Marketers, You Have Work to Do

The second in a two-part series, today's post was contributed by Margit Weisgal, author of Show and Sell: 133 Business-Building Ways to Promote Your Trade Show Exhibit. She writes for The Baltimore Sun.

“If it weren’t for customers, we could get our work done.”

Adults indeed say the darndest things.

Don’t you wonder how some companies stay in business? They spout platitudes about how much they care about you and that customers are paramount. 

Then they go and do something incredibly stupid.

Here's an email I received recently (identifying information deleted):

Thank you for contacting us. As for as why our department does not receive incoming calls, there are many reasons. The greatest of these reasons is that if they were required to answer phone calls in addition to their paperwork that is sent to them every day, they would have a much more difficult time processing the requests they receive. Please be patient as our department looks into your request. Thank you and have a wonderful day.

In other words, paperwork trumps customers. 

It’s marketing’s job to make sure there is consistency in everything a company says and does.

Marketers, you have work to do!

Adults Say the Darndest Things

Today's post was contributed by Margit Weisgal, author of Show and Sell: 133 Business-Building Ways to Promote Your Trade Show Exhibit. Margit writes for The Baltimore Sun on Baby Boomers' issues and interests.

For 17 years, TV personality Art Linkletter hosted a segment on his daytime show called "Kids Say the Darndest Things. He'd interview children and watch them, wide eyed, as they spouted incredible responses to his questions.

Like Linkletter's kids, the adults who staff your trade show exhibits also say the darndest things. One of my favorites is, “Why do I have to be here, when I could be out meeting customers?”

Really? What do they think they’re doing at the show?

Sometimes—maybe too often—we don’t take the time to explain to staff our goals and objectives for a trade show. 

When they don't understand why you're participating, or what you hope to accomplish, they'll work like a team of horses pulling in different directions. Not a team at all.
 
Marketing is about more than what you say. It’s also about what you do. And actions speak louder than words. If the two don’t jibe, your credibility goes away. 

It’s the darndest thing.

Potpourri

Concise writing achieves communication in pure form.

So it's considerate on his 207th birthday to celebrate Edgar Allen Poe's "one-sitting rule" of writing.

In "The Philosophy of Composition," Poe extols brevity for the effect it creates.

"If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression—for, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and every thing like totality is at once destroyed."

Long-windedness deprives a piece "of the vastly important artistic element, totality, or unity, of effect," Poe says.

"It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art—the limit of a single sitting."

Using the right tools are just as important, Poe insists in "How to Write a Blackwood Article."

"In the first place, your writer of intensities must have very black ink, and a very big pen, with a very blunt nib. No individual, of however great genius, ever wrote without a good pen a good article."

Farhenheit 1832

Last month, the members of the Internet Engineering Steering Group announced that websites blocked by governments will display the error message, "451 - Unavailable for Legal Reasons."

The jokers on the committee were, of course, alluding to Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel, Fahrenheit 451.

The novel depicts an America devoted to biblioclasm, the ancient practice of suppressing objectionable ideas through book burning.

Still a weapon of choice for thugs like ISIS, biblioclasm is beginning to show signs of age.

With 94% of mankind's knowledge digitized, tyrants need to embrace technoclasm.

That's a word I've coined to describe the burning of computers to quash dangerous thoughts.

The fires they ignite will have to burn hotter, too, because silicone only combusts at temperatures above Fahrenheit 1832.

All Marketing Rules are Stupid

We love simple rules.

They make our worklives easier, by absolving us of judgement.

Simple rules, in fact, form the bedrock of business strategy.

But I've heard in my time lots of rules purporting to assure marketing success that are simply stupid. 

For example:

Latinos hate purple.

Content needs to be sincere.

Infographics are out.

Avoid pastel colors.

Product names must be literal.

Innovate or die.

Your average skeptic would insist, for simple rules like these to be effective, they'd have to be verifiable. These examples aren't.

A hardline skeptic would go farther, insisting there are no effective rules.

No course of action can be determined by a rule, because any course of action can be understood to obey that rule.

I might, for example, avoid pastels in my web pages. Great, I've obeyed that rule! 

Then another, colorblind marketer comes along and publishes web pages full of pastels.

He's also obeyed the rule.

Stupid marketing rules abound.

It's smart to be skeptical of them, especially when facts aren't handy to back them up.

HAT TIP: Greg Satell inspired much of this post.