dumb marketing

Google Health offers reputation massage

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“Fire the publicist. Go off message. Let all your employees blab and blog!” fantasised the writer Clive Thompson in a recent WiReD magazine cover story.

“The name of this new game is RADICAL TRANSPARENCY, and it’s sweeping boardrooms across the nation,” burbled the mag.

But the perils of allowing employees to “blab and blog!” were splendidly illustrated over the weekend by Google.

“Does negative press make you Sicko?” asked Google health account planner Lauren Turner. She was referring to the new documentary by left wing demagogue Michael Moore about the US health provision.

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Are you a Top Gear Tiger or an iPod Babe?

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You’ve heard of Soccer Mom and Mondeo Man. Millions are spent each year on research that segments us to into such convenient categories. But have you ever felt these vague and unimaginative descriptions leave you wanting more? If the marketeers are going to be so reductive, why not get creative and give us a ‘Wolverhampton Tightwad’, or a ‘Carling Depressive’?
Top Gun Tiger
Help is at hand, courtesy of this top secret market segmentation guide. It’s designed for sales teams at a leading UK mobile phone retailer. We won’t say which one, but Phones4U staff should be able to recognise it instantly.

This divides potential punters into 12 categories, and what phones they want. An Insight section takes us into the mind of each segment.

Top Gear Tigers, for example are men between 25 and 44, who “work hard – for the cash”, the briefing tell us. The Top Gun Tiger cluster size is 1.16 million.

Favoured brands are Auto Trader, Sky Sports, Subaru, Ray-Ban and (no surprise) Top Gear.

“I do well for myself and don’t mind telling you,” is the main insight from a Top Gear Tiger. “The ‘i’ on the back of my car is crucial to me!”

But Top Gun Tiger is outdone in the bling stakes by Flashing Blade. (Cluster size: 1.68 million)

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Blog refuseniks facing the sack?

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We’ve all heard about employees being sacked for blogging. But as the fad begins to wane, will staff soon be sacked for failing to blog?

Last week, Sony BMG UK issued a new corporate marketing strategy.

According to an official release from the group, Ged Doherty, chairman and chief executive of SonyBMG in UK and Ireland, said the company “has made it obligatory for all senior staff at both Columbia Records and RCA Records to start blogging actively”.

So what happens to staff who refuse to toe the corporate line, or perhaps fail to produce the required quantity of blog blather?

We had to find out.

A spokesperson for SonyBMG told us “you won’t be sacked for failing to blog”, but added, rather ominously: “If you don’t blog, it’s going to be frowned upon. Ged has made it clear that staff are expected to blog and participate in the community. He sees it as part of people’s jobs.”

But what if you’re in, say, accounts?

“It’s more for staff in the creative areas of the company. It’s unfair to insist someone in the royalty department dealing with the backend engage in this, but if you’re a marketing peerson then you should.”

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On the Web 2.0 bubble

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To London, where the web utopianism has a name (“Web 2.0”) and is a rage amongst marketing and media people. I reiterated a point I had raised two years earlier:

&ldquo”Let’s acknowledge what the Web has been successful at: as a presentation layer. But the Web 2.0 kids desperately want to write system apps on their “global operating system” – only they don’t have the cojones to do system level thinking. Real engineers look at where systems (and humans) fail – their priority isn’t a cool demo. They’re pessimistic. And there’s no place for pessimism at a Web 2.0 conference.”

Have a listen to the MP3, or click below the fold to read the transcript:

Tim O’Reilly had snootily replied that he was unable to respond to “innuendo”-

“… this is yellow journalismi: find the outliers, and attack them to make a point.”

For O’Reilly, infrastructure is an “outlier”.

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