Black Friday, Green Christmas

Posted on November 25, 2011 by admin

The Holidays mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But to retailers and their marketers, the Holidays are nothing more than a dollar sign and market opportunity, especially Black Friday. But is that really so bad?

People may criticize the idea of Black Friday, turning it into the classic tale of marketers having to commercialize everything, but I’d have to disagree. I acknowledge that sometimes marketing can be greedy, over-commercialized, and even unethical, leaving little left for the sacred, but those are just the bad apples. And regardless of the marketing, people are going to buy gifts for their friends and family; there’s no changing that. Retailers are just playing the game. There is no malicious intent; they’re just doing their best to give people what they want – crazy awesome deals. There’s never been a more sure-fire way to make an attempt at increasing profits than to simply give consumers what they want. Pleasing the consumer has always been important, but it is ever increasing in this day and age when more and more consumers’ are becoming strict arbiters of their spending decisions and product/brand choices, so making them happy is vital if you ever want to increase profits and market share.

If you ask me, Black Friday is a brilliant marketing strategy. But we can’t blame any specific person for the invention. The origin of Black Friday may be linked to Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parades in the early 20^th century. Since department stores sponsored the parade, they used it as a vehicle to launch a big push in advertising, getting consumers excited for the first official day of holiday shopping. Eventually it had become an unwritten rule that stores should not do their Christmas advertising until the parade was over. That would just be tacky. So the day following Thanksgiving naturally marked the official first day of the holiday shopping season, and marketers could advertise with a guilt-free conscience. And so a materialistic holiday that makes retailers’ cash registers ring and consumers’ wallets smile was born, and that’s ok with me.

- Andrew

Don’t Be the DMV.

Posted on November 11, 2011 by admin

The DMV. I bet after just reading that, you already have a bad attitude. If the DMV was a product/consumer based business, they’d have gone out of business a long time ago. Their PR alone is a nightmare. Everyone has their own horror story about their experience with the DMV. This is my most recent encounter.

By November 30^th, I have to renew my driver’s license. The last time I was at the DMV was in 2006, and I’ve savored every un-DMV moment since. But now I have to drag myself back and l will probably have another horror story to tell for the next 5 years. But so far, before even going there, they’ve already left me with a sourpuss attitude. Since it’s been so long since I’ve been there, I was doing some research to make sure I know what’s going on.

First of all, I was trying to figure out what time and day they’re open in Brookings, since I remember there being an unreasonably small window of time that you can get your license renewed. Something like, every third Tuesday on a Leap Year from 9:27 am to 9:54 am, but only during the Waxing Gibbous moon phase. So I call the Brookings courthouse, inquiring as to whom I should call since I could not find anything online. So they give me a 1-800 number to call, which takes me to a voice automated system. I can’t tell you how many times the robot encouraged me to “remember, most of your questions can be answered on our website at www, dot dps, dot sd, dot gov.” I bet you hated reading that. Could they have picked a harder url to remember? Also, yeah, I get that you’re trying to reduce the amount of phone calls at your call center, but given your reputation, I don’t trust that your website will be very easy to navigate. So I opted to speak with an actual person, and of course, all the call center representatives were busy, which says something about the DMV in it of itself. I wasn’t even given the option to hold, the robot just told me to “call back another time.” So I had no choice but to go to their website, which actually had a somewhat modern look, but as I suspected, it’s difficult to find information. I will say that I learned about what documents I have to bring, but I only stumbled across that information by clicking through links. If they want to deter phone calls, don’t you think they’d make information easier to find on their site?

At the end of all of this, I’m still left with unanswered questions. The best information that I managed to find, was on an UNOFFICIAL DMV page! It really shouldn’t be this hard to find basic information. As I mentioned at the beginning, if the DMV was a business, they would have failed a long time ago.

There are a lot of things businesses could learn from the DMV about what NOT to do. First, make yourself available to people, and don’t keep them guessing. I still don’t know when the heck they’re open. Secondly, make sure you make all of the right information easily accessible. And don’t think that a modern website design is all you need. A fancy look should come secondary to accessible information, which is one of the most important things to your customers. You only have a small window of time to draw someone in and to keep them there. Consumers can be quick to give up and to move on to a competitor who makes things easier for them. Also, you want to make sure that you appear willing to help. In this digital age, people still have not lost their desire and expectation of businesses to be willingly helpful, and that includes on the phone, and even face to face! Passing me around on the phone, encouraging me to NOT talk to you, and directing me to an information source that is no more helpful than your holding music, sends the message that you don’t want to help me, and that you want to get rid of me as soon as possible. Who would want to do business with someone like that? No consumer should have to WORK to get answers about your business. So please, don’t be the DMV.

- Andrew

Hamm’s, the brand refreshing…

Posted on November 3, 2011 by admin

Since I commute to work from Brookings, I spend the night at my parents’ house in Sioux Falls once a week to save a little money on gas. When I’m there I’m treated to great dishes like roasted chicken, grilled steaks, awesome appetizers, and it’s all washed down with merlot or my dad’s homemade brew in a frosted glass.

My parents and I enjoy a high quality beer, but sometimes my dad likes to buy a 12-pack of plain old brew, nothing fancy. The kind of beer that doesn’t require you to intellectually analyze what you can “detect a hint of,” a man’s brew and nothing more. I think he’s nostalgic for those summer nights in his youth when he and his friends would lean against his ’69 Mach 1 Mustang, turn on some Zeppelin and pound back a couple Schlitz or Hamm’s.

Recently when I arrived at my parents’ house after work I was offered an Octoberfest, but for some reason a Hamm’s sounded better to me. As my dad cracked open the beer and poured it into a frosted glass, he started singing “From the Land of Sky Blue Waters, Comes the beer refreshing, Hamm’s the beer refreshing….” The tune was slightly familiar; I must have recognized it from a lecture when I was an advertising student or from a “History of Advertising” program on the History Channel or something. I DO know that to my recollection, I have never seen an active Hamm’s advertisement in the media, which tells me it has probably been a long time since my dad has seen an active Hamm’s ad altogether, which means this famous Hamm’s jingle has stuck with my “not-so-musically inclined” father for a long time.

What a great example of effective and memorable advertising. The Hamm’s ads really must have hit my dad’s “sweet spot”. I tried to no avail to find the last time the Hamm’s jingle aired, so unless a wiser person can enlighten me, I’m assuming it’s been at least 20 years or so. This would mean that all this time the Hamm’s jingle has been sitting in my dad’s memory without any further reinforcement. And my dad isn’t very web savvy, so I know he hasn’t listened to it on YouTube or anything. By just pouring the Hamm’s into the glass, the song sparked up in his memory, and then he sung it with sentiment.

This is the most ideal place a product can be – moving beyond sales and transcending into parts of peoples’ lives they remember fondly. To my dad, Hamm’s isn’t just some crummy beer he used to drink. Hamm’s stands for those simple summer nights in his youth, leaning up against his Mustang on a gravel road, laughing with his friends, and enjoying a couple beers after a hard day’s work on the farm. Hamm’s is a fond memory, a part of his past, and a part of his life.

- Andrew