Tag: fail

DIY Marketing: Who is Huffing Detergent at Ichabod LaundraBar?

Ichabod Laundry Marketing Hair and Drool
Ichabod Laundry Marketing Hair and Drool

I don’t mind do-it-yourself (DIY) marketing efforts when the do-it-yourselfer is earnestly trying to make an impact. I sincerely try to help them with good tips and ideas. Let’s face it, though, it is easy to laugh at the majority of novice marketing efforts.

I can drone on about terrible marketing, but so much of it has already been said. I mean, I already tried to warn people with “7 Reasons Your Marketing Sucks“, and there are many really useful articles in my blog archive.

For some people, there is simply little future of a marketing career. Reading about it, talking about it, Facebooking about it, tweeting about it, and trying their very best will simply reflect the long-standing rules of survival of the fittest.

These are the creators of marketing efforts that make room for a new spot on Darwin’s evolutionary chart. You can call me a jerk for pointing them out, but pointing out weakness and explaining a better way ultimately serves a greater purpose. Besides just that, the marketing hall of shame is often good for a laugh. I find a lot of laughable examples online, and I will share some of them again, in case you missed these earlier articles. Each of them make good points about bad marketing.

Today, I submit Ichabod LaundraBar.

I respect the value of polarizing an audience and not trying to make everybody happy, but apparently some people think it means to just randomly turn away business without forethought or purpose.

Enter a Dog Infested “Ichabod LaundraBar”

What do you picture when you think about your laundry? Maybe a summer breeze blowing as your clothes hang on the line at the edge of a grassy meadow? Maybe nicely folded fluffy towels dropping one upon another in a perfectly lit studio re-enactment of your laundry day bliss? I guess some laundry detergent corporations try to promote that, but let’s use some brain cells, and let’s begin today!

Those paint a beautiful picture, but can you imagine all of those nasty bugs you will find in your pockets and the airborne dirt and pollen making your shirts look like crap? As for the glamor of those fluffy towels, if that looks so compelling, I welcome you to come and fold my laundry.

Let me tell you, we have a laundry company in my town that can take those bugs and airborne filth to a whole new level! They can make the vision of clean and fluffy towels and turn them into sour and musty rags that you found crumpled up behind a washing machine.

Branding Tip: Public Does Not See it Like You Do!

Really? Can the marketing of a company truly make that significant of a difference in consumer impression? Yes, my friends, it can … and it hit me with a nasty whiff of mildew and dog poo just moments ago when I witnessed the profile photo of a laundry bar Facebook Page that I would describe as a really nasty looking mouth-breathing hell hound.

Let me skip back a step. Have you heard of a laundry bar? It is the kind of place where college students can mingle in their worst laundry day attire, but they don’t mind, because they can also buy a cheap beer! I am sure that some of us who were around before the laundry bar concept can remember setting aside a cool pair of acid washed jeans and a nice Guess shirt before heading off for our laundry day humility, but there is no need for that today. At a laundry bar, the otherwise scrutinizing eyes of those sexy people around you will be blurred with suds of another sort. Beer!

What I just cannot wrap my mind around is how a dog logically fits into that picture. If it requires a story of how that dog safely landed an airliner full of laundry executives and saved hundreds of lives after the pilot died from ring around the collar, just to understand it, then it is not good branding.

Would You Market a Laundry Bar Like This?

In my opinion, they should be running some A/B comparison testing across various demographics between items such as follows:

A.) “Laundry Sucks: You may as well have a beer and shoot some pool.”

B.) “Hot Guys Do Laundry: This is where the ladies come to watch them do it!”

Then they could measure which ad achieved the greater response rate, and among which test demographic. Then they could begin to build a customer model to help guide their other marketing efforts more efficiently. No, that probably sounds too scientifickey and complex. That kind of thing is surely only useful for big Fortune 500 companies, right? That is not for this company, so they roll with the ghetto dog theme, instead.

I’m talking about a laundry bar. Better yet, a laundry bar across the street from a university. There is surely a better way to reach potential customers!

Finding your way in marketing and knowing how to rally the customers takes more than a quick moment at the computer. It should involve a lot of steps, including data collection, forecasting, psychographic modeling, and a lot more. The best results come with big portions of marketing talent and creativity.

Maybe they think their best target demographic places little value on cleanliness, or is at least very relaxed about it. Maybe they just didn’t think about it at all. As long as that is the case, they will probably do better to stick with the party crowd, and de-emphasize promoting their full-service laundry.

Ichabod LaundraBar Marketing Department Brilliance

This brings me to a point of how DIY marketing can take a huge fundamental turn toward failure. Many companies will see themselves in a totally blurred way. They think they know how others view their brand, but they screw it all up in their creatively destructive ways. In this case, it is a traditionally sacred space of college students … a laundry bar. They are pushing for a broadened market that has some money to spend. So, they seek busy people like me to drop off my clothes to be laundered, and then pick them up later. That is great, but we have about a squillion places in town that offer laundry services. This is the only one that gives me the strong impression that my laundry may come back with more filth than when I dropped it off.

Ichabod LaundraBar Wants to Wash Your Clothes ... Woof!
Ichabod LaundraBar Wants to Wash Your Clothes ... Woof!

I may be the minority here. I have not done the market research for this company, and I don’t know them at all. I am just an outside observer, just like anybody else who encounters them. However, it seems pretty clear to me that a smiling bartender serving a box of detergent and a mug of beer is a whole lot more appealing than promoting clean laundry with a hairy, drooling, mouth-breathing hell hound. To me, that is extremely repulsive, regardless of how cuddly, loving, sweet smelling, clean, and obedient that dog is … it is a DOG! Even to dog lovers, it still surely feels a lot less clean than their own dog’s slobber, hair, dander, and poo.

