Black Friday and the GPS Blues

Black Friday

During Black Friday the new Rhianna album Rated R was available for $3.99 on Amazon.com. You could also have used a $3 e-voucher which meant for the princely sum of $0.99 you would get the album. Is this a great deal or does it make me question if the album is any good or not ?

For any brand this is a slippery downward slope..Rhianna may have sold lots of copies, but is the consumer being conditioned to value her product for less in the future ?

GPS Blues

The GPS manufacturers such as Garmin and Tom Tom are having a severely tough time of maintaining the (premium) value of their products as price competition drives down the $$ value of each and every product innovation in days ...let alone weeks, as reported by daily finance.

Value for me experiences

Spending time building engaging (value for me) experiences for consumers is a way out of this challenge - with a front of mind brand being Apple.

Less obvious and more interesting examples from Fox such as "24", and the band Sade are case studies of how to achieve this by 'cultivating' their fans.

You wont find these cases in the marketing books or too many blogs.....yet, but I may just have to change that....

THERE’S A GAP IN THE MARKET FOR A ‘SABOTAGE MARKETER’

I’m not an advocate of negative marketing, but after reading the story "United Breaks Guitars" a Smash Hit on YouTube! (as reported on MSNBC) http://tiny.cc/4NRaN , a contentious thought came to mind - that there could be ‘a gap in the market’ for a new marketing career path - namely sabotage marketing !

Don’t buy it huh, well hear me out…..

1.In the above case United Airlines get lots of coverage and can use it to show how they will learn and improve, and Dave Carroll (the inconvenienced customer) will get some belated compensation.

2.After all we have recently seen a number of cases of very smart and highly impactful ‘crisis management/turnarounds’ to handle negative publicity following inappropriate staff behavior at Domino’s (as reported on Fox) http://tiny.cc/quWZx and a chicken shortage at KFC http://tiny.cc/LpDQq

3.Although I’m not suggesting it was a premeditated strategy in the above examples, the results are impressive. What would stop a brand thinking ‘aha’ perhaps we ‘stage’ a negative experience as a way to build a viral ‘turnaround’ story.

4.That’s why I argue that there’s a gap in the market for the ‘sabotage marketer’, their sole job would be to actively and purposefully stuff up - and yes annoy consumers!

For those inclined - some sabotage marketing tips:

a)have a ready made press release, b) get your CEO Youtube response recorded, and of course - c) your Twitter apology posted, and d) fingers crossed either Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper cover you on CNN.

PS.

Typing the phrase ‘sabotage marketing’ into your search engine produces descriptions not as extreme as the way described in point 4 above…..but you never know, so keep your eyes peeled and let me know if you find any concrete examples.