The Polemicist’s dilemma

I’ve been working on a project that has caused my to read Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and re-read “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser. I’m pretty much in agreement with the pro-natural food, anti-factory food arguments made in both books. However, I found the polemicizing in one book far more compelling for reasons that are worth noting by marketers.

Pollan follows four meals from farm to table and makes commentary along the way as to how the food is raised and processed. The first meal is fast food, and the villain is “big ag” which seeks to coopt sustainable sources, organic standards, traditional family farms and foods free of drugs and pesticides in order to deliver something that follows the letter of the law while totally disrespecting the spirit by which honest, healthy meals have traditionally come to the table. So far so good.

The problem is that his is a holistic outrage; you need to totally buy into his argument to accept each part of it. And while in most cases I was nodding my head, at one point I found myself thinking “that’s actually pretty cool” when he described all the things you can make with corn. This is preaching to the choir and to the extent that Pollan wants to make new converts, I don’t know that he is doing it.

Schlosser, by contrast, adopts a “but wait, there’s more” approach to layer on the outrages of eating at McDonalds et al. It starts modestly, even acknowledging that the stuff can taste pretty good. Nothing here to make a Big Mac lover put down the book. But he gradually adds outrages and pulls you in. “You don’t like the feces in the beef? Well, let me tell you about the factory workers that get their limbs chopped off.” You’re led to agreement in baby steps, and thus potentially converted.

We direct marketers are happy to ignore the 98% or so of our audience that doesn’t pay any attention to our work, and focus on tweaking and maximizing our message to the remaiing 2%. It’s probably a worthy goal for a polemicist to get 2% of his or her readers to change their attitudes somewhat. I think Schlosser does a better job, but I recommend you read both books and decide for yourself.

(This post has been edited. There are four meals described in Pollan’s book and I want to make it clear his fast food outrage is specifically about the first meal, thus offering an apples-to-apples [or fries-to-fries] comparison with Schlosser. Be sure you read on about the other three meals, and don’t miss Angelo and the pigs.)

The worst meal of my life

This has nothing to do with marketing, but I think the occasion must be commemorated: last night I had the worst meal of my life at Steak Escape, a “food court” store in the Denver Airport. Worstness is here defined not by the savoriness or healthiness or preparation of the food, but by the total indifference of the staff.

I had time before getting on the plane in Des Moines and thought about picking up a known quantity, a Quizno’s classic Italian from their store right next to the airport. Then I decided that taking a sandwich on the plane to eat 3 hours later was too food-obsessive and I’d just roll the dice when I made my connection in Denver.

I chose the “Steak Escape” because they were right by my gate in Denver and they advertised an Italian sub. I asked the counter person what was on it. He could not tell me. He darted his eyes around the food prep area, and I could tell he wasn’t finding anyone or anything that could help me. Finally he took a stab in the dark: “It’s salami… ham… and some other kinds of meat.”

So I ordered a known quantity, a Philly Cheesesteak. It came bare and I stopped the counter person just as she was about to slather it with mayonnaise. I told her I wanted mustard instead. She said, “we don’t have any mustard.” A cheese steak place without mustard? Impossible. But turned out she was just being lazy… SHE did not have any mustard and her station, and did not feel like stepping over to the next station on a slow night to get some. But a guy cleaning the place heard the conversation and produced a big box of packets. Hope he gets a better job soon because he deserves it.

The food was just as awful as you’d expect, but the non-service described above is what makes this the world’s worst. Here is their phone number: (303) 342-3445. Why not give them a call and ask them a question about their food?

Not so smart, J. Jill…

A woman of my acquaintance found she really, really liked the clothes from the mail order retailer J. Jill. She ordered so much that they asked if she’d like to have a credit account. Even though she had plenty of other cards, there were some minor incentives so she accepted and started getting a regular billing statement.

One month she mailed her payment late, and got a late fee. Then she left the country for two months, not realizing the late fee had been assessed. The next month there was a second late fee and the month after that she became officially a deadbeat. She begain receiving recorded calls several times a day, “please hold for a message about your J. Jill account.” The folks who were house-sitting would hang up, and the voice would call back an hour or two later. Without ever making any kind of threat or bullying statement, J.Jill simply rendered her phone unusable for incoming calls because one never knew who was on the line. Like a Boston Boot for credit.

Then she returned, found out about all this, and immediately paid all the late fees. And cancelled her account, and swore never to shop at J. Jill again. It’s illogical for J. Jill to lose a relationship over $30 in late fees, right? Yet likely J.Jill considers the whole matter a big success because they’ve discovered a new profit center in turning customers over to a credit issuer who’d pay for the privilege; after that they weren’t J.Jill customers any more, but the property and responsibility of the finance company. Not so smart.

Inside the Baby Boomer cranium

I recently celebrated a Significant Birthday, and celebrated by ordering myself a 30 GB video iPod. Shortly thereafter, I cancelled that order and purchased a refurbished iPod mini.

