Misadventures in Marketing
Ever try to convince someone that you’re not trying to cheat them? It’s not easy. A lot of times, you do it too well and only end up convincing them that you’re too much of a “smooth talker” to be trusted anyway. How’s that for a Catch-22? It’s a position I find myself in quite a bit. You see, I work in marketing. (Stop laughing.) Just last week I spent almost an hour on the phone with a customer at my credit union trying to convince him that our current auto loan rates weren’t (in his words) “some kind of bait-and-switch thing.” After forty-five minutes of reading and re-reading the terms and conditions to him, he finally believed me. However, he was quick to add, “I still don’t trust you people” before he hung up. (FYI, he really didn’t want the loan either, he just wanted someone to explain it to him, I expect to hear from him again when we run our home equity loan special next month.) I really don’t blame people one bit for not trusting marketers. They really shouldn’t, at least not when we’re trying to sell them something.
Allow me to explain. Contrary to popular belief, all marketers aren’t heartless, soulless individuals who take extreme pleasure from the suffering of others. (If you’ve read my previous piece on telephone and Internet scams, you might think I’m switching gears on you, bear with me.) Most people who work in marketing aren’t rich, present company certainly included. For the most part, we’re just trying to make enough to pay the bills and save a little – just like everyone else. Unfortunately, thanks to the way most marketing salaries are structured, how well we eat is directly linked to how well we can convince people to like us, trust us, and of course, buy what we’re selling.
Now the law of averages says that we can’t all be lucky enough to sell great products. There just aren’t enough great products in the world. Besides, why would you pay someone to sell something that sells itself? (Think about it, when was the last time that someone had to actually talk you into a box of Girl Scouts Thin Mints?) So, much like that old lawyer joke – when the facts are on your side, argue the facts; when the law is on your side, argue the law; when you have neither, bang your fist on the table really loudly – marketers need to make up for the weaknesses in their products somehow. So what do we do? Just about anything. For those of us that can’t afford to pay Britney Spears to dress up in tight retro clothing and lip sync, this means downplaying the weaknesses any way we can, overemphasizing the strengths any way we can, and getting you to like us, any way we can (within legal limits, of course). The reason for that last one is simple: the more you like us, the less you’ll think about calling that other marketer out there who’s selling something better than ours.
Here’s where the trust comes in (or flies out the window, depending on your view): getting a customer to like you can have little or nothing to do with telling them the whole truth. I’ve been told that I’m a lousy marketer because I’m too “blatantly honest ” (Thanks, boss. Coming from you, that’s a real compliment.) My attitude is that the truth catches up with you eventually so it doesn’t make any sense to lie to or even mislead a customer. Not all marketers think that. In fact, most of the people who are far better at selling than I am will tell you that detaching yourself from this job is the key. If you empathize too much with your customer, you may end up believing that they don’t need your product, and what kind of marketer would you be then?
By now you’re probably thinking that I must have been recently fired from my marketing job or have just bought a lemon from a fast-talking used car salesman to disparage my profession like this. Neither is true. My impetus for writing this piece is this: lately there have been far too many examples of people putting their trust into products, people, and companies that have done very little to earn that trust. Moreover, when given that trust, these people and companies act in their own best interests anyway.
Now I’m not just talking about Enron here, although what happened there had as much to do with slick person-to-person marketing as it did with misinformation. (How many Enron employees testified that they didn’t ask many questions about the stock or the retirement plan because their trusted the executives?) How about your doctor? How much do you trust the advice he or she gives you? According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, pharmaceutical companies spent $16 billion in 2000 trying showering doctors’ offices with free meals, tickets, and promotional items. So when your doctor prescribes a brand name drug over a generic (a move that will cost you more in the long run), is he or she doing it because the brand name is genuinely better, or because he has a closet full of promotional items emblazoned with that drug’s name? You won’t know unless you ask. So many of the decisions that you theoretically have some say in end up being made by someone else who isn’t going by what you need, but what someone like me has told them, or, given them. Again, you don’t know until you start asking questions.
And asking is the key – it’s the most important thing to do when you’re face to face with people like me. We’ll be content to play the “trust me and be my friend” game all day if you let us. Instead, let us work for your trust. Ask every question you want to, even if it starts to annoy us. Really, we just want the sale and we aren’t going anywhere even if you are annoying. What do you care, anyway, you can find friends on your own, you certainly don’t need some schlub in an uncomfortable suit and a pasted-on grin to say that he or she is your friend.
Let’s face it, this is a consumer-driven culture. In recent months, we’ve been asked to prove our faith in the “American way” not by being more active citizens, but by being more active consumers (and don’t think we at TINN are not a little irked at that bit of irony). But there’s a big difference between faith and blind faith. My advice (and take it for what you think it’s worth because I do sell financial services for a living, after all): take advantage of the freedom you have to be as darn suspicious as you want to be.
