Desperation Reeks!

You know when you get caught taking a little sniff of your underarms to see if you stink? Its embarrassing for both you and the person who is unlucky enough to witness it. That’s exactly how I feel about this little gem of an ad I found in a local pulp publication recently. While I’m all for truth in advertising, there are some times when less is more!

In recent years there have been a lot of desperate business owners wondering if this month will be their last and that is a terrible place to be. But you can’t allow a particular circumstance to effect how you present yourself to your customers. Would you really want to buy from a business that you knew was about to go under? Most people wouldn’t. And even if the business survived, you would always have that idea in your mind that they weren’t the most stable which might prevent future purchases as well.

When you need customers, don’t expect to get them by showing your desperation. Even hookers know when to dangle the merchandise rather than shove it in their customer’s faces and so should you. Be coy, mysterious, and give great service. That is attractive and will get you long-term customers instead of cheap one night stands.

2 Bagels to go!

I like bagels – in particular a garlic bagel with a cream cheese smear on the side. So every morning on the way to work, I stop off at a local bagel shop across town and pick one up for me and my business partner. Incidentally, this local shop outsold, overcame, and outlasted the intrusion of an Einstein Bagel franchise in part, I believe, because of their fun and friendly staff.  Not to sound like my father who regaled to me over the years with stories of traipsing through ten feet of snow in hurricane force winds, uphill (both ways) to get his education, but I drive very much out of my way and through the eternal construction zone each day for my breakfast when it would be much easier and less expensive to buy my bagel and cream cheese at the bakery near my house.

Why do I do this? Simple, I love the level of customer service I get each morning. The employees are happy, friendly, and have a good time at work. As a business owner myself, I know the challenges that come from trying to motivate staff, so when I see an example like this, I’ll trek through hell or high water to support them – and so will many other people. That my friends, is why you need to value and respect your staff, because not many people are willing to inconvenience themselves to spend their money at your store, unless it is an exceptional experience and that experience is completely dependent on your front line employees.

Hold the MILK!

Take a moment and stroll down crappy commercial lane with me. What are some of the worst commercials of all time? The furry wannabe rats hanging in mid air singing above a Quizno’s Sub? Or what about the dancing boogers at the Coughacabana? Seriously, I don’t want to see boogers of my own much less cartoons of them dancing. To quote my great aunt Pearl who was a Southern Bell in the truest sense of the word, “that won’t attract anything but flies.”

But the bane of my existence, the proverbial pee in my Post Toasties, if you will, is the super creepy plastic Burger King “King” with the oversized head who breaks into McDonald’s headquarters and steals their “secret” formula for the Egg McMuffin. It’s not just me who has considered intensive therapy due to this guy either, there’s a whole community of them – check out http://burgercreep.tribe.net/.

It makes you wonder, what is going on at corporate advertising meetings? Are these guys’ morons? First of all, the premise that Burger King really had to steal a “recipe” for a scrambled egg, sausage patty, and a slice of cheese on an English muffin? How do you follow that leap in reality? Maybe in the next episode, the Burger “King” will try to steal the recipe for  milk and stick his hand up a cow’s butt to get the ‘secret formula’!

In all seriousness, who ever decided that annoying the public at large was a marketing strategy? Does your advertising annoy people and make them want to shop elsewhere? Customers are smart and savvy too, and business owners need to appeal to their needs through emotion not through ridiculous storylines and stunts that insult their intelligence. I’m all for originality, but it has to be creative – not stupid.