Valuable marketing tip: never overstate the value (2 great photos to illustrate)

I never miss an opportunity to take a picture of funny things I see when I'm out and about. One common misstep in marketing involves overstating the value of something beyond what your company can deliver. When marketing practitioners overstate the value of something, it causes anger and distrust from their customers. The photo below is from a menu at a Mexican restaurant we stumbled upon in Hilton Head recently.

Cheap Swill Wine....Probably out of the box....(aged on the truck)

Is that not brilliant? It's crappy wine, but they've chosen to not overstate its value buy calling it the house "special," or something along those lines. They are telling it like it is and making customers smile. With that description, it's doubtful anyone has ever bothered to complain or send it back. Customers were told what they were getting. If I ordered it and it was truly awful, I'd probably just shrug my shoulders and laugh, knowing that I had been warned.

I'm not quite sure what to say about this next photo.

NICEPKG

At first, I assumed it was a young 20-something-year-old driver with an inflated ego. This is the kind of thing my own 16-year-old would find funny to do, so I immediately assumed it was a misguided youth. I had the opportunity to pull up next to the driver at a light and was slightly horrified to discover that he looked to be my father's age. He might have been driving his son's car somewhere for the day. He might have owned a reputable UPS packaging franchise and the vanity plate was simply a form of marketing (I know, it's a stretch). Whatever the case, it's a clear example of over-promising something you might not be able to deliver on...and something with a rather subjective value (I would imagine...the light turned, thankfully).

While a lot of marketing is all about choosing words to attract customers or buyers, one must be careful about not overstating the value of what you are selling. Often it can backfire and then you've lost the trust of your audience completely. This is especially true in real estate. My mother, sister and brother were all realtors, so I've heard a lot of the euphemisms out there! Cozy = too small for a flat screen television; retro décor = vinyl floors and avocado green appliances; mechanic's dream = the house is dump, but the garage is huge; unique design = flawed floor plan where you might have to walk through the pantry to access the bathroom.

Marketing is about finding that perfect balance between promoting the benefits, yet keeping it real enough that you won't lose trust by overstating the value of that NICEPKG you might be selling.

Dear CVS and online marketers....

Dear Online Marketers,                                                   

It’s not that I don’t like you. I do. I’ve been you. I understand the need to capitalize on a current transaction by offering the customer a future discount. This all makes perfect sense to my cynical marketing self.

But, please….stop offering me discounts for the exact same products or services I JUST PURCHASED AT FULL RETAIL PRICE, no less than 72-hours ago. It makes you look stupid. It makes me like you less.

I just took my son to CVS Minute Clinic for a sports physical. So, a few days later, I'm struggling to understand why their marketing department would send me a coupon for $10 off a sports physical. Maybe it's all entirely coincidental (not), but I haven't received a CVS promotion until just now, when the online check-in prompted me for my e-mail and address.

I can’t tell you how many times this practice happens. As much as I love Lands’ End, they are guilty of this also. It never fails, that I’ll place a $200+ order for school uniform apparel, and I’ll get an e-mail the very next day for 30% off. Seriously? I know I can call your customer service and they will probably give me the discount on the past order (as they have stellar customer service), but you just make me feel all bitchy and cheap doing that.

So, please…take the following into consideration:

1)     I love that you appreciate my business with a personal e-mail following up on my purchase. Kudos for that.

2)      I love extra discounts, who doesn’t?

3)      I don’t like to feel like I’m being played, or that I missed the boat on a seemingly good deal that’s (coincidentally) occurring moments after my credit card was swiped.

If you are going to use your voodoo marketing and target me before I’m even aware that I’m a loyal customer, please don’t offer me a discount on what I just purchased. If I was just at your store for a sports physical, there’s a pretty good chance I don’t need another one this week. Maybe file this promotion away to hit 11 months from now and send me an e-mail reminder and a coupon for the next delinquent annual sports physical my child likely needs for school. If you want to send me a promotion immediately, offer me something that I can actually use: $5 off any purchase at CVS, a discount on a flu-shot, or $10 off any prescription.

If I just purchased a boat-load of clothing at your store…cough-cough, Lands’ End…don’t send me a 30% off everything promotion that starts tomorrow and ends next week. Send me an e-mail that says, “Thank you for your recent purchase. We are sending you a coupon code that can be used for any future purchase in the next six months." Better yet, notice all those times I have stuff in my cart and haven't checked out? I'm not checking out right away because I'm waiting to see if you will send me another e-mail promotion this week. Save us both the time, and offer me a discount TODAY.

