Saturday 16 February 2013

Marketing Lessons Learned from Horsemeat Scandal

You will have had to have been hiding under a rock to have missed hearing the words 'Horsemeat Scandal' over the last few weeks.

It all started with a burger and has since snowballed with large food manufacturers like Findus being thrown into the frame.  The latest reports indicate schools and hospitals have been supplied with beef products that contained horsemeat - and so it goes on!

But what can we take from this? It seems that no one is really outraged at the fact they have been nibbling on Red Rum's extended family, some even commented that they thought the food they had been mis-sold tasted good. The problem lies simply in the description. Calling meat 'beef' when in fact it is 'horse' is where the issue really lies.

As business owners we can learn from this. If your product looks, smells, tastes, or proves itself to be good - your customers don't really mind about how you came to produce it. What they DO want is to know EXACTLY what it is they are buying. So when marketing your product or service:

  • Be clear and concise
  • When limited by character on social media channels such as Twitter, post links to more information
  • When agreeing contracts of work, ensure you have gone through the fineprint carefully to avoid conflict later
  • Use pictures where possible
  • Be honest!
Check out this Guardian article for more on the scandal.

Monday 4 February 2013

Happy Birthday Facebook!

Mark Zuckerburg's Social Media baby turns 9 today!



On 4th February 2004 the site was first launched from a Harvard University dorm by Mark and his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes .  The site, which was orginally called thefacebook.com, has become the most well known and well used social media site across the world with more than 1 billion users.

Since its creation facebook has grown at rapid rate, inspiring a movie 'The Social Network', making a public listing in May 2012, turning its creator into a multi-millionaire and become a common social reference in media.

I wonder if in the days when Zuckerburg's site required you to have a college email address to join that he could have forseen what a giant it would become.