Please submit your stupid marketing tricks to me for publication.
Okay, we're going to change the direction of this blog. Here I am waiting for my plane which is now delayed for the fifth time.
Perfect time to write a blog.
It is now 10 hours since my flight was supposed to leave. I just got back from giving a speech in China. The entire flight took 11 hours. But this is from Newark to New Mexico. Four hours, but really 10. Anyway, I'm reading the papers. looking for an available outlet for my computer and I realize that marketers do some really stupid things. For instance, the lady across from me has a Cingular phone. Only Cingular used to be AT&T before AT&T became Lucent and changed back to AT&T. So now Cingular is AT&T. Again. Bestill my beating heart, especially since my Dad has no idea who he has a contract with.
And then, of course, Sprint made the front pages by firing its customers. Really... if they complained too much, Sprint sent their noisiest customers notes saying. "we don't want your business" But did they get penalized for breaking the contracts too early, like us commoners? Of course not. I gave up my first- born to sever my contract with a cellular "provider." I gave up on Sprint a long ago, when I wanted a new phone. They said, "No you're too good a customer, you don't get one." Oh.
As I have often stated, The emotional appeal is where the money is. Hot button marketing is marketing to an emotional need. Let’s take water. People are going to bars and ordering Evian on the rocks. The rocks of course are made with tapwater. And did you know that Evian spelled backwards is Naïve. One of the more popular waters is Aquafina. Do you know where it is bottled? At your local reservoir. So is Dasani, from the people who bottle the sugar water known as Coca Cola. Both speak about their amazing filtering processes that leach out bad tasting, (implied) bad for-you-minerals. But Dasani brags that they add minerals to make water taste to taste something like ... well...water.
Haagen Dazs is made in Hoboken, NJ. Do you know why it is called Haagen Dazs. Because it sounds nice. That's a good marketing trick. If they called their ice cream Hoboken's Best, that would be bad.
Just one more marketing trick. We have love affairs with our sports teams. We wear their jerseys and root for transient millionaires who don't give a damn about us. But we spend big money to wear their tee shirts. We don't root for a team as much as we root for a logo.
As Seinfield said...we're cheering laundry.
Please submit your favorite Stupid Marketing Tricks.
Next piece: American Airlines.
