Can We Fix Marketing? Most Best Practices Are In Fact Worst Practices.

On average I received 2 calls a night if I am lucky enough to be having dinner at home and not traveling, these calls are properly timed so they know I will be having candlelight dinner with my family and that’s exactly the time for interruption.  This direct-to-consumer telemarketing business should never be allowed, the worst thing is they call you and put you on hold while they finish up their other call.  (Business-to-Business is a whole different story as often they do have a value exchange and conduct in a very professional manner). They don’t know or care what I want or my interest and only interested in a "yes" answer after reading their script to me. Is this (direct) marketing?

Dear direct/tele marketers, are you really proud of what you do for a living? You build your career primarily by using late night direct TV commercials targeting the elderly and the vulnerable. Direct marketing is in trouble as they kill million of trees and bombard our mail boxes with garbage that no one reads let alone buy. These marketing firms belongs to the same category to used car dealerships, both are in the business of fishing for some vulnerable folks and sell them something they don’t want, need or will ever use.

You think there's nothing you can do with the telemarketers, in most cases they don't leave messages and will simply call you back, resulting in an endless cycle of you not knowing who's calling and having to call back to find out--something you're unlikely to do.  Here's Web 2.0 answer to this problem, solution, introducing Caller Complaints, a crowd-sourced index of the phone numbers of law breaking companies that have called folks on the do-not-call list. Users list these numbers, what was being pitched--and the frequency of the calls. If you find someone else has already listed the number and shared their negative experience, you can pile on and leave your experience, which votes it up.

The most popular (or in this case unpopular) companies rise to the top and are tracked on leaderboards. Users can also browse by area code and what type of call it was, from political phone spam to prank calls and debt collectors. The idea is that there will be enough resources to help you get to the bottom of who's calling to either leave a complaint with your carrier or simply blacklist the number from calling again. So far the site has amassed nearly 200,000 number searches from curious call recipients.

Here's some advice to marketers in general, please stop describing your product/company/service as "world-class" or "state-of-the-art." State-of-the-art lasts about 30 days today and what does world-class really mean? “ The "latest technology” means something I need to invest 50 hours to learn how to use it. “Free” means you will end up charging my credit card if I forget to cancel the services and that’s what you’ve factored in your marketing plan.

Stop calling me to subscribe to your magazine or newspaper. I have something new at home called the Internet (it has plenty of free content just in case you don’t know) and I can cut and save any content for future use. Besides, I am already subscribed to 18 publications from Harvard Business Review to Wired Magazine; I don’t need a general lifestyle magazine because I don’t have a general lifestyle. You must be able to see the problem as the economics of direct mail are failing rapidly and it costs too much to mail, and fewer response.

Having said all that, there are still many smart applications of direct marketing including the Blackberry campaign below. I am mostly referring to the bad practices of the industry.

Stop knocking on my front door while I am in a middle of an important battle with my Halo 3. Stop telling me I need to buy this energy-protection plan or replace my windows. Only Microsoft can tell when to replace my windows, not you. Police in some parts of Nothingham, UK are setting up four "no cold calling zones" in a bid to rid vulnerable residents of uninvited doorstep visitors. I really like this idea. Householders are being asked to ignore uninvited callers - and put stickers in their windows telling potential doorstep sellers they are not welcome. They can report suspicious behavior to a special trading standards hotline.

And for those electronic retailers, stop trying to sell me that warranty. The odds are small that I will remember that I have a warranty, know where I placed the receipts, or even bother to file the paperwork. I was buying a MacBook the other day from a retailer and he was trying so hard to sell me their extended warranty and tell me it is better than Apple care because they have better service. They don’t even service those products. Now even if I buy a CD or battery, they still try to sell me warranty. I guess they sell everything else at costs.

Advertising is not working even when it migrates to the virtual world. When Coldwell Banker hung out a shingle on the site as “the first national real estate company to sell homes within the community.” The real estate firm is in good company. H&R Block, Adidas, IBM, Dell, Reebok, American Apparel, Toyota are among the dozens of firms already there.  More than 70% of the site’s users say they are disappointed with the marketing that goes on in SL, according to a survey by Komjuniti, a Hamburg, Germany, research firm. This could be because companies are approaching it like a traditional marketing channel. Advertising is still advertising, it is losing its power. These brand sites on Second Life currently look like they’re being treated in pretty much the same way as traditional ads.

