RANT - Marketing people
Discussion
I don't use my mobile phone much but I pay the same line rental as everyone else so I expect it to work when I need it. It is therefore very irritating when I urgently need to get hold of someone and I get the message "Network Busy". I have to redial (manually as auto-redial only works on busy signal) for about 5 minutes to get a connection.
I wasn't too bothered however as with all these people using the network, the phone company will be raking in the money and hence will be able to increase the network capacity and all will be well. Well that's what I though until the previously named BT Cellnet decided to change it's name to O2 at a cost of several million pounds. Can I connect to the O2 network at busy times? No, I get "Network Busy".
I mean really what was the
point? Everyone knew who BT Cellnet were. They were the mobile part of BT. The name was descriptive and accurate to the products sold by that company. What possible benefit was gained from changing it's name?
The same goes for T-Mobile (previously One-To-One), Borland (previously Borland then Inprise now back to Borland again), Accenture (previously Anderson Consulting), Royal Mail (previously Royal Mail then Consignia then Royal Mail again), etc. Norton Utilities used to be brilliant. Then Symantec got involved and now they are sometime called Symantec except when it is the home version where it is Norton but yet the technical support is still Symantec... or something.
Millions spent on advertising the previous name is now down the swanny. And what do the punters do? Everyone I know still calls O2 "Cellnet", Borland Delphi is Borland Delphi, not Inprise Delphi, Anderson Consultants are still called t*ssers and so on.
I blame marketing people. The same piles of excrement who take every decent web site I have ever found, remove the content and replace it with big pictures and videos. Try finding some trainers on www.nike.com or a ringtone for a T68 which Erricson-Sony (formerly Erricson and Sony) claim are on their web site.
If any marketing people are on this site (unlikely as they are most probably numpties), please identify yourself so we can turn PH meet #4 into a public torture session.
I wasn't too bothered however as with all these people using the network, the phone company will be raking in the money and hence will be able to increase the network capacity and all will be well. Well that's what I though until the previously named BT Cellnet decided to change it's name to O2 at a cost of several million pounds. Can I connect to the O2 network at busy times? No, I get "Network Busy".
I mean really what was the
point? Everyone knew who BT Cellnet were. They were the mobile part of BT. The name was descriptive and accurate to the products sold by that company. What possible benefit was gained from changing it's name? The same goes for T-Mobile (previously One-To-One), Borland (previously Borland then Inprise now back to Borland again), Accenture (previously Anderson Consulting), Royal Mail (previously Royal Mail then Consignia then Royal Mail again), etc. Norton Utilities used to be brilliant. Then Symantec got involved and now they are sometime called Symantec except when it is the home version where it is Norton but yet the technical support is still Symantec... or something.
Millions spent on advertising the previous name is now down the swanny. And what do the punters do? Everyone I know still calls O2 "Cellnet", Borland Delphi is Borland Delphi, not Inprise Delphi, Anderson Consultants are still called t*ssers and so on.
I blame marketing people. The same piles of excrement who take every decent web site I have ever found, remove the content and replace it with big pictures and videos. Try finding some trainers on www.nike.com or a ringtone for a T68 which Erricson-Sony (formerly Erricson and Sony) claim are on their web site.
If any marketing people are on this site (unlikely as they are most probably numpties), please identify yourself so we can turn PH meet #4 into a public torture session.
Being someone in the industry Andersen Consulting name change was due to a split from Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting and the new name Accenture was formed,
BT Cellnet changes its name from Cellnet to O2 to try and enhance its rep as it was seen that BT in General was an old firm an not exciting whereas 02 is a new firm
Things change, names change
Get over it
BT Cellnet changes its name from Cellnet to O2 to try and enhance its rep as it was seen that BT in General was an old firm an not exciting whereas 02 is a new firm
Things change, names change
Get over it
Oops, I knew I would offend at least one marketing person. Nothing personal you understand but I still consider it to be a waste of money.
IMHO, people are far more upset with BT Cellnet for bad management, diabolical billing departments and service problems than whether it is an old company or not. Even if everyone does start calling it O2, it will still be an unorganised buch ofwits. And don't get me started on its Genie web site!
