It's psychological

[peterbirks]

My bank has gone mad. Or, rather, the marketing department has gone mad. They have sent me a cerise-coloured communication "produced from 75% recycled fibre using a totally chlorine free process". This has phrases like "ta very much" and "we love you" surrounded by hippie-like flowers. Oh, and, how could I forget, a packet of sunflower seeds.

Yes, never mind immediate interest on cash deposits, Smile Bank sends you sunflower seeds.


Now, give the bank's marketing department a bit more credit than you would give most marketing departments. It does say fairly on in the communication (font is Arial 10 point, I reckon, for you real studiers of marketing techniques) that "You're probably wondering why a bank's sending yo a packet of seeds".

Apparently it's because "we wanted to show that we appreciate you".

Well, put up the interest rate you pay me by a quarter of a percent.

Oh, and there's a competition. Take a snap of your sunflower and mail it to smile (electronically, of course, no paper here) and "the best photos will be posted on smile.co.uk later in the year".

Well, where's the fucking overlay in that?

++++++++

No, I'm being too harsh. Compared to most marketing stuff that I receive (and, like you all, I receive a LOT) this is quite good. I read it, I might even plant the seeds. And it did, yes, make me Smile.

But I still think that they've gone mad.

+++++++++

It was quite humorous suddenly finding myself at the same table as Hellmuth last night -- doing his PR for the low-stakes tables, I guess. Beat him up in two hands, while he suffered torrents of bollocks from twats watching from the rail ("What's the minimum buy-in?" wailed one player with, I assume, a bankroll more suited to 1c-2c) and, shortly after Hellmuth left, I saw the game collapse. Three of us were left (with one other guy playing at the other two tables I was at). So, these other six people were only sitting at the table because Hellmuth was there. Utterly baffling. Myself and the other multi-tabler had an enjoyable rant about "tourists", before giving up the table as a bad job.

Comments

Seeds on the Highway

[geoffchall.livejournal.com]

Yes I got my Smile seeds as well - and yes they did make me smile. I'll pass them on to the female members of the house that seem to care about these things a little more than I. I believe it's what the marketing trade used to call a 'hot potato' promotion where what was sent didn't really fit neatly into envelopes. Charities still send a pen in order to encourage you to give money to Christian Aid because they gave you a 3p pen with which to write the cheque.

But it all goes with the Smile ethos that they are a bunch of loveable whacky guys and girls who just happen to run a bank as well in their spare time. They just want to indicate their love for their customers which is why they are choosing to be nice to them (albeit with a pathetically cheap promotion). They probably do have a more amiable approach to their punters than every other bank I've dealt with, but there's a borderline being messed with here. Do they genuinely like customers or do they recognise that we will buy more services through them if we feel liked and therefore put on a pretense of liking us? Or both?

Some banks try and project professionalism to make us think they're trustworthy. Smile just put on a different face.

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

The fame game is strange one. I've had the pleasure (I came out ahead) of sitting with Erik Seidel a few times at FTP, and very pleasant he was too. Watching him in a HORSE sit-and-go was instructive: he won it, I bubbled, discovering that he played far tighter than me - and I thought I was playing pretty tight.

Not having Hellmuth's public persona, of course, Erik didn't have to suffer many idiots, although the number of "are you playing the WSOP this year?" queries must have got tedious.