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November 25, 2008Review your sausage stuffer; win a MIG welder (and our first annual Christmas quiz)
I love Northern Tool+Equipment ("Where warriors prepare for battle!"). I've only bought one item from them -- the inimitable Northern Industrial Vertical Sausage Stuffer with 15lb capacity -- but, since it showed up about five minutes after I bought it (OK, a few days, but I do live 4000 miles away), and since their customer service is "tiptop at Toots,"* I'm a fan. I'm bemused, though, by their customer satisfaction survey invitation. Filling it out lands me in a pool to win a Hobart Handler 140 MIG welder. What on earth am I going to do with a MIG welder? I wouldn't know how to fire up the thing, much less use it with skill. This offer, far from being an incentive to fill out the form, is a disincentive to participate. I'm afraid of winning. Now, I applaud the effort. More companies -- all companies -- should ask for customer response. And an incentive helps pull that response. But if you are company with a long product line -- like Northern Tool+Equipment -- it makes sense to a) pick a "prize" that reflects the customer's buying habits or b) offers the chance of a flat discount on the next order. I have my eye on a lot of Northern's food processing gear, but I have no need for a MIG welder. *The first annual Christmas Quiz refers to a quote made earlier in the post. 1) Name three people at the table where this statement was made. 2) Which one taught an Olympic gold medalist. 3) Who was that athlete? 4) Which of the three principals is still living? The prize is a $25 gift card from Amazon. Respond by comment here. The first to answer all four questions before December 20 wins the prize! Best of luck, Allan Posted by Allan Jenkins at 12:13am in Business, Games, Marketing | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (7) | TrackBack (0) July 11, 2007Debbie Weil performs liposuction on Alliconnect
You may not have noticed the new Alliconnect Blog,. Alliconnect is a place to discuss weight loss with the creators of alli, an over-the-counter weight control medication, approved for OTC sales in the USA, made by GlaxoSmithKline. I am not quite sure how alli works.. the blog is coy on the subject, but since it discusses "oops moments" ("Good thing I was close to home so I could change my clothes!" says chief blogger Steve Burton) and "undigested fat floating in the toilet," I can only speculate that the drug blocks fat absorption. Why be coy about that? Were I seriously overweight and committed to losing weight, I am perfectly fine with learning the possible side effects. But since it's a corporate product fluff blog, we can leave that. The problem for GlaxoSmithKline is that the alliconnect blog has attracted almost no readers and only a handful of comments -- all but one of those are from Now, that would normally be a problem between GSK and Weil. But Weil has made the bad results -- the falling short of client expectations -- brutally obvious in a public way. Can things be so bad she's asking PR bloggers to "seed" comments onto the alliconnect blog? Yes. David Murray quotes this email from Weil on his blog: *** Hi everyone, This is a shameless request. I'm working with GlaxoSmithKline on the While traffic to the blog is growing, readers seem shy about leaving Comments. You can help jump start the two-way conversation! Take a peek at the If you're inspired or provoked, leave a comment on any entry. No need It really is kind of neat that a Global 100 company is doing a blog - D -- *** Weil (an IABC conference speaker, by the way) has truly wedged herself in a tight spot. I cannot believe GSK's alliconnect is going to get a sudden surge of comments from her feeble plea -- you'd have to be an obese PR blogger more than ready to shill for no pay -- and I'm certainly skeptical of her professional ethics. What I wonder is who thought this up? Weil, alone, in desperation? Or did GSK lean on her? Either way, it's another sad ethics tale for our profession. If you're inspired or provoked, leave a comment on any entry. No need OK! Who can resist! Posted by Allan Jenkins at 10:49pm in Bizarre & Unexpected, Blogging for Benjamins, Corporate Communication, Marketing, Pharmaceutical Industry | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (12) March 02, 2006Short update on the Sprint Ambassador diplomatic crisis