Don’t make me feel dumb. Don’t make me feel like I missed the boat on a sale. Make me feel valued for the customer I am, and the customer I will continue to be if you give me a little free stuff respect. I'm fairly easy in this regard....just treat a girl with a little dignity.

The "so what" factor in effective public relations

One of the greatest challenges in working with clients (both with internal clients and in an agency environment) is teaching people what constitutes writing a news release. Often, in the high-tech computing environment, my systems and technology group wanted a news release written for every new improvement made to our enterprise computers. Faster. Better. Bigger. Whatever. To which, I was trained to respond, "so what?"

While it is super-great that the product group created a new and faster computer, what's the real news value in this? How does a communications professional sell this to the media?

Simply announcing a faster, better computer isn't news.

This will inspire eye-rolling among journalists and your credibility level will drop. Your job as a communications professional is to ask your clients what this means for their customers. Your client must be able to produce an actual customer (or a real person who will benefit from the news you are announcing) who can be used in a story and as a reference for the press. When I worked at Unisys, we had a rule with our client groups. We would plan our public relations plan around their new, faster computer, but without an actual customer success story, we'd kill the launch date of any news releases and any media tours (stressful when you have travel booked and interviews scheduled). It's not always pleasant to be the bad guy, but you are doing your company a favor. Media will start to discount everything you put out if you don't have anything substantial to offer.

The media wants more than just the "newer and faster" line. They want a story. A story involves a customer...people...a real world application of how this newer and faster thing improves lives, increases efficiencies or saves money. Without a real case study willing to go on record as a success story, you have nothing but fluff.

So what? This is the question you should be asking yourself on a daily basis. It's the key to pitching better stories to the media and gaining their respect. Always make your clients answer this question before moving forward with issuing a press release. Asking yourself "so what?" on a daily basis as you write and prepare media pitches will make you a better communications professional and will lead to more successful results.

Replaced with a Tweet? Has the bold, printed headline become obsolete?

While enrolled in graduate studies for Journalism at Temple, I developed a fascination of headlines in the printed press. Since this time, I have been collecting historic newspapers, many of them framed and featured around the walls of my dining room. From an original 1860 newspaper announcing Lincoln's presidency to the more captivating headlines of the past century, including the Moon landing, JFK's assassination and Nixon's resignation, they all illustrate how journalism has evolved over time.

I enjoy looking at headlines and how their advancement, which is mostly attributed to improvements in press production and the introduction of electronic publishing. The announcement of Lincoln's presidency in the 1860 paper is found on page two, not page one. Today it seems so unimpressive, as it's positioned a few inches down on column two, page two, with no more than a 12-point header. In just 100 years, the headline had exploded, as evidenced in the JFK story, where the headline and news takes up the entire front page.

While we still have large headlines in print today, the printed paper is not how the majority of people get their news. Radio, television, internet home pages, Twitter, Facebook, texting and other forms of social media comprise our primary sources of media. With all these forms of communication at our fingertips, it's rare that anyone is seeing the "headline of the day" at the subway or street vendor's newsstand. By the time we see a headline in print, it's old news.

Instead of seeing the big, bold headline to know what's the major story of the day, we piece together news "nuggets." Nuggets come in many forms: the news soundbites or breaking news tickers, radio updates, Facebook posts, Tweets, online news streams, texts, YouTube videos, e-mails, etc. Instead of being exposed to a single, captivating headline for the day, we probably see a hundred or more "nuggets" signaling to us the trending topic of the day (or hour). Depending on your industry our line of work, you may be exposed to more than 100 small headlines before finishing your morning cup of coffee.

What does this mean for the pr practitioner? Your job is harder, and changing every day. There is no single, one way to reach your audience. It's neither a press release or a single Tweet. It's everything. Knowing your audience allows you to emphasize certain media outlets over others, but they all need to be acknowledged and dealt with individually.

No longer is public relations about just sending out a press release on the wire. The information needs to be choreographed to hit news outlets, your website, message boards, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail groups, industry bloggers, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other forms of social media simultaneously.

Today, it's not the size of the headline that matters, as much as whether you've saturated enough media outlets with your message. In some aspects, we've shrunk our headlines back down to about the same size of the Lincoln headline in the 1860 paper. A Tweet is about the same size, and limited in characters. The difference between then and now is that the distribution channels have increased considerably. Hitting your target isn't about printing one line in one source, it's now about getting that smaller nugget exposed in dozens of outlets.