My reasons say something about selling to baby boomers, a demographic that has marketers salivating because of its size and presumed affluence. The initial impetus for my buyer’s remorse was a search to find ways to import DVD video to an iPod. After finding out it might take a weekend to convert a feature length film, I began to wonder what was wrong with watching a film on my computer or even (drum roll)… the TV.

It also occurred to me that at 4 GB, the iPod Mini has space for all the tunes I am ever likely to listen to. I was attracted the renowned reliability of the Mini and also some potential redundancy—my wife already has a Mini and I like the idea of making use of her various docks, chargers etc.

So. Here we see a Baby Boomer who is attracted by simplicity, the very idea of not doing something he could. That represents a real turning point for me, who has always bought the buggy 1.0 release of everything. Simplicity also means the confidence something is going to work as it should, nothing more and nothing less. That’s also something you don’t get with the newest cutting edge product. The Mini is in fact a long-discontinued product, yet still popular on eBay and occasionally available at the Apple outlet.

By the way, this new iPod is replacing an iPod shuffle which is a great product when you recognize what it actually is: a competitively priced USB thumb drive that comes with a free MP3 player, software and headphones. My only problem with the shuffle is that I want to quickly locate the track I want to play. “Surprise me” is also not a pleasing concept to the baby boomer. My daily life has had plenty of surprises. Give me simplicity and predictability, and my wallet opens like a May flower.

Why Steve Jobs is a (marketing) genius

The next time you open your iBook, MacBook or WhateverBook, note the orientation of the Apple logo on the top. It’s upside down! Wouldn’t it be more elegant to have it right side up, from the perspective of the user?

In fact, it used to be thus with earlier generations of Mac laptops… until the return of Steve Jobs. He recognized that it’s more important to present the brand to those who have not yet purchased than to current users. THEY see the logo right-side-up now. And it’s maybe a bonus to those who want to be cool that there is no question we are using an Apple rather than some other kind of inverted fruit.

I recently heard an interesting story from an Apple design engineer who happened to be working the night Steve returned to Apple, in 1997. (It was a Sunday.) They showed him a work in progress called the Nancy, an all-in-one computer. They explained how it was a network device in development. No it’s not, said Steve. This is our new consumer PC.

And so was born the iMac….

Thank you for your business. Now goodbye.

The 5/22 mail brought a letter from AT&T Universal Card. I almost didn’t open it because it was preprinted “OPEN IMMEDIATELY: Important Account Notice” and had a preprinted first class indicia. Obviously, another of the cash advance check mailings I receive 4x a year or so.

But no. The letter inside began: “Citi, the issuer of your AT&T Universal Cash Rewards Card, has decided to discontinue this credit card for business reasons. Therefore, your account will be closed on 6/30/06. This letter outlines important information about he closing of your account.” And so it did… several single spaced paragraphs to inform me what happens to my cardmember benefits (mostly going away) and outstanding balance (it’s still there) before a final “thank you for your business” at the end.

Now let’s see here. I’ve had this card for maybe 20 years. As I recall it was a pioneer—the first high limit, fee free MasterCard. Over the years it changed hands several times and various institutions paid what would add up to several billion dollars for the customer portfolio and brand identification. And now suddenly it’s worth no more than a curt “thank you for your business” ?

Ironically, the very same day brought an email from AT&T Universal Card. They want to let me know that I should refinance my home at a low home equity rate through them because, as a Universal Card customer, “you’ve earned it!”

That quotidian email is an example of why marketers believe business relationships have value—especially when you have the kind of relationship that gives you legal permission to send an email solicitation to your customer list. Yet, I’m assuming this will be the last I hear from my friends at Universal Card. (The deadline for my loan application is 6/30, which makes sense because my card relationship goes kablooie then.)

Citi evidently believes the Universal Card no longer has any business value. I disagree. Anybody want to join me and take up a collection to buy the brand? I’m hoping $1000 will do it.

Best in the world UPDATE

After I wrote about how you could not find Google Adwords results for “best (x) in the world”, I went and tried the Adwords registration process myself. I found that I could not use “best” in my own ad because comparatives are not allowed unless from a third party. I COULD choose “world’s best copywriter” as a search phrase, but Google warned me my results would be so low that a CPC could not be calculated. That was around March 12.

But as of today (4/19/06), something’s changed. If you look up “best copywriter in the world” you will find lots of sidebar ads. 8 on each of the first two pages, 2 on the third page. I don’t actually think that all those people got the idea from my blog. More likely something has changed in the bowels of Google.

But I’ll stand with my original thought: nobody wants to hear you talk about how great you are, and the folks who do happen to click on these ads are not going to turn into leads. Let’s watch and see what happens over time…

The price of security

I was recently a victim of identity theft. First, my credit card company called me wondering why I had been charging so much at walmart.com. When I said I hadn’t used my walmart.com account since 2004 (which I know because I keep all my old emails), they suggested somebody had gotten hold of my credit card info and suggested I cancel my account and get a new card. Which I did.

