Last week some relatives from Lausanne, Switzerland came to visit us in Miami (where they thought it would be warmer, but not). Their little girl, Maddy is so cute that we were all having fun playing with her and dolls and animals I’d bought. Then her Mom, Christine, asked about her daughter’s new coat, and when she could see it.

Coat? Why would anyone want a coat in Miami and how would I know where Maddy’s coat is anyway?

Turns out I not only should have known, I should have been looking after the coat for the past three months. Chris had Facebooked me in October that she’d bought a brand new winter coat on eBay and the seller wouldn’t ship overseas so she had it sent to me.

And I’d forgotten all about it.

That’s why I was looking at Christine with a blank face, my mind churning furiously for clues, excuses, rationales – anything. Maybe they hadn’t sent the coat, maybe the sellers were ripoff artists. Finally something tugged at a loose thread in my memory.

A mystery package … months ago … no note, no message, not even a return address … a little pink coat. Yeah, the coat … oops, my heart sank. I’d given it away.

This is the way it happened…

I’d been chatting with Julie, the wonderful nurse who’d cared for my Mom in her last three years. Julie happened to mention that her four year old granddaughter in Oregon had outgrown her winter coat.

Wow, I’d thought at the time. Talk about lucky coincidences. The mystery coat is perfect for a four year old girl. How wonderfully strange things work out…Karma. So, brought it over the next day and Julie mailed it to Oregon.

A few days later a delighted little girl in Oregon called her gran to say “thanks”.

Well, that was nice. But now I sat listening to Christine describe the fancy designer coat she’d bought, how costly it was and the fact that it was perfect for Maddy’s coloring. It was pink and pale green, and had special embroidery around the button holes.

I felt like a coat thief, a Robin Hood coat thief, but a coat thief just the same.

I ‘fessed up to Christine and, against her objections, bought Maddy a new coat (it’ll be here soon and I’m going to print MADDY in magic marker all over the box) and ever since I’ve been thinking how this mixup happened.

I guess I’m just on Internet Overload. I have too many things to remember: 100 or so Facebook messages a day, 200+ emails and thousands of Twitters. And that’s just the personal stuff. The business stuff has me on overload.

I’ve made some doozie mistakes over the years.

When I worked for Hearst I once mixed up book club shipments so that 100,000 Good Housekeeping ladies got the Cosmo Love Book. Funny about that one; nobody complained.

One time, working for our Ford of Canada client, we were in a hurry to merge databases and wound up sending huge English language truck-offer packages to 50,000 French speaking Quebecers and French packages to 50,000 Albertans.

Disaster, right? Nope, the exact opposite. We recovered quickly, mailed the right language to all 100,000 with a small added note and later we noticed that those people bought a lot more trucks (as a %) than the 900,000 who got the right language in the first place.

We wanted to send the wrong language to everyone in the following year and then the right language with a small note. Client wouldn’t let us.

Making thing right works because it’s a human thing to do. People sympathize and appreciate the extra effort. It is a good idea when you make a mistake to admit to it…and use a Whoops! Letter, or I’m Sorry, Or, “This might cost me my job, but..” note.

Mostly, though, things work out for the best as Pangloss said “in this best of all possible worlds”

I’m just happy a pretty little girl in Oregon has the nicest, fanciest new winter coat in her whole school! Another little girl in Switzerland will have hers soon….because this time I’ll remember!

A few weeks before Christmas, I ordered eight American Express Gift Cards and was disappointed when they didn’t arrive in time for the big day.

Later, I asked Amex about the cards in an email and back came an automatic answer that they’d reply in a day. They did, which was good. Even better, they said they’d invalidated the cards and reinstated my points (and added some more to my account … for my troubles).
I loved that response. Amex tends to be like that; they usually do the right thing.

This reminded me of my friend David Hochberg who was a frequent guest lecturer at the Direct Marketing courses I taught at NYU. David worked at the Lillian Vernon Catalog.

He told us that people who bought a gift through Lillian Vernon catalog but returned it were always happy. Why?
“Because we take everything back, even personalized merchandise, unconditionally” he said. They also tracked everything and learned to their surprise that people who return merchandise purchase more items over a long period of time than any other group.
That makes sense. Obviously, I’m going to be more loyal to American Express now and have already been using their card a lot more often lately. So consider:

1. Make everything “right” for your customers.

3. It will make you memorable, because the customer is expecting “push-back” from you.

Good Luck

(The year is so much easier to type than it was 12 years ago in good old MDCCCCLXXXXVIII – or is it IIMM?) I’m using Roman numerals her to subtly hint that there’s an old school idea in today’s blog.
The end of the year is always a great time to look back to the good old days, say back to MMVIII, aka 2008.

