If you wanted to promote something that was better than ever, especially high definition television, you certainly wouldn’t like to use a piece of snail mail that wound up in your humble e-scribbler’s snail mailbox looking like this:
The ultimate HD experience does not mean heavy water damage and tattered edges all the way around.
Amazing.
- srbp -
Heard that before, right?
And it’s true.
Just because it is true - and most adults know it is true – doesn’t mean that all of them still aren’t willing to crave a free gnosh.
And not just lunches.
Free anything.
One of the oldest marketing ploys around is the old BOGOF: buy one, get one free. One of them really isn’t free. You just think it is.
Still.
See that BOGOF over there.
You know you want one.
Go on.
See? Told ya.
As in life, so in politics.
Free sells big.
Free education is the ticket for the province’s New Democrats in this election. They are aiming heavily at the student vote. The provincial Dippers hope young people will work voting miracles.
So they are promising them free education.
And when they’d finished announcing that policy, they announced that they would actually phase it in.
First would come more grant money.
And eventually education would be free.
Give the Dippers your vote, the one you got for nothing in the first place, and they will deliver you free education.
Eventually.
Like four or five years from now after you’ve finished your degree.
And only if they accidentally accumulate enough credits to form a government first.
But that’s just details.
Look.
Vote one, get one!
Free!
And free is really popular. You can tell because the Canadian Federation of Students - a completely impartial group the DNP loathes - released a poll on Wednesday confirming for those who remained doubtful that fully 84% of those surveyed in the province thought free tuition was an amazingly, wonderfully great idea.
Coincidences are wonderful too, aren’t they?
Anyway, this Harris-Decima poll is a penetrating insight into the friggin’ obvious. People love freebies.
Just so there’s no misunderstanding, you have to hand it to both the Dippers and the CFS for coming up with a bit of retail politicking that plays to a potentially important voter segment for them.
Education is one of the big issues for people. We know that from the quarterly government polling that some people have pried out of government under access to information laws.
And this fake free lunch thing is exactly the sort of freebie that can get some headlines, generate some interest and hopefully not cause people to think too hard. it’s simple enough that people can get the full impact of the NDP message in two words; free education.
They just have to pray to the deity of their choice – for those who aren’t atheists – that no one thinks about the whole thing for two long.
For starters, people would realise that the NDP have to win this election to collect on the vote sell-off implicit in the NDP offer. Since the NDP are actually campaigning for the Tories to win, that’s gonna be a hard one to collect.
Then there’s that whole free lunch thing. “Free tuition” would actually be paid out of tax dollars. And if it turns into increased cash to universities and colleges and grants to students for living allowances, that ‘free’ is going to get quite expensive.
Forget tax cuts.
Forget spending more on other areas people want to see action on, like health care.
And if that wasn’t painful enough, consider that at the heart of the provincial NDP policy, they are really talking about having taxpayers in this province give a free education to people from anywhere but here as well.
There really are no free lunches.
But marketing like the Dippers are using just wants you to turn off the rational part of your brain for a long enough to cast a vote.
Just think of the free education policy as the spindly super vacuum that runs on double A batteries but sucks better than a Dyson and didn’t break a few weeks after the Canada Post truck dropped it off.
You got two for the low price of $49.95 or whatever it was. You just had to pay the separate shipping and handling for both.
Same basic marketing premise.
- srbp -
How valuable is a brand?
Well, apparently their brand is so valuable that Abercrombie & Fitch is willing to pay the cast of “Jersey Shore” sizeable amounts of cash in order to stop them from wearing Abercrombie clothes on air, according to cnn.com.
"We are deeply concerned that Mr. [Mike] Sorrentino's association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image. We understand that the show is for entertainment purposes, but believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans," an Abercrombie & Fitch spokesperson said in a statement. "We have also extended this offer to other members of the cast, and are urgently waiting a response."
Cast members tweeted comments ridiculing the offer, according to msnbc.com:
Paul “DJ Pauly D” Delvecchio had his own comment, calling the brand out on Twitter for reportedly previously selling shirts with the “Jersey Shore” gang’s famous catch phrase – GTL – gym, tan, and laundry.
“Hmmm if They Don’t Want Us To Wear Those Clothes Why Make GTL Shirts #yourPRsux,” he wrote, tweeting to a picture of an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt with “GTL” stamped on it above the word “Fitch.”
-srbp -
I uploaded about 100 pictures of the attractions and historic areas of Charlottetown, North Rustico Harbour (the epitome of a Canadian east coast village), the beaches and cliffs of Prince Edward Island Park (look for the picture of the fox that trotted right up to our car while holding a rabbit in its mouth) and, of course, Green Gables (if you’re the parent of a girl, you’ll know what that is.)
I uploaded photos from my flickr page directly to PlanetEye. It was simple. Took about 2 minutes for each batch of 20 to 25 pictures. And then the geotagging worked perfectly. I simply dragged and dropped my photos onto a map in the location where I’d taken them.
The difference between the two approaches is a simple word: authentic. Thornley's experience carries with it all the credibility of someone who has actually been there and done it. There's a story to be told here and the pictures are part of the whole thing.
Now theoretically, he could be working for the PEI tourism department or the software companies he mentions but nothing on the site would suggest he is. Ethically he'd be obliged to disclose such a connection and base don a number of factors, including the fact he doesn't comment on the issue, it's a reasonable assumption that he isn't. Note that one of Thornley's viewers chides him about the software developer.
Even after a suspicious mind has gone to that point and returned, you come back to the integrity and the sincerity of the post.
His last line, which will be seen by thousands in exactly the demographic Islanders are looking to hit, says it all:
If you’re interested in an unspoiled place for a summer vacation, take a look at Charlottetown on PlanetEye or at my Charlottetown photo set on Flickr .A simple call to action - for you marketers out there - and the links are left in it so you can act, just as Thornley would have wanted.