Many ad guys still believes that television is still the most important medium and will still e the most important medium for the next 20 years because: a) people have them; including people abroad and b) people know how to use them. Now that’s the kind of BS from the old school ad agencies.  The engagement power of television has been drastically reduced and they have now been reduced to digital wallpaper. The future of advertising is NOT in the advertising; it is in “Service Design”. Service Deign is like advertising in the mid 50s, no one knows enough about but sooner of later it be turned into an industry. It will be the backbone of what “Engagement” is all about. There will be no creative director in that world as marketing communications will not be built on one cute idea, it becomes “experiential”. User Experience Director replaces Creative Director.

Most customer experiences today are simply revolting, sometimes disgusting, particularly banks, airlines, telecom and many more. The idea now is (instead of) just focusing on a 30-second TV spot, to start a simple idea to engage, empower and energize customers. These Three Es is the future. It is NOT a creative director’s job to come up with an idea; it is the multi-disciplinary creative class that gets the job done.  Advertising agencies need to move from a factory model back to the idea model, put down the 50 years legacy and collective egos (creative awards ) and look to the future. You are in the ideas business. We live in the age of the idea. “Service Design” is the new discipline for the manifestation of the idea business, not product design alone and "Social Networks" are where circle of trust will be formed. That's where the game is.

On a closing note, here is great guerrilla promotion for the DVD release of the movie Death Proof is gory, attention-getting and totally appropriate for the movie it promotes.  Marketing meets "Happening Performance Art". Have a great weekend.

Comments

[stephen henault]

Another quality piece of thought/writing. Thanks for sharing-

Gonna go chew on the idea of "mind share" as the desirable place of residency to occupy with ENGAGED customers/partners as the objective.

rock on -

[Jennifer Silva]

I am with this on this piece. Let's put those "Customer Interruption" marketers out of business. The future is "Customer Engagement". Thanks for sharing.

[Patrick Byers]

This is a terrific post, and you nailed it on this one.

I blog daily on Responsible Marketing at http://responsiblemarketing.com and am authoring a book on the topic.

"Advertising agencies need to move from a factory model back to the idea model," is a great soundbite. Mind if I use it if I give you attribution?

I've subscribed to your blog and look forward to building a conversation on this topic and more.

Cheers,

Patrick Byers

[Paula Thornton]

Such is the great 'catchup' (there's got to be a good katsup analogy in there somewhere) of the also-rans coming of age to now leverage 'old' approaches.

This is also a symptom of people thinking there are 'experts' and relying on what they say -- much as you pointed out the fallacy of what's being promoted in academia (which I was arguing with as I was being taught the stuff!).

[Alan McKay]

We should thank those companies such as Peppers and Rogers who think automated out-bound calling is a compelling customer experience. And those Wunderman and Carson Marketing whose jobs are to interrupt us with no value add. Great post!! Thank you.

[Anthony Kuhn]

Idris:

Thanks for your thoughts on the broken state of marketing affairs in the 21st Century. If only there were a way to tailor marketing campaigns to individuals without invasive privacy practices? Any ideas?

[gregggallagher]

Campaign '08 Implications?

Idris - another stimulating post and has me pondering if we're seeing some of the old vs new marketing paradigms at play in the current election cycle. Personalities & platforms aside, it would seem that the Obama campaign is more conversant and effective in applying non-intrusive social marketing techniques, whereby Hillary's approach is much more a traditional, brute-force approach....

[Ashely Laap]

I love this post and they are provocative as usual. also look forward to hear your views on the election campaign. Thanks

[John Williamson]

Lots of great insights. I've only just discovered this and I am sharing this with my team. We are a12 person marketing team of a CPG company based out in Florida. We find this very useful and we are referring back here all the time during our discussions on our marketing plan. Thank you for sharing.

[Linas Simonis, PositioningStrategy]

Dear CEO of a cold-call company.

Today is the age of conversation, not an annoying advertising.

Instead of accepting an assignment from the client to spam several thousand phone owners, please recommend the CEO of your client to start a direct conversation with buyers and prospects by starting a business blog.

This is more effective and this is the future of the interaction between companies and customers.