WORST PROMOTION?
(Simpsonized, May)
I have seen you guys present the Interactive Marketing Awards for great campaigns at the Interactive Promotion Summit. And I was wondering — have you ever considered an award for the worst promotions?
Here is a letter I recently wrote to P&G:
Dear Procter & Gamble/TLC Marketing/Herbal Essence Marketing Guru,
I recently found a link to a promotion you are running for Herbal Essence. It requires a purchase of two products to receive a free manicure and pedicure.
This is absolutely the worst promotion I have ever seen. Thank you for single-handedly setting back the business 40 years.
Let me give you the highlights in case you have forgotten its absurdity:
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Purchase two bottles of specially marked Herbal Essence Shampoo and/or Conditioner.
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Visit this Web site and enter your two qualifying UPC codes.
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Print your redemption form.
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Mail your completed redemption form listing two UPC or LOT codes along with original receipt(s) (no copies accepted) of the Herbal Essences participating qualifying products. If any of this information is not included, your submission will not be accepted. All materials must be postmarked by 12/31/08.
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You should receive your voucher within four to six weeks of receipt and verification. Please allow one week for verification. The voucher will include a Web site that lists venues. Locations will not be provided prior to you receiving your voucher in the mail due to agreements made between TLC and participating venues.
Problem 1: It is complete buffoonery to ask people to participate in on online promotion that asks them to purchase a product and mail in a bunch of information and then wait four to six weeks for a response. Have you ever heard of online registration/purchase authentication? It seems to me that you couldn’t find an easy technology fix, so instead of using your brains you made the customer do the heavy lifting.
Problem 2: So is the waiting period four to six weeks, including verification, or do I need to wait an additional week for verification? And what exactly am I waiting for verification of? This is terrible customer service. Do I also need to take pictures of myself using the hair-care product? Should I blur out certain portions, or do you want a candid shot?
Problem 3: This voucher really gets me. So you’re telling me that after I have spent over $35 in gas driving from the store to home to enter my UPC code, then driving to the post office to buy stamps and mail my letters, that you expect me to wait seven weeks to hear there are no pedi-mani places within a 30-mile radius where I can go and not expect to get a foot rash or possibly lose a finger? Why aren’t you more upfront with your customers?
What you did right was give consumers until Dec. 31, 2008 to send in their information because it would take that long to jump through all the hoops you just set up. Maybe next time you do a promotion like this you can have the creative execution be tied to some sort of Gladiator Trials or Double Dare-type obstacle course! Then I would at least see the correlation.
Three bad ideas that would have still been a better alternative to your current “promotion”:
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Sending out an e-mail that says, “Try this, it doesn’t suck.”
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Setting up free hair-washing stands in the mani-pedi places and giving customers a shampoo while they get their mani-pedi.
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Not doing anything at all.
Brittany King
Dallas, TX
R. CRUMB CHIMES IN
(Crumb on Marketing, November 2007)
I appreciate that you send me copies of Promo. I continue to find the magazine fascinating and appalling. Did you get much reaction to that letter of mine that you ran? (Editor’s note: The letters still trickle in, see below.)
Also, I was very intrigued by that old Edison Record Company promotional item that you showed in July 2007s.
R. Crumb
Sauve, France
Remember R. Crumb’s 1971 portraits of the white man, briefcase in hand, swaggering down a sidewalk carpeted with people? Is it a straight or crooked line from Crumb’s sidewalks to the parachute packing rooms and sign-plastered neighborhoods of 2008?
Marketing is the art of manipulation. Let’s just be parabolic about it and move forward. Or lay down.
I admire you for printing his letter.
Bill Hampton
[email protected]
Network
