No, we don’t have a franking machine. No, I don’t want to win tickets to football matches. No, no, no.

It’s all right, I woke up feeling cheerful this morning, so why the rant?

It’s not really a rant, but annoyance at poor marketing.

When I go to a cashpoint, I don’t want to be offered the chance to win football tickets as I have no interest in football. The assumption that I am interested annoys me. Now, promotions through cash machines are a challenge to target as most people need cash, both those who like sport and those who don’t. If my bank wants to drive away non-sports lovers, it’s doing a good job. If it wants to keep us happy, it could either stop offering football tickets or offer a range of tickets for other activities, eg theatre, music, film. These wouldn’t just not annoy me but would actually attract me to participate in the promotion.

And I wouldn’t feel so annoyed if sales people phoned up and asked if we had a franking machine rather than asking to speak to the person in charge of the franking machine which we haven’t got. How sloppy is this? If they can’t be bothered to establish whether or not the franking machine they think we have exists, it’s unlikely they would provide good service had we got one.

Just a slight alteration and all annoyance can be avoided.

It’s worth remembering if you don’t want to annoy potential customers.

z2zine next: getting small things right can make PR more effective

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It’s now so common to express your ideas through a quote borrowed from a prominent writer or expert that we’ve decided to give in and join the practice, starting with:

“People who like quotations love meaningless generalizations.”
Graham Greene, Travels with my Aunt

A great question for an essay or maybe to discuss over a drink in the pub, but sadly too many people take the lazy way out and quote away with very little accompanying original thought.

I enjoy reading the work of Jerome K Jerome, but if you search for him on twitter there are two specific quotations tweeted so many times daily that you wonder whether these people have actually read anything by him. (You’ll have to search yourself as I won’t include them here.)

Quotations can be very powerful when used sparingly. After all, how many of us can better the words of the greatest thinkers and writers? But if we communicate our ideas solely through someone else’s language we end up sounding like receptacles for soundbites with no ability to think for ourselves.

I imagine that a lot of people who issue their daily quote quotas don’t think deeply, while some can but don’t feel confident enough to express themselves effectively. Perhaps they think their ideas will carry more weight when shored up by the words of a well-known figure, even though the genius of a great writer is more likely to overshadow their message.

My own preference is to hear someone express their thoughts in their own words.

z2zine next: Assuming our assumptions are correct

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I’ll be taking part in the FSB Business Advice Evening at the Barnstaple Hotel, Barnstaple from 6.00pm to 8.30pm on Tuesday 16 February, giving a joint presentation with Kevin Woodward of K&V Associates and Multiheat Energy Systems on twitter and social media.

There’ll be lots of government agencies and business advisers present to offer free advice to all business.

We’ll be tweeting from the event and hope to see you there or else say hello to you on twitter and follow #fsbnd

Follow Kevin at @llamakevin

Follow Multiheat Energy Systems at @infraredheating

Follow Zarywacz at @z2zine

Follow me at @robertz