IMHO, people are far more upset with BT Cellnet for bad management, diabolical billing departments and service problems than whether it is an old company or not. Even if everyone does start calling it O2, it will still be an unorganised buch of
wits. And don't get me started on its Genie web site! quote:
Being someone in the industry Andersen Consulting name change was due to a split from Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting and the new name Accenture was formed,
BT Cellnet changes its name from Cellnet to O2 to try and enhance its rep as it was seen that BT in General was an old firm an not exciting whereas 02 is a new firm
Things change, names change
Get over it
IPA - I work with some pretty big marketing co's and I completely understand why this kind of thing pi55es you off.
I especially detest the made up names - the Consignia debacle being a recent case in point that I hope heralds a shift away from that ghastly 90's trend.
If you have a name that means nothing, then almost inevitably you'll end up with a brand that means nothing.
The over-designed web page thing is an interesting argument. You'd be surprised how many clients effectively demand that their site be slow to download because they want sexy graphics.
However, I think you'll find relatively few marketing people are numpties tho.
I especially detest the made up names - the Consignia debacle being a recent case in point that I hope heralds a shift away from that ghastly 90's trend.
If you have a name that means nothing, then almost inevitably you'll end up with a brand that means nothing.
The over-designed web page thing is an interesting argument. You'd be surprised how many clients effectively demand that their site be slow to download because they want sexy graphics.
However, I think you'll find relatively few marketing people are numpties tho.
quote:
I especially detest the made up names - the Consignia debacle being a recent case in point that I hope heralds a shift away from that ghastly 90's trend.
I can the point made by Peritas regarding Anderson Consulting but Accenture has to be a trimph of trendy thinking. I believe there is an accent in the name somewhere but I won't spend time finding the appropriate keyboard shortcut.
quote:
However, I think you'll find relatively few marketing people are numpties tho.
The marketing people in our company display numptyish tendencies (one 35yr old female followed me for 5 miles with her fog lights on in broad daylight) but obviously there are a couple of PH readers who are marketing people so my generalisation may have been a bit wide.
>> Edited by IPAddis on Thursday 20th June 10:24
quote:
The over-designed web page thing is an interesting argument. You'd be surprised how many clients effectively demand that their site be slow to download because they want sexy graphics.
They probably want a Flash intro too... trouble is, there's lots of research on usability on what users need to get out of a home page/web site, and it would appear that 99% of marketing people (and web design shops) think they know better. Jacob Neilsen's stuff is pretty good (www.useit.com/alertbox/)
>> Edited by Neil Menzies on Thursday 20th June 10:26
I'm right with you IPAddis..
I find the whole marketing mindset deeply unpleasant. I think it's the fact that it works and that marketers control everything that's left of the world after the lawyers have taken their slice.
Millions of people are being made mugs of every day by some bloke called Jason who lunches in wine bars, drives a Rav4 and works in a glass building in Chelsea, which he loves because everyone on the Kings Road can see him flouncing round his office like Rudolf Nuriev, proselytising the merits of brand value and leveraging synergies (ARRRGHH!
) to a customer who's comlpetely baffled and yet terrified to interrupt in case Jason get's the wrong idea, sticks his tongue down their throat then hands round the nose candy. 
I find the whole marketing mindset deeply unpleasant. I think it's the fact that it works and that marketers control everything that's left of the world after the lawyers have taken their slice.
Millions of people are being made mugs of every day by some bloke called Jason who lunches in wine bars, drives a Rav4 and works in a glass building in Chelsea, which he loves because everyone on the Kings Road can see him flouncing round his office like Rudolf Nuriev, proselytising the merits of brand value and leveraging synergies (ARRRGHH!
) to a customer who's comlpetely baffled and yet terrified to interrupt in case Jason get's the wrong idea, sticks his tongue down their throat then hands round the nose candy. quote:
quote:
The over-designed web page thing is an interesting argument. You'd be surprised how many clients effectively demand that their site be slow to download because they want sexy graphics.
They probably want a Flash intro too... trouble is, there's lots of research on usability on what users need to get out of a home page/web site, and it would appear that 99% of marketing people (and web design shops) think they know better.
I think you got that exactly right. Using broadband I notice that some sites take a long time (relative) for me to load so I pity the 56k user. The stuff I write uses Flash as useful parts of interactive guides etc. As an intro I'm sure the vast majority of people just click on skip.
