Bad Sales and Marketing Promotions - If You Are Not Going to Do it Right, Don't Do it At All

I see some really bad promotions and marketing all of the time. They make me want to pull my hair out. Spending money on promotions is great, but if you run a company and your folks aren't going to go out and spend the effort, elbow grease, sweat  and time to make the promotions a success, you shouldn't do those promotions... Or you need to find someone who will spend the effort.

I think the biggest mistake of promotions, and you won't find a company executive who disagrees with me, is thinking that throwing money at a promotion will make it good. Even though you won't find a company executive who doesn't agree with me, you'll find one heck of a lot of them who are guilty of doing this very thing or, at the least, allowing it.


I see it all the time.


Frankly speaking, if you are not going to do a promotion right, then don't do it at all. Little things are what really make or break a promotion to potential customers; to me, to you. Far too many company executives look at a promotion purely from their point of view and fail to see it from the other side.


Need proof that little things make a BIG difference? Here's one that everyone has seen: When you see a clock in public and the clock is broken do you think well of that clock makers merchandise? No. No one does. Of course.


How much more basic can you get than that example?

It takes a licking but keeps on ticking

Here's a few other examples that I can give you of promotions I saw recently with my own eyes that were absolute disasters.


I recall a time at a very famous record company when they were preparing the release of the CD of a new artist. The artist management was demanding (as they should) all sorts of promotion and cooperation from the label.


The label promised this and that. The one item I clearly remember was the label boss bragging to the artist's agent that they were going to go all out and print the most in-store flyers they'd printed in years to push this one artist. A few months later, when sales didn't materialize, I was visiting the record label. There I saw, under the desk of the promotions manager, stacks and stacks of unused flyers for that artist stored under his desk. There must have been 50,000 flyers there. This was two months after release.


So they spent a lot of money on the promotion but the people were too lazy to get off their rears and hit the streets and distribute those flyers. Needless to say the promotion was a flop as well as a waste of money.


That was several years ago. Last I heard was that this same guy was still in charge of promotions. Any wonder why their sales do not increase? 


The guy is lazy. That's all there is to it.


Another example that made me want to pull my hair out was a promotion for a famous automobile company. It was a charity banquet at one of the top hotels in Hong Kong. There were famous politicians and movie stars there too. Besides those folks, a lot of movers and shakers in town were also in attendance.

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW

Banquet table. Can you pick out the automobile promotion? 

An American automobile company was a co-sponsor for this event. On the banquet tables they put boxed automobile models of their newest car. Guess what? No one knew what was in those boxes because they didn't bother to open one and make the model for display for each table. They left the model cars in the boxes!


Now, that is inexcusable. Any good promotion will allow the potential customer to recognize instantaneously what the service or product is. That the end user has to pick up the box, look at it and think, "What is this?" is just plain embarrassing for the sponsor. How long does it take to recognize a Coca-Cola promotion? One one-hundredth of a second?


On the cluttered tables at the banquet, the cars got lost in the shuffle and few people knew what they were (I took home a dozen to give to my kid and his friends). When I was taking boxes of models, one lady (who sat next to me all night) asked me, "What are those?" I showed her and she exclaimed, "Oh? I want some for my kids too!" and she grabbed a few from the neighboring table... Why not? No one at the neighboring tables took any home. Why should they? They didn't know what they were either. (By the way, including opening of the boxes, it required the average chimpanzee about 30 seconds to assemble one of the models).


Great promotion, eh? These things are sitting on a table right in front of people and no one even knew what they were.


Just before the banquet started, I asked one of the guys from the automobile company to open the boxes so that people would know what the heck they were but he told me that he "didn't have time."


Think about that folks. The guy from the automobile company says he "didn't have time." So what he is saying is that, "I didn't have time to get my butt over here an hour or two early to get the job done right." 


Hell, they could have at least tried to display the cars correctly on some of the tables. But they decided that they didn't have time to do them all so they didn't even start or make an attempt, so they didn't do any! 


The guy is lazy. That's all there is to it.


In spite of what you see going on around you, folks, there are a lot of people who are observant and thinking. In both the examples above, anyone can see that this is incompetence. 


Now be honest with yourselves? How do these examples reflect on the companies that ran these promotions? Good? Bad?


I think the impression is decidedly bad. It is half-a*sed and poor work. It is unacceptable. 

