Michael Shipe Blog

Maybe a good product, but could use help marketing

The other night I was watching Ultimate Fighter Champion Rich Franklin vs Evan Tanner 2 when I saw a commercial that was completely out of place. I see absolutely no connection between a Cross necklace that you can see the Lord’s Prayer when you look through the center crystal and Ultimate Fighter Champion.

The money spent on that advertisement was almost totally wasted. There will never be a shortage of people who are ready to throw money away thinking it’s a marketing opportunity. Please do not put any money towards marketing without at least knowing your target, the demographics and reach of the marketing opportunity. This information is available in any media kit and could have easily saved IdeaVillage the time and money. Or better yet, trade the money spent on un-targeted tv shows for highly targeted social marketing opportunities. You will halve the reach, but quadruple the sales – funny the effect of proper targeting.

To recap: The Prayer Cross & Ultimate Fighter Champion DON’T MIX!

The other day, this toy section caught my eye while walking through Target. “Certified Non-Toxic”, the ludic toy brags. It is clear Target is experimenting here, but I wonder if this toy’s primary selling point speaks to the struggle fair trade products have in getting on shelves.

Granted, most parents want their children’s toys to be non-toxic, but is “Certified Non-Toxic” that big of a selling point? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. There are more toxic toys in the US than I know of, but that really isn’t saying much. I grew up playing with steel Tonka Trucks that could give you tetanus with one malicious twinge of the hinge.

Here is my point, let’s contrast the “Certified Non-Toxic” with “Certified Fair Trade”. Some parent sees this non-toxic toy and thinks, “That’s nice, but I’ll just get a cheaper stuffed animal. It isn’t certified non-toxic, but I don’t see a scull and crossbones either, so…it’s probably ok.”

Switch the non-toxic to fair trade. The same parent goes to buy the fair trade stuffed animal and thinks, “The bear is certified fair trade, what about all the other toys? Are they made for children by children? Does Target trade fair for this bear, but unfair for the other 99% of the store?”

I suggest, that the mere existence of a fair trade product calls into question all the other products. That’s why Macy’s fair trade experiments (Shop for a Better World) does not emphasizes that it is a fair trade project. They link it to a specific project and highlight how it helps a specific community overcome a specific problem. Because it is an especially project, it does not cast doubt on the fairness of Macy’s other products.

It makes me wonder if highly charged terms like “fair trade” could survive in big box retailers simply because the brain too easily goes from “fair” to “unfair”. As technology makes the world smaller, consumers will want more evidence that their money is bettering the world hence the rise in corporate social responsibility(CSR). More and more retailers will be experimenting with green-fair-organic-non-toxic products trying to find exactly what consumers are concerned about.

Upping your position on the left side of search engine result pages is the cheapest form of internet marketing right. Aside from the cost of achieving a higher ranking of course. But having a high position does not cost a thing. So we found out that inbound links up our relevance and all of the sudden building links became the thing.

It is no wonder it became the thing. Building links is relatively easy, inexpensive and kind of fun for the swivel chair marketer. This spawned a whole slew of irrelevant opportunities to build links. Thankfully, search engines weight the importance of each link by the quality and relevance of the site providing the link.

Thus the Golden Rule of Link Building:

Establish links as if there were no search engines.

One of the things I enjoy most about marketing is how pervasive it is. Marketing gives input at all stages – product creation, packaging, pricing, distribution, promotion, sales. Marketing also contributes at the strategic level with research, targeting, and product offering. All aspects are crucial.

Here is a personal example of when Crest Mouthwash completely lost any hope of ever winning my business again because of failing at the packaging design stage.

I have no idea how Crest Mouthwash compares with other mouthwashes when it comes to effectiveness in mouthwashy things. I will not buy Crest’s Mouthwash any more and I have instructed my wife not to buy it because it is impossible to use without dripping blue mouthwash all over your bathroom space. This transcript of a typical rant after using Crest’s Mouthwash has been expurgated for all audiences (expurgations):

“What the heck! Son of a gun. Who was the dumb dumb that designed this inadequate lid to drip this blue stuff all over my sink? This junk is all over the place. It looks like a trucking smurf couldn’t hold it and went all over the dirty place.”

Crest, please let me fix this for you. And please help the guy in charge of packaging for the mouthwash find a position that better fits his skills.