The Marketing Observer

Another example of a failed attempt at integrated CRM

I thought Orange were starting to get better! (They used to be reknowned for their customer service, back in the "the future's bright, the future's orange" days).

Had an univited SMS text from them this morning - the second in 2 days mind - saying they had reviewed my usage and that I should go to the website to look at the best plan for me.

With a nice simple URL included it all seemed simple so I duly entered the address into my browser address bar, logged in with no problems. And then I was presented with:

Unfortunately we are currently experiencing a technical problem. Orange is aware of the problem and is working to resolve it.Please try again later.

You can imagine how I felt. I've just tried it again a few hours later and the situation hasn't changed...

Grrrgh - Hurry up 3G iPhone - I cannot wait to move!

Why does Gap (not) do it?

Gap has a good brand in Europe and Banana Republic now has a flagship store on Regent's Street in London (about 5 doors up from a big Gap). I haven't picked up the vibe on BR to see if people rate it or not yet. I was underwhelmed as it seemed like a poor Gant clone.

However, the real reason for this blog is that neither brand has a website worth speaking of. That is unbelievable given the advanced state of the ecommerce offerings from both brands in the US. What are they thinking?

Interesting article about this here from Internet Retailing

Everybody admires the way Abercrombie launched in the UK, so why haven't Banana Republic followed suit?

ISP data pimping

I am not generally in favour of conspiracy theories.

But I have been following the recent saga of Phorm with great concern. Basically Phorm is looking to take the major ISPs user data and as a result produce targetted advertising.

Horrible data privacy concerns arise from this and it is very worrying to see how far BT, Carphone Warehouse & Virgin have gone with this so far.

I won't repeat all the information here but try these links in the register...

ISP data deal with former 'spyware' boss

Phorm is adware

BT lies

Please make sure you add your name to the growing numbers of people who have signed the Downing Street petition about Phorm
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ispphorm/

Beware the Phorm

Great article in the Register today.

Whilst it is a bit of a diatribe on the evils of Phorm and Big Brother, there is a very real and very worrying bucketload of truth in here too.

See the article here

Don't get sold out to Phorm. When Virgin Media ask me/ tell me about this I will move to someone like zen methinks...

Orange DM destroys customer value

Today received a  DM piece from Orange.
I am an orange customer and am beginning to regret it all over again. I so nearly didn't renew with them last time, but succumb I did, due to inertia  and a critical need for a new phone.

So, back to the DM piece. As I am opted out they are only allowed to send me service messages. The leaflet talks about Orange bestplan. This dounds like a great idea as they will automatically update your plan to ensure you are on the best one for your profile of usage. Hey, they only do it every 6 months and you have to register on their website.

So far, so good. Imagine what happens when I go to the Orange Bestplan part of the website?
I have to login - which is OK as the brochure said I would need to. Once this is done I cannot find any reference to bestplan!  Eventually I find a reference saying that the service isn't available yet.

So why did Orange kickstart demand by sending out a direct mail leaflet for a service that hasn't kicked off yet?

I can only imagine, and so can you!

Revised CV

Just noticed that my old Curriculum Vitae is still on the blog - it's now over 2 years old and has therefore missed an important part of my recent life.

So here it is:

Download MPCV_may07.doc (49.0K)

A rant about English in advertising

I was prompted by a conversation in our office today to put fingers to keyboard.

There are several inaccuracies in current marketing speak being used today.

The two which particularly frustrate me are:
Better than half price - better for whom? The retailer or me?
The example that immediately springs to mind is the Holland & Barrett Better Than Half Price Sale.

And the real classic:
More than 10x savings - I mean what absolute rubbish is this? Ten times what?
Does this actually mean 90% off - maybe I'm atypical but this is rather more appealing to me.

I feel more like Lynne Truss every day!

Does anybody out there have any strong views?

emails that damage customer loyalty

The Marketing Observer returns!

Today I received an email with lots of nice shiny looking gadgets on it.
I liked the look of one of them so I clicked on the link.

I was then dumped unceremoniously onto the homepage of the emailer's website.
The product that I was interested in wasn't featured on the homepage.
And I couldn't immediately see how to reach it via the navigation...

How many times does that happen?

What a waste of marketing time and resources to send that email out!
Even, worse, they risk damaging any feelings of loyalty towards them.

All it takes is the marketers and emailers to communicate properly...

A transitory world

This is a post of contrasts!

The other day I resolved to get my blog back up and running and then I found that TypePad wouldn't let me upload anything.  This has been well documented... here and officially here

This occured after I was talking with a chap from be the brand experience - an MRM provider - about this blog.  The call was due to an ancient post I made on e-consultancy (www.e-consultancy.com).  What is surprising is that I am one of only 2 people to actually post on MRM on e-consutlancy. 

For those of you who don't know MRM stands for Marketing Resource Management and is the term to describe the marketing back office systems that larger organisations need to make marketing work effectively.  It is a growing field of software and services that probably hasn't reached the critical mass it deserves within the marketing community.

• An aside here about the use of URLs and branding - I couldn't remember the URL for be the brand and tried looking it up on Google, yahoo, MSN etc - couldn't find a thing.  Eventually found the URL - http://www.be-thebrand.com/ - not exactly intuitive chaps - and  no PPC or SEO effort to make sure it came up when I searched for "be the brand" on the search engines.  Morale of the tale - if you cannot get the right URL then change the company name.
  

The other thing to mention is that due to my inability instantly to sate my desire to post on my blog (albeit after a long layoff), I have lost the transitory point I wished to make.  You cannot imagine how frustrating that is!!!!   Must have been too many beers with Freddie on Friday night.

o2 turning away customers

You know when organisations start to spurn customers for no good reason that things are not going well.

O2 recently turned down someone I know on completely spurious grounds it seems to me. Deciding she wanted an o2 phone because they offered the best reception at  work, contact was made with o2.

After going almost the whole way through the application process, o2 then stated that the address was incorrect as it wasn't on their database.  This was an address that had been lived in by this person for 9 years!  However, unlike every customer service person I have ever had dealings with, they refused to overwrite the address data.  They stated that they had to email Royal Mail for them to update the PAF file.  After about a week the data should be updated an another application to be a customer could be made!!!!!!!

This seems bizarre to me - what company outsources its marketing data to the Royal Mail.  Bless 'em, they try hard but the PAF file is, at best, 90% accurate.

To compound the general misery of this tale, a quick check on the Royal Mail website would have shown o2 that the address was prefectly valid.

A customer turned away unnecessarily, due to poor process.

Further note: this situation applies whether online or by telephone.  At least they're consistently crap!