In my opinion, putting a big hairy slobbering dog on a Facebook Page promoting clean laundry makes about as much sense as a Doberman having a love affair with a Chihuahua. It not only paints a picture of absurdity, it cannot be a very productive relationship.

A Better Approach to Facebook Marketing
I wrote a nice four step plan for Facebook marketing. It covered the steps of creating a Facebook Page, customer modeling, promoting, and growing awesomeness. It does not include random placement of dog photos. Here you go:

Facebook Marketing: Pages, Customer Modeling, Promoting, and Awesomeness

Effective DIY Marketing Requires Thinking Before Doing!

Why do companies still try to do their own marketing without at least thinking before they click? I may never understand it, but I welcome even the worst marketers to subscribe and learn, before they end up with people who are not as nice as me to explain things. People may call me a bastard, a jerk, a prick, or an ass for pointing things out this way. What they will likely never notice is that my saying it is a whole lot kinder than the way others point it out. They don’t say a word about it, and they simply take their money somewhere else. In this case, somewhere more hygienic.

People who believe that simply putting their company name on Facebook is a good idea, without any marketing strategy that is defined beyond “tell more people” or “make more money” are exactly why I very seldom work with small companies. Far too many small companies are doomed to remain small, simply because they are too impatient, apathetic, or their thinking is otherwise crippled.

OK, dog lovers … go ahead and tell me how brilliant it is and why you think the dog is so damn adorable. Your comments are welcome.

UPDATE: I heard form the owner of Ichabod LaundraBar and had a nice chat. She let me know that the dog is not a resident of the laundry bar, but just a mascot.

I wish them the best, and I hope they will feel free to reach out for some free ideas anytime.

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Eureka Springs Tourism = Fail Arkansas Style

Eureka Springs Social Media ReactionsEureka Springs, Arkansas is a lovely little tourist destination … blah blah FAIL!

Do they wonder why people make fun of Arkansas, or do they even hear it? Maybe they just figure people make fun of every state that way. You know, like the way people make fun of all those barefoot inbred hillbillies playing the banjo and smoking corn cob pipes over in Colorado’s tourist destinations.

Sure, for all the jokes, there is charm in Eureka Springs. Sometimes it is the kind of charm of looking at an ugly baby. You get a good laugh after the parents are out of earshot and wonder how you held it together without spewing your drink out of your nose. There is still charm to that ugly baby.

Enough Eureka Springs Jokes, This is Business

Seriously though, there really is some charm to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and I am not just saying that to avoid being buried out by the woodshed or cut up for catfish bait. I said I would stop joking, so here you have it … the real deal.

Eureka Springs, Arkansas has been a nice little tourist destination, and perhaps still even has much of its original charm … for now. Sadly, it seems that they slipped behind the eight ball as other communities have embraced their would-be tourists and are poised to take Eureka Springs right off the map given time. It appears as if this little town has elected to roll over and die instead of taking steps to regain their reputation as a tourist destination that wants visitors. It is a case of survival of the fittest, and this tired old animal seems to have given up.

To show how serious their problem is, just have a look at this Eureka Springs social media analytics report. If this was funny it would be a great submission to Fail Blog. Instead, it is a sad fact of utter social media failure and business failure. It is something I see often, and worth a good strong warning to anybody who thinks an empty Facebook Page or following a bunch of people on Twitter without any interaction is how to see benefit from social media. It is also a warning to anybody who still doubts social media’s importance to a business or to a community.

It really does matter, and it really does drive real business. Otherwise, why in the heck did Pepsi spend $20,000,000 (yes, twenty million dollars) in social media outreach instead of Super Bowl commercials? Sure, you can say that is crazy, but it was a huge success for Pepsi. Read “Social Media Marketing: How Pepsi Got It Right“.

How Eureka Springs, Arkansas Tourism Failed

Is it really a failure? Yes! When you lose market share you fail, and when social media barely even knows you exist, it is a pretty good picture of your business health. This is especially true of a geographically-bound institution such as a city. They cannot just move to a better location, so instead, they count on people to come to them. This does not mean waiting for people to search Google for things to do in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It means telling people about its charm and cultivating a market of potential visitors. It means creating an awareness of the community instead of just rolling over to die. It means having the highest waving arm and saying “pick me” when somebody is looking for a nice day trip or a romantic getaway. It means generating a fan base of people who will tell all their friends how incredible the place is and that everything from the food, the people, the scenery, the shopping, and even the bed sheets at the bed and breakfast were amazing. Yes, it is just like old fashioned word of mouth, except that it spreads further, farther, faster, and with much greater longevity than the blurb from somebody at the water cooler of days past.

Here is a video I was presented with that illustrates a very troubling fact that some people seem to believe just putting something on the Internet will make people come begging to do business. It is worth a laugh.

Arkansas Governor’s Conference on Tourism

I will tell you how Eureka Springs was recently brought to my attention. What prompted me to write this was not a recent trip or a good experience. It was a message on Facebook about a blog post. The blog addressed Eureka Springs’ failure to make people aware of an upcoming event that is important to the community. Ironically, it is the “Arkansas Governor’s Conference on Tourism“. Yes, seriously … Arkansas Governor’s Conference on Tourism is coming, and if left to the Internet to discover it, you might think it would be hosted by their new Governor Bill Clinton.

Do you see how nicely that spreads? A friend told some friends, who told some friends … and the story goes on. This is how social media works. This is the power of people communicating with people. This is what Eureka Springs and a sad too many hard luck stories out there wondering why all the customers disappeared should know.

I think it is both funny and sad that a word I made up only yesterday on another blog where I write has more presence in social media than an entire town that relies on tourism to pay the bills. It is sad indeed! I think Eureka Springs may need a “social media dubeshag“.