The beauty of having a partner that also works in your industry is that even though it can be frustrating at times to be talking about work or design until the late evening hours, you sometimes come up with some really great ideas to take away. Last week, my SO and I were discussing a marketing blunder that we had seen recently, and although the conversation twisted many ways throughout the evening, there was one overarching theme to it all –
*yes, I like to write notes to myself on the calendar we hang in the kitchen.
Nobody likes to talk about failure, and I feel marketers especially hate admitting fault in bad design or execution. I know for sure that I don’t like it at all, but my own steps in overcoming this uncomfortable feeling include challenging myself to approach my failures head-on rather than avoid them. I learned a long time ago that avoiding your failures only leads to problems down the road – especially if you happen to be unfortunate enough to repeat that mistake again.
But what happens when you find yourself in a situation where the general attitude around you is something like this: “Well, at least we did something, even if it wasn’t great.” I’ve had conversations with friends, colleagues, and leaders throughout my career about this, and usually when the dust settles, I’ve noticed people like to lean on this feeling to bring resolution to an otherwise difficult project. It almost feels like a coping mechanism of sorts to deal with the failure and move on to the next project refreshed.
*a blast from my past – Megaflicks was the local Blockbuster competitor in my town growing up, but had the unfortunate signage you see above.
Bad marketing is something we are all going to be guilty of at some point in our careers – you know there’s an ad or a website or something from your past that you still shake your head about. In my opinion, the difference between a great marketer and a good marketer lies in where that person holds themselves accountable for failures or bad marketing that escaped into the wild, and how they choose to utilize that lesson in the future.
Back to the main point, though – is bad marketing better than no marketing?
Is a bad, outdated website better than no website at all? Is a print ad with a typo in the New York Times better than a pristine ad in the local paper? Are billboards in the seedy parts of town better than no billboards anywhere? Is a bad customer experience better than a forgettable customer experience? (Well, let’s be real, I think we’re all leaning towards bad experience is always bad on this one)
What are your thoughts on this subject? Do you know of any places where bad marketing is still better than no marketing at all?