Devil's Advocate

Boots put foot in it

By Ian Moore November 17 2012, 7:19 pm 1 Comment
Tagged: Blue-Chip Marketing, Boots, Hoover, prize draw

Oh dear. I literally ducked for cover when I heard that Boots had inadvertently told 9,000 people they were on their way to Barcelona. Echoes of Hoover and ‘There but for the grace of…’ rang around our offices.

I suppose it’s one of the perils of automation, although you have to wonder if Gremlins were involved. We handle hundreds of draws, and I can’t imagine why we would ever first email a lucky winner. It simply invites problems (think spam, identity, missives, to name a few).

It also seemed curious that Boots offered the ‘winning’ losers the chance to re-enter a draw to win a trip to Barcelona. It got me wondering whether they had one to spare???

Simon Guest

Chris, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. The two most important things that any marketing director or agency need to think about are ‘trust’ and ‘belief’. If the customer believes in the same things (values, reason for being, ethics, approach to business) as the brand, and they trust the brand to do the right thing by them, they will remain loyal to that brand and recommend it to like minded people. In a world where the public is being consistently let-down by people, businesses and politicians, organisations have a great opportunity to re-evaluate who they are and how they operate, and thus create the right conditions to re-engage customers with their brands.

Business Strategy Director, Maverick.