Lying or smart marketing? A personal shoe story:

My feet hurt, and I knew that comfy shoes would fix it, so I searched online for comfortable shoes and found a few. Air support, memory foam, springs - all were listed as THE solution for sore feet and an aching back. The spring technology was the most intriguing. I had seen in a few magazines, but I did not have a chance to review the details around their claims for comfort until now.

There are different spring technologies, spanning 'wave springs', special materials, and unique encapsulation processes that differentiate the 3 vendors I found with spring-based shoes. The one that caught my eye, Gravity Defyer, had a nice website, but it was difficult to find information on the technology. The website was a little difficult to navigate if you were searching for information and not in the buying mood. What really interested me was their 'clinical study' and how they were justifying their claims.

Now, I've never tried these shoes, nor do I have any reason to believe that the shoes are bad, or good for that matter, but what caught my eye was the opening paragraph of the 'clinical study'. See the quote from the clinical study link below:

This 'clinical study', if it can even be called that, does not use an independent 3rd party to collect and analyze the data. In fact, the study is actually a statistical analysis of data provided by Gravity Defyer to the analyst firm. In simple terms, if the analysis firm was sent 100 perfect ratings in 17 rating scales, they would have to state that the data showed 100 perfect ratings. The analysis was a foregone conclusion since there never was a question about the outcome of the analysis since the data and results were already known before the analysis was performed by Packer Engineering. If that's the case, what's the 'clinical' part of the study? Where's the real value to consumers in this equation?

So what's going on here? Some would argue that "clinical study", as a term of trust, was abused and that consumers would be confused. It seems to be on the wrong end of ethical language. It may even be illegal as it could mislead consumer into believing that doctors, control subjects, and proper protocols were involved.

On the other hand, it could also be savvy marketing. If the term 'clinical study' is not protected with a legal expectation, this technique could be viewed as a quick shortcut to earn trust that actually works. If there are no legal ramifications to using 'clinical study' then why not use it any time you want to appear to have a scientific advantage? It's buyer beware, right?

This seems slightly less ethical, but probably more effective than those "similar to as seen on TV" stickers you see on products. The font is so small in parts that it looks like "as seen on TV", so it's easy to mistake the product at the store for the one on late-night infomercials. Yes, before you ask, I've seen people in stores pick up the "Snuggle blanket" instead of the "Snuggie" and specifically point to the "similar to as seen on TV" sticker or printing on the box and call it a Snuggie.

If there are no policies or standards around marketing language, it can easily be used borrow goodwill or even mislead consumers and even business readers. In order to know what you're getting and possibly save yourself of headache or legal wrangling later, read the detail. There may be more to what's being said than is written in the large print.

Your bag of tricks is worthless

I had a thoughtful conversation with Dave Aune about business expectations when people hire marketers. Dave made an interesting comment that stuck in my mind, "what's in your marketing bag of tricks?". MY bag of tricks? I knew he was joking and goading me onto my soapbox, so I told him he was funny.

Long ago, while running my first marketing department, the company president wanted to understand what my marketing department did. The knowledge sought was simple - What did we do that was growing the company? How did my staff fit into the big picture, and what would happen if staff were cut? Little did I know at the time, but we were about to be acquired, and cutting head count would make us look more attractive.

What I presented was a marketing operations spreadsheets. A 240 row spreadsheet showing all the tasks that my team was doing on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. The list of operational tasks was impressive, and the company president was initially overwhelmed. Later that week, in a discussion with the engineering team, the company president mentioned that I was "working on my bag of tricks". It was the first time someone referred to my marketing as a 'bag of tricks', and it would not be the last.

The notion of a marketing 'bag of tricks' is now one of fastest filters that tells me that someone doesn't understand marketing or suffers from marketing naivete. When someone really believes in a marketing bag of tricks, they almost always hold the unhealthy belief that a marketer has a tactic will always work. That 'it worked once, it will work again' mentality is the bane of sales executives, presidents, and board members over and over again, as a persuasive marketer can use 20/20 hindsight to explain how some marketing tactic worked last year or in their last job, and it will work again. It CAN work, but rarely does as a straight drop in. A bag of tricks suggests that the customers are either being tricked or that the marketer has magic, neither of which seems like a dependable, let alone repeatable business strategy. Instead of hoping for magic, wouldn't it be better if your marketing was based around strategies, systems, and processes that, when applied properly, lead to awareness, action, and conversion? Good marketing applies those strategies, systems, and processes to identify one hit wonders as well as longer term repeatable phenomenons and allows for the application of the right money at the right time.

Markets, and the people that make them, are dynamic, and what's more important than any trick or tactic are the fundamentals behind why that tactic may have worked earlier. The dancing baby worked once, the dancing hamster worked once, tattoos on the forehead worked once, even cavemen worked for a little while. Some campaigns or marketing memes work once, a few times, or can last, but there's no way to guarantee that you can bring a caveman variant to the next marketing campaign at the next company.

It may seem like magic when good marketers are successful repeatedly, but it's not. In fact, good marketers apply processes and a toolkit by which they temper with experience, past lessons, and an understanding of human motivations and behaviors toward a given business goal. Those tools may be applied with expectations for success, but focus on applying tools that generate results which can lead to greater and greater successes. The end result may seem like magic from a bag of tricks, but there is no magic, just insight derived from the proper selection and application of marketing tools, and the willingness to test, cull poor performers, and expand in winning directions.

Dave has heard this rant dozens of times, but I thank him for suggesting it as a blog topic that needed to be covered.