Marketing / Sales

Repwarn.Rocks.

info@repwarn.rocks

The form says don't complete it for your own marketing. You didn't read it or you decided to ignore it anyway.

When customers spend months working with a salesman who works hard to understand their business and to tailor products and services to their specific needs, companies often cancel that relationship in favour of transferring the customer to someone with none of that understanding of the company, the product fit and, of course, the individuals involved. The question is this: does this hangover from the 1980s have a place in the modern sales environment?

Here's a moron of the first order. You want to sell us financial services and then you put a demonstrable lie front and centre in your pitch.

Thanks for the best laugh of the morning, you idiot. And yes, your IP address has been blocked from our entire server system.

You'd think that marketing people that make specific assertions in their material would ensure that those assertions are true.

Meet PapaWP which uses a .org address (it's not an "organisation" in the sense that .org addresses are supposed to represent). And that's not its only failure.

It's incredible how many spammers lie, even those who fill in a webform and have to pass bot-resistant tools to submit it. This one makes an amazing lie: that he found our own Group company details on Facebook. Well, we don't have any Facebook page so that's not true. It's for that old figment of the imagination, SEO services, including on Instagram which, also, we don't use. Even the completion of the formal parts of the form show dishonestly and a willingness to mislead. Not bright at all.

In the past year, two of Australia's most high profile departments have undergone so-called "rebranding exercises." ASIC and the ACCC have changed their logos. Was it worth it?

How much use are listings in Google for marketing? Now as much as people like to think, especially if your business is outside the USA.

This weekend the GMA takes place. It's a huge, three day, affair and it's part of a music - tv - film industry of mixing, matching and deal-making event is very, very influential. And yet it doesn't show up on the first two and a half-pages of a Google search because either as GMA, GMA or even GMA ASIA TAIWAN MUSIC awards. Why? Because it's in Taiwan and because there are so many US GMAs that are listed over and over again in the early pages. 第30屆金曲獎 GMA, ( it stands for Golden Melody Awards) , despite now being in its 30th year, might as well be invisible so far as Google is concerned.

There's a company that wants to build something a bit like Ted Talks. They are called SERMEx and every few days, they issue a "call for papers." It might be interesting. if we could understand what their email says.

See if you've any clue.

It's a very long time since Formula One (and many countries) banned tobacco advertising. For a decade, Ferrari have kept the red and white of their previous long-standing tobacco sponsor, Marlboro. Now Malboro's parent company are back, with a white logo, on the Ferraris and a book of Haiku poetry created from the wit and wisdom and sometimes grouchiness of Kimi Raikkonen just before he leaves the team. So what's going on?

Remember This ("Taboola's big marketing fail") from a few days ago? Well, incredibly, they have compounded their ludicrous campaign with this...

We dislike Taboola's low-grade, spammy, click-bait rubbish that populates so many websites. We specifically use an ad-blocker code to make sure it is not displayed on any of our machines (||taboola.com). We really should get round to blocking it at router level. At some point, we've made that clear. But Taboola is so utterly stupid that it thinks spamming us with a suggestion we actually carry the very material we don't ever want to see is a good idea. The fun bit is at the very start of their spam, reproduced here, complete with addresses, so spam-harvesters can have a great time with them.

Recently, I found this old (March 2013) on-line chat with Amazon.com's US call centre lurking on my hard disk. Before deleting it, I read it. It's both very funny and an object lesson in the frustrations of dealing with people who have no power to control the situation their own company has created.

A hashtag referring to the expression "the law is an ass" has produced some very unpleasant and disturbing consequences.

A cautionary tale...

California, North Carolina, Ohio and the US federal government have been awarded shares of awards made in criminal proceedings brought in the Illinois District Court against DISH NETWORK LLC for making "millions and millions" of calls to people who have recorded their numbers at the Do Not Call Registry. The total fines amounted to USD280 million. It got off lightly: the possible maximum was up to USD24,000 million say some reports. The judge made specific reference to the use of call centres for telemarketing.

Six days ago, on LinkedIn, I posted the following.

"Saw a job ad for "Head of Financial Crime" at an "international bank." Seems that even banks need someone to help them break the law efficiently and effectively now :) Perhaps "Financial Crime Risk Officer" might be a better job title."

It has gained many, many times the views of my more valuable posts. And as a result has provided useful data as to the benefit of LinkedIn for spreading information which, of course, is intended to have some positive benefit on business.