Creative Marketing

How Stupid I Am, Part II

Did I miss a memo?

Apparently somebody pushed the idea of "stupid" marketing, 'cuz I just heard a local storm-door company using it. Although, give them credit, they did try to make it sound like everybody else was stupid BUT me...

"There are a lot of stupid people out there -- not like you -- who spent way too much to install a new storm door..."

Hmmm. Okay. I guess I don't feel so bad 'cuz its everybody else who's stupid this time. But then they go on to say...

"...hopefully you're smart enough to see that spending more on a storm door..."

D'oh! There I go being not-too-smart again... and all I'm doing is listening to a radio ad.

I won't be buying any storm doors, though.

I aren't smart enough fer that.

Tell me again how stupid I am?

Right.

So I'm watching a television commercial that consists of a "funny video:"a guy, cutting down a tree, fells the tree right on top of his car. This is followed by a graphic that says "People do stupid things." And then another graphic, "Like pay too much for phone service." And then it ends with info about Vonage.

At first, I was chuckling along as I watched the funny video guy try and stop this 30-foot tree from falling atop his car. And I kept chuckling through the end of the commercial until it hit me...

They just called me stupid.

Now, I don't doubt that I'm not too bright. --Hell, I prove it at least a couple times a day to be sure. But you know what?

I don't really want to buy stuff from a company that's gonna call me stupid... Atleast, not without getting to know me first. Take me out for a drink, buy me dinner, but don't start the relationship by calling me stupid.

Too bad for Vonage.

I may be stupid... but I ain't dumb.

The Always & The Never, cont'd: Example

Bruce Kasanoff, author of MAKING IT PERSONAL, shares, in his manifesto LESS: WHAT CUSTOMERS REALLY WANT, a terrific example of Seth Godin’s “find the always – do the never” technique for creating a purple cow…

He tells the story of Phil Baxter, of the 570-room Four Points by Sheraton hotel, who set a goal of offering 24-hour check-in.  ( The “never” in Seth’s equation -- most hotels “always” have specific check-in times.)

It took some work and some selling, but Phil got it done. Four Points’ occupancy rate soared to more than 90%... while competing hotels averaged 66%.

What  “never” can you do for your business?

The Always & The Never

Man, the best idea I've thought up in the past week was caffeinated toothpaste (so people would get addicted to brushing their teeth) and Seth Godin comes up with this incredible way to create entirely new products, processes, and businesses.

Man, it just just ain't fair for one guy to be that damn brilliant.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go brush my teeth and think about this whole "find the always and do the opposite" idea for a long, long time.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

When is saying "I'm sorry" the right thing to do?

Whenever you screw up! Especially when that screw up impacts your customers.

It's simply a matter of respect, as Seth Godin points out.

Sock-it-to-me!

Sock-it-to-me!!

Sock-it-to-me!!!

Sock-it-to-me!!!!

Mmm-hmmm, just a little bit...

If you're having trouble figuring out how to apologize, pick up Ken Blanchard's The One Minute Apology and give it a quick read. It's easy (reading the book and apologizing, I mean).

Crest Post-Mortem

The brand doctors over at Brand Autopsy  did a wonderfully concise and cogent review of a new ad campaign by toothpaste giant Crest that's well worth looking at.

Well, sit my big butt down and feed me dinner!

While reading this week's issue of NewsWeek, I stumbled across 2 excellent examples of "edgecrafting" (see Seth Godin's book FREE PRIZE INSIDE!), that is: taking an idea/product to the edge so that you create something totally new.

First, and sadly, is The Big John. Yep, that's right, extra large toilet seats for those with, well, big butts. It's a terrific example of seeing something common, seeing a growing market (no pun intended) in America's obesity problem.

Second -- and oddly connected to the first item -- is the development of 2 new franchises where harried folk can go and make dinners.... that they take home and put in the freezer (well, what they don't eat right away.)

Looked at closely, each of these merely takes a common idea (a toilet seat, takeout food) and pushes it to the edge thereby creating something completely new.

How can you push your business to the edge?

Learn To Not Suck

Lots of great ideas pouring forth from the recent Word of Mouth Marketing summit. I've spent most of the past day reading various blogs with summaries from various speakers, but my favorite has to be the one at Church of the Customer that shares Guy Kawasaki's comment on companies that suck.

Enjoy.

FREE PRIZE INSIDE

I just finished reading Seth Godin's  FREE PRIZE INSIDE! THE NEXT BIG MARKETING IDEA and all I can say is "wow!" This guy just really thinks differently about business and marketing and, well, just about everything.

Some of my favorite quotes from FREE PRIZE! are:

"Little changes cost you. Big changes benefit you by changing the game."

"The most obvious symptom of a failed project is that management tries to add a lot of people and money at the end (now that it is important and failure is expensive). This never works because more people.... actually slow down a project rather than fix it."

"If marketing is about communicating to consumers that you've solved their problem, then the first step is, in fact, to solve their problem"

"If  you're working on a truly remarkable idea, then by definition, there's no way in the world you can prove it's going to work."

"Generally, it's a bad idea to answer objections. If you spend all your time answering one objection after another, sooner or later the people you're selling to will find an objection you can't answer. Better to answer an objection with a question.... Keep working your way back until you uncover the actual problem -- not the symptom of the problem."

And there is so much more.

Indeed, this is one of those books so packed with challenging ideas it's hard to keep from highlighting the whole damn thing, one page after another.

So if your business is stuck and boring and trying to figure out what to do next, then you need to read FREE PRIZE INSIDE! And while you're at it, read his blog, too. Mostly about business, but every now and then you can learn something interesting about other topics, like daylight savings time and such.