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Marketing is in the Details: Sears Catalogue Disaster

Written by: George Torok

Article Overview: Marketing can make or break your business. Marketing is about sending messages. Marketing is everyone's responsibility because each staff member sends messages about your business. Often your unintended messages have a greater impact then your intended messages. What affects your marketing messages the most? Details! Are you attending to the little details that make or destroy your marketing message?

Marketing is in the Details: Sears Catalogue Disaster

Marketing can make or break your business. Marketing is about sending messages.
Marketing is everyone's responsibility because each staff member sends messages about your business. Often your unintended messages have a greater impact then your intended messages.

What affects your marketing messages the most? Details! Are you attending to the little details that make or destroy your marketing message?

Too many businesses make the mistake of delegating marketing to the marketing department. Watch the downward spiral of your business when the CEO hands off marketing responsibility to a department. Marketing is not a department thing - it is a company wide thing. All the creative work of the “marketing department” can go 'down the drain' because of sloppy execution or poorly trained front line staff. You can blame marketing but the CEO is responsible.

Look at the mistakes that Sears made not in the creation or production of their catalogue but the delivery. Read the details and cringe. Then start checking how your marketing message is delivered.

The Sears catalogue was delivered to my house. Where would you expect to find your Sears catalogue when you look out your front door in the morning? In the mail box? In the magazine rack? Perhaps on the mat? Maybe on the porch? Or at least close to your door? All reasonable guesses and expectations.

I discovered the Sears catalogue at the far end of the drive by the street where I normally put my garbage for pickup. I know that's how papers are delivered in rural areas - end of the driveway - but we are in the city. It's a short driveway - not long enough fit two cars one behind the other. It is not a long walk to my front door from the street. Yet the Sears catalogue was dropped or thrown out of a car window at the end of my driveway as though it were litter.

As I went for my morning run I noticed all the houses on my street and neighboring streets had a Sears catalogue at the end of the driveway by the edge of the road. Some of the packages were ripped open and the pages strewn across lawns.

It had rained but fortunately the Sears catalogues were wrapped in plastic. Most of them were probably dry inside the plastic. That assumes that householders would pick up the wet package, brush off the wet leaves and carry it into the house. Why would they do that? When I returned home from my run I gingerly picked up the offensive package and deposited it into the garbage. Then I went inside and washed my hands. Yuk.

Just imagine the time and money that went into the creation of that catalogue - plus the hopes of the CEO and VP sales. They probably patted themselves on the back for creating another colorful catalogue. The marketing department probably awarded themselves another trophy for their creative design.

So will anyone really know why sales were down during the next season? Will anyone investigate the details of delivery? Perhaps they'll conclude that catalogues don't work anymore. Maybe they'll blame it on the economy.

Where the Sears catalogue is placed is a small detail. And small details can sink your marketing campaign.

Post Mortem: I contacted Sears by email to tell them about this incident. The only contact that I could find on their website was “Customer Service”. The person who responded insisted that I must complete a form before they would talk to me - which conveyed another marketing message - forms are more important than fixing a major problem.

It might be too late for Sears. You can still fix the marketing messages in your business by obsessing on the details.

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Article Tags: marketing ideas, marketing principles, Power Marketing Tips



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