The Break Up

Here's a little video that summarises beautifully how traditional marketing is failing.

I experienced an example first hand last week when Vodafone, my mobile network, rang me. The scripted call-centre guy, who I could hardly hear, started off by grilling me with a questions to establish my identity; off putting considering they rang me, and it could be anyone calling me as I try and shop with the kids.

Then he told me that the call was to thank me for being a loyal Vodafone customer (I've been with them for a while) and as a reward offered me this deal: free phone insurance for three months, after which this would turn into a policy that will cost me £6 a month.

A great demostration of how to insult your customer. This was quite obviously no "reward", but rather a very clumsy way of trying to upsell me some insurance I don't need, using shmarm that wasn't even as good as that of the "advertiser" in The Break Up, above. Hard selling to me is bad enough, doing it under false pretenses even worse

It does remind me of a few opinion leader meetings I've seen though. Genuine scientific discussions or thinly veiled selling schemes?