John Jantsch, creator and founder of Duct Tape Marketing, offers a humorous story of one of his real-life marketing blunders. While not intentional, grammatical errors plague the best of us and will often live to haunt us (or better, make us chuckle).
I often tell a story of the time I was living in West Africa when I was early on in my language study of the local African language, Aja-gbe. I was at church and asked to pray, so I worked up a prayer for the Lord’s Supper. While not grammatical, I made a blunder in tonality (in this tonal language!) that had me mixing up similar sounding words simply because I didn’t take the time to articulate the correct tones. My prayer about “Jesus’ car” and the “bellybutton of heaven” gave my African friends something to laugh about for years to come (I meant to say “Jesus’ blood” and the “gates of heaven”!)
In addition to grammatical or tonal blunders, we are often guilty of simple marketing errors based on an irresponsible expectation of our advertising. Roy Williams shared this article a couple of years ago called “Top Advertising Blunders” (read the full article for a full description of the items below) – you’ve probably experienced some of these and we have too.
1. The quest for instant gratification
2. Trying to reach more people than the budget will allow
3. Assuming the business owner knows best
4. Unsubstantiated claims
5. Improper use of passive media
6. Creating ads instead of campaigns
7. Obedience to unwritten rules
8. Late-week schedules
9. Overconfidence in qualitative targeting
10. Event-driven marketing
11. Great production without great copy
12. Confusing response with results