Category: Portland advertising

Girl Scout Cookies Online — Good Entrepreneurship, or Sign of the Apocalypse?

My son Tyler won his Cub Scout Pack wreath-selling championship three years in a row. He did it the old-fashioned way — by personally calling his relatives and parents’ friends, and personally touring his dad’s office every year asking for the order. His younger brother Ryan followed that up by winning the Pack wreath sale trophy twice more.

The most innovative technology they had available to them was the telephone.

So it was with great interest that I read Newsweek’s article on 8-year-old Wild Freeborn, a Girl Scout in North Carolina. With her father’s help, Wild set up an online cookie sales operation, complete with YouTube video.

In a short time, she received 700 online orders for cookies. And, of course, other parents complained to the authorities. It turns out that the Girl Scouts prohibit online cookie sales.

There are several conflicting interests at work here: There is a great deal of value in teaching kids how to sell face-to-face or on the phone. That’s a skill that, if learned properly, will serve them all their lives. And some issues of fairness exist as well, since some families don’t have access to the technology that would allow online sales.

The other side of the argument was offered in the article:

“First of all, selling things online is no less safe,” says Peter Fader, a director of the Interactive Media Initiative at Wharton, the business school at the University of Pennsylvania. “And if we want to teach our kids to be able to operate in society as responsible adults, online savviness is going to be part of the overall portfolio.”

In addition to losing a teaching moment, Fader says the Girl Scouts are missing out on a sales opportunity. “It wouldn’t even be a transition—it’d be an expansion,” he says, noting that the program could allow cookie sales online through personal Web pages hosted by area councils. With some troops reporting sales down by as much as 19 percent this year, getting online would be a simple step that could invigorate the locally minded fundraising goals of the program.

My kids are long past their wreath-selling years, so I don’t have a personal rooting interest in this. But I’m interested in your thoughts.

Should the Girl Scouts, and other fundraising organizations, allow online sales? Why or why not?

Please leave your thoughts in the comment field below.

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FedEx Office Wins Word-of-Mouth With Kindness

Many in the marketing community have criticized FedEx for buying Kinko’s and changing its name (to FedEx Office) and culture.

So it’s only fair to praise them for a very smart piece of word-of-mouth marketing. As I write this on Tuesday, March 10, FedEx Office stores across the country are printing resumes at no charge for anyone who walks in. People don’t have to purchase anything to have their resumes printed — there are no strings attached.

If they’ve purchased any advertising for this, I haven’t seen or heard it. But FedEx has gotten a huge amount of news coverage (Google “Fedex resume” and you’ll encounter more than a hundred articles).

In a very rough job market, FedEx Office has extended a hand to many thousands who need help. In the short term, it’s gotten them a lot of publicity. In the long term, some of the people who take advantage of this offer will wind up in the executive ranks — and they’ll remember FedEx Office with fondness.

 

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

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Become Known For What You Know

If I were asked to give one piece of advice to someone considering a career in media sales, it would be this:

Please find something else to do. I don’t need the competition.

If, on the other hand, I could offer two pieces of advice, the second one would be: learn something valuable that most of your colleagues don’t know.

I may have saved a client several thousand dollars the other day with that kind of knowledge. He is the General Manager of a local auto dealership. He worked for a long time in the Portland car business, moved to California for several years, and recently returned to Oregon.

He emailed me the other day because he was planning to launch a new used-car promotion. He has a selection of pre-owned vehicles priced at half their original MSRP, and wanted to feature them in his radio advertising.

What he didn’t know is that while he was in California, the state of Oregon made it illegal to compare a used vehicle’s price to the MSRP in an ad. The official commentary accompanying that section of the law (technically an Administrative Rule) explains that MRSP is a term reserved strictly for new vehicles. Because so many factors (mileage, wear and tear, accidents, etc) affect the price of a used car, the law forbids using an MSRP in any way when referring to anything pre-owned.

I know this because a little more than a year ago, I was the only Portland broadcast rep to drive to Salem for a seminar on the new laws. So I was able to warn my client away from a strategy that would have earned him a substantial fine from the state.

My clients know I’ve taken the time to learn the rules, that I’ve got copies of all the relevant consumer protection laws, and that I check with my contacts at the Oregon Department of Justice if I’m not sure of something.

They also know that my competitors weren’t at the seminar, and may not know the law as well as I do (I’ve been known to bring that up in conversation). So I get phone calls, and business, from advertisers who might otherwise take their money to another station.

The extra income this brings me stops briefly in my bank account, until my wife decides she needs something like new lamps for the living room. The lamps are pretty nice, actually.

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

The Value — and Risk — of Rebate Offers

When I wrote recently about the ethics and advisability of rebate offers, local reader and attorney Kevin Spence had this to say:

Gift cards, rebates and vouchers are all kind of a scam in my opinion. They are all designed with a certain failure rate. Whether the failure is caused by the recipient losing it in the wash the cost of the voucher to the business is less than the value of cash. Gift cards are particularly bad in my opinion.

Why people are convinced that buying a gift card to a particular store is better than giving cash that can be used in countless different ways is beyond me. Add to that the limitations and fees that are placed on some gift cards and I’m left scratching my head.

In the Oregonian, Laura Gunderson recently tackled the same topic:

Although some companies nationwide have veered away from redemption programs in recent years, many remain and are legitimate. Typically, marketing experts say, the easier a deal is to fulfill, the more trustworthy and beneficial it is — for customers and the company.

In Oregon, the legal bar on promotions is rather low. Offers that are inherently misleading — even simply confusing — can trigger an investigation.

In my work with car dealers and, in one memorable case, a siding company, I’ve had a chance to talk at length with Eugene Ebersole of the Oregon Department of Justice. Gunderson’s warning is correct — Oregon has always had some pretty explicit and strict rules concerning advertising and promotion. Those rules became even stricter about a year ago.

Considering a rebate or gift-with-purchase offer? Doing it wrong may not only anger your customers — it may get you a subpoena from the D.O.J.

Call me first.

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

Dental Advertising Case Study: Sleep Dentistry of Portland

Dr. Floyd Kasch operates Sleep Dentistry of Portland. As the name suggests, Dr. Kasch concentrates on sedation dentistry. His target patient is someone who is afraid of going to the dentist. I’ve seen statistics indicating that up to 40% of the population does not see a dentist regularly; in many cases this is because of fear.

Dr. Kasch has a great story to tell — he does sedation dentistry because he himself was afraid to go to the dentist after some bad experiences as a child. For this reason, he really relates to his patients. As I got to know him and the practice, I realized that if we could tell that story effectively, patients would seek him out.

I recently talked with his son and business manager, Brandon Kasch, about the process of putting the Sleep Dentistry of Portland campaign together, and the results they’ve achieved.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UBNxnUPKHY]

You can learn more about Sleep Dentistry of Portland here

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.