Here and there, random thoughts on food, photos, marketing, & customer service

So while browsing the headlines at cnn.com I saw a side bar banner ad for Dockers pants pop up to the right of the news story I was reading.

Now, I’m not a banner-clicking guy generally speaking, but sometimes they really hit their mark, and something pops up that looks like it was a match for me. Good job banner marketing person! Okay, so the Dockers brand is not exactly exciting anymore, and to me it’s dead in terms of work pants. For more then ten years I bought only Dockers khakis and nothing else (w/ pleats no less). About 5 years ago I stopped and made a switch to LL Bean. More recently I’ve mixed in a few pairs of 5.11’s. (Both hold up great BTW)

I switched away from Dockers because their sizes and quality were all over the map. When I started with them they had good fit and good quality material. They seemed to hold up well, and when I bought them I would write the date I bought them on the label and note when they wore out. As time wore on, and the purchase date and the retirement date got closer and closer together it was easy to see that that quality was inconsistent, and I eventually gave up.

I also hate trying on pants in the store, I would take size measurements at home and had carefully noted the size of my other pairs of Dockers, and I’d buy the same size. I ended up with at least half a dozen pairs that I bought that did not fit, or ones I got for Christmas when someone had inquired about my pants size. No matter, the sizes were often wrong.

So why all this talk of pants? Well to be honest I really burn though them at work. I’m under desks running Ethernet, unloading trucks, making deliveries, trying to jam servers into racks, and most pants don’t hold up well. Trust me, I’ve tried all the brands. Dockers, for a long time was in my findings the best bang for the buck, in terms of an all around work clothing item.

So when I saw the Dockers banner ad stating that “Some Pants Go With Rolling Up Your Sleeves”, I was like cool, maybe they have a new type of pants or they improved their quality, or something. From the look of the photo, it looked like they might be a tad tougher, I don’t know. That’s why I clicked. Well, guess where the ad dumped me? http://www.dockers.com. No new news about new pants, no info that was related to the ad I clicked on, just you wanted Dockers, you got Dockers, all of it in fact, mens, ladies, pants, shirts, shorts, all of it. What’s up with that? I clicked on an ad for men’s pants, and you’re gonna’ dump me just at the front door? Take me inside, show me what you have that’s new and make it something that has something to do with the ad I clicked on.

I don’t have any more Dockers, and I guess there aren’t any in my near future. Nothing on the site is calling out to me. I will give them Brownie point for the 360-degree video clips for their four styles of pants. That’s cool, but still over priced (IMHO. To be honest I have not shopped for Dockers recently, but the last time I looked they were $40 to $50 a pair. LL Bean is at least $20 less If I recall and I can get a solid 2 years of wear of out of them when rotating thru my pants “inventory”), and no mention of an improvement in any department. Oh, and I had to click though to “Mens Pants” to find what the ad might have been talking about.

In terms of on-line marketing, when I click on something I’m looking for info, and I’m looking for something clever. At this point I almost expect it when I click. The stuff that’s cool. I talk about and often buy (or at least remember for later). When you’re marketing to potential clients, make sure you make an impact when they come visit, and especially if you’re paying per click.

Also, Dockers is running a sweepstakes. If you sign up for their newsletter you might win 5 pairs of Dockers pants. Wow, that’s really going to grab me, Not! Why not run an ad that’s like sign up for our newsletter and 1 in 100 will win a pair of pants of their choice. Or, everyone who signs up and remains a subscriber will be entered in our weekly/monthly drawing for cool Dockers apparel. I have to say this just stuns me. Maybe they know something about e-mail newsletter sign ups that I don’t. If I’m missing the point, please let me know.

Update: 8/19/09: Once I write about something on my Blog, I think about what I wrote for a few days after, and I usually come up with a few other things. This post was not really to bust on the Dockers brand, but more to talk about how they missed the mark on grabbing me again as part of their target market. I also failed to mention that in the case of Dockers and a number of other brands I tried, I would cut the nameplate designer label off the outside of the pants. To me, I thought the “brand” on my backside was kind of weird, and I’ve been cutting the labels off (at least the big ugly ones) off my jeans for years. Don’t get excited Levi’s folks, I have not bought a pair of jeans in quite a while, and I only wear them to the farm these days. My last three pairs are pretty much on their last “legs”, so I might be buying a new pair or two real soon.

Using Twitter to keep clients and prospects informed and in touch is a fantastic business tool. If your followers are following you to obtain useful information about your field of expertise or your company, then don’t alienate them by posting too frequently or posting useless info.

I follow 55 people, companies, and organizations that help me keep a finger on the pulse of my clients, friends, and what’s happening in Annapolis and Baltimore. I know there’s lots of folks that follow far more than that. I also know that many users also automatically “follow” anyone that follows them. That’s a nice gesture, but are you kidding me? How are you going to keep up with updates from 500 people? That makes Twitter and the valuable information it contains totally useless. Talk about info overload!

