​I ASKED THE advertising manager of a large organization with a sizable budget to tell me her advertising objective. Believe it or not, that’s something many an ad manager cannot do and has never considered.

“To produce inquiries,” she replied without hesitation. Impressed, I laid out what direct response marketers know, how they know it, and how they would devise a measurable campaign to produce inquiries. 

She heard me out. Well, she awaited her turn to talk. With patent parental pride, she showed me the advertisements that the organization’s outside ad agency created and was running for them. 

This is unusual for me: I found the wherewithal not to say that based on my experience the admittedly clever ads likely had the pulling power of brittle rubber bands. Instead, I asked, “How many inquiries have the ads produced?”

“None,’” she said, shrugging, “but they got noticed, so they did their job, right?

“If the objective was to get noticed, yes, but if the objective was to produce inquiries, no.”

Another shrug. “Yeah, well you can’t expect an ad to do that.” 

Actually, you can and you should. I could have sworn I had gone through that, but, just in case, I went through it again.

”Yeah, I know,” she said, “but the ads got noticed, so they did their job, right?”

Getting noticed requires no expertise. People with a body odor problem get noticed all the time. So do nails on chalkboards, dogs barking next door at midnight, and people who pick their nose in public.

I didn't say any of that. I could tell it was time to shut up. 

​I didn’t walk away with a new client.

​Call me a wimp, but I am not eager to invite a hacker or virus into my computer.

That’s why, when a company I do business with emails me a link to a great offer, I don’t click it. I log on to the company’s website and look for the offer there. 

If the marketer is smart, the offer will be featured prominently on the home page. If the marketer is less smart, I may have to search for it. If I can’t find the offer, it’s possible that I’m dealing with an incompetent marketer, but it’s more likely that I just dodged a phishing bullet.

Which brings me to this suggestion for marketers:

When you email your customers an offer, go ahead and provide a link so don’t lose lazier customers. But for security-minded customers who won’t mind an extra step or two, also provide prominent, easy-to-follow instructions for finding the offer on your website. And briefly explain why going that route is a good safety practice.

You’ll be educating customers on Internet safety, which is a valuable service. And you might just protect a customer or two from the next virus or hacker.

Recently, the glut of ready-to-cook-pre-measured-ingredients-to-your-door companies like Blue Apron had caught my attention. I knew they weren’t for me, however, because you still have to cook the stuff, which smacks of work. It was Freshly that hooked me. All you had to do was pop the meal in the microwave for two and half minutes. That level of effort I could handle.

Freshly extended a compelling introductory offer, a necessity in their business, so I gave them a try. A couple of weeks later, twelve, high-end, microwavable meals about the dimensions of a Stouffer’s entree arrived at my door. Each weighed around twelve ounces, give or take. They were packed cold, not frozen. 

Four meals into the twelve, this one-person jury reached a verdict. Freshly’s products were better than I’d feared but not good enough to keep ordering.

Steeling myself for what I was sure would be an ordeal, I returned to Freshly’s website to bail. A lot of companies make bailing difficult, which is a really dumb idea: Once a customer makes the decision to bail, making things difficult will not endear you.

Freshly was, pun intended, refreshingly different. Their site has easily-found, clear instructions for closing an account. They beg and plead along the way, of course, but they don’t make it difficult. Once your resignation is complete, they ask if you’d mind telling them why. I did. Not long after, I received a gracious email thanking me for giving them a try. “We’re sorry we let you down,” it said.

The experience left, pun intended again, a good taste in mouth. If you feel like giving Freshly a try, I have no hesitation assuring you it’s safe to proceed.

—Steve Cuno

​I’ll lead with the opening paragraph of Michael De Dora’s harrowing 2016 article in Religion Dispatches: 

Writer.

Hacked to death.

Think about that.

I live in a country where a tiny paragraph known as the First Amendment lets me express just about any thought I wish. I write not in hiding but from the comfort and safety of my living room. The worst consequence I face for speaking my mind might be the loss of a friend or two, possibly a client. Imprisonment? Execution? They are to me all but incomprehensible.

I am not content to sit here idly appalled. I am doing my part to help people who live where free speech is a capital offense. I support the Center for Inquiry’s Secular Rescue program:​

Why the focus on ​religious expression? Because no one takes more seriously the importance of religious freedom than secularists. As a secular organization, the Center for Inquiry understands there is no freedom of religion unless everyone has it, believers and non.

Even in the United States, there are geographic pockets where being Jewish, Muslim, or a non-believer is downright risky. One of the best ways to ensure religious persecution in the U.S. remains abhorrent is not to become inured to it—not to permit it—elsewhere in the world.

Moreover, lives are lives, no matter where victims live. If you would like to help save lives, I urge you to click here to learn more about supporting CFI’s Secular Rescue program.

