Marketing Without Advertising

Looks tasty but isn't

I have been watching the genius of food styling on TV for about a year.  Every time I see one of those beautiful meals with shrimp, sizzling beef, squeezed lemons and steaming vegetables I get hungry.

Foolish as I am, I have tried three of these national sit-down restaurant chains.  First a disclaimer.  I live in San Francisco where even the lowliest diner has four kinds of lettuce in the salad, rarely serves fried dishes of any sort and tends to grill most food especially vegetables.

In each case in the national TV restaurant chain the food was poor (I won't mention the names because one of them may be the only restaurant in town for some of my readers). The meat was tenderized and still flavorless, fish was fried, the veggies were steamed and over cooked, the salad was iceberg with Safeway dressing. The service was just: I'm Shirley, I'll be your waitress today...and five visits from an unknown host interrupting 'Is everything fine, sir?' The waitress had ten buttons on her blouse promoting god-knows-what.  The table was cluttered with special drink promos.

Those brilliant food styling shots have misled me badly. Deceptive, if I have a vote.

Find the market first

I actually created a whole new world of perfume and get no credit, but when I walk around Tokyo, I am fully rewarded.

What happened?  In the early 1980s a 50 year old fellow was introduced to me and he hired me for consulting.  It was a simple consulting project. 

The gentleman had been an employee, what the Japanese call a 'salary-man', in the perfume business.  At the time very few Japanese women wore perfume because it was all Western and alien to native taste. Western perfume is a combination of musk and floral fragrances (rose, Camellia, citrus..).

My client said the Japanese would respond to a range of essences from trees and herbs such as sandalwood.  Herb and tree bark smells have been a staple in Japan for centuries.  Traditional 16th Century parties were focused on guessing the subtle ingredients in incense.

I suggested the gentleman package 100 bottles in an appropriate shape and design and ask his friends at the highest status department store to see how customers reacted.  

The department store turned out to be Odakyu in Shinjuku and the new perfume became the basis for the entire modern Japanese perfume business.

Special pricing

The first chapter of Marketing without Advertising is about the distressing extent of deceptive advertising as a reason that much advertising is so ineffective.  People don't trust advertising.  If it is interesting that the public views advertising with a curious eye.

One of the current offenses is airline advertising.  Several airlines are advertising rates that are particularly low because they don't include airport fees.  This is especially deceptive when it comes to international rates because the airport fees can exceed 15% of the price of the ticket.

It is not uncommon in standard American advertising to exclude sales tax in the price of a product or service. Most often consumers know their local sales tax, but not always. This is inherently deceptive because sales tax varies in ways that consumers can not compensate for, such as absence of a tax on take-out food but not on eat-in food in some states. 

The airline omission of airport fees is much more serious because consumers (1) don't know when an airline has omitted the fee and when it hasn't. (2) has no way to know what airline fees are and (3) airline fees are always applied...there is no way to avoid the on the part of the consumer.

Deceptive advertising is typical short range marketing thinking.  It attracts the ignorant customers to the false lower prices and keeps away the more competent customers who are generally more loyal to a business. 

It also makes all consumers more leery of all advertising which is why the advertising industry is short sighted in permitting deceptive advertising.