As I'm writing this, I'm realizing it won't be long before the printed newspaper becomes entirely obsolete. I suddenly feel an urgency to add to my newspaper collection, as I can't imagine a day where people like myself buy and trade original Tweets highlighting the greatest news moments in the 21st-century.

Say it FIRST...how to control the message before others beat you to it

Many of my examples of what not do do with public relations and communications come from real-world examples of things I see in my own life (and not necessarily situations involving past clients).

One such example under the "say it first" category comes from my boys' charter school. Last year, two students were caught having relations under the stairwell in the upper school. And, yes...I do mean the hard-core variety.

What happens more often than not is that businesses and organizations aren't prepared for this kind of "crisis communications." I can't tell you how many times I see this in daily life. Situations spin completely out of control because a business or organization chooses to say nothing, rather than address a situation. Usually, they are simply too afraid to say anything, for fear that it will be the wrong thing.

Silence often leads to speculation, distrust, frustration and anger. With social media permeating every facet of our lives, there's no such luxury of remaining silent and hoping that people don't hear about something. With our school's situation, the parent Facebook page was inundated with posts as soon as the high school students returned home that day and shared with parents what they heard had happened between two students caught in the act.

Many parents were outraged and felt the school was covering the incident up with their total lack of silence. It led to a massive blow up including conspiracy theories and many parents were quite vocal in asserting that the situation was not being dealt with or handled appropriately by administration. Some of the upset parents turned their ugliness further by singling out the parents of the two involved teens, even questioning their parenting skills and (probable) lack of religion. One parent was adamant that she was going to call the media and legislators in Raleigh over this. (She should probably have included Oprah on the list too....two teens having sex? That's never happened before!) It took a few days, but eventually the board's moderator (a parent) pulled the thread down. In the meantime, however, it was a pr disaster for the school.

What could have been done to avoid this? Saying something...anything. Saying something is always is better than saying nothing. All the school needed to do was to issue an e-mail like the following:

Dear parents,

As you may be learning from your children, there was an incident in the Upper School where two students were engaged in inappropriate conduct on campus. We are addressing this situation with the students and their parents, and hope that you will respect the families and students involved as we work through disciplinary measures and move forward.

While we are not making light of the seriousness of this incident, we hope that you will keep in mind that teenagers often make terrible and inappropriate decisions as they evolve into young adults. As adults, we need to remind ourselves of this and be sensitive in not contributing further to the embarrassment of the involved parties.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to call me personally.

Best regards,

Principle Hodge (name changed)


Would this have been hard? It acknowledges that something happened (without going into graphic details). It reminds us that we're all human and as adults we probably shouldn't seek to tar and feather the students. It also openly encourages a private discussion for anyone who may have further concerns.

This simple letter would have shut down the rumor mill before it even started. I don't know if there would have been posts about the incident on the parent page. I do know that it would have prevented about 95% of the furor over the incident.

• The parent who started the whole thread about a cover-up and conspiracy wouldn't have anything to yell about.
• We would have all been subtly reminded that most of us have done one or two really horrible things in our youth and as bad as this incident was, these kids don't need their lives and reputations further destroyed.
• Any parents that felt like they needed more information would have felt welcomed to approach the principal by his invitation to call.

Being silent allows others to do all the talking. Do you want the agenda and tone set for you, or do you want to come out first and control the message?

Say something first....anything.

The power of an apology

There's an interesting thing about human nature. We all make mistakes. We can acknowledge we make mistakes, as do others. However, many of this have this unrelenting need to hear someone acknowledge when they've made a mistake through an "I'm sorry."

Why is the "I'm Sorry" so important in daily life and communications? I suppose it resonates with people because they feel their issue was heard...they were right...it cleans the slate and allows both parties to move forward.

While there are hundreds (my husband will likely say thousands) of issues I can think of where a simple "I'm sorry" from someone would have turned things around and allowed me to move forward in a positive tone, one stands out in particular. This was a mind-boggling example of poor customer service:

At my salon, I used to pay for a senior stylist. Women are all familiar that there are different prices charged for haircuts and blow-outs based upon a stylists "level" of training. I was paying $45 for the cut/style (a good ten years ago). My stylist cut my hair as usual, but since she overbooked herself, she sent over "Amber," a stylist in training to blow me out (sounds dirty typing this) and style my hair. Part of why I enjoyed going to the salon was to get that really nice blow dry...the one I have never in decades been able to replicate at home.

