Been noticing some things around me that provide lessons for us marketing folks. Here are some ramblings—
- Not all revenue is good revenue. You may grab at an opportunity that hurts your brand. This applies to soca artistes as much as it does a consumer product discounting itself to death.
- Some people think Facebook is a silver bullet… A hundred meters race with a prize at the end, rather than a marathon that requires much preparation and long-term commitment.
- Went for a pedicure and Wendy swears by her coupon drop in the newspapers over other promos she has done. The coupon got me there and she was so good, I gave her a big tip by my standards.
- Instagram seems to be growing in popularity in Trinidad. I don’t know the numbers, but just seeing more of it in my space.
- The recession has caused many people to freeze everything they are doing. Their logic is that sales are not where they need to be so let’s control what we can control by cutting expenses, including advertising and training. But we can’t turn on and off our relationship with our customers as if it were a light switch. The challenge is to find ways to keep engaging our customers with our brand. If we don’t, they will find another brand that’s talking to them.
- A Carnival fete is too often a show, a concert rather than a party. I think there is an opportunity to put back some party in the fete.
- Sign of the times: the mobile players have all but disappeared from the Carnival. Once upon a time you could not turn without seeing red or green.
- The internet is a wonderful purveyor of both quality content and crap. You need a filter to help you control what you let past your red rope.
- I continue to see some horrible location decisions for retail food outlets. No parking available. No foot traffic. No other food outlets in same area to create a group magnet. These places will close, and somebody will have to pay back the bank or their mother-in-law for the next 3 years. There are some proven best practices in the location decision. For food it’s about how many total customers are in your catchment area and what percentage of them you can reasonably expect to convert on a consistent basis.
- The national instrument continues to be largely left out of Carnival except for Panorama. I’ve been to Cuba. We can steal a page from them with 3-woman and 6-man bands all over the place. There is opportunity here.
- People generally love tactics over strategy. It might be because tactics are action, while strategy is serious thinking stuff. But “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”— (Sun Tzu)
