Stupidest Marketing Award Winner Announced!

And we have a winner! Winner of what, you ask? Why, the first winner of Magilla’s Stupidest Marketing Ever awards, that’s what.

Reaching the final decision was agonizing. It took an incredible amount of soul searching and internal debate.

There was shouting, crying and bouts of hysterical laughter, all while weaving around the house in a stained tank top, waving a pistol around in one hand and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the other and screaming out the window to a guy on my front lawn who was holding a bullhorn: “I’m not coming out until you leave! No! I’m fine! Just leave!!! AAAAAGGGHHHHHH!!!!”

Oh, wait a minute. That was a drinking binge.

Now I remember. There was only one entry. That’s how this person won.

One reason Magilla’s Stupidest Marketing Ever Awards only received one entry was probably because I failed to supply an e-mail address to send them to. D’oh! As a result, I have presented myself with a lifetime achievement award for Stupidest Call for Entries Ever.

In any case, the winner of the first-ever Magilla’s Stupidest Marketing Ever Award is … drum roll please … Someone Who Wants to Remain Anonymous!

Understandably, this person doesn’t want to burn bridges. But he/she sent in three stupid marketing stories, all Magilla’s-Stupidest-Marketing-Ever-Award worthy.

As a result of the three entries, this executive has won the gold, silver and copper medals—figuratively speaking, of course. Magilla has no budget for creating award medals, which is probably a good thing since they would likely end up in a pawn shop before they got a chance to be handed out.

And here they are: the first Magilla’s Stupidest Marketing Ever Award winners:

“One time, the CFO suggested in all seriousness that we should e-mail all the people who unsubscribed. We pointed out that this was illegal. He thought that we should just put: ‘This is a service message’ at the top, and promote the latest site-wide sale. ‘Everyone loves a sale,’ the CFO said. ‘That is good service.’

“Another time, our client asked us to pull together a list of sources for buying e-mail addresses. They didn’t want to rent the file. They wanted to own the names. ‘Why e-mail them only once. We know we need to send at least 10 messages before we get a decent return,’ the client said.

“They particularly wanted to buy a list of all the people who had donated to the Katrina victims. The marketing director thought that people who were of a giving nature would be delighted to hear about the 100 different magazines that this company represented. And he thought that once the company bought the records, he could re-sell them and make back the investment cost.

“We ended up presenting a plan for a multi-touch, highly targeted list-rental program, including a testing plan for subject lines and call to action. We did a case for ROI and a break-even analysis. They told us we ‘weren’t listening’ and supposedly found another source for buying the addresses.

“Then there was the time that the new brand manager, all ready to make a big impact on the business, thought we should append e-mail addresses to records of those who had been catalog customers in the past year, but were not on the e-mail file.

“This can result in very high spam complaints, so the ESP refused to send it. (Fair enough). A list-management vendor agreed to send six messages per recipient in one week to the records that could be matched with e-mail addresses.

“After much internal debate and consternation from the e-mail marketing director who (wisely) thought this was a dumb idea, the campaign was scaled back to pace the messages out over four weeks and to ensure that the language included things like, ‘Since you are a customer, we hope you will consider joining our e-mail program to receive benefits … blah blah blah.’

“The brand team listened to only half of the counsel and the campaign dropped with the very engaging subject line, ‘Requests your Permission’ (no kidding). The campaign resulted only 10% of the messages getting delivered into people’s inboxes and earned a nearly 200% complaint rate at a major ISP. Which is darn impressive, if you ask me. Hard to get over 100% of your recipients complaining on one mailing!”

And there you have it, folks: The winner of the first Magilla’s Stupidest Marketing Ever Awards! That was some serious marketing stupidity on display Notice each of those examples involved direct marketers following their absolute worst instincts and failing to listen to people who know better.

Keep it up, guys! The next piece of marketing-crippling legislation is potentially always just around the corner and this type of e-mail stupidity is the kind of stuff that brings it on.

Editor’s note: I have decided I really like the idea of others writing my copy, so after much soul searching, internal debate, shouting, crying, bouts of hysterical laughter and shouting at some guy holding a bullhorn on my front lawn, I’ve decided to extend the awards indefinitely.

Anytime a reader has a good stupid marketing story he or she wants to share, I will be happy to resurrect Magilla’s Stupidest Marketing Ever Awards for the following issue. Heck, if it were up to me, it would be a weekly feature.

Please send stupid marketing stories to Ken.Magill_at_Penton.com. The stupider, the better.