If early tomorrow morning I drove past your home and threw a bag full of dirty paper in your driveway before you woke up, would that be alright? What if I did it twice next week? What if I did it twice every week… forever? At what point would my “free trial” of the bag of trash start being litter?
How about this. When you leave for work today, I am going to come to your home and stick some trash in your front yard. It will be attached to a stick. I am also going to put more trash on your doorstep and doorknob. I might even hang some trash on your mailbox. Finally, I am going to put together a big book of trash. I will drop 10 of them off on your porch, because it has probably been 3 weeks since the last time someone brought you 10 of them.
From phone books to lawn care signs, pizza delivery coupons to newspapers, everyone appears to be obsessed with filling up my property with litter, which subsequently will fill up the landfill with litter. Yes, I appreciate your generosity. It is a nice gesture, but enough already. I am honestly half tempted to take my next Goodwill bag full of old stuff to one of these companies and leave it on their doorstep as a “free trial.” Hey, here is all the old crap I don’t want. I will give you the first load of it for free. Unless you tell me otherwise, I will just keep on bringing it by for you. Sound good?
The choice is up to you. You can make me a fan of your product by being amazing, unique, attentive, and remarkable in which case I might voluntarily place a sign for your business in my yard… or better yet, blog about it, link to the post on Facebook or LinkedIn, and tell everyone I know how awesome you are. Or spend your money printing up junk that I don’t want, throw it on my lawn or in my driveway and continue to aggravate me by making me clean up after you.
My advice — Stop littering and start spending the time and money you save finding ways to dazzle your customers. Let one of them tell me how good your product or service is, and I am much more likely to call you than if I have to add cleaning up after you to my to do list. Plus according to those signs, Ohio has a $500 fine for littering.
Interesting way of looking at this. I feel the way too. We need a national “Do Not Litter” service for coupons, phone books, and the like!
Agreed.
As for phone books, you should be allowed to order them when you want them, with what you want in them — customize the content of each book. Heck, I might just pay for that. Particularly if you could provide a digital companion version. Don’t just push everything and everyone in the region at me 10 books at a time, 10 times a year. When the power goes out, phone books are handy to have, but one current version with all my local information is sufficient.
Ah yes, David, but what you’re suggesting is too much like work! Understand your customer? Deliver personalized experiences? Get close and make the experience unforgettable? Blah. It’s far too easy to throw junk in your yard than it is to knock on your door, introduce myself and my product, give you one free, ask for your impression, respond to the good & bad feedback, and commit to getting better every single day. By throwing junk in your yard, I don’t have to face you. I don’t have to deal with rejection one on one. And I make myself feel better with all of the marketing “activity” I’m doing.
Kind of sad that far too many would rather cheapen their brand with doorhanger coupons that may or may not be relevant to me than deliver a customized experience for me that would have me raving.
Don’t we all want to rave when we have a great experience?
Dave,
You’re spot on again. Remember how we talked about advertising versus marketing? This is one of many poor examples of the former. I get business cards with thumbtacks shoved or stapled to my mailbox and the first time I get a thumbtack in my car tire I’m going to kill someone. Blogpost to follow…