Marketing has such a poor reputation that it now has to pretend to be customer service. And it makes me hopping mad. For example . . . I got a letter from Spectrum, my internet provider, that said “Important information about your account.” Inside, a generic offer to upgrade my service. My doctor’s office used…
Tesla announced a humanoid household robot Thursday, with a prototype due out next year. It made headlines even though there was nothing to see but an actor in a suit. Elon Musk was just musing out loud with slides and silly props. This is not new. Most of what Musk announces has no dependable release…
Volkswagen posted, then withdrew, a press release about renaming the company as “Voltswagen” to reflect a commitment to electric cars. Apparently it was an April Fools joke — and very poorly executed at that. Here’s the timeline of how it went down: Monday, 29 March: Press release about the rebranding “accidentally” posted on VW Website,…
Coronavirus has frozen your business in place. Nobody’s buying. Nobody’s even able to buy. What should you do? Be generous. Give stuff away to your customers. It’s simple. The only real asset you still have is customer relationships. You also have workers — unless you’ve let them go — and those workers are used to…
TV spots and other advertising right now are mostly wasted. Consumers view your normal ads for normal products against a backdrop that is not remotely normal. People are shut up in their houses; people are dying. This is not a time to get people to test drive SUVs or open a new credit card or…
My inbox is full of irrelevant messaging. There are the messages from everyone from my eye doctor to the bike shop about COVID-19. And then there are marketing pitches that were clearly created months ago and are totally irrelevant now. There’s only one thing on people’s minds: surviving the pandemic. If that’s all people are…
Goop sells a $75 candle that smells like Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina. Paltrow and her perfumer came up with it. Look, I’m no prude. Bodies have smells, and smells generate emotions, some warm and touching. But that’s because the smell goes with the body. That’s why your girlfriend’s hands or your husband’s cuddle smell so good…
There was once a seafood restaurant in Boston that had no name. It never marketed itself; the food did the talking. It lasted 102 years. Now it’s bankrupt and gone. When I first came to Boston in 1979, I lived in graduate student housing in Cambridge, a four-bedroom apartment with three other guys. The day…
I just came back from a conference full of marketers. Marketing conferences challenge the mind — but not necessarily in the way that they should. There are the talks that are intended to inspire. They are about being true to yourself and your brand, or the power of outstanding customer experience to inspire people. They…