Friday 3 August 2007

Anything but the greatest


We received a letter at the office today, from a company called Elite Memorabilia Leasing.

It was odd. Very odd. It started like this:

“Dear Fellow Business Leader.”

Hmm!?

It went on to say, “We are all striving to find that special something that will capture the attention of our customers and focus their minds on the benefits and value of our products or services.”

Can’t argue with that I suppose. But what do you think that ‘special something’ might be?

A consumer insight?

A special offer?

Better service?

No. The ‘special something’ they think customers are looking for is a picture of Muhammad Ali!

Why?

Well there were several reasons given by Elite Memorabilia, but my favourite was this one:

“He has indicated that he will never again conduct a public signing of memorabilia due to his deteriorating health, his last public signing being in January 2006.”

Of course!

Exactly what my customers are looking for. Not.

I could ramble on forever about this pathetic attempt at memorabilia marketing, but I won’t. Instead I’ll leave you with the closing sentence from the Elite Memorabilia letter:

“Please don’t put yourself in a position of having to say to your firm in a month or so, ‘If only?”