Love is in the air.

And all the time I seem to be exhorted to love this and love that. I must love parks or love my heart or cycling or fish or [pluck any word out of the air].

Some people in marketing must have fallen for the love concept big time.

I haven’t.

I like raspberries. I grow raspberries. I like picking and eating plump, juicy raspberries. I like making raspberry jam and raspberry sponges. I don’t love them though.

Nor do I love cars, confectionery, gadgets, television programmes, web sites, power tools or [insert randomly generated name of object].

I love those dear to me: my wife, my family and special people in my life.

This lazy marketing concept debases real love.

Does my wife really want to be placed on the same level as a manufactured dessert or a mass produced garment in a high street store?

Please stop it.

And now I’m going to make sure I don’t say I love this or that so that each time I do use this special word it conveys my full meaning.

. . . bin it.

That’s what I did when I received an unsolicited email. The first part of the subject heading was the price, which was followed by the name of a seminar being promoted.

I deleted it.

Then I retrieved it because I wondered whether the company actually got any response as this approach made no need to persuade me, but rather turned me against the offering straight away. And it’s made me think: I don’t like being sold to like this, but perhaps this company has found it to work.

That’s one of the important things about any form of marketing and sales. We’re not selling to ourselves, but to other people who often have very different tastes and preferences.

I still don’t like this approach and binned the email again.

What do you think?

Robert Zarywacz thinks businesses who maintain their marketing will thrive (read full article at ndba.org.uk)

A double-dip recession would be far more interesting for the media than a sustained recovery.

This was evident on the day when the Office of National Statistics published the third quarter 2010 UK GDP figures. Many commentators had been almost rubbing their hands with glee as they predicted 0.4% growth, only to retract their words when the actual growth was double their predictions at 0.8%.

Success is 50% sentiment . . .
Unfortunately, sentiment is very powerful and can raise or reduce confidence very fast. While government cuts will inevitably mean a tough 2011, it would be very easy to talk ourselves back into recession unnecessarily.

Conversely, we could just as easily talk ourselves into recovery.

There is no logic to fickle confidence.

. . . and 50% hard work
But, as everyone in business knows, talk doesn’t run a business: hard work is needed for that.

Read full article at ndba.org.uk