This is Marketing Genius
If I told you that I have an effective marketing plan which you can implement to boost the sale of your goods and services, would you like to know more about it? Absolutely you would.
If I said I’d give you my expertise for free, Would that please you? Yes, of course.
Let me describe what my bit of marketing genius is about. It’s a clever loyalty/reward marketing strategy. One strategy you could refer to is a buy one, get two for free. The promotion involves offering one of your items or services and then giving away two of the products or services.
As I mentioned, this is an easy method to boost your sales. This is really a piece of marketing genius. It is worth considering charging an outrageous amount for this information.
Now that you’re well-equipped with this information, Are you planning to give my promotion plan to try? No, of course not.
I am sure you are thinking. You’re thinking, this isn’t a work of marketing genius. It’s an act of suicide in business. Who would ever sell one item or service only to give away two other products or services? Not just any two items or services, but two other products or services that come from a different company!
I understand why you may be skeptical and perhaps even skeptical. A marketer wouldn’t even think of doing something like this, is she? If she had thought of an idea like that, but she wouldn’t be wise enough to let it run by her bosses. Would she? Even if she tried to run it through her bosses, they’d never be able to accept it, wouldn’t they?
If you were to run with a plan such as this, will it require an entire list of insane errors and ineptitude that is massive? Precisely. I’ll then inform you about the Hoover flight promotion failure.
If you’ve seen this offer, Buy one Hoover and get two flights for free…
… Would you turn it down? It’s difficult to imagine that a lot of people would turn down an offer of this kind. It’s precisely the kind of offer Hoover presented in the UK back in the year 1992. It was hard to refuse.
The offer offered two accessible seating on air flights in Europe or America for anyone who purchased a Hoover product for PS100 and above. It’s an understatement to claim that Hoover had a good number of units.
The people went crazy for Hoover vacuums. About 200 000 were purchased depending on your preference—five hundred jumbo jets of seats. Hoover required additional staff to meet the demand for the production.
But according to The Independent reported in 1998, even though there were winners – airlines, as well as the taxman but there were also winners, including Hoover itself. The Independent estimates that Hoover sold around PS30 million of goods but needed to pay an eye-watering PS50 million.
If it’s too fantastic, to be honest…
… It usually appears too for actual However, it’s not the case if the offer is Hoover providing free travel in exchange for the purchase or purchase of one of its items. Back in 1992, this promotion was genuine and excellent. It was a good deal for those who were purchasers of the product from Hoover. However, it wasn’t as good in the case of any other participant in Hoover.
The most obvious question is how this plan was approved? I would guess this was a terrible error. The people who made the decision probably were discussing how many people could actually be able to take the flight and came to the conclusion that a significant amount of people simply wouldn’t take their seats, incredibly when the terms of the tiny print are demanding. They had not anticipated the Hoover buying public’s determination. The BBC stated:
The promotion was just too generous. Just PS100 to purchase any Hoover product, and you’ll get two return flights for free… maybe yours, but only when you’re determined enough to navigate across the maze of tiny printing and Hoover’s travel agencies trying to offer additional products that could profit you and cover the costs of this promotion.”
It became apparent that people weren’t being intimidated by the tiny print obstacles. Hoover committed the colossal mistake of placing more obstacles for those who wanted to fly. In this article, Rob Page explains.
“As the number of vouchers began to pour into Travel agents, they made another error in rewards marketing and created a system that made it increasingly difficult to redeem rewards. One of the most important “Do’s” in the world of loyalty and reward marketing is that it should be enjoyable and straightforward. Agents were told not to let the blood flow out by refusing to accommodate requests for travel (such as traveling days) and also by strictly adhering to the tiny print. Consumers no longer had fun and demanded that the reward be returned.
The result was a complete catastrophe, and Hoover’s Free Flights Rewards program quickly turned into a Free Flights Fiasco.”
The Great Marketing Disaster Great Marketing Disaster
Hoover’s case is a classic. Hoover’s case is often used in marketing classes throughout the United States and even abroad as a great example of a disastrous marketing plan and the wrong way to run any loyalty or reward scheme.
One question that’s not frequently asked is: why did Hoover not take the plunge as things went in a downward spiral from unpleasant to the point of causing career-ending calamity? If the question is asked in the context of an issue that is typically discussed is that not having pulled the plug might have brought additional PR problems to an already catastrophic marketing catastrophe.
Another possibility to be explored by law schools, not marketing faculties, is the fact that Hoover might be too late to end the campaign in many instances. If Hoover decided to cancel the campaign, they might have run into one of the more difficult questions in English contracts law.
The issue that is tense has about unilateral contracts. If Hoover pulled out the flight tickets of some of its customers, Hoover might have been able to claim that they had already been contractually bound by Hoover to purchase the tickets, even if they hadn’t yet bought the Hoover product.
The little nugget in English legal contract will be the basis of a different article.
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