"Yeah, but my other son is a stableboy..."

Two visions of marketing crossed my desk today.

Greg Ludvik writes:

I asked to sign up for a hosted email solution. I received a PDF from a service rep which had a quote for a hosted exchange mailbox “starting at only $4.99 a month!”

However, the service rep I emailed said that it would cost $11.99. When I asked him what the $4.99 option in the PDF was, he said:

From: Eric
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 2:27 PM
To: Greg
Subject: RE: Hosted Exchange & Outlook Web Access Account

Greg,

The $4.99 is the cost if a mailbox only (the pdf is a marketing thing).  You also need to purchase storage at $6.99 per 100MB, and you have to buy a minimum of 100MB.

So, aggressively shading the truth and tricking people is a "marketing thing." Next...

Just got off the phone with a computer at the local sales offices at Verizon... trying to change my service, a big chance, it seems, to make some more money at their end. Hit five or six buttons on the phone tree. Then the voice says, I'm quoting here, "Due to excessive volume" your call cannot be handled. And then the computer hung up on me.

I just treasure the word "excessive." Excessive is a factory word, not a marketing word. If you've got too many people calling into your sales line, you don't have a problem, you've got, I think, an opportunity.

Today Tom Peters quotes from one of my favorite books, The Art of Possibility, "A shoe factory sends two marketing scouts to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business. One sends back a telegram saying, SITUATION HOPELESS STOP NO ONE WEARS SHOES. The other writes back triumphantly, GLORIOUS BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY STOP THEY HAVE NO SHOES."