SALES DISTANCING
PRACTICE SALES
DISTANCING
BY: DEB GABOR
LLike the rest of you, this crisis has me glued to my phone. Not
only are we taking in every news alert and every new health
recommendation, we’re working remotely and attempting to
keep business running. It’s an insane amount of highly intense
information to process.
Which is why poorly timed ads are much more likely to piss me
off. It’s time for every brand to cancel their marketing
automation.
Here’s an example. A Ladder Insurance ad popped up in my
Instagram feed a couple days ago. It’s a picture of a father and
son in an airport security line. The message is you don’t have to
put your life on hold to buy Ladder Insurance.
In an ordinary time, this ad’s worst sin is that it’s boring. In an
extraordinary time—say, when airport lines are clogged with
people returning from overseas, and the very idea of standing
in a crowd makes you shudder—this ad is almost offensive.
Funny a week ago does not equal funny now.
That’s just one example, and it’s so easy to fix. Just cancel your
automation, right? But there are other companies committing
worse brand sins.
Lucky Brand, a clothing store based out of L.A., e-blasted me
with this headline: “Trip cancelled? Stay-cay > Vacay”. The email
has a photo of a bed with the word “getaway” crossed out and
replaced with “staycation.”
Setting aside how horrible the word “staycation” is all by
itself, the tone-deafness of this ad is almost unreal. Our
current global crisis and the isolation of people all over
North America and the world isn’t a “staycation”—it’s an
uneasy new reality that we’re all navigating together.
Overtly salesy or pushy messages like this represent the
easiest way for a brand to do themselves in.
Instead, every brand needs to take a page from my
friend Carrie Trabue of Carrington Legal’s playbook. She
runs a legal recruiting firm and recruits head counsel for
all kinds of organizations.
She sent a thoughtful email to her list about how to
effectively conduct screening interviews via
videoconferencing. That’s helpful—a lot of companies
are adjusting to a new long-distance reality.
Do you need help crafting an authentic message that
isn’t tone deaf during a crisis? Let’s chat!
Deb Gabor is the founder of Sol Marketing, a consultancy that has
led successful strategy engagements since 2003 for global brands
like Dell, Microsoft, and NBCUniversal, and for numerous digital
brands, including Allrecipes, Cheezburger, HomeAway, and many
more. A leading expert on brand disasters, she is the author of
Branding Is Sex: Get Your Customers Laid and Sell the Hell out of
Anything, and Irrational Loyalty: Building A Brand That Thrives In
Turbulent Times. Deb has been featured in USA Today and other
major publications. A displaced Midwesterner, Deb currently lives
in Austin, Texas, but travels frequently to help her clients build
bulletproof brands. DebGabor.com
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