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW

Question: What does a model car in a box look like? Answer: A box. 

Think about it: If, say, an automobile company can't even handle a simple promotion at a dinner show, how am I to expect that they will make their cars or run their business? How can I confidently purchase their vehicles? I can't.


The point? If you are going to do a promotion then do it right or don't do it at all. A poorly run promotion is damaging to a company image.


Now why in the world would a company spend money on a promotion that is just going to create a bad image or hurt their brand?

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW

This is my rendition but, anyone can see, within one-twenty-fifth of a second that above the black boxes is a model car. It shouldn't be too difficult to figure that this is an automobile promotion.

Everyone is Sick: People Do the Weirdest Things When They Are In Love: Why I am Against the Death Penalty

"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread." ~ Mother Teresa

"Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." ~ Eric Fromm

"At the extremes, people are considered, or actually are, nuts. But as time progresses, what used to be considered eccentric, is viewed as abnormal and in need of medicating, or at least worthy of employing members of the American Psychological Association to treat." ~ William M. Briggs

"When love is not madness, it is not love." ~ Pedro Calderon de la Barca

There's not a person in this world who isn't suffering from some sort of mental disorder. I have one. So do you. The most ill of all of us are the ones who are so vain and narcissist - or extremely ill - that they won't, or can't, admit it.

I think there isn't anything wrong with having failings. We are, after all, only human. Humans are imperfect.

In 1995, the religious cult called Aum Shinrikyo committed the Nerve Gas Attacks on the Tokyo Subway. After years of searching, one of the top suspects in that crime voluntarily gave himself up to police (that's an interesting story, in and of itself - the police didn't believe that it was him when he gave himself up, so they turned him away). The police had always been baffled how he was able to remain a fugitive for so long. Now, maybe we know.

Yahoo reports: 

A woman claiming to have lived with a senior member of the doomsday cult behind the 1995 nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subways turned herself in and was arrested Tuesday for helping him evade police for nearly 17 years. Akemi Saito, also a member of Aum Shinrikyo, gave herself up after Makoto Hirata surrendered to police on New Year's Eve, according to police and Saito's lawyer. Hirata has refused to explain how he managed to keep underground for so long despite being one of Japan's most-wanted fugitives. He is suspected of involvement in a cult-related kidnapping-murder in 1995. Later that year, Aum Shinrikyo released sarin nerve gas in Tokyo's subways, killing 13 and injuring more than 6,000. 

This is a weird story. These crimes allegedly committed by Hirata are heinous crimes and cannot be forgiven nor forgotten. That he would be protected by this woman, Akemi Saito, is the part that is probably most curious to the average person. But, I don't think so. Sounds like she probably loves him. She is sick. We're all sick. Modern society is making us all sicker by the day.

Hirata caught on surveillance camera at Osaka station on 12/31/11

If she weren't sick in the first place, she would have never joined a religious cult. Agreed?

Now, let's extrapolate that thought. Let's consider Hirata. Is he a criminal? Oh, most definitely. Is he sick? Oh most certainly, without a doubt he is a very sick man. Most people can't even conceive of doing the things he is accused of doing.

Now that he's been caught, if convicted, Hirata will probably get the death penalty. 

It might seem that I'm getting off the subject here for a second, but let me state here that I am completely and unequivocally against the death penalty for any crimes. Why? Because of the finality of it all. Men make mistakes. In the history of the law, we have executed the wrong guy many times. Most definitely, many times, Japan has sentenced people to death only to find out later that they made a mistake (sorry link in Japanese only). In my, possibly errant opinion, I don't think the Japanese legal system would ever admit that they executed the wrong person. The United States has certainly executed the wrong person. A CBS report showed that, from 1973 to 1995, in 5,800 cases that resulted in capital convictions, there was an error rate of 68%! Is there any doubt to anyone that this sort of error has happened many, many times in our history? 

Claude Jones was executed in Texas in 2000. Whoops! Wrong guy!

I am against the death penalty. Even if we know absolutely sure that someone committed a crime, we cannot make exceptions to the rule of law and change the law, or make new laws, for that individual. So, I am against the death penalty if only because having a death penalty means that, ultimately, we will someday execute the wrong person. I may agree that Hirata needs to die for his crimes... But, like I said, if we have a law that allows the execution of Hirata, then the law is on the books and that allows us the margin for error to, in the future, as in the past, to execute an innocent person. We must be a society of law and the rule of law. Not a society of mobs and mass disorder.

