Sales? What's that?

The coffee maker I've had - and been happy with - for around 20 years is beginning to show its age, so I thought I'd get a new one. Sadly, the page on its maker's website made no effort to retain a loyal customer.

Now, if a customer went into a shop and said to the assistant, 'I'm looking for a Cafe Mattino Coffee Machine', the assistant would take it that the customer either had one of the devices, or it had been recommended to them. Online, someone putting the exact name into Google [as I had] and arriving on the product's web page is, effectively, saying the same. 

In the shop, however, the salesperson would not just say 'it's obsolete' and leave it at that. I'll go further and say that wouldn't use the term 'obsolete' [who does?] they would use a softer term, such as 'it's no longer made', or 'it's no longer available'. 

But, and here's the point of this posting, the assistant would follow up - probably in the same sentence - with '... but we do have its replacement'. 

Indeed, a good salesperson would be more likely to say something like, 'Oh they were great machines weren't they, very popular - but the technology they used was getting old, so Morphy Richards replaced it with an updated version which has all the old features plus some new ones, and it looks more modern too.'

So why doesn't the website say something similar, with a link to the new product? 

I'm going to make the suggestion that it's because no one with a sales background was involved in the development of the website.

MINI? That's a BMW, right?

When teaching, I encouraged students to bring in examples of good and bad marketing to discuss as a class exercise. It seems old habits die hard – an ex-student sent me this.

The ad appeared on the home page of Microsoft Edge. What errors can you find?

Her answers – with which I agree – are shown below.


1 The ad is for MINI … the nice shiny car in the picture isn’t a MINI.

2 Each word is capitalized, even the one-character indefinite article. ‘MINI official UK site – request a 48 hour test drive’ is better. I’ll accept that beauty can be in the eye of the beholder in this case.

3 The message is rather formal – almost a command. ‘Request’ is also vague – requests can be rejected. Why not something like; Book your 48-hour test drive on MINI’s official UK website. Note, ‘site’ and ‘website’ are different things, there’s plenty of space for the extra four characters. And yes, you may think it picky, but ’48-hour’ is a compound adjective describing a noun, so it should be hyphenated.

4 A domain name thing. As per the copy text, the brand is MINI [an issue from when BMW bought mini] – so the presented domain name should be MINI.co.uk. You all know domain names aren’t case sensitive don’t you? I’m also wary about using capitals in directory and file names of a URL, but it’s not a deal breaker in this example.

5 I’ve saved the best – that is, worst – ‘til last. There is no such web page as https://www.mini.co.uk/New/Car – so the link doesn’t work … which means the ad is a TOTAL* waste of time and resources. * uppercase for emphasis.