Marketing tricks

We all know the marketing tricks as marketing directors and advertising agencies but in this day and age so does our customers! for some marketeers this can be a good thing for others it's definitely a bad thing. A casing in point; in this weekend’s news I read Coles getting in hot water on their ‘tick’ for their ‘Smart Buy’ campaign you'll notice if you shop in Coles they have this plastered all over their own label brands, no bad thing you may say but their products are bad as in full of rubbish, their 'tick' mirrored the tick of approval from The Heart Foundation, so in effect giving the impression its product was improved by the Heart Foundation, sneaky and look at the backlash Coles are now getting from health groups and their customers, maybe the campaign should now be called ‘Not a Smart Move’ campaign?

Which gets me onto cars, the principles remain the same, here’s a product truth I’ve found as a customer visiting the microsite from Toyota Yaris 'It’s clever enough to be almost anything' is the line well not quite, your site is broken!! the interior tab freezes each time I roll over so what does that say to me about the car?

Over promising or not fulfilling your level of service after you’ve bought the car or looking for a car, is something that as a customer can really make you angry and now with the digital channel you can vent that anger via FaceBook and Co.
Product truths in advertising which is executed in a creative way that really hammers home the message is still the key, take for instance a campaign I did for VW in the UK:
They built their customer loyalty around ‘Reliability’ I knew this truth from working on the account and I owed one.
I knew it was reliable from starting first time in those cold winter nights and their customer service was exceptional (They once gave my then girlfriend a spare VW while her old Ford Escort was getting repaired).
So I was never disappointed and guess what? the following year I had two VW’s, a new one for the wife and with me still driving the same reliable VW.
One thing can be guaranteed as a customer I won't be buying a Toyota Yaris or shopping in Coles if that's their customer experience.