The websites/resources I produce are designed with speed in mind, when 100+ students access the same page at the same time, its got to download quickly. I'm surprised how many professional websites contain graphics that are larger than the space they are given. eg Jpegs which are huge and shrunk to fit by the author software. I'm sure that people don't realise that it is far more efficient to use a graphics package first, resample/reduce size then use that image within the site.
Rant over
quote:
Millions of people are being made mugs of every day by some bloke called Jason who lunches in wine bars, drives a Rav4 and works in a glass building in Chelsea, which he loves because everyone on the Kings Road can see him flouncing round his office like Rudolf Nuriev, proselytising the merits of brand value and leveraging synergies (ARRRGHH!) to a customer who's comlpetely baffled and yet terrified to interrupt in case Jason get's the wrong idea, sticks his tongue down their throat then hands round the nose candy.
Classic CarZee.
Yeah, why don't people make their bloody pics 100% or whatever. Can't see the point of putting enormous great pics on a website at the wrong size/resolution because people can't be bothered to edit them for size first. Keep those sizes DOWN!
IP, you can relax, safe in the knowledge that the name Anderson probably won't be around for much longer anyway – do they have a client left ?
Probably Doris's corner shop
>> Edited by MikeyT on Thursday 20th June 11:33
No it's true, apparently they thought their old name was too long (so why not go for PWC, or am I missing something?)
Mind you this is the company whose logo was just their initials in wingdings font. Can't reproduce it here.
I'll start ranting about management consultants next - at least marketing types do something, even if it is pointless and expensive. OK management consultants are expensive ... no I'm not going to start or I'll get pissed off, these wastes of oxygen really wind me up, although not as much as the gutless directors who employ them as a comfort blanket because they don't have the faith in themselves or their staff to make sensible decisions ...
Going for lunch now. If any management consultants are reading this and don't like it - get a proper job.
>> Edited by JohnL on Thursday 20th June 12:35
Mind you this is the company whose logo was just their initials in wingdings font. Can't reproduce it here.
I'll start ranting about management consultants next - at least marketing types do something, even if it is pointless and expensive. OK management consultants are expensive ... no I'm not going to start or I'll get pissed off, these wastes of oxygen really wind me up, although not as much as the gutless directors who employ them as a comfort blanket because they don't have the faith in themselves or their staff to make sensible decisions ...
Going for lunch now. If any management consultants are reading this and don't like it - get a proper job.
>> Edited by JohnL on Thursday 20th June 12:35
quote:
..... BT Cellnet changes its name from Cellnet to O2 to try and enhance its rep as it was seen that BT in General was an old firm an not exciting whereas 02 is a new firm
Things change, names change
Get over it
So??? I WANT to deal with a firm thats been around for a while, knows what its doing.... (oops - BT, knows what its doing - DOH). Changing the name doesn't change the product/company/directors/staff. Those are the things that interract with the users (the most important part of a company is it s CUSTOMERS!), so changing the name is just a waste of time IMHO.
Bring back Royal Mail, the GPO, British Airways, Marathon (remember them pre-snickers??) and the rest.
) parked near Rugby centre, totally on the pavement, with a number plate JAY 50N. Except yesterday when there was a purple Cerbie in its place. And last week when one of those Clio V6's was there.quote:
The power of marketing is immense, even if most of us think it is shite, think of the 'Spice Girls', IMHO a bunch of dogs who cannot sing, certainly can't write original music etc. etc.
They cant sing! I have a number of media luvvie type friends one of which told me that on the first spice girls albums they would get all 5 in seperate recording booths in a studio but the mic's would only be turned on for the two that could actually hit a note and they would get session singers in to cover the other 3 voices.
Matt.
It is all very well to have a go at Marketing People (of which I am one) but your rant should really be directed at the Fat Cats who set the budgets. Marketeers have an obligation to provide a service - namely create branding and awareness of a product. They are not responsible for the quality of the product. I agree 100% that it is a crime that millions are wasted on pointless rebranding and name changes - The National Lottery (Lotto) and The Post Office are just two. So have a rant at the Board of Directors who authorise this waste of money.
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