Here are three cautionary tales regarding odd marketing attempts of three different companies.
Tale One:
A while ago I received a package delivered by my ever-amiable UPS delivery man. As a design firm I’m always receiving fabric swatches, flooring samples, laminates, so I wasn’t surprised to be getting a box that day. As soon as I opened the package the incredibly strong smell of vinyl hit my nose. The contents were seven ”memo-books” of wall coverings in various sizes. A memo-book is a very expensive sales tool where individual samples of each fabric or wall covering is cut to an exact size and bound, book-like into an easy to peruse “catalog”. I’ve had many companies come back to my office to pick up books that I’m not using because they are so very expensive to produce. These wall coverings were very nice, thick, some with brocade, some with velvet, and even some with glass beads impressed into the surface. I estimate that I held in my hands hundreds of dollars in marketing materials. Marketing materials that I did not request, nor would I ever use since each piece was 100% virgin vinyl, off-gassing noxious fumes. Inside the box there was no invoice, no receipt, no letter to introduce the company, nothing to say, “Hi, here’s some samples for you!”. However, attached to the outside of the package was a packing slip with a woman’s name at the bottom.
I called the company and asked for ‘Jessica’. I asked why I had been sent these samples. Jessica explained that I had indirectly requested the samples by merely showing up at NeoCon (the annual design tradeshow/convention in Chicago). I asked her which of her materials were in any way ‘green’. Jessica pointed out that one of the coverings lines were made from wood, which she informed me was a natural material. I had to point out to her that most of the woods listed in this line were exotic hardwoods from Africa, but she still insisted they were a natural product, so therefore ‘green’. I asked what I should do with her samples, and she told me I could spend my own money to send them back, or just keep them and “do whatever I want to with them”. I gave them to my sister for crafting; at least that’s a re-use instead of throwing them into a landfill. What a weird way to market something: send very expensive samples to someone who never asked for them, and especially to someone who definitely would not use them. Strange.
