Marketing in Rambles 1: The teaser Campaign

Marketing in Rambles 1: The teaser Campaign

(Thanks to Dan for the title idea – Hope it takes you less than 59 seconds to read it).

If you’re finding your job boringly easy in that FMCG environment where even the sandwich delivery guy understands the four P’s of marketing then I appeal to you to step outside your comfort zone and join me in the hospital industry. Here marketing is that department that makes tea for patients and blows up all the balloons with logos on them – a branding exercise I suppose. Apparently scientists and doctors think our that communication portals, intranets, websites, C.I.’s, adverts and brand affinity measurements come about by a big bang theory of sorts.

So the guys who blows up the balloons (and those other strange guys that pay the salaries) decided to blow a huge budget on this year’s year end function and therefore needed to make sure that interest levels and attendances are high. This particular balloon blower decides to execute a simple teaser campaign of four funky (if I do say so myself) emails sent twice a week each, leading up to the event and giving away a bit more information every time - teasing as it were. The first one went out today, simply giving them a little clue about a big party coming up and the date it would happen so they could book it in their diaries.

The only way to explain the response was to show you some of the emails responses I got back:

“Where?”

“In my diary - in the basement?”

“Details please!”

“well is it a day time or a night time thing?”

“What will be the occasion in December?”

“Be where twit?” (Another word for a balloon blower I suppose)

“What is this about?”

Clearly the concept of a teaser is lost with this lot. I responded to these queries with a simple “It’s a teaser campaign.” To which some responses were:

“A what?”

“I don’t like being teased.” (From a female colleague, I am bracing for the harassment hearing from those guys that pay the salaries)

“Teasers in Rivonia Blvd?” (A strip club in Johannesburg, or so I’ve heard)

Lessons learnt:

· Don’t tease people that spent seven years after school in textbooks and the rest of their lives after that in body cavities.

· Don’t let non-marketers (read doctors, professors and scientist) know that balloon blowing is just one of your many skills; so many paradigm shifts could create another hole in the ozone.

· If you intend to use such ‘advanced’ (yes I know) marketing techniques such as an email teaser campaign, be prepared to spend the rest of your day answering confused people that call themselves professors.

Right enough rambling, back to creating more big bangs