momorantings

My friend who carried this bag had no idea what it meant - she just liked the bag. To me it was simply a further outbreak of the 360 plague that infects our world to very little marketing effect. Whenever I see it, I am struck that while I know it's meant to indicate something like constant interaction, it primarily reminds me that 365 is a much better known number - and thus 360 seems like taking 5 or 6 days off. It seems to be a diminished claim. It's all very well for marketers to think they understand what 360 means in their world, but that's not enough to justify pasting it everywhere regardless of the sub-context, under the assumption that your customers understand it and in the misguided belief that it will aid differentiation. That way leads to things like Vodafone360 People. Vodafone 360 People "brings all your friends together backed up in one place" which I'm not sure has much at all to do with the generally agreed 360 ideal. It strikes me that it...

My mobile phone provider frequently fills my time with irrelevant offers designed to bring them more revenue. My mobile phone provider also knows I make a lot of international calls. But when they implemented a new international call plan six months ago, they failed to tell me about it. As someone admitted, "they don't shout about it". Presumably, they don't expect their customers to shout about it, but I did. Firstly on the phone where I had to endure a whole bunch of security questions despite making it clear at the outset that I was just seeking to clarify when the plan was implemented. That just served to remind me of the insurance company with which I once worked. They discovered that they asked a woman more than twenty scripted questions when she rang their emergency claim line before they got to the important question are you ok? At the time she was less than ok - her house was burning down in front of her along with the policy details they were demanding. The...

Marketers have realised that women are the key purchase decision-makers. Marketers have belatedly begun to realise that demography is skewed to the elderly (even though economics classes were pointing that out twenty years ago. Marketers will eventually have to acknowledge that technology is a tool and not the the reason for the behaviour. But in the interim, we'll have to endure a lot of nonsense like digital paper. How ever fine or specially treated it may be; what ever digital machine you might insert it in; regular paper is and always will be analogue not digital. To suggest otherwise is just another example of marketing's obsession with newness. An obsession that's arguably even worse than its fixations on youth and authenticity. A product-focussed logic not a customer-centred one. People don't necessarily want new. They want better. If your new is better then that's great, but make sure it is. All too often, new is complicated, functionally-bloated and impen...

Over the span of the last several months, there have been numerous emotional debates over pricing in the blogosphere, particularly among a small handful of very respected colleagues in the theater industry. I have remained, for the most part, on the sidelines as much as possible, because parts of the debate centered around practices that I have publicly endorsed at major conferences. As such, I didn't want to interfere in what was an open and honest dialog. However at this point, I feel the need to address some of the misinformation that has been posted on a few reputable blogs , and shed some light on what to me seems to be a misunderstanding of dynamic pricing by Isaac Butler (founder of Parabasis ) and Adam Thurman (author of Mission Paradox ). Some things to think about: 1. Dynamic pricing in itself doesn't determine accessibility. Dynamic pricing is simply a tool, or maybe it is better described as a philosophy. Like most things in life, the devil is in the details. How...

It's a bank, not a roller-coaster and self-delusion like this is the marketer's worst enemy. Enthusiasm may seem great in meetings, but it's the customers who decide and it's obvious that excitement isn't at the top of their banking needs. Moreover, I guarantee your branch will not be exciting and if you over-promise, you're bound to under-deliver.