About a week ago, Bryan Eisenberg from Future Now posted a story called, “Sign-of-the-Times Marketing.” Staples sent an email to it’s customers to try to capitalize on the Office Depot’s troubles. Bryan posed the question based on the image below,
“In these rough economic times, do you think this type of message is smart? Are they building confidence with this kind of messaging or is the painful message an overall turn-off? Your thoughts?”
On his blog, I offered the following comment:
It’s definitely not Kosher Marketing. Focusing on the pain of making the dollar stretch at Staples would have been more effective in my opinion. Knocking Office Depot does nothing to strengthen the relationship between Staples and their customers, which should be their only goal. They broke Commandment number 9 of Kosher Marketing: Be Polite. You can see the complete Ten Commandments at http://koshermarketing.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/TheTenCommandments.pdf. If I were Staples, I’d offer a special discount to people who are out of work and can verify it with an unemployment check stub.
This was a highly commented post. Over 24 people, mostly marketing professionals, commented on the Staples tactic. 19 of the 24 thought it was a very bad idea, and one joked about Dunder Miflin. Only four people liked the idea. In fact, one person said that he’d be more likely to go and buy at Office Depot because they probably would have some great sales now. Another person said that they perceived Staples message as desperate indicating that perhaps they were having financial difficulties, which is why they’d resort to such a dumb message.
In short, this tactic really backfired.
Staples has the chance to gain market share. Why not continue to focus their marketing with a strong positive message? This is a clear case of the management of Staples enjoying the demise of a competitor. While they might be entitled to enjoy it, it clearly clouded their thinking and their marketing decision making. The message they delivered was, “Staples and Office Depot are at war, and Staples is winning.” The problem is that customers could care less about the war. They want great value.
They could have offered to honor Office Depot’s reward checks as a way to pull in new customers.
In short, be polite.
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