Recipe For a Marketing Campaign that Won't Work..!

Initially when asked to write a recipe for a marketing campaign that will fail I was stumped as obviously it’s not something that companies usually want to know. However if companies know what doesn’t work they can make sure if they don’t fall into the trap...

Ingredients

100kg - power mad employees who won’t work as a team
0g - target audience
100g - a rubbish product
200g - advertising where your potential customers won’t see it
10g - bad customer service
150g - mixed messages
200g - a poor distribution line
300g - not tracking changes in consumers wants and needs

You will also need to have full use of social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and a badly designed website.

Method

Firstly ensure the product doesn’t match the wants and needs of your target market. It is possible to achieve this by making sure that you don’t carry out any market research to find out what trends have emerged or may emerge in the future. However please note, it would be better if your company did not have any idea as to who the target market is, but this is VERY hard to achieve and can only be mastered by a few experienced individuals.

To make sure that the marketing campaign fails completely no effort should be taken to ensure that consumers know about the product. For this method it doesn’t matter whether the product is good or bad. Sometimes you have to work with a good product however one way to fail in this situation is to advertise in places where potential customers won’t see it and in outlets that don’t match the brand. For a good example, imagine a designer handbag in Wilkinsons.

Continue to advertise the product in the wrong places until the balance sheet turns red.

Add the 100kg of power mad employees who won’t work as a team. This is one of the core ingredients because this alone can have the desired effect on the marketing campaign. However make sure there is limited collaboration between advertising, PR, marketing and management as otherwise you run the risk of projecting a cohesive message that consumers might understand.

Grate consumers up the wrong way by hassling them with social media tools with regular and pointless updates. One way to fully use social media to ruin your campaign is to connect with consumers but not listen to what they say – promise them something and then don’t follow though.

At this point you should be able to see the results of all your hard work, or lack of it.
If you do manage to get a customer purchasing your product make sure that the staff are VERY rude when taking part in the transaction. This should lead to the customer being angry, leave them to simmer for a while. This will work best if the complaints procedure is as long and complex as possible.

Throw in a badly designed website that provides no useful information.

To finish sprinkle on a bit of controversy from the directors of the company which reflects badly on the company or a product recall due to safety concerns and you will have yourself a perfectly bad marketing campaign.

Please note:
Do not under any circumstances take any positive media coverage regarding the product or company.

Timescales have been omitted due to the subjective nature of the recipe.


Article Written by Carli Smith


Visit Inferno Designs for more on Company Branding and Email Marketing.