Remember planning? A lot of our clients (and even some not-yet clients) ask us for new creative ideas for their next year’s Grand Plan.

It’s nice that they think we’re so creative we can come up with brilliant ideas on the spot – sometimes we do – but often they turn a deaf ear to our best idea: look back. “You’ve had major successes in the past and what worked then will work now.”

We have to prod them a bit sometimes but eventually they remember programs that were gangbusters in, say, MDCCCCLXXXXVI, but they dropped them because the programs were “tired”. I doubt that prospects got tired of them but I know our clients did.

So maybe in 2010 you might:

• Revive a few older creative approaches that worked well. Maybe update the graphics, try a new offer. I’ve seen this work wonderfully well many times. It’s inexpensive, quick and, more often than not, very profitable.

• Make one program fantastic. One of our clients asked us to work on website, email program and newsletter all at once. We’re still hanging on to all of them waiting for photographs of staff, final product mix and a decision on a name for the their new social community. Had they asked us to focus on, say, the website, we’d have it done by now and could flow in all the missing details in a few hours. That’s what we did for our friends at the National Cleaners Association. Take a look here: NCA Website

• Take one area that your really enjoy in social media land, and focus on it. I’ve been very involved in Twitter for the last year: Check me out here: LoisGeller”s Twitter
I even have a Twitter Philosophy on following people: (twitterwatchdog) At first I tried to be on LinkedIn, Facebook, Plaxo, Ecademy, Hi5 and Twitter every day. Then Attention Deficit Disorder set in. I couldn’t learn about any of the communities until I actually spent time on them. Pick one, and focus.

• In 2010, consider going to quieter places. Everyone is running to Google. It’s competitive there, and very complicated these days. Maybe you might want to focus your efforts on another search engine where you can end up higher on the list. I know people who use Ask.com all the time.

• Consider unique, even weird, offers and use your own brand personality to articulate them in a human way. If everyone else is giving 10% off on first purchase, try a gift with purchase instead. Maybe that gift can become your trademark, like the lucky trolls I use here at the Lois Geller Marketing Group. For some reason, people love them.

• And consider under-promising and over-delivering on any of the services or products you offer. Nationally, 1-800-CONTACTS does that and I just can’t imagine ordering lenses anywhere else. Locally, Coit Cleaners does it nicely, too – surprise and delight! I always remember buying a Ford Explorer years ago. Two weeks later, they sent beautiful director’s chairs in a canvas bag.

Bought another Ford just a few months ago.

Happy 2010. Make it great.

When I was a kid, my Mom bought me a diary with a small brass key. I wrote in it every day until my sister peeked into it and that was the end of my diary writing, especially when she found out I had a crush on her boyfriend. He was a dork.

I’d forgotten all that until people in the business started insisting that I do a blog. “It’ll make people like you … ” “You can show how smart you are…” yada yada.

So, I set up joyofdirectmarketing.com to write about our clients’ direct marketing efforts, as well as my speeches and books. Then my assistant at the time said that no one does direct marketing any more (as in direct mail – boy was she wrong). That threw a wrench into things for a while.

Then someone else here at the office wondered about the objective of the blog and if I was going to build continuity, progress constantly and develop content. Hmmm. This was becoming too much like work, not at all like my diary days when it was fun.

Then my friend, Amy Africa blogged that somehow my blog is stiff and not like me at all. No trolls and such. You can read about it here: Amy Africa’s QLOG

People responded to Amy (as they always do) with ideas for improving content, type fonts, email capture, colors, adding a photo of me and everyone said to lose the calendar. (God knows where that came from anyway).
So, I figured I should check out some other blogs.

Amy’s good friend, Debra Ellis, has an interesting one here: Wilson Ellis Consulting Blog (I adore her from Twitter.)