I feel awkward and uncomfortable saying anything to my regular stylist and sit fuming while Amber styles my hair with a disappointing show of talent. This defeated the purpose of paying top dollar for the senior level stylist. I decide to sit quiet and say something to the salon manager when I paid.

I ask for the manager when I'm checking out. I discreetly pulled her aside and reminded her that I've been coming to that salon for years, and was disappointed that my regular stylist didn't style my hair and that a trainee was sent to finish me out. I wasn't looking for a free haircut or any kind of a discount, I just wanted to be heard and understood. The manager proceeds to tell me that this was "for my own benefit," as my stylist was quite busy and using Amber helped her. I'm scratching my head at this point, not really understanding how Amber helping my stylist was of any benefit to me, when I was paying for a certain level of experience. I think I somewhat snarkily pointed out to the manager that the real benefit was to the salon and my stylist so they could pack in more clients, rather than focusing appropriate attention to each client.

From there, our conversation spiraled (as they often do when I don't hear what I need to hear). The salon manager remained defensive and rather bitchy about the whole incident, finally throwing her hands up that I was not satisfied with her answer.

All I wanted was a simple apology. "I'm so sorry you had an unpleasant visit, Ms. Rafizadeh. Your stylist was getting backed up, and while I realize this was an error in our over-booking, I thought having Amber style you would be preferable to waiting longer."

Had I heard this, I probably would have apologized in turn for saying anything and expressed appreciation that they tried to rectify the situation (albeit with Amber).

Instead, I left angry and never returned to that salon again. Never underestimate the power of a simple apology to turn around an angry or disappointed customer. There's something very humbling in hearing an apology from someone that can turn anyone, even me, around.

Journalism vs. Public Relations

George Orwell said it best:  "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations." Even with the explosion of social media and the ever-changing landscape of traditional journalism in George Orwell's time, this definition still stands as clearest and most poignant one I've come across. 

When I read a newspaper or news website, I can't help thinking about "the source" of the news. It's especially interesting to pick up a copy of a small-town, local paper to really see the impact of public relations on the stories we are fed as news.

The front-page story in this week's local paper highlighted a boy that gave his life savings (of $100) to support a cancer organization. Worthy cause? Yes. Wonderful story? Yes. Worthy of front page news? Probably not.

If you have your own local business, do you ever ask yourself why Tony's pizza is featured with a nice article about Tony's Sicilian mother who immigrated to this country with nothing but $5 in her pocket (and her great aunt Sophie's pizza dough recipe), the dry cleaner that found and returned an heirloom watch to one of its customers, or the seemingly impressive new Math teacher at Woodbridge Academy?

Are these stories examples of journalism, or are they as George Orwell asserted, public relations? These stories are examples of public relations. Public relations often receives a bad rap with terms like "spinning" or even "creating" the news. As someone who as worked on both sides of the journalism-public relations fence, public relations does often deserve a bit of cynicism. Often I've sat around the table with clients or corporate executives and brainstormed of what we could do to "create" news. 

Journalists generally don't follow around corporate executives, small business owners or directors of charity organizations to report on their business dealings or operations. Journalists depend on obtaining entire stories or leads by public relations professionals -- some studies indicate as much as 75% of all editorial content is based on public relations.

While this statistic may seem depressing at its face, it doesn't mean that most of all news is not newsworthy and that it's just fabricated stories being pushed out by pr flacks. A corporate communications officer or public relations manager at a company is an integral part of the news process. I think most people in the industry come to accept the fact that journalism and public relations professionals both need one another, and it would be hard in this uber-competitive, instant-access kind of society for either to exist without the other.

What does this mean for both parties? In short, journalists should not rely solely on information they are being fed and take it at face value. Hopefully, most journalists do not rely solely on a single angle story they are fed through a press release (such as Tony's pizza). Journalists should look at a news release and expand on it to include a larger, more meaningful context.As a public relations professional, one needs to carefully balance the role he or she may be playing in the creation or shaping of news. Will this story be of value to the consumer beyond how it may serve your company or organization's bottom line? If not, how can I better position this story for a larger appeal?

Journalists should be working in a way that blurs the line so that readers aren't able to come to such quick conclusions about whether a story is news or whether it's just good public relations. Is this even possible? I'm not sure if I've ever come across such a piece. Most stories seem to provide nice examples using George Orwell's categorization: where they are actual news stories because they are things that someone doesn't want printed (political scandal, bank bailouts, etc.) or public relations, which simply includes everything else.