Wasted Opportunites

It’s chilling (from a marketing perspective) how great opportunities go begging. A friend of mine manages a busy paint retail store which is part of a national chain. The shop is located on one of Perth’s busiest roads and it’s daily exposure to all those potential customers is as endless as the tail-lights of the cars crawling past during the rush-hour to and from the city. The company has its own in-house marketing team who have recently been given lashings of cash to spend on re-branding the stores. TV, magazine, radio have all been used plus in this case use of billboards. This one was located a couple of streets away from the store in a location that at best was ‘OK’ish’.

We’re done bill-boards here at Mammal and know that done right they are very effective. The billboard was fine but of course even the most lavish budget meant that after a few brief weeks it’s time was up. I mentioned seeing the billboard to my friend and he informed me that none of his customers had actually seen the billboard. He then went on to say that despite his store’s prime exposure for passing traffic it had remained painted with the old brand colours and signage for about six months. Six months! That’s half a year totally wasted! There was no apparent reason for this other than that familiar ‘big company’ problem of moving slowly when it comes to organizing things. Apparently no pressure was applied by the marketing team to hurry things up as they were focused on their own thing. All that money spent by the whizzo marketing team and yet an opportunity to use the FREE advertising area of the store itself totally wasted!

My point is that it’s all too common for ad guys to only focus on their part of the business. Their ‘specialist’ skills meaning they can remain oblivious to the broader business as a whole. Producing fine, groovy ad campaigns is one thing but it’s another to be aware of the business in a general sense and to make it your business to damn well find out and know what’s going on! Makes me stamp my little feet it does!