Sunday, 1.30 pm: A text message from an unrecorded mobile number exhorts me to “STAY FIT Reduce fat(8inch)use-SAUNA SLIM BELT-(650/DELHI)*(700/NCR)+Free YACO + Free HOME DELIVERY CALL NOW:…”.
Saturday, noon: TM-HOTOFFER tersely informs me: “Coming Soon Jaypee Kensington Business Park Commercial Space in Sec 133 on Noida Expway@5588/-ft on DP 5min from S.Delhi Book now… .”
Tuesday, 6 pm: Now it’s TM-HOTINVEST’s turn. “Havent invested in DELHI-NCR yet? Do not miss JAYPEE 1st Commercial Park at Noida. Prime spaces ONLY 5588PSF on DP!”
TM-HOTINVEST appears awfully anxious about the fate of this project. Within 10 minutes, three messages arrive. All of them read: “Haven??????t invested in DELHI-NCR yet? Do not miss JAYPEE…”, and so on.
The hard-seller of the SAUNA SLIM BELT had been off the radar for almost a year. Messrs HOTOFFER and HOTINVEST are newcomers to my inbox. They’re part of a resurgent tide of marketers who have a grossly inflated idea of the salary Business Standard pays me. Jewellers, premium cosmetic brands, companies offering car loans, home loans, any loans, manufacturers of power-saving devices…, they’ve all managed to get round the Do Not Disturb (DND) registration and bombard my mobile.
If their quirky punctuation, eccentric use of capital letters and urgent, cramped shorthand convey one compelling message, it’s that the economic slowdown is over. And, after about a year’s respite, so is the consumer’s peace of mind.
I am not a lone victim of this bulk text onslaught. A web search for the identity of these messengers throws up a plaintive complaint from a DND-registered mobile owner listing 21 unsolicited calls and text messages he received between March 22 and 28 this year — the HOTties figure as does the sauna belt seller.
Marketing gurus such as Kotler et al have disgorged reams of earnest, scholarly works advising companies on the principles of marketing, but none of them have dealt with the issue of irritating selling techniques. Tele-marketers, of course, top the list of annoying marketers, a problem the DND registry has partly addressed. But the text-marketers are pretty much on a par with their timing (Sunday afternoon?) and frequency (once a week, sometimes more).
It is unlikely that any of these annoying marketers have read Kotler’s magnum opus; they’re merely mail-list owners leveraging a cost-effective medium to scatter-shot messages over a wide consumer universe.
Their persistence is puzzling because the offers are couched in terms that hardly enhance their credibility, which, even if you haven’t read Kotler, is surely a common-sense rule for marketing anything from steel to lipstick.
The purveyor of SAUNA SLIM BELT is a case in point. To check it out, I decided to make a customer call. A helpful lady answered after three rings and enthusiastically answered my queries.
SAUNA SLIM BELT was a direct sales outlet based in Naraina in west Delhi. The belt was supplied to it by a company called S L Sky Shop. Did S L Sky Shop make the belt or was it imported? The salesperson could not say. But they could deliver in 24 hours and the product carried a one-year guarantee.
And what was this free YACO? Apparently, this meant the belt could be adjusted to suit the user’s height — even children, I was assured, could use it — and helped you maintain your blood pressure if you wore it during your morning walk. YACO???
A web search revealed one online yellow-page entry for S L Sky Shop in Patel Nagar (also in west Delhi) that was listed under the category “Utility Shops and Services”. This didn’t in any way suggest that it was a trusted maker of health equipment. So, despite the conscientious efforts of its sales outfit in Naraina, I decided not to test its credentials further by ordering a belt.
The Jaypee messages are of a different order. There was no phone number to call, just a text reply code. This is not an unknown company but the realty arm of a powerful northern construction company that builds roads and power projects. It is also possible that its marketing arm may not be aware of the messages sent by the HOTties, no doubt co-opted by brokers. But messages of this ilk are unlikely to enhance its reputation and, surely, it should wield some influence in how its projects are marketed.
Scale this up to banks and consumer companies that have re-discovered the virtues of text marketing as economic growth picks up, and the issue of credibility acquires more serious dimensions. If there’s one lesson irritated consumers can teach marketers, it’s that whatever the medium, the message of credibility does not change.
