| Stupid Marketing Surveys |
Reverse Marketing
Example:
A local Ottawa lawyer reserves a domain name and email address: "e-legal". It looks fine until you say it out loud: "illegal". Is this clever marketing- everyone remembers his address and URL or is it reverse marketing?
Example:
Americredit, a US based call centre company, is locating a new office in Peterborough, Ontario in 2001. The City proposes to rename Major Bennett Drive (an unopened road allowance) "Americredit Way". Major William Bennett, a WWI (Victoria Cross Medal) decorated serviceman, was the first Peterborough resident killed in that 'War to End All Wars'. Members of the historical society and residents of Peterborough are pleased to welcome the additional employment for their city but dismayed to learn about the renaming proposal. The City proposes renaming a nearby residential street after Major Bennett and retaining the 'Major Bennett' name for the industrial park.
Surely, there must be better ways to recognize Americredit than this?
Example:
The City of Ottawa comes up with a new slogan: "Technically Beautiful"after spending some $200,000 on a marketing consultants fee. The slogan is so badly received that the City dumps it after a couple of months. Compare this with the City of Biggar, Alberta. Their slogan is: "New York is Big, but this is Biggar." The slogan cost the town nothing and is internationally known.
Ottawa should have run a contest on its web site (Ottawa is a technical city with very high net penetration) for a new slogan with a first prize of, say, $5,000. The City should receive 100s maybe 1000s of entries and many would be creative and funny and effective. This process is cheaper and it allows a 'buy-in' by the citizenry. It takes advantage of the power of the web to reverse out the work.
Example:
"How to enrage 60,000 people" (Globe and Mail, 2001)
Ultramar, a gasoline retailer, sent out thousands of 'Reveal a Deal' coupons for prizes up to $1,500 worth of free gas. Ultramar only wanted to give out three such jackpots- they actually printed more than 50,000 winning coupons for a potential liability of $90 million. As a result there are ugly scenes at Ultramar stations across New Brunswick, where the coupons were distributed. The Company has the right in 'clause 8' of the contest rules to terminate the contest if the "number of coupons entitled to win a prize is higher than the number of prizes..."
This circular bit of reasoning may get Ultramar out of legal jeopardy but it likely to be highly unsatisfactory to their customers who have been told to send in their 'winning' ticket for some alternate prize.
Example:
The following is an example of reverse marketing (albeit accidental) for two major commercial initiatives. One can argue whether any press in this case is 'good' press but certainly if this was a major airline company, for example, this would not be considered good press to have.
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If you believe in your business, you need (at least in Canada and the USA) to buy your dot com name even if it is from cybersquatters. Most folks when they hear your business name will try a dot com address first. Did you know that rogersvideo.com is a riské site from the Netherlands and a recent dispute resolution by ICANN found in favour of the Netherlands man who owns this site. So Roger Video (Canada) is stuck with a dot ca address and some shocked customers.