well, as marketing is and has been one of my main interests for years, and also i studied it for years in college, i figured i might as well start writing bits and bats about what i like, what i don’t like, and what i am seeing in marketing, as well as marketing related banter with other people. my first example is taken from a random spamming on myspace.com that i received yesterday.
From: hibernate
Date: Feb 14, 2006 11:43 AM
i make electronic music and i wanted to see if you would join my friends list. check it out and tell me what you think.
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From: davin AFK
Date: Feb 14, 2006 5:45 PM
this looks like a copy and paste message. pffft. not impressed.
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From: hibernate
Date: Feb 15, 2006 9:20 AM
well i m sorry. i want to get the word out to people. all advertising is cut and paste to a degree isnt it? i like to talk to people once they respond but to get them to i play the numbers. anyway.. i have an album at radikal.com for sale. its called OCD. u might like it.
thanx and message me anytime,
[name withheld]
—————– Original Message —————–
From: davin AFK
Date: Feb 15, 2006 8:39 PM
not all advertising is copy and paste. the difference is in the method and the application.
sales targetted towards specific people is a push method. this is the more personable, 1 on 1 approach. marketing is the copy and paste you speak of, but it’s a pull method, as in advertising placement and a call to action within the advertisement. it isn’t done directly to people as real people, 1 on 1, can pick up on the fakeness of the message and ultimately reject it. hence why it is not done effectively.
davin
this brings me to one of my first points about marketing that i’d like to put out there: marketing is huge. it is much more than un-solicited direct mailings, spamming, blog comment bombing, mailing list and contact database swiping — these kind of items get shovelled under the marketing umbrella but this is really the tip of the iceberg. and it’s not real marketing. to start, real marketing requires research on three levels:
- the product or service. yes, it can happen — a marketing department will not do the research on their own product to open up the possible uses for it. what does it do? what makes it worth anything at all to anyone? what’s different about it? this is a pretty good place to start. sometimes this step is .. skipped.
- the people who would possibly buy this kind of thing. why would they buy it? what else do they do? what do they need it for? what else does it work with that they probably already are into? are they sophisticated or trashy? what will get their attention?
- what do these people read / watch / listen to? what kind of avenues are there for advertising buying, what channels are there for marketing this thing to the right people?
sometimes you’ll see a completely useful product or service but the advertising is failing to convey the features. the selling points are not reaching; this is plain and simply bad advertising. they needed to think it through a bit more first before broadcasting to the world — spend more time researching number 1 and get it right before wasting a budget on an ineffective campaign.
i’m not totally certain who some of the new, bright orange VOIP commercials are supposed to appeal to, but idea in marketing is that, while trying to gain audience, a marketing campaign must not piss off the target market. vonage’s campaigns could do a lot better. i found the name of their company by googling “annoying voip commercial.” their site came up as number one on the search.
sometimes you’ll see a new tampon commercial during a hockey game. someone didn’t do their research on number 3.
failing to research number one will leave everyone unaffected, failing to research number two will cause marketing efforts to appear unfocussed and therefore useless, and failing to research number three will hemorrhage the advertising budget.