I attend #blogchat on Twitter most Sunday nights about 8pm, and Mack Collier runs this information-packed session (you need to be on tweetdeck though), and I like his blog: Mack Collier’s Blog

I now read Dianna Huff’s b-to-b blog all the time: Dianna Huff’s Blog

And for fun, I follow the Brazen Careerist, Penelope Trunk – a city person marrying a farmer who has somehow got me engaged in her whole life, like a soap opera. Take a look at it: Penelope Trunk’s Blog

My friend Dwain told me about the blog: Small Dead Animals. Take a look at it here, and you’ll be hooked: SmallDeadAnimals.com

As I’m checking them all out, I’m wondering more and more why I need a blog, what it’s good for. I still have no idea.

If you get a chance, let me know what you think! Thank you.

by: Tamar Weinberg

Reviewed by Lois Geller

Reading this book reminded me of something and it tugged at the back of memory until it burst through.
Keats!

195 years ago, John Keats wrote a sonnet called On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer. Chapman was George Chapman and his translations of Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad struck Keats as rather splendid:

“… I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;”

That’s how I feel about Tamar Weinberg’s new book about Marketing on the Social Web and if I could write like Keats I’d compose a sonnet to her on the spot, perhaps borrowing those lines :

“… I heard Chapman Weinberg speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his her ken;”

It’s that kind of book, an eye opener, a gentle slap to the back of the head.

Just as Keats had read other translations of Homer, I’d read other books about the Social Web and I am on Twitter, Plaxo, Ecademy, Facebook and LinkedIn and I thought I was doing pretty well with them.

Then that new planet swam into my ken and I realized I’d been a village blacksmith tinkering with a jet engine.

This book is so comprehensive, that I learned about StumbleUpon (still not sure how that works), and delicious.com and RSS feeds, bookmarking and whole new worlds I’d only heard about. The 346 page volume is packed with all kinds of new opportunities, for people like me who love marketing.

Tamar (I don’t know her but I hope to be on a first name basis some day) starts from the start assuming her readers know nothing about the Social Web, and, compared to her, that’s a good bet no matter what readers think they know.

She holds your hand and in tight, readable prose walks you through this Wonderland. She tells you that it is really conversation marketing. She tells you how to do it (or get it done), how to get photos and video on social sites, what language to use (and not use), how to build your reputation and your following, and, most of all and dear to the heart of this direct marketer, how to use social sites to sell.

She tells you who’s already miles ahead of you (and why) and not to worry because you can catch up in no time – if you pay attention to Tamar, my new BFF.

Get this book, read it, read it again, keep it by your side and grow rich in your pajamas, working online at home, having fun and making friends even if you’re the marketing head of a Fortune 500 company.

P.S. I went to a local Barnes & Noble to buy a copy for my client, and they were sold out. That’s another good sign.

Sometimes I use humor in my speeches!

Friday morning I was on the Jim Blasingame radio show, and was talking about humor (Click Here To Hear The Show). So does humor work in advertising, in the social media?

It depends. A pretty good rule of thumb is that humor doesn’t work but that’s because you have to be really, really good and have a great client to make it work.

Most lesser talents think humor is jokes and vice versa and that’s simply not true. As David Ogilvy famously said, quoting Claude Hopkins, “People don’t buy from clowns.”

Humor works when it’s right, (often) self-deprecating and woven (seemingly) effortlessly into a USP.

When I was working in Canada and we had Tourism Canada as a client, we learned that US visitors came from everywhere but Texas. Could we do something about Texas? Our Creative Director, put a huge close-cut photo of a moose on the face of a white 9” x 12” envelope with the headline “Got any of these in Texas?” Bingo, Texas problem solved for Canada Tourism.

When I was head of Geller Direct at TBWA in New York, we worked on the Absolut Vodka business. The client, Michel Roux, told the creative team they could show the bottle profile with two words and one of the words had to be Absolut. The other could be anything.
They looked at each other. What? Then they came up with one of the most humorous and effective ad campaigns of all time.

One of the reasons jokes, visual or verbal, don’t do well in ads is that people often don’t get them or even notice them. And when they do get the joke, they remember the joke and not the product.

The funny Super Bowl ads (the reason I watch the game) get a laugh, once, and then all those millions of dollars are gone. Maybe they help the brand, maybe not.

I think I remember two over the years. One was back in the dot com craze when some idiots thought it would be funny to shot gerbils from a cannon (it wasn’t) and the other had a guy in a clown suit with the suit – including the clown head – upside down. He ordered a Bud and … well, never mind where he put the bottle. Two ladies in the commercial had the vapors. Ever saw the spot again.