Still no reply to my email to "Bob" (you will remember I had to assign him a name) at Sprint. I do hope he will reply in such a way that I can restore diplomatic relations with Sprint and say "ok, we're friends again!" In the meantime, the estimable Mike Sansone at Copywriting Watch makes his own suggestion to Sprint on my behalf. It's lovely, and I wish I'd thought of it. And if Sprint takes him up on it, I will sing their praises to high heaven. That's what it's about, everyone (and I mean everyone!): market ethically (don't spam), but if you do mess up, apologize! And over deliver to your victim! It's an easy thing, and we have all seen it work a thousand times. Unfortunately, we still see it too little. So, Bob at Sprint Ambassador Team. If you take up Mike's suggestion, I will choose three of my friends back in the United States, all of whom could have stepped out of the pages of The Tipping Point, and you can make them ambassadors. I'll be happy, they will (that is, if you over deliver) be happy, and you will be happy. It's win-win-win for us all! Also, I've sent an email to Lori Joseph, a senior communicator at Sprint, prominent IABC leader, and former colleague of mine on IABC's board of directors. Since she's all about good corporate communication and marketing ethics -- and knows how to get things done -- I am sure all of this will be speedily and happily resolved. Technorati: Sprint, sprint ambassador, mike sansone, Copywriting Watch, diplomatic immunity, lame pitches Posted by Allan Jenkins at 02:14pm in Bizarre & Amusing, Communication, Ethics, Is Tedious in the House?, Marketing, Public Relations | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (3) November 15, 2005Sony faces another class action
While still clueless, Sony has enough money to fend off lots of lawsuits. Still, it's nice to see lawyers lining up to do what they do best. Here's a snippet from Brian Krebs' post from WaPo: Sony BMG is facing yet another class-action lawsuit stemming from the controversy over its anti-piracy software, this time from a New York attorney who filed a federal case that could potentially include consumers in all 50 states. Krebs links to filings for both the California and the New York suits (PDFs).
Technorati tags: Posted by Allan Jenkins at 06:56am in Business, Intellectual Property, Is Tedious in the House?, Marketing, Music | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (0) November 11, 2005Doctorow rips into Sony's EULA; Symantec finds Sony worm vulnerability...
Update 13 November 2005: Eric Eggertson is following this outrage pretty closely... I'd quote some of his stuff, but I would swear violently, and I don't like to do that on Sundays. Just go read. Is Sony Music winning this week's Bacon's Information Cluelessness Award? It would appear so. Cory Doctorow uses his bully BoingBoing pulpit to tear apart Sony Music's EULA. Sony's EULA is worse than their rootkit
1. If your house gets burgled, you have to delete all
your music from your laptop when you get home. That's because the EULA
says that your rights to any copies terminate as soon as you no longer
possess the original CD.
2. You can't keep your music on any computers at work.
The EULA only gives you the right to put copies on a "personal home
computer system owned by you."
3. If you move out of the country, you have to delete
all your music. The EULA specifically forbids "export" outside the
country where you reside.... There's plenty more. Still considering buying Sony CDs. Then ponder this from today's Boston Globe: Computer Worm Exploits Software on Sony's CDs People who bought music CDs from Sony BMG Music Entertainment may have exposed themselves to a dangerous new computer worm. Symantec Corp.,
the leading maker of antivirus software, said the worm has infected
computers that played Sony BMG recordings. Two other antivirus firms,
BitDefender Labs and Sophos PLC, also issued warnings yesterday. The
Sony BMG disks install software that is supposed to prevent the user
from making illicit copies of the music and distributing them over the
Internet. But the anticopying software conceals itself so that the
computer user can't easily remove it. Now someone has written a
''Trojan horse" program that exploits this feature of the Sony BMG
software. The program, which is spread through spam e-mails, uses the
Sony BMG code to hide itself. Then the Trojan horse uses the Internet
to contact its creators for further instructions. Eggertson calls for a Sony boycott: It will be a cold day in hell before I buy anything from Sony. I don't
actually care if they are being scapegoated by bloggers and others.
They deserve every bit of damage to their brand that they suffer. Parmet asks: Why do companies act this way? And what makes them think that in the long run they can get away with it? To which I can add only: Any company promoting Shakira, Ricky Martin, and Destiny's Child deserves an exclusive circle of hell.
Technorati tags: Posted by Allan Jenkins at 10:15am in Business, Intellectual Property, Is Tedious in the House?, Management, Marketing, Music | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1) | TrackBack (1) November 09, 2005Proof that anyone can be a copywriter if he knows his product
Friend Lisa sends this link to an expired eBay auction for a pair of DKNY Men's Leather Pants. Proof, if any were needed, that the copywriter who knows his product and desperately wants to move it is capable of great work. "You are bidding on a mistake. We all make mistakes. We date the wrong people for too long. We chew
gum with our mouths open. We say inappropriate things in front of
grandma. And we buy leather pants...." Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:52pm in Advertising, Bizarre & Amusing, Humor, Marketing | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1) | TrackBack (0) You like your experience on our airline? Blog it!
