Don't show them the strategy

Yesterday i received a piece of direct mail from Ocado. The first sentence read 'In tough times. So I threw it in the bin. Because my first thought was tough times, Waitrose, deli bar, overpriced, home delivery and food close to sell by date. No thanks. Aldi are only another 15 miles away through snowdrift I'll go there. It felt rather opportunistic and reminded me of all the stuff I am reading everyday in the paper. If it was trying to strike a chord, or create some empathy it failed badly.

All which got me thinking about how easy it is to get carried away and 'advertise' your strategy. So things like Sky addressing mums 'As a busy mum ...' in their direct mail. Then proceeding to make no further reference, promoting the big match and MamaMia with equal weight. If you are going to do it, do it properly and tailor the whole communication. I think direct marketers are more guilty than the rest we like to show off our targetting ideas.

There are must be lots of examples, anyone got any more?

In dark times

We know there is a recession on, we 'enjoy' access to news channels 24x7 so why do advertisers think they need to prefix their messages with a reminder of the state of our economy.

"In tough times ..."

Do they think consumers have temporarily forgotten about the recession (yes we are in one) or are they trying to persuade us that we are worth it. Perhaps they are right, there has never been a better time to replace the 32" flat screen TV with the 42" version! Unfortunately it just comes across as jumping on the bandwagon.

Too many organisations don't bother with customer research, probably the first thing to go when budgets are tight. Shame for them really they could have discovered very easily that they are wasting much of their budget.