Older readers (as old as, say 40) probably remember Mr. Whipple, the supermarket who nagged his customers with “please don’t squeeze the Charmin”. He wasn’t funny, at least not at first but over a 21 year campaign and 500 spots, Mr. Whipple (Dick Wilson appeared in al 500 spots) developed a hokey homespun kitchiness that I still think of when I buy toilet paper.

In 1984, Wendy’s hired 81-year old Clara Peller to look askance at a competitor’s puny hamburger and blurt “Where’s the beef”? Wendy’s started to take off. Humor can work, gentle humor that integrates the product and will continue over time to amuse middle America, not wiseacre agency kids.

So here are a few things you might consider about using humor in today’s climate:

1. Humor cheers people up. I got a postcard about a “hot copywriter” with a photo of a handsome young guy who writes great copy. It was fun. In mice type it said “appearance of some copywriters may vary.” Funny and focused.
2. Don’t “knock-knock” it until you’ve tried it; test a humorous approach vs. straight creative. Do a 50 – 50 split if it’s email or direct mail.
3. Play to your target audience. When using humor don’t use toilet funnies, unless you’re a plumber. The New Yorker keeps its circulation because of the cartoons, and they’re often earthy and sometimes sophisticated. Consider your own audience, and how you might laugh with them.
4. Brevity is important in this time of Twitter messages, IM and sound bites. Brevity is also the soul of wit, if you believe Polonius in Hamlet. If you use humor, begin with it and make it short and sweet to make your point.
5. Consider radio. In one commercial I heard recently an announcer called a healthcare company and had a hard time talking because a lobster had clamped onto his tongue – so the listener actually focused on his message.

Humor works if it’s relevant. If you just want to be funny, try Caroline’s.

My Creative Director and friend Michael McCormick (Guts of a Burglar blogster) needs a new car (at least I think so). His Ford Explorer is 12 years old, runs like a top and still looks pretty good … on the outside.

The inside is a different matter entirely. Passengers have to fly their legs over the Sirius antenna wire; the spots and stains are, well, spots and stains. The A/C in the back doesn’t work anymore and the vehicle is almost ready for its confirmation or bar mitzvah.

When Michael got this Explorer back in the late ‘90s (it’s his second one), I went with him to the dealership in Queens. He told the saleslady what he wanted, and she asked him what color he liked.

Anything you have is fine, he said. She and I looked at each other in disbelief.

Anyway, I thought the Cash for Clunkers program was a heaven sent opportunity for Michael to get a new ride. He disagreed. He thinks his Chuck (the Truck) is barely broken in. The tires are new, the brakes are new, the oil’s been changed and fluids checked every 3,000 miles. Yada yada.

It took me a while to understand his real reason.

For weeks I encouraged him to go to see the new cars. He wants an Explorer but the closest Ford dealership closed and they don’t make Explorers anymore, anyway.

So, I went to tweetdeck and started asking around. @ScottMonty, Ford’s Twitter spokesperson, gave me some recommendations. Another friend suggested the Flex and sent me photos. No buying action. I asked Michael why he wasn’t moving on this.

Turns out he really and truly doesn’t think taxpayers should be subsidizing his new car. Hmm. Hadn’t thought of that. And, he pointed out, a new vehicle cost a lot more than $4,500, perhaps around $25,000 more for what he wants. Why spend all that dough when he doesn’t need a new car? Men are soooo logical. It’s frustrating. But I already knew that. The new insights this whole episode provided got me thinking.

Not too long ago, the only way Ford could show its cars was in print or television advertising. Now that’s all changed.

What we see on TV or in ads is one-way communication, the company talking at us and controlling the flow of information.

Now we control the flow of information and we can find what we want, when we want it and consult with friends and family and experts along the way. I’ve known all this in theory and in making smaller purchasers for quite a while, but it’s a different matter to experience the whole process for a big ticket item (like a new SUV) in the real world of actually buying it.

In the meantime, people haven’t stopped looking for authenticity. And marketers are paying serious attention to what’s going on in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. On the web, customers can find anything, competitive prices, colors, and visit a website and buy anything in a NY minute.

Except, of course, Michael. He’ll be driving that car and me – and, horrors, clients – into the ground. Eventually, he’ll chat with a few friends and head off and buy a Flex or Edge or, who knows, a Club Cab F-250 – purple with a yellow interior, that some dealer happens to have on the lot and ready to roll.