Love to annoy people

Many things annoy us as customers such as the long process of customer support on the phone. Ever tried calling up a credit-card company? The long process of online transactions? Ever tried doing stuff online with one of them? What about this one? While watching, something pops up right in the middle of the program which says, “You can skip this ad after five seconds” disrupting our thoughts and views. The list goes on and on.

What’s happening here?

Michael Shaffer says: Every research report concludes that consumers LOATHE pop-up ads. While pop-ups might slightly increase sign-up rates for a newsletter, at this point, there’s no rational marketing professional who can believe that people like these maddening interruptions.

But if you ask a marketer why they do it, they say “because they work.

But people hate them.”

Google posted this stat recently: “More than half of all consumers said they would not revisit or share a page that had a pop-up ad.”

But why do marketers continue to do them when research after research reports that consumers hate them.

When asked why they continue to do what they do, the usual responses from the marketing people are:

1. It works.

2. We’ve always done it that way.

3. Our competitors are doing it, and if we don’t, we may be left behind.

Even when confronted with the fact that people hate these pop-up ads, the typical marketing person justifies: “We’re expected to blast pitches because one out of a million will respond.”

Well, this may be true, but have they ever considered the fact that while one person responds, 999,999 others are annoyed?

What an effective means to scale consumer hate and annoyance.”1

I remember the time when I was still doing garments and I loved the regular meetings I would have with agency creatives and marketing communication personnel. They would methodically ask me questions wanting to know what my business needs were. I was not an easy client to deal with. I demanded to see the rationale and philosophy behind the campaign proposals. But the marketing professionals patiently conversed with me, probed, and educated me so I could understand the strategies and tactics they recommended to boost my brand image and grow my business.

In big companies today and agencies included, data scientists and algorithms are now handling the delicate function of marketing. Schafer says: “We’re becoming over-reliant on data and dashboards to know what to do.

One extreme example, I was working with a business leader and he was relying on Twitter sentiment analysis to direct his product development efforts. He was investing more and more in his IT department to create algorithms that would distill some logic from the wall of Twitter noise.

He seemed to be so locked into the mystery of the data before him that he was overlooking the obvious fact that most of his customers weren’t even on Twitter. When I suggested that he pick up a phone and call some customers, he turned pale.

This story is a symptom of the larger disease. The heart, the soul, the truest pulse of marketing is vaporizing because our profession is turning into a glorified IT function. “

One day I picked up Philip Kotler’s required textbook for Marketing 101 in college, and I was hooked. I fell in love with marketing. For me, marketing is the frontline of any business. Marketing was meaningful because it serves the customer’s needs and helps clients grow their business. Clio Awards and other creative endeavors are beautiful side dishes to a very noble and rewarding business function. It also created value in the world.

Schafer says it beautifully “it was about creating love… love of a product, a service, a brand.

It should not be known today for creating things that people hate.” Annoying the customers make them distrust businesses, and this could be amplified through marketing technology.

Power today has shifted from the business companies to the consumers. Businesses should stop doing what people hate. You can bombard the customers with tactics that annoy them; you can disrespect them today. One day they will hit you back by simply refusing you and everything you stand for. You would not want that, do you?

So here is one powerful thought for people in business: THINK LIKE THE CUSTOMER!

(Attend two inspiring days of leadership training with Francis Kong. His highly acclaimed Level Up Leadership seminar-workshop will have its last run for the year this Sept. 10 and 11 at Makati Diamond Residences (near Greenbelt 1). For registration or inquiries contact April at +63928-559-1798 or register online at www.levelupleadership.ph)

1 https://businessesgrow.com/2018/01/02/marketing-technology/