Simon said of David Archuleta, that he would be surprised if the song was chosen by him last night.

For those who do not follow American Idol because someone has held a gun to your head or tied you to the chair without passing you the RC first, David sang a really unknown song, bland melody and all that. That’s not the point. The point here, is that each singer has been told to “go with their hearts” and to understand their own vocals when making a song choice.

Very obviously, someone else chose the song for him. It was so out of character and it was such an esoteric choice, a 17-year-old could not possibly have even heard the song, much less prefer it. And the results were predictable - no one liked the song, though they still loved David.

Do you do this to your Ad Agency? Do you “choose the song” for them to sing?

If you did know better, why hire an ad agency in the first place, right? It could be an ego thing, to hire experts, and then telling them what to do. But it is hardly something that will be highly positive for the betterment of your marketing efforts.

Just as David could still be loved for his excellence in execution, so can your ads. But it would have been so much better if it was totally enjoyable rather than having to nit-pick to find something to like about the performance.

Do yourself a favour, don’t choose the song for your ad agency.

UPDATE:

David insists that he chose the song himself, and it was in fact, his personal favorite. OK, this brings to bear an interesting counter-point. Sometimes, even the best ad agencies can make wrong choices, wrong decisions, and it is the client’s who will then suffer for having trusted them. Look at the track record. No one is perfect. But if the evidence of excellence are there, then the likelihood of you being “more right” is lesser. We all know about caveat emptor… but it’s painful…

This is off-topic, but when I saw this video over at Doris: A life-changing video, I just had to visit Nick’s site.

What I found was an upbeat, positive and professional site created by a man who has been blessed by God. Considering his affliction, this is indeed awe inspiring. Head on over to Nick Vujicic’s LifeWithoutLimbs.org and be inspired.

Sorry to have to get back to this topic again. But I just read this post about Burger King’s Inappropriate Commercial and I just had to heave that sigh… I wanted to say “I told you so!” but then, I would be lying.

You see, I have never met the marketing folks over at Burger King. If only they read the warning…

I would hate to repeat all that was said about this topic, so, do head on over to read what Eliza Ferree has to say about it.

Do not be deceived, there is no choice!

A friend of mine had a very interesting discussion with me recently. Basically, we were talking about why she was not aggressively marketing her company’s services. Typical of many small business owners, she was a little apprehensive about marketing.

Her comments were along the lines of her not having a very outgoing personality, there was not a lot of money to go around for marketing, and such. But the most interesting comment was this: “Maybe I cannot do push marketing, but what kind of pull marketing do you think I should do?”

Let me get this straight - too shy to do push marketing and you want to do pull marketing? Hmmm…. interesting.

I mean, you can get a lot of information on the Internet about what push marketing and pull marketing are. So, this statement took me by surprise. What was it in the definition of pull and push marketing that gives the impression that pull marketing was

• cheaper
• less demanding
• no need to encounter customer

This is so wrong. So, I have some good news and some bad news for all small business owners.

The Bad News is - pull and push marketing are two sides of the same coin
The Good News is - pull and push marketing are two sides of the same coin

What is the essence of marketing anyway? Please, put away your marketing texts and stop waving that MBA at me!

Marketing is basically about letting others know how wonderful your products/services are and to convince them that they should buy it from you.

Now, keeping that in mind, there is no such thing as push and pull marketing. Leave that to the “experts” and those who make their money marketing full time. For the small business manager, you just have to find what works for your particular industry and niche. More importantly, do what works for you.

For example, distributing flyers at the street corner can be considered “pull” marketing as you attempt to get customers into your eatery or hardware store. But it is really not so effective if you were a lawyer or a dentist. Putting up posters advertising your wares might work if you had your own brand, but it is not going to help get customers directly to your store.

Forget about push and pull marketing. Instead, think about “bread and butter” marketing. Every action that you take to attract customers must pay off for itself, at least. Don’t get caught up in jargon and industry fads. Focus instead on what works for you.

Talk to a marketing professional because they will know how to “do it”. But don’t get bamboozled by all the glitz. Use your hard won experience and tell them what you want to achieve and how much money you have to do it. Any good marketer should be able to work within your budget and deliver your results. The great ones will exceed your expectations.

A friend of mine in the tiny, sunny island of Singapore, just told me about a really interesting development that really got the people miffed: “The New Taxi Stand Rule“.

This was really interesting. You see, most of the policy makers, as commonly assumed, are government scholars. The best of the best. The brightest of the bright. So, they are supposed to, short of being able to see tomorrow’s stock index, be able to map out the plans for the future.

Now, the “central business district” is the downtown area that is consists mainly of offices and shopping malls. It is usually the most crowded and traffic is usually congested. This whole “taxi” rule came about because of a desire to improve road safety and to impose a stronger measure of orderliness in an already highly ordered society.

The problem occurs where the rubber meets the road, almost literally. While the measures are good, it created ripples of inconveniences that the law-makers never expected - the disabled, the elderly, and the vagarities of the weather. Having to trudge 50 meters in the rain to get to/from the allowed taxi stand is definitely not an improvement in the eyes of executives and office workers who used to have the convenience of a taxi to the doorstep.

Forcing a wheelchair bound person to use the taxi stand is even more ludicrous. Now, how is all of this relevant in a marketing blog?

Marketing is about communications. But communications is not all there is to marketing. How the example of logical thinking failing in the face of reality can be illustrated by one example that I will give below:

Everyone knows that there is no better way to drive volume and increase take up rate by giving away one free for every two purchased. Right.

Several years ago, a company wanted to launch a new game. The revenue model was for gamers to buy a prepaid card with a special code number on it, then, they get to play for 30 days when they enter this code into the computer. So, marketing said, “Buy 1 and get 1 free”. Simple.

Well, actually, what really happened was, instead of increasing sales and increasing take-up, they have just REDUCED SALES by 50% and lost 80% of the follow up sales. Those familiar with the online games market will understand this. What happened? Unlike other consumer products, online games have a definite, and usually short, life-span. Giving one for one simply made it so that gamers (who always move in groups) simply pooled together and bought half of what they would have purchased originally.

Then, follow up sales suffered because not everyone will continue. So, with a lower initial sales, follow up sales will also be lower. Now, this is again different from those instances where games are played for free and then later have upgrades to a paying model. It is not as simple as it appears at the outset.

All I am saying is, knowing happens at many levels. And sometimes, the heart and soul of a specific market could be very different from the norms of a generic market.

NOTE: As of now, they are reviewing the policies to address some of the concerns raised about the elderly and the disable. The rest of them just have to learn to use an umbrella, I guess.