Velocitize Me

 A Pet Project

In the current issue of Marketing Magazine is an article titled, Around and Around We Go that is about shopper marketing in Canada.  The piece discusses all the tools that we marketers have at our disposal to push consumers along the path to purchase.  But now, with the rise of digital and mobile media, that path has transformed from a classic funnel model to a loop.  A Loyalty Loop.  To build that loopy thingy you need to:

·      Collect names, addresses, and email addresses with permissions

·      Push messaging of products and activities with texts and social media

·      Monitor social feeds like Twitter Facebook et al

·      Share consumer feedback of positive experiences and referrals

One proposed method to use positive consumer feedback is to create microsites populated with all those glowing reviews.  After all, according to Nielson in its study of the blatantly obvious, it found that 92% consumers trust recommendations from the friends and family over opinions expressed in advertising.

To Mike Farrell of Conversion Marketing Communications, these kinds of microsites are important because they are about humans communicating with humans.  Now I’m sure Mike is a nice affable chap, that he’s kind to children, old people, and dogs, but I have to call him out on this.  First off, humans communicating with humans, as opposed to what, the Dead? (a Ouija board already has that covered), animals? (see Doc Dolittle), Gaia? (peyote and LSD can do that for you).  He then goes on to say that if you can get someone to say something positive about a deal or new product and drop that onto your Facebook page, you’re velocitizing your communications.  *Sigh*

I don’t think it’s a good idea to get someone to say something nice, AKA paid endorsements, if you’re planning on keeping it authentic. How about just letting it just happen. Then again, using people’s comments has it problems. Take Nick Bergus, for example.  Nick spotted something unusual on Amazon:  a 55-gallon drum of personal lubricant—how or why he found it I don’t want to know.  According to the NYT, Nick saw it as an object deserving of ridicule, so he shared that link on Facebook and added the pithy comment: For Valentine’s Day.  And every day.  For the rest of your life.  Well… things, uh, sort of slid, um, downhill from there: Within days, friends of Mr. Bergus started seeing his post among the ads on Facebook pages, with his name and smiling mug shot. Facebook — or rather, one of its algorithms — had seen his post as an endorsement and transformed it into an advertisement, paid for by Amazon.  

Oh bugger! Better call the lawyers.

The Marketing Mag article goes on to say that mobile has a lot of promise, especially for sending alerts about discounts and special offers that can drive people into stores because, according to Rico DiGiovanni of Spider Marketing, bricks and mortar is where it’s at.  This is the first sensible and empirically proven point to appear in the article.  People prefer to see, touch, and feel things before buying them, especially big-ticket items.

Unfortunately, this moment of clarity was fleeting as next came a description of a possible scenario that shows the increasing potential and power of mobile.  In it, a customer comes into a store looking for a particular TV; he then proceeds to use his phone to read blogs about the item and do a price comparison with other vendors, all while in-store.  If he finds a better deal from, say eBay or Amazon, he’ll buy it that way and will leave the store before the sales staff has a chance to talk with him.  Really?  What kind of knob would actually stand there, chewing up his data plan, to do this?

It seems to me that anyone using mobile to check out a product is pretty damn close to buying it, probably within hours—it’s only a question of which store.  He did all the reading of blogs, product reviews, and price comparisons days or weeks earlier from home on a desktop.

Anyway, I know that all these new technology toys present an irresistible chance to flood people with messages, but geeks, brand managers, and CMOs, please understand this key truth:  People don’t care.  People don’t want a relationship with a brand, they don’t care about interactions or conversations with a brand, and, acting like the drunk on the all-night bus who keeps trying to strike-up a conversation, forcing the issue usually results in the intended target ignoring you or getting off a stop or two early.

Stolen from:  Sellsell.co.uk

People go online to look for discounts, to buy things, and get information about things they want to buy.  In that order.  Which is almost the inverse to what businesses believe the reasons are for why people go online.

If this keeps up, we will become like the stream of door-knocking itinerant duct cleaning peddlers, the students flogging chocolate almonds, cheap light bulbs and shitty garbage bags, or those devoted humanitarians who want me to sponsor them for some charity run/walk-a-thon/hand-holding Affirmation Circle of Life event—but want me to pay upfront.  Bombarded consumers are going to tell us, Get the fuck off my front porch and don’t come back. 

Pretty soon, some twenty-year old will develop a killer app that sends a screw off message to technology-obsessed marketers each time they try to clog up our inbox and mobile with conversations.  I can see it being be named after a breed of dog spelled with more consonants than vowels, with a couple of umlauts thrown in, and is best pronounced with a heavy German accent.