tdog.blog

Okay, is it me, or has our bare-knuckle insult-the-comic-dog no-holds-barred culture finally seeped into the game of marketing? I mean, I’m your typical Voltairean cynic, with one eyebrow cocked whenever I hear anyone’s spiel (especially if it looks like they’re winding up to pitch me something) but in the grand old days of marketing, you were at least assured of some kind of romance when it came to sales pitches.

You know what I’m talking about, right? The tailor would comment on your husky build by saying “you must work out a lot” and the let out a few inches around the shoulder. Or the purveyor of fine scotch would tell you that his product would introduce your palate to a higher plane of enjoyment. And so on.

Not so anymore. Now it’s more like “Hey bozo, you’re fat, ugly, and you dress funny. We won’t even put that on your mom. But never fear, because we’re here to help you. For $99.99, we’ll juice up your sex appeal, make your life easier, and get you on the road to fame and fortune. It’s all right here in our packaged CD series, How to Make Enemies and Influence People. Call now and you’ll get a makeup kit, because damn, you have a face made for radio.”

Some of you may think that I’m just kidding around, but let me present some evidence to the court.

1. Came home the other day and found one of those doorknob hanger thingies on my doorknob. Actually, several of them. Very annoying. I always throw them out. The one that rankled the most was a little survey that told me that my roof needed replacing, that my landscaping was out of date, and my oak tree was out of control. And oh yes, for a small monthly fee, the landscaping company would be happy to remediate these problems. I say thanks and I’ll trim my own oak tree.

2. I submit to you Sony’s pathetic attempt at passing off corporate-created content as user-generated content, better known as AllIWantForXmasIsAPSP.com. This is slightly different from the approach in #1 above, but way more prevalent. Maybe it’s still acceptable to insult someone’s intelligence, or maybe it’s just easier for this kind of thinking to percolate up the decision chain at big corporations. Dunno.

3. Read this, shake your head, come back. This is the inadvertant kind of insult marketing that happens when you really have nothing to say to your customers and prospects and just shove any old thing out the door. Oy. Think Zen Buddhism…sometimes the silence between words has meaning.

4. Posts like this one, I suppose, in which the meta-discussion about insult marketing percolates.

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Join us on September 13 as we talk about the mechanics of writing, getting ideas, putting together a good proposal, and more.

Oh–we’re also planning a part 3 in this teleseminar series on September 27–how to promote your book!

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Been reading the Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille. Clotaire combines techniques from psychology, cultural anthropology, and linguistics to drive to the very truth of people’s feelings behind different brands. And not just brands like Jeep, Lexus, or Nike, but also ideas about health, mothers, sex, and more.

Every chapter is full of thought-provoking examinations. At the heart of all of it is a basic (and well-intentioned) mistrust of what we say. After all, we all say that we like this or that on a survey, but when it comes to actually doing (or buying) we deviate from the neat little survey. If you’re doing any kind of survey-based research, you’d better stop and read this book, because the approach Clotaire elucidates will give you better insight into your products, services, and brands.

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If you’re about to update your corporate brochures, try this on for size. Take your most popular product brochure, and somewhere in the middle of the text flow, insert the following content:

“Please send an email to sales@whatever.com with the following code as your subject line: XYZ123. Please be sure to include your full signature file so we can send you a check for $500. Thank you.”

Obviously, put in an appropriate email and code.

Don’t worry, you won’t spend a dime, because nobody is reading your brochures.

That’s mostly because:

1) They’re boring.
2) They’re exactly the same as all your competitors’ brochures.
3) They contain pictures of unrelated activities (like people enjoying the beach on a brochure for accounting services).
4) They never answer the real questions that are on people’s minds.

Stop wasting your money on these things. Why not create an audio CD in which you interview 5 customers about how you helped them with different problems? Why not offer that up instead?

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Last week, Thom Singer and I spoke for over an hour on the topic of writing and publishing a book. As they say in all those church newsletters, a good time was had by all!

This is probably the first in a series of podcasts on the topic of publishing a book, btw. More later.

GET PODCAST (1 hour and change)

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