Dear Tig: When Publicity Is A Bad Thing, Customers Vs. Clients, and Marketing Criticisms
by Tig Tillinghast

** Tig's weekly column fields questions from and for marketers. **

Dear Tig, Do you agree with this statement: “All publicity is good publicity.” It confuses me!

Thanks, Curious

Dear Curious,

It probably confuses you because its truth does not always apply to the marketing industry. The expression is variously attributed, but very likely had its origin in the early Hollywood or New York City entertainment industry publicists.

In the celebrity-marketing context, public foibles, gaffes, even crimes can generate a complex sense of humanity and sympathy from the public. The key for these fame-seeking actors is to get famous, not to become famous for a particular quality.

Branding works differently among products and services. Fame isn't enough. Tylenol was famous when cyanide was found in some capsules in 1982. Several meat and vegetable packing plants have enjoyed reams of publicity recently for some listeria outbreaks. This probably isn't good publicity.

There are die-hard publicists out there who would argue differently--that once the listeria outbreak calms down, people will remember the brand name and forget the bouts of excruciating stomach pain, nausea and diarrhea.

This presumes an audience with very poor memories and an almost Pavlovian attraction to famous brand names. I can assure you that in the fall of 1982, when Chicago police ran loudspeaker trucks through the city to warn people not to use or buy Tylenol, it was not good publicity.

If your company markets specifically to nincompoops, and the brand is already so tarnished as to have little worth, the old adage may have some weight.

But I'd like to see, instead, a more accurate and universal phrase from John Updike replace the old saying: “Publicity is a voracious idiot that doesn't mind what it eats.”

-----------------

Hey, Tig, What are the differences between “customers” and “clients?”

Thanks in advance, Wondering

Dear Wondering,

Customers are generally those who buy something from your company. The term “clients” usually connotes that these customers are regular customers.

The difference often breaks down to companies selling products versus services. Most product companies think in terms of customers. Most service companies think in terms of clients, as they often have ongoing relationships.

Then there are the delusional products companies that believe that by calling their customers “clients” that they will increase repeat business. That repeat business is not a pattern established by nomenclature, but instead, a product of how the buyers are treated and served and the structure of the transaction.

While there are real differences in the meanings of the words, using one term or the other generally has just about no effect in the marketplace.

I've been witness to several high-level discussions about these issues, where management mistakenly believed that by shifting the use of the term, the companies' customers would experience a different, presumably better level of service, or at least perceive one. I once had to let a CEO of a major corporation berate me for a couple minutes for having used the term “consumer.” (I had to let him do that because he was my “client.”)

The truth is that customers generally don't care.

----------------------

Dear Tig, What would you say are the main criticisms of marketers and their advertising techniques?

- Fault Finder

Dear Ms. Finder,

Marketers get a lot of disapproval--much of it well deserved--but the criticisms depend on the critic.

The audience of a lot of marketing communication will generally charge that the marketers spend a lot of money cluttering up their media with untargeted ads--ones that seem to them obviously useless.

Railing against junk mail, broadcast clutter, and spam has become something of a national pastime in the States, and is even now appealing to populist legislators as a future target of regulation.

Some similar complaints stemming from this lack of sufficient targeting come in the form of the advertising-as-sign-of-societal-decay variety. Improperly targeted ads allow more conservative audience members to rail against the immorality of ad images that include too much flesh, bad language, innuendo, etc.

Clients of marketing agencies will complain about a few different things. They often suspect that a lot of the more amusing and beautiful ads that agencies suggest are designed to win more creative awards than new customers. These advertisers also complain that the agencies tend to put new employees on their business once the agency wins the account, ferrying away the experienced and expert staff that made the client hire the agency in the first place.

Media sellers have a long list of issues with marketers. Among them, they find their purchasing decisions to be often arbitrary and pernicious. They fail to reward particularly successful media deliveries, instead insisting that anything less than an exceptional performance will be considered a failure in the future.

And, finally, the most common criticism marketers level against themselves is that they didn't listen to their parents and go to law school instead.