Via Fredrik Wackå comes news that Hapag Lloyd Express, a low-price airline, is giving passengers the chance to blog their experience with the airline: "Hapag-Lloyd
Express, a provider of low-cost flights that in 2004 carried 2.7 million
passengers, are using blogs as part of their customer loyalty program. Perhaps
they weren't the first in their business to realize this obvious blog use, I
don't know, but it's a good idea nevertheless. At HLX Urlaubsblogs everyone that has booked a flight can publish
photos and post to blogs. Travelling is experiencing, experiences are best
shared and blogging is sharing. Travels and blogs are a perfect match." While we have Fredrik front and center, he recently updated his European Corporate Blogs list, which is simply THE directory for corporate blogs in this part of the world. Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:24pm in Communication, Marketing, Public Relations, Travel | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0) When would you choose premium service over lower price?
Fellow MarCom Blog contributor Dale Wolf takes a look at the everyday tradeoff: would you rather pay for premium service, or opt for the lowest cost product? Drawing on a recent Reveries article, Wolf unsurprisingly finds buyers opting for premium service when buying complicated stuff such as airplane engines. But -- and this surprised me -- they also pay happily for premium service in everyday transactions down at the local mall. "Does this work just for complex business-to-business companies? Nope.
Customer service gets right down to the level of the grocery store. An
independent researcher discovered that the vaunted TESCO, the leading
UK supermarket, is vulnerable to a competitor's superior customer
service." I don't like surprises, especially when delivered in the blogs of my fellow PR practitioners, so I examined my own buying habits. By and large -- I opt for paying for customer service, without being entirely conscious of it. I never opt for "service" packages when buying computers, printers, or other technology -- but I seem to for almost any other purchase. Is this rational? Or profligate? Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:16pm in Management, Marketing | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0) November 02, 2005Is this Corporate Cluelessness Week? Ask Amy Gahran and Tosh Bilowski
[Update: I published without proofreading, which is always a mistake. The version you see below is an edited version of the original. The message is the same.] Amy has been gently, but firmly urging Panasonic to come clean about its Tosh Bilowski character blog. Like most of us, Amy believes the character blog, in theory, can be a good thing. But, like the rest of us, she's seen no or, at best, few, examples of character blogs that work. And Tosh Bilowski isn't one of them. For me, it's mainly because Tosh isn't an "obvious" character (such as Captain Morgan); instead, he's being passed off as a real person (and a boring one, at that). But what's teeth-jarringly clueless? The snooty and short-sighted responses Gahran gets from Tosh Bilowski's "handler", Jan Crittenden Livingston. Amy noted on her own blog -- that is, in her own space, not Panasonic's -- that "Tosh" apparently wasn't accepting comments she'd posted to the blog. She pointed out that it is Panasonic's right not to publish comments, but wondered if Panasonic was "getting" the concept of conversation. In response, Jan Crittenden Livingston shows she doesn't get it .. she writes Gahran: Hi Amy, The reason we are not posting your commentary is because we do not have to.... We are hoping that it can turn into a nice site where people can come and learn
about all things Hi Def. We do not have to run it like any Blog or Website that
you have seen before, it will be run the way we choose to run it... Bad enough? Livingston uses the Tosh Bilowski GMail addy to sign the thing. Tacky or what? Some people -- me, for example -- would have joyfully skewered Panasonic. Amy patiently and wonderfully turns the episode into a set of guidelines for companies contemplating character blogging. Really fine stuff, Amy!
Technorati tags: Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:01pm in Bizarre & Amusing, Blogging, Communication, Corporate Communication, Is Tedious in the House?, Marketing, Public Relations | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (0) September 28, 2005The Reason I'll Never be Rich....
... is because I never would have dreamed up the Million Dollar Homepage (sort of like I wouldn't have dreamed up Skype, either). Hat tip to Thomas Kristiansen. Posted by Allan Jenkins at 01:01pm in Bizarre & Amusing, Humor, Marketing | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (3) | TrackBack (0) |
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