My Google Alert keyword search turned up an interesting forum discussion from Malaysia last week. Someone was upset that a mobile operator there had introduced a US$0.88 charge for sending out a paper bill because eBilling is now available to their customers. Nothing unusual, but I noticed that as I read down the postings (or in most cases, rantings), the rhetoric became more heated and passionate. What started off as a fairly reasonable, minor complaint ended up with the company being lambasted for being unethical and greedy; for profiteering and introducing illegal charges! Based on this forum, the poor company appears to be second only to Al Qaeda in the Axis of Evil! And I'm sure their Public Relations department has since been in a spin, trying to contain the fall-out!
For anyone living in South Africa, just the mention of the words "City of Johannesburg" or "Municipality" is enough to make you want to pull every last remaining hair out your head...
My year long tantrum started when I received a R120,000 (about $16,000) utility bill from my local municipality for water and electricity consumption, of which water constituted 95% of the bill. Now this would not have been that unusual or surprising if I happened to be "running a small bottling plant in my backyard and I was illegally distributing my own private label mineral water" as suggested by a rather unhelpful and rude customer service agent!
I recently received an email from someone with the title "Demand Generation Specialist". This got me thinking – mostly about who dreams up these titles?
It dawned on me that maybe the term "Salesman" wasn't cool anymore – but I soon realised that Demand Generation is a neat new buzz word in the lexicon of sales and marketing teams. Same work – different words.
The idea is to use all sorts of media to tell people about your products and services and get them to phone you!
Wow! Novel! Gotta try that – or wait? Isn't this what marketing has been trying to do for years?
Recent Comments
Flint Says:
"Don't forget that we like that big companies don't have their acts together. That way they have to buy solutions from us!"
»
post a reply
Alison Treadaway Says:
"@Rob McGregor: the short answer is yes. Our secure PDF format works on most mobile O/S assuming the recipient has the appropriate PDF Reader."
»
post a reply
twitter
rss
newsflash
facebook
linkedin 
Comment
