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So Bad It Deserves An Award
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Introducing... The Clammy Awards
Many (many, many) years ago, when I was just out of university and working for a consulting company, we'd see the occasional really awful mistake made by various staff. These were quickly deemed CLMs, for “Career Limiting Move”, or “Clammys” (after the Grammy Award and the feeling your hands got if you were the perpetuator) for short. In the same spirit, we present the Stupid Marketing Clammys – a page I’ll periodically update as I see ‘em. For now, the top three (and a hall of fame winner) are… AT&T, for their “we prefer the rush of getting a new customer to keeping the ones we have” pricing / lack of retention policy. By my calculations, getting new customers costs them about six months of revenues from those customers. Losing a customer to a competitor is even more expensive. But I’ve heard from many folks (and verified myself) that if you call in to attempt to get the same promotional rate on DSL as a new customer ($144/year, vs the $216/year charged to existing customers), AT&T will effectively tell you to go use a competitor for better rates. Really! The “DSL Retention Line” thanked me for being a loyal customer, but was unable to get me $72 in credit. The rep and supervisor wanted to, but were handcuffed… and admitted “it’s a stupid policy”. Amazing.
Land's End, for their “what, you mean we should sell things we have?” catalog marketing. I’m not sure how much their catalog space is worth per item, but I personally found it less than amusing that of five random items I selected, they were out of stock in four, including a cover item… for three catalogs running. No kidding. First the items were featured, then they were mid-catalog, then they were “marked for quick sale”. In many colors and sizes. Over a period of almost four months. But Land’s End never actually had the items, nor would they accept “pre-orders”, nor could they say when the items would be in stock. Now as much as I love pretty pictures, folks, was it worth spending all that money to mail those catalogs and generate customer annoyance?
Cingular Wireless, for their “mumble garble hunh?” radio advertising campaign. The theory must have sounded great – a tie-in with the Winter Olympics, where the radio spot would feature a mock phone interview with an “Austrian skier” more thrilled by his Cingular coverage than his travel to the Olympics. The execution, on the other hand, resulted in a nationally aired, multi-million dollar radio spot where through a combination of phone acoustics and “Austrian accent”, the point is not only lost, it’s unintelligible. Talk about truth in advertising about Cingular’s quality and coverage...(!)
Fidelity Investments, for their “We’ll pay you $10 to do absolutely nothing” direct mail. I loved getting an expensively produced glossy letter from Fidelity, asking for my contact information, for which they’d send me a $10 Starbucks gift card. (Note they didn’t even try a tie-in, like adding $10 to my account. Straight bribery). But the card included an “opt-out” box on the card. So I happily filled in my info, checked the box (forcing them to dump my info on reciept), sent off the card, and received my gift card weeks later. Cost to Fidelity, at least $15 per person. Value to them, zero.
Inktomi Corporation, for their “Cool ad! What were we marketing again?” television commercial. You know you should sell the company’s stock when they produce a series of CGI-animated abstract art commercials with a voiceover saying things like “Air… essential to you. Inktomi… essential to the Internet”. The company logo wasn’t even shown until the last 2 seconds. No URL. No description of what Inktomi actually did, or the benefit to users. (Note: Inktomi made most money off of Proxy Servers. Proxies are data center software. No, most people watching TV don’t know or care). Foolishly, I didn’t sell the stock, and watched as the price fell from $217 to $2.17 per share. But I got some great T-shirts…
[Dot-Bomb, Name withheld], for their “Failure is more fun with a big audience!” approach to customer acquisition. I promised I wouldn’t name these guys or use their until they’re actually out of business… so check back here in six months. These folks run a consumer-oriented, file-sharing web site. They depend on people having a clean, quick upload and download experience. At one point, their site was so unstable that almost half the file attempts were failing, frustrating end users. So what did they do? Demand more marketing! “Hey, let’s push to have more people come to the site, so we can piss off half of them and never see them return!”. Folks, here’s a hint: most people try to hide their weaknesses. Fix the stability, then show people how great you are. Oscar Wilde’s comments aside, the only thing worse than being unknown is being known as a loser.
HALL OF FAME WINNER, Osborne Computer Corporation, for their “Product? What Product?” approach to sales. Tim Oren, of Pacifica VC, says it best: “To be ‘Osborned’ (or to ‘Osborne oneself’), is to promise a follow-on product that is then delayed, but kills demand for the current product and sinks the company”. If you have a blazingly successful product, and are leading the industry, spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) about your competitors is all very fine (as Microsoft has repeatedly shown). But FUD-ing yourself is not only immoral and illegal in several states, it tends to kill your company.
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