Category: Lousy Marketers

If you’ve ever worked in retail or ecommerce, you know that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are big deals. I’ve had clients who made 20-30% of their yearly income on these days alone. It sort of makes sense how this came about. A holiday means a day off, so people will have time for leisure activities such as shopping. It follows that days off near Christmas are an especially great opportunity to get people to shop for their upcoming gift giving. Enter the lousy marketers though, and suddenly, we skip past the whole gratitude part of Thanksgiving and go straight for the shopping.

Now look, Thanksgiving has complicated and somewhat hypocritical roots, but you can’t overlook the fact that it’s just plain nice to have an entire day dedicated to gratitude. As an American, it’s one of the things I’m most proud of about my country. However, it’s slowly being killed. Black Friday started as a day with sales for Christmas shopping. Now it’s just a nasty commercial nightmare that starts Thursday evening and ends Monday night. People leave their loved ones and their gratitude at the table, then go knock each other over to buy as much as they can for as cheaply as they can. Holiday ruined.

It isn’t just Thanksgiving though. Every holiday has become an occasion for lousy marketers to shove sales down people’s throats so that they forget about everything but shopping. This past July 4, I saw a commercial that encouraged me to “celebrate independence with independence from payments”. So yeah, don’t celebrate your country. Don’t waste time with your family or community. Don’t thank a soldier. Just buy stuff you couldn’t otherwise afford and be grateful that you have one year of deferred payments. Materialism is just what our forefathers intended, I’m sure.

Idiocracy was set 500 years in the future. Sometimes, I doubt it’ll take us that long to get there. We’re already losing sight of everything that matters. And so, dear readers, I offer you this – on your deathbed, you will remember people, not things. You’ll remember what you did and not what you bought. So take these holidays for what they really are. Make them into opportunities to strengthen and/or create new connections. Time away from work is precious, so make it worth it. You’ll be happy that you did.

Seasonal planners can definitely be lousy marketers. This happened to me about 5 years ago. I had gotten a gift certificate for Christmas, but when I went into the store to shop, they didn’t have sweaters, gloves, or any of the other warm clothes I needed. It was late January, it was cold and snowy out, but all they carried was summer wear. Maybe I’m just a simpleton because I don’t plan my outfits months in advance, but I’d bet I’m not the only one.

This happens when forecasters focus nationwide instead of accounting for local needs. It’s a common recurring problem for humanity actually. For example, consider the history of the Catholic church. In the early days, the bishops had more control over their local communities. As such, their churches catered to the specific needs of the local people. Different teachings were emphasized based on the unique needs of the community. Then, as transportation and communication improved, the pope was able to enforce more control and establish standard dogmas across all territories. The power of the local bishops decreased and with that, the emphasis on the unique needs of the community decreased as well. When you try to apply one size fits all, you push people to the fringes. That’s how the Catholic church split into the many christian churches that are around today.

Alternatively, consider that before the industrial revolution, most clothes were tailored. One size fits all was created for mass production, not because it benefits the people. One of the cool things about the age of the internet is that we are going back to tailored clothes. Companies like Stitch Fix and Trumaker start with your measurements, then make clothes to fit you. It’s quite nice.

So what’s the takeaway? If you work in marketing or business, consider local needs and interests. Meet the needs of your customers instead of requiring that they meet yours. That’s the way of the future and any company who can’t figure it out will be out of business.

Music Ruiners are a special breed of lousy marketer. I’m talking about the people who pick songs to use in commercials here. They take someone’s art and repurpose it for profit. It’s repulsive.

In case you couldn’t tell from my post containing Hoot’s Insomniac Playlist for Feeling Feels, music is a very important part of my life. It’s pretty much been my one constant companion. It makes my highs higher and my lows tolerable. So, to see music stripped of meaning and treated carelessly breaks my heart.

I discovered The Velvet Underground my sophomore year of college and it was love at first listen. I loved their sound, their lyrics, their content, their vibe, their fascinating history – all of it. One of my favorite songs of theirs is Heroin. Yes, it is about heroin. It isn’t advocating for the use of heroin, but it isn’t really speaking out against it either. As far as I understand it, it’s just about a person who chooses to do heroin. The lyrics describe why he uses and how it feels. Throughout the entire song, there is a drum that mimics a heartbeat. When Lou Reed sings about taking the drug, that beat quickens along with the pace of the song until you feel like your own heart might explode. And then the pulse slows again as he comes down from his high. I highly recommend you give Heroin a listen. Like it or not, you’ll respect it. It is truly an experience and I’m amazed by it every time I hear it.

And so, imagine my frustration when I heard this song that I love used as background music in a car commercial. There are layers upon layers to appreciate in Heroin, but they stripped it down to only the guitar and one line. The line they used was “I have made a big decision”. Some idiot heard that and thought to him/herself, “great, buying a car is a big decision, so this is totally appropriate”. If you know the song though, you know that the complete line is “I have made a big decision, I’m gonna try to nullify my life”. Not quite the same is it? Kind of dark, isn’t it? Kind of grossly inappropriate to use to sell SUVs, isn’t it? What a shame.

The exception to Music Ruiners is Volkswagen. In the 90’s, Volkswagen ran a series of commercials that celebrated the wonderful connection between music and driving. They picked excellent music and focused the commercials more on the euphoric feeling of driving while listening to a great song than on the car itself. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but that’s how I first heard about Nick Drake, who is another of my favorite musicians. Volkswagen succeeded because they celebrated the music and the experience of listening instead of using a song out of context and stripping it of its meaning because it has a catchy melody.

Nietzsche observed that without music, life would be a mistake. He wrote that “The musical art often speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the heart”. I couldn’t agree more. And so marketers, let’s leave the sacred alone, ok?