SMS Marketing Fights Food Inflation

To help curb food price gouging, the Italian government has turned to the ultimate information dissemination device for grocery shoppers…mobile phones.

A shopper can text “bananas” to short code 47947 and get an instant SMS reply listing average banana pricing in their area at different types of stores. The system sends price info for various fruits, meats, veggies, dairy products and fish.

If governments recognize mobile as an effective product info service for on-site shoppers, marketers should too.

Don't Play Hard To Get With Your Customers

Some businesses make money by acting too busy for you. Think a trendy night club whose popularity grows as the line grows, wedding planners that can't quite fit you in this month, or a restaurant that's already taking reservations for August. Sometimes scarcity makes customers want you more.

But for most types of businesses, it helps to be eager. Eager to win your business and eager to impress right off the bat.

I'm a new landlord and recently needed to run a background check on a potential tenant. I called a local screening firm and was nonchalantly told by the woman answering the phone that she was eating lunch and would call me back. A little irritated I agreed and waited for a return call. After almost 3 days, they finally got back to me but of course it was too late and I'd already found another service.

Showing customers that you are eager and excited to help goes a long way. Everyone wants to feel wanted, especially your customers.

Direct to the Source

Have you ever had someone try to avoid you? If you're a marketer you know the feeling. Consumers avoid marketers with TiVo, pop-up blockers, email white-lists, caller ID and that last defensive mental moat, selective perception.

In the not-so-far-off future, a new advertising model will emerge: direct incentives in exchange for accepting ads. The perfect way to do this is with mobile phones. Mobile marketing is micro targeted, efficient, personal, location based and relevant. Of course, if people get advertising on their phone, they'll also want to be incentivized with cash or a subsidized phone bill.

Effective mobile marketing goes right to the source, cutting out traditional media entirely. As marketers pay consumers to view their ads directly online and on their phones, traditional media companies lose power, but it will be a positive overall because advertisers will have permission to connect directly to consumers, and consumers will have more control over what kind of marketing they get.

Bad Toys

On the left, a bad toy idea back in 1954.
On the right, a really bad toy idea from 2007.

The kid's pole dancing kit is no joke. It was marketed to 7 year-olds in the UK by Tesco with the following copy: "Unleash the sex kitten inside...simply extend the Peekaboo pole inside the tube, slip on the sexy tunes and away you go! Soon you'll be flaunting it to the world and earning a fortune in Peekaboo Dance Dollars".

Stupidity spans the generations, I guess.

Deep in the Amazon

Did anyone else find last week's coverage of the lost Amazonian tribe hilarious? Here's how I imagined their conversation going...

Man on the right: Hey, Kyle look up at that.
Man on the left: Wow, Todd, nice spot. Check out the downthust on that Agusta TiltRotor 300 chopper.
Man on the right: No kidding. It's carrying a whole camera crew and still floats like a hummingbird. But is it a TiltRotor 300 or 400?
Man on the left: It's the 300, see, I'll point to the face plate with my bow
Man on the right: I see it now, right there. Hey, wanna go get a frappuccino?
Man on the left: Sure. Should we invite that naked dude behind us who painted himself with black mud? He looks like he needs a friend.

No Problems? No Profits.

I have a sign up in my office that says "No problems? No profits."

Simply put, if it were easy, everyone would do it and there would be no more profit in it. If everyone got admitted to Stanford, everyone would go and it wouldn’t be as valuable.

In my market research business, every time I'm faced with a challenge that makes me want to slink away, I just remind myself that my ability to solve it (while others are not willing to try) is how I get paid.

We are experiencing this concept right now with oil prices. Increasing prices have brought problems like rising food costs, crowded mass transit and less disposable income. But high oil prices have also brought us the gifts of increased desire for alternative energy, more efficient vehicles and better mass transit systems.

Problems are painful, but the rewards of solving them make you glad you have them.