Marketing in Action

Small businesses probably imagine that marketing agencies are expensive luxuries that offer little value for money. They probably wonder why they should bother using an integrated marketing agency when they could do the job in-house. After all, don’t all marketing types just rip you off and deliver nothing more than you could do yourself? 

The content of TV programmes in the 21st century is sometimes incomprehensibly liberal. Graphic depictions of violence and sex are interspersed with virtually any word you could care to imagine – after all it is not long since the screening of Jerry Springer The Opera gained such notoriety. However, in a bizarre display of double standards, TV viewers must be shielded from the phrase “bloody hell.” 

…that they just can’t be bothered to make us our own advert. It’s something of a pet hate for me and one that I referred to briefly in an earlier post (A Time And A Place). The basis of it is that companies make an advert abroad that is utterly inappropriate for the UK market, but just can’t be bothered to modify it. The cost of putting it right is often minimal – certainly less than a prime time slot – but they just fob the UK off with it anyway. 

How could we not have noticed that during this last week was Valentine’s Day. Now at the risk of sounding cynical, I feel that this may be some sort of retailing ploy to get us to spend more… 

One of the most successful, and most cost-effective, new marketing media is the viral advert. It has emerged over the past few years and depends on the viewer actively promoting the advert to their friends and colleagues.