What is Marketing Mayhem? In the simplest terms, it is the mindless marketing that has been draining profits, wasting productive energy, and creating strategic and tactical confusion in just about every type of business.

Why is this happening? A few specifics are below.

• Mindless use of technology
• Imaginative sterility
• Misleading and confusing use of language
• Taking customers for granted

Want some examples of what Marketing Mayhem has done?

We have more technology, analytical tools, And process than ever before. BUT: Sales and profits are down. Why?

We supposedly know more than ever before about what buyers want. BUT: Customers are more skeptical and more alienated from us and more resistant to sales offers than ever before.

We can choose from a ton of CRM software and hours of CRM seminars. BUT: The typical customer responds with the loyalty of a gnat.

You can find more specifics on the pages of Marketing Mayhem. Even more important, you'll find answers to the problems that Marketing Mayhem creates–and you'll be entertained all along the way by the world's most productive copywriter and DIRECT Magazine's most popular feature columnist.

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

I. Imaginative Sterility The Jamie Lee Curtis Syndrome


Nike and Mike . . . John Paul, the Frito Bandito, Pierce . . . and Almost Everybody Else 

Lee Iacocca, Look What You Did

Hara-Kiri: 21st-Century Style

"Please Stay on the Line for a Self-serving Message
"
Reader's In-Digest-ion

Where Does an Alien Go to Register?

Idiots' Delight

New Uses for Software Campaigns: A Limp 3 1/2-inch Floppy

Hit-and-Run Appeals to Fragments 
The Peanut Gallery: A Digestive Directive

Our Version of the Boston Tea Party

It Ain't Necessarily So: Ten Creative Myths

II. Process/Technology Abuse


Marquis de Sade, Author of Owner's Manuals

Invasion of the Term-Throwers, Part I

Invasion of the Term-Throwers, Part II

Invasion of the Term-Throwers, Part III

What a Surprise: Nobody Is Responsible

Before We Had "CRM," We Actually Had Customer Relationships

CRM by the Pound

Darwin Was Right: The Evolution of Motivators

Will the Real Sax Lewis Please Stand Up. . . ?

Some Attitudes Just Don't Compute: Smart Uses of Smarter Tools

They'll Never Know the Difference

Sweet Sue!

A Really Simple Way to Connect with Your Customers: Shipping and Handling

Some Really Dumb Uses of Really Smart Tools

III. Language Abuse Basically, I'd Like to Define This as a Paradigm Shift

Cell-Phone Phonies

But Wait, There's More!

L.O.L.: Take Out the Periods and It's Short for Lollygagging

A Blockbuster of a Marketing Mistake

The Importance of Saying "Important"

Free at Last? Well, Sort of . . . Except. . . .
An Embarrassment of Riches

When It Comes to Award-Winning Artists, We Mean Business. Let's Shake on It

If Your Caddy Zigs, Does Your Jaguar Jag/ Does Your Saab Sob? And How about a Pap Test for Your Volvo?

Rocket and Roadmaster, Where Are You? 
Lawyers on Skateboards

Aw, Come On, You Know Better than to Use These Words

I Admire You, You Rascal, You

If John Caples Were Alive Today, He'd Be Turning over in His Grave

Standing on Our Heads, Riding the Tsunami

Let's Be More Niggardly with Our Euphemisms

New and Improved: A Good Old-fashioned Home-made Original

IV. Customer Abuse Service with a Snile

Get out of My Face!

Your Call Is Important to Us. Please Rot on the Line.

"And How Are You Today?" "Terrible, Thanks."

The Decline and Fall of Telephone Manners

Au Revoir to an Old Friend
Latest Online Service: Customer Elimination Department
Retail Riddance

High Tech, Low Tech. The Breitling Chronicles

The Large Type Giveth & the Small Type Taketh Away: That *$%#@* Asterisk Strikes Again

Is It Any Wonder They're Skeptical?
Where Is Ed McMahon Now That We Need Him?

Vee Know Where You Liff!

Here's Your Official Survey: We Need Your Opinion on Latvian Flag Design

Post Mortem

Index