But I digress... This post is about Akemi Saito.

The girl next door? Saito Akemi

I think there are a lot of people like Akemi Saito running around Japan's big cities -  or any big cities around the world for that matter. Even though, in Japan, the cities are  bustling with people, they can be very lonely places. I've even read before that, when talking vending machines first came out, that they were popular with young people because they could at least hear someone's voice. I don't know if that's true or not. It is probably partly true, partly false.


But I do know that there are a very many lonely people here in these big cities...

Think about it; healthy people, in the first place, do not join cults. I would submit to you that healthy people may not even go to church at all. 

In Japan, often, church people go around to houses and pass out literature or ask for donations for this or that. But that word is not for me. 

I am always polite and kind to these people, and on blistering hot summer days, I sometimes offer them tea. They take that as a hint that I am interested in their church. I am not. Even so, I usually praise them for their selfless work towards their beliefs (I think that it is what they are supposed to do; "Spread the word"). Many times, these people will ask me to come to their church and attend services. I always decline.

At the front door of my house, I have a crucifix hanging over the door. Am I a Catholic? No. But when Mormons or Jehovah's Witness folks come by, they always ask me about it. People are surprised by my answer.

My crucifix

"Well, that was a present from a very high ranking Catholic priest from the Vatican who was once my friend long ago. I haven't seen him in years. He went back to Italy. I didn't know what to do with it, and I don't want to throw it in the trash can, so I hung it over the door. I figure any 'extra insurance' couldn't hurt." 


Hard core religious people are usually very surprised by that; worship of idols and all that...

Fact of the matter is even though I think these religions are all the same, I respect them all. If I had a Koran or a Torah or any other religious artifact or book, I feel guilty about throwing them away (my psychological quirk) so I don't want to accept anything from these kind people. (If someone cherishes something, I don't want to crumple up that and throw it in the trash... Perhaps I am too sentimental...)


They again ask me to attend their church, I always reply, "Sick people go to hospitals. I am not sick enough to need to go to a hospital now. If I do get that way, I will go. For now, the church in my heart is enough for me."

But I drone on. The point? I think that people are all sick. I think that people who go to church do so for a longing. It's not a bad thing; it's a good thing. To each, their own. It is human nature. I think that people who really get hard core into it, may be very sick and lonely. I think it might be a contradiction that today's society makes people sick... So, if you think about it, in today's world, being sick is the new normal.

Like I said, I'm sick. You're sick. Hirata is very sick. The sickest ones are the the people who won't admit or refuse to see that they are sick. Akemi Saito, the woman who "loved" Hirata (or what he represented) and hid him for all these years, how about her? Would you say that she is sick? I would.


These two are very sick and lost people.

These people need help. I hope that they don't sentence Hirata to death. I hope that Saito isn't sent to prison for decades. These people need help. 

Akemi Saito should not be sent to jail where she becomes a guest of the state (and a tax burden on you or me) she is sick. She should be in a mental hospital where she is a burden to her family and her insurance company. Hirata will, unfortunately be sent to death, which will cost the taxpayer millions. But he should be sent to an insane asylum for the criminally insane and be the likewise burden to his family and insurance company (if he had one).


I know the Nazi's did it, but I'd like to think that our civilized society doesn't imprison or execute mentally ill people.

NOTE: Even though I think these people are sick, I do not think that we can blame society. Everyone is master of their own destiny. That being said, is it anyone's doubt that finally, our political and legal system is broken? The government claims that we have the death penalty as a deterrent. But, history shows that this deterrent doesn't work. Why? Even with the death penalty, people commit premediated murder or mass and serial murders. This proves that the death penalty doesn't work as deterrent.

I suggest an economic solution to the problem. Say an insurance based one. Insurance companies insure everyone. If they insure someone, and that person commits murder, the insurance companies pay millions and that person loses everything in retribution (their home, bank accounts). You think that their family and loved ones losing their homes wouldn't be motivation to not commit crimes? I do. 

If someone is deemed a bad risk, they can't get insurance. No insurance? No car, no home, no job, no family. Sure this economic solution may sound draconian or like a utopian dream, but the political solution that we've been using for so many centuries is not working well.

Anyone with any other ideas?