years in which I’ve watched the game by myself rather than at a party or a bar, I’ve managed to have copious amounts of generally not very healthy food by my side. Try to find a food site without a Super Bowl menu on it. Try to find a bar or a non-fine dining place that isn’t throwing a party.

Here was my take 8 years ago. Nothing has changed off the field (we won’t go into how the on-field experience has changed):

The Super Bowl is unlike any other sporting event from just about any perspective.  It’s watched by more people and is even covered by media people who wouldn’t know an H-back from Preparation H.  Hundreds of marketers, both authorized and unauthorized, try to tie in with “The Big Game” (for you ambushers) whether they’re selling food, TV’s, or anything else along the durable to non-durable scale.

So what do you do as a marketer? Do you try and fight city hall and run your own campaign not related to The Big Game? Do you pay the NFL’s or the broadcaster’s price tag (if your category is available) and use the marks or even just buy TV time in or around the game? Do you just stay quiet and begin your Valentine’s Day promotion after the game?

Tough question. If you’re in the food business, Super Bowl Sunday is one of the most popular takeout days of the year (1 in 7 Americans order takeout food for the game!). A third of Americans consume some sort of dip. Are you staffed properly if you’re a restaurant? Have you ordered extra dip and sour cream if you’re a market? If you’re not a food business, you need to account for this holiday – especially this holiday – in your marketing and content plans. Unlike any other sports championship, people watch The Super Bowl even when they don’t have a favorite team playing. They actually watch the ads. They generally participate in word of mouth and social media conversations. It is America’s holiday and if you market behind the others, maybe you need, as it says on many pizza boxes, to try the best since you’ve tried the rest. Make sense?

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Filed under food, sports business, What's Going On

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January 16, 2019 · 2:40 pm

When Free Is $99

If you’ve not moved or bought a house recently, you are probably unfamiliar with the deluge of mail you receive for everything from supplemental mortgage insurance to yard services to security systems. The last time I bought a new place was in 1985 when it must have been a lot more difficult to pull together all the names and addresses of those people filing deeds or getting new mortgages. Apparently, it isn’t today.

One of the offers that showed up in the mailbox on Monday came from…well…I actually am not really sure from whom it came since there wasn’t a return address. It says it wants to welcome me to the neighborhood with a FREE OFFER! Of course, nothing in this world is free and this offer isn’t any different. The “free” security system will be installed with a $99 customer installation charge and the payment of $28 a month for monitoring. The free offer will only cost $435 the first year, and you have to sign a three-year agreement. Nice, right?  The fine print, which takes up a third of the second page, also mentions that labor charges might apply and that there are additional fees for various monitoring services beyond the basic. There are also limits on how many sensors you can get if your home isn’t prewired. Of course, it also comes with a $100 Visa gift card, so I got that working for me, which is nice.

This is yet another example of shady marketing. Sure, it’s a free offer in that the offer is free. The alarm and monitoring will run you thousands of dollars. The company behind it is called Protect Your Home and out of the 63 reviews for one location on Yelp, 59 are one-star reviews. There are complaints about being lied to by technicians, missed appointments, non-existent customer service, and even forged signatures. The BBB shows 1,630 complaints in the last three years. One can’t help but wonder why ADT, for whom they are an authorized reseller, doesn’t monitor how their brand is being marketed and serviced.

Trust is everything in marketing these days. A lot of fine print, unless it’s the sort of regulatory stuff the government makes you write as in a drug ad, is generally not a good indicator of trustworthiness. “Free” should really be free or the word should not be used. It sets an expectation which this company clearly doesn’t come close to meeting when the offer is broken down in detail. Honest marketing is one of the first steps to happy, satisfied, long-term customers. Beginning any relationship with a lie or half-truth really isn’t, is it?

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Filed under Consulting, Huh?

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November 26, 2018 · 8:25 pm

More Fake News

It’s holiday time, and holiday time is shopping time. Now if you’re anything like most people, a fair amount of your shopping is done online. Even if you don’t actually buy from an online retailer, you probably do a fair amount of your research using online reviews and they are our topic today.

A marketing solution provider called Uberall released its “Customer Review Report,” which analyzed how consumers evaluate reviews online. They found that consumers think brands should be very active online responding to reviews. In fact, 65% of consumers think brands should respond to every online review every time, whether the review is positive or negative. Other observations from the study were that 18% of consumers believe brands should respond only when the review is negative, while 10% feel they should never respond, and 6% think they should only respond when the review is positive.

How do you feel about it? Personally, I think it’s critical that brands monitor the reviews of their products and not only should they respond but they should also verify. I’ve found that review verification sites such as Fakespot provide a wonderful service. I recognize that some brands actually pay for fake positive reviews in order to mask the crappy stuff they’re selling. That’s short-sighted since the revenues they make will be far offset by the costs of returns, customer service calls and maybe even lawsuits. Running an Amazon URL through Fakespot or ReviewMeta can save you a lot of trouble and also tell you a lot about how well a company curates its reputation.

There was a study a few years back that found that 20% or so of Yelp reviews were fake. You can spend $1 to get one written and you just might end up having to pay up to $40,654 to the FTC for having done so. Online reviews are a great source of, if not THE best, information for consumers and a generally accurate reflection of how your brand is perceived. You should influence that perception through positive interaction and not through creative writing. Most of all, you should respond, especially at this time of year when it’s a crucial sales period for most brands. Are you doing so?

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Filed under digital media, Growing up

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