Then, a few days later, another call. Had I changed my billing address to somewhere in Arizona? No, I hadn’t, and the ability to do so meant that somebody had hacked my online account with the bank in a major way. This set off alarm bells requiring cancellation of the new card, plus alerts to the credit reporting bureaus of which maybe the worse repercussion for me, as a marketer, is that I am automatically removed from credit card solicitation lists for the next 5 years. (No more Capital One swipe samples for me!)

I thought the whole matter was handled just about right by CitiBank. They were efficient, not accusatory, and the paperwork required (two notarized statements from me) was tedious but reasonable under the circumstances. That got me thinking about what is the right balance between companies protecting themselves and providing benefits to consumers.

A serious lack of such balance was exhibited in my first purchase recently of a “digital edition” from Amazon. It came with onerous digital rights management (DRM) protection that requires me to go through a complex registration process, where I sign in with Adobe online, simply to be able to read the document I have paid for on my computer. It simply ain’t worth it, folks. I asked for my money back. Their rights are protected but they lose a sale. Good deal? Not for me, not for the publisher, certainly not for the author who probably has no idea this is going on.

Back in my “suit” days, I had a client who asked me if it would be a good idea to sign up with a bad check protection service which would make good any bogus paper in return for a 1.5 percent commission on ALL checks received. Sounded somewhat plausible until we did the math and found that the bad check problem was actually costing considerably less than 1.5% of sales.

People who make their living trying to cheat other people and businesses will probably find a way to do so, at least some of the time. A business needs to find a balance where it makes things somewhat more difficult for the bad guys without penalizing the average customer with unreasonable security measures. This is the same logic that applies when we talk to our clients about money-back guaranteed, isn’t it?

A money back guarantee, especially on a mail order or internet purchase, answers the big objection “what if I get it and I don’t like it after I see it?” Marketers who are reluctant to make guarantees are afraid that somebody is going to take advantage of them. But the bad guys will anyway… and meanwhile they’ve scared off a lot of potential customers who were on the fence.

Best in the World

We’ve all had clients who think the way to open a sales letter is to say, “As the world leader in intelligent solutions that do xyz, Acme Systems would like you to know blah blah etc…”

There are two obvious problems with this strategy. The first is that chest-pounding self-importance tends to put people off, not endear them. Readers want to know “what’s in it for me?”, not how great you think you are. And the second is that claims of superiority are not credible unless they are a/supported by hard facts and b/proffered by someone other than the person or company being judged.

You wouldn’t want to throw it in your client’s face that their self-centric posturing (which probably comes straight from the CEO’s corner office) is going to doom their campaign before it gets started, so here’s some useful third party validation: the U.S. Olympic Ski Team, which chose as their slogan for the recently-concluded Winter Games “Best in the World”.

The slogan didn’t say anything about the team’s passion or aspirations, as something so uninspired as “Striving to Be Our Best” might have done. It’s generic, anybody could have said it, and the only way it could have been remotely acceptable would be if you actually were best in the world, which our boys and girls demonstrably weren’t. So it became an object of ridicule, until ultimately Austrian skier Herman Maier, who actually is, shouted “best in the world!” from his victory podium.

Oh, here’s another objective test you can try with your client. Look up “best [insert your client’s business description] in the world” on Google and notice how many Adwords classified ads appear on the side. There almost certainly will be no ads at all. Try it with several variations and it will be the same. Meaning that everyone who has tried marketing to the phrase has abandoned it and it’s not even worth paying 1 cent for the top position. Best in the world, indeed.

What does a copywriter do, actually?

Every now and then I get a request for help in copyrighting something. Here’s an example:

“I am a singer/song writer who has just recorded my first single. I am trying to get my single in stores to be sold but I need it copywrited first. I wrote the lyrics to the song and need them copywrited before I put the single in stores so that no one will steal the music…do you do that kind of thing or would I need to look for someone else? I’m a bit confused.—L.D.”

Answer: no, L.D., that’s not what a copywriter does. (Although I think I know the answer: if you created it, you ALREADY own the copyright unless you expressly sign it over to somebody else. But hey, I’m a copywriter, not a lawyer, so don’t take my word for it.)

For an excellent depiction of what a copywriter DOES do, check out this short movie on the Veer website. In case you don’t have 7 minutes to spare, here’s a synopsis. Copywriter gets a job in a design agency. He keeps showing his work around for feedback and nobody ever has anything to say. Finally he realizes all the designers are illiterate. He teaches them to read and write—and then gets fired. As his boss explains, “now we can write our own copy, so we don’t need you any more.”

Thanks to designer Steve Stanard for sending this link my way. Think he is trying to tell me something?