—Steve Cuno

The prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka the Mormon Church, recently asked everyone to quit calling the Mormon Church “the Mormon Church,” to quit using “Mormon” as a modifier of, well, things Mormon, and even to quit using the initialization “LDS,” short for “Latter-day Saints.” It is, he said, “non-negotiable.”

Ironically, the request went out via the church’s MormonNewsroom.org.

I admit coming to the party a little late, since by now pretty much everyone has weighed in. My favorite commentaries so far are this one by self-described oxy-Mormon columnist Robert Kirby and this one by Boston Globe columnist and Mormon historian Alex Beam.

But since I’m a marketing consultant who knows a thing or two about brands and who happens to live in Utah, here I am, adding my two cents.

First cent: This isn’t the first time the church has made this request.

It made a similar appeal shortly before the Winter Olympics came to Salt Lake City in 2002. Among its worries was that in many minds “Mormon” invokes polygamy. That, and “Mormon Church” doesn’t sound like a Christian church, which the Mormon Church would like everyone to know it is.
 
The dictum didn’t work out in 2002. It won’t work out this time, either. 
 
Second cent: Chevy supports my point.

In 2010, the Chevrolet Division of General Motors Company asked everyone to stop saying “Chevy.” Pardon my resorting to marketing jargon, but: What a bunch of idiots. The market, not the company, came up with Chevy. It was convenient, endearing, and ensconced. There was no getting rid of it. Before long, the Chevrolet Division of General Motors Company came to its senses and re-embraced the nickname. 
 
Likewise, it was the market that bestowed “Mormons” on Mormons and “the Mormon Church” on the Mormon Church. It began as a term of derision but in time morphed into an inoffensive identifier. It wasn’t long before even the church embraced it. That’s why it’s the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, not The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Tabernacle Choir.

At least, for now.
 
Like the 2002 effort, the new directive will eventually disappear. The most devout and anal Mormons and the Mormon-owned press will do their best to follow the new directive. Outside of that, the press and ordinary, everyday people will continue using “Mormon.” Like “Chevy,” it is convenient, ensconced, and, at least to some, endearing.

In time, the church will give in—again. There will be no special announcement. The church will simply stop raising the issue and let it go quietly away.

​EVIL MARKETERS must soon cease from tricking people into believing that soybean plants have mammary glands. FDA chair Scott Gottlieb wants to make it illegal to label as milk any product that doesn’t come from a lactating animal.

That’s right. You can breathe easy, knowing you will never again be taken in by the likes of soy, rice, almond, macadamia nut, and other so-called “milks.”

The proposed regulation comes not a moment too soon. Heaven forbid someone might try to milk an almond tree. Or that Playboy​ might feature a rice pictorial.

Meanwhile, it’s perfectly okay to market alternative medicine as medicine, chiropractors and naturopaths as physicians, product-based pyramid schemes as network marketing, and organic and natural products as if they weren’t cons riding the Appeal to Nature Fallacy.

Concerned citizen that I am, I have prepared a list of products for Gottlieb’s future crackdowns:

• Peanut butter isn’t really butter.
• Naugas don’t have hides.
• Chili peppers aren’t of the pepper family. 
• Mars bars aren’t made on Mars.
• A quarter pounder costs way more than a quarter per pound.
• There is no tooth in toothpaste.
• Facebook isn’t a book.
• Best Foods’s foods aren’t the best foods.
• Honeycomb cereal doesn’t contain honeycombs.
• Lady Gaga is really Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.
• ​​​Shih tzus aren’t real dogs.
• Lululemon products contain no lemon.

​If you’re so cynical as to suspect that the dairy industry is behind the proposed change, let me state clearly and for the record that, well, yeah, it is. Which is funny for two reasons. (1) A word change will be a revelation to no one. Alt-milk sales aren’t growing like mad among people who don’t know a macadamia nut from a cow, but among people who know what’s in real milk and don’t want to consume it. (2) By lobbying for the word change, the dairy industry makes itself (and Gottlieb) look silly.

Mind you, I support the FDA. Most of the time. I like the sense of security that comes from knowing I’m consuming products that have passed scrutiny. Moreover, readers of this blog know I’m no defender of misleading advertising. I might add, too, that I love milk. Chocolate milk is the food of the gods. And, no, I have no alt-milk clients.

Thing is, the idea behind the FDA is consumer, not industry, protection. Until a significant portion of the population are misled into thinking they can milk magnesium, the proposed crackdown protects no consumer. The FDA should tell the dairy industry to pipe down. Otherwise, we’ll have to find another word for milking, as in, the U.S. dairy industry is already milking the federal government for 73 percent of its revenues. 

Last week I wrote about the Center for Inquiry’s (CFI) needful and courageous suit against CVS pharmacies for marketing homeopathic—a euphemism for medical quackery—products alongside real medicine. A new video from CFI, below, will tell you more. I recommend watching all two minutes of it now, while it’s on your mind.

I’m a longstanding CFI member and supporter. I urge you to join and support them as well.