Response to Diana Schaller

I guess my big question is what would you do if you were being pressured to remove your commercial from the air during a show? Is it worthwhile to submit to the pressure of parental groups? Why is it so necessary to respond to them and do they really have enough power to hurt your business?

Watch this first 

 Now that you have watched the Skins trailer, I think it is reasonable to see why so many parents are upset. Even though that trailer was shown in Canada, the show is identical. I have to say that I attempted to watch the show when it came out because MTV put so many advertisements throughout their other programs that I figured, why not? Within the first fifteen minutes of the show, I was not only confused by how the teens were behaving. The show opened with a teen fighting with his parents, then proceeded to setting someone up to lose his virginity, and by the end of the show, there was a girl that had attempted suicide via prescription pills.  Is that how teens are talking these days? I sound old when I only graduated from high school in 2008 and for crying out loud, I am still in college.... how many things can actually stop me in my tracks and be upset? After living in dorms with communal bathrooms and a forced triple, I would say not many.

The phrase goes, "No press is bad press," but what if the show gets pulled? Then I think that is some bad press. As for the companies that are advertising throughout the show, I would be on the fence. Guaranteed there is a demographic that will be watching the show and the commercials, but will that be promoting what the show is? I would submit a press release stating that the company does not have any affiliation with the individual show, but rather the network as a whole. I would also state my concerns to the network. No matter what though, the company will stay in business. Especially a huge franchise business like Subway. They will not be going out of business just because of this one show, but it could potentially hurt their bottom line. I believe that every person is a potential client, therefore a company needs to behave accordingly. Marketing is where a company is supposed to establish the type of demographic that they want their product or service to be selling to. With that said, if teenagers is the demographic, I say go for it and continue advertising.

Customer Service!!! Come out, come out wherever you are!

Lately all I seem to notice is how poor customer service is. What happened to lollipops at the bank window, or a free piece of cheese at the deli counter? Am I being irrational or has customer service taken a nose dive? I cannot seem to understand why businesses are allowing their employees to treat customers poorly. Recently I ordered a jacket from a Forever 21 which is also online. I purchased the jacket over the internet (on sale!), but when I received it, it just did not fit correctly. I loved the jacket, so I placed the jacket in the bag, instructed the store to send me a different size, put all the given paper securely taped to the bag, but then noticed that postage was not paid for. Strike 1. After three weeks I had not received or heard from the store. Strike 2. I call them. The customer service representative explains that the return policy for their franchise is that there are no exchanges, just refunds. This meant that I had to reorder the jacket (without any sort of discount) and wait for this one to arrive. Strike 3. You can only imagine how frustrated I have been with this company. I believe that this was poor customer service. How can there not be more customers complaining to this multi-million dollar corporation? There was clearly no sort of customer relationship being built, but instead rethought on my end. This is also a classic example of production orientation. Even though it was not necessarily the production manager's fault, but rather the company policy.

In my opinion, customer service will never go out of style. Building strong customer relationships will then build repeat customers. And repeat customers means referrals. If a business markets incredible customer service, like L.L. Bean does, the customer remembers this and wants to purchase many of their products from there regardless of price. It seems like common knowledge to the marketer in me.