Want to hear a story about a costly marketing mistake?
Make-believe your name is Jack, it’s a warm summer day and in comes a call from an unfamiliar individual. “This is Joyce from Worldwide Business with Kathy Ireland. Kathy is impressed with your unique Box Latch™ gadgets and thinks they should be promoted all over the world. She is inviting you to come to California for an interview on her TV show highlighting sustainability products.”
What would you do? Be flattered that a former Miss America and successful businesswoman likes your products? Hang up? Contemplate your course of action?
Co-owners Jack and Jim did their research and bit the bait only to find out that the first three minutes cost $28,800 just to get on the show. We saw that lots of other big companies had been on this show so we should, too. It aired in the USA and internationally and we have an excellent professional video to show for it at youtu.be/_k3wurxGqVU.
What did we learn? A lot.
Would we do this again? No.
Why not?
As we filmed the segment with this attractive and ingratiating interviewer, we discovered we could barely say our names after hers in three minutes. So…you guessed it. Along came the upsell pitch, “To get your money’s worth, Jack and Jim, you really should extend this great segment to seven minutes.” Our question, “How much will that cost? Answer, “Only half as much as the initial three minutes.”
Our next question, “How much is that?” “Only $15,000.” Since three minutes was worthless, we gulped, bit the bullet, paid the additional $15,000, and left.
We received one direct inquiry after this aired on Fox Business News. It did not result in a sale. It has been viewed a mere 299 views on our website and YouTube channel. Since then we have been contacted by at least three different media platforms touting a similar opportunity.
What did we learn?
We should have hung up. This was the most embarrassing bad decision we have made during the life of our business. What we learned was that: 1) we cannot help our customers until we understand their unique problems, and 2) we hang up or block contacts from other media companies with similar offers.
If you have questions about closing and reusing boxes without the use of tape, please contact us – we’ll be happy to listen. If your problem is, “How do we hold box flaps down and out of the way while adding or removing contents,” click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oLuRchX24g, then place your order at boxlatch.com/shop.
If you’d like a free 20-minute listening session so we can review your supply chain logistics’ problem and would like to receive some free samples, contact Jim (EDT) at 570-359-2580, our company by email at info@boxlatch.com, or by texting Jack (CDT) at 920-541-3404.