Several months ago I was following a buddy who is a very involved Twitter user in area who is very well connected in the Twitter community, but he updated to Twitter just too much. I could not stand it. I kept hoping that the frequent Tweets would pay off and help me stay informed and connect with more business and information in the region. I know this guy personally, but after six months I stopped following him. I hung in there until I just could not stand it anymore. He also Tweets for his company as well and I also follow them (until today). Same problem. He just could not stop tweeting about stuff that just had no meaning to me. I don’t think it’s only me (at least I hope not).

I use Tweetie to stay in touch with Twitter, and this morning he had 10 posts in a row about what a nice day it was, how great it was to be alive, and hello to this person, and thanks to that person, and follow this person or that person, or how certain people were cool or whatever was too much to handle. I stopped following the company behind that Twitter account. I feel bad about it, as I know I’ll be missing out on some info gems that are scattered in between the other useless info. As time went on the useful info declined while incessant useless static was posted.

I dropped another guy today too. He posted 10 or more posts in a row with #followfriday info. Okay that’s cool, but do you really expect people to put up with that? I don’t have time to click on over 100 Twitter users to see if I want to also follow them. This is not some random dude either, he’s a regional marketing player with good connections. I stated following him based on a recommendation from someone else (via Twitter), and because of where he works and who he is, it looked to be a great person to follow. Nope. He just posted useless info and “social” stuff.

I don’t mean to be a sour puss, but If you post useless info ten times in a row, people are going to drop you. I see Twitter users post complaints about losing followers all the time, I know some of it is Twitter SPAM, but I think much of it is folks dropping off because of the white Twitter noise.

There are people on Twitter with massive amounts of followers, and some of them have figured out how to build an army of followers. They don’t do it by following everyone in the universe, they do it by posting useful, interesting, relevant, and sometimes funny posts. A good example is Scott Bourne (http://twitter.com/ScottBourne) he’s a pro photographer (it’s a hobby of of mine). Some of his posts are annoying, but not too many of them. He also posts ALOT, but they all mostly contain info that I want to know about. Lots of his posts are self promoting, but there’s lots of other good info liberally mixed in. You know it’s the real deal when you’re following 188 people and you have 23,430 people following you!

Ok, what am I looking for? I want cool info on cool, in-touch people who are experts in their field and have interesting things to say. Not everything has to be up my alley, but as long as the ratio of interesting and compelling info is greater then the in between tweets of looking for a couch to crash on in the UK (which is somehow funny anyways) then we’re cool. Look up Dave Troy (http://twitter.com/davetroy) if you’re looking for an example of another person using Twitter the right way. You might get a few tweets in a row but they mostly have meaning. He does stuff, but he posts about the stuff that is “interesting” and “compelling”. He might tell you that he’s thinking about picking out some wine for dinner, but you won’t hear about that topic again, and the wine he talks about sounds pretty good too! (Ok, Dave’s a pal, but the other guy I dropped is a friend too).

If you want to throw out a tweet about what’s for lunch, that’s cool (Let’s hope it’s vegan) but make it interesting, and don’t do it everyday. If you do, that’s going to get real old real fast. If you’re trying to use Twitter for business, then your clients (and potential clients are watching) don’t piss them off.

I’m assuming that the folks following MacMedics (http://twitter.com/macmedics) are people who want to hear about stuff about Macs. I’ve never posted my wine choices or where I’m heading for lunch to them. They are important as they help pay the rent, and to me it’s a “professional” relationship. Ever hear the saying don’t mix business with pleasure? I have a personal Twitter account (http://twitter.com/danastibolt) where I post announcements about my personal Blog, funny pictures, what I’m having for lunch every now and again. everyone who follows there there is a friend, I’m assuming that’s what they want to hear about.

I’ve picked up some vegan followers based on my posts about vegan issues, so I have a few “followers” too, but I don’t abuse them.

Keep your posts revenant and your followers will thank you by continuing to follow you. If they do, then it’s a win-win situation for everyone.

I saw some of my fellow Twitter peeps use a new service called twitpic for posting pictures to Twitter. Sounds like a fun and efficient way to put a picture on the Internet and share it via Twitter. I posted 4 or 5 pictures over the last few months, and thought very little of it.
This week when a Macintosh iBook G4 came in with a it’s keyboard ripped off (like a monkey got a hold of it), I thought it would be fun to post it and share with my Twitter followers, so I did.

So when I went to review the picture after twitpic failed to post my picture to the Twitter feed, I was greeted with the ad of a competitor right next to my post. The example above shows an ad for Progressive Auto Insurance, not the ad I was talking about! You might not have a competitor showing picture or video based Google Adword ads, but in the process of trying to get a good example to pop back up, there were all kinds of ads, including one for a national restaurant chain displaying a video ad of their latest cheeseburger. While I can handle that, I am a vegan, so perhaps I don’t want pictures/videos of burgers displayed next to funny pictures of broken Macs, iPods, and iPhones displayed for other friends/clients that might be more sensitive to that sort of thing. Matter of fact, I don’t think I want any advertising next to any of my pictures.

Lesson learned. From now on I will just post my pictures to my images folder on my website and leave sites that are supported by Google Adwords “out of the picture”.