I recently arrived at a meeting only to be told it had been cancelled (see our previous rant about meeting etiquette here, so as I headed out of the car park I handed my parking ticket to someone who was just arriving. Is this illegal? If so, let’s just say it was a hypothetical car park. Either way, I was rewarded for my good deed by a fairly lengthy lecture……. “I’m a marketing consultant, your car has your company name, logo and strap line on it, but doesn’t tell me what you do, this is bad practice because…. blah, blah, blah …. here’s my card”.

Now, I may have already been a teeny bit grumpy, but this sparked 4 main observations.

1. Boring people isn’t an effective sales tool

2. If you are clearly boring people, it’s not going to help if you then give them your card

3. Car parks aren’t great places for networking (although see an exception in Big Business Rule No 3 Spend more time out of the office than in it!

and the one which I really want to talk about…..

4. Even when you are right (and he is right), you need to ask some questions and get into some sort of discussion before you can crow bar in some free advice. Had he asked any questions I could have explained that having trialed various versions of on-car branding, the version without the detailed company description actually performed better as a lead generator that one which ticked more of the “things to do in marketing” boxes. Guidelines, check lists, rules and suggestions are brilliant, but how you apply them is everything. Brands and organisations are highly individual and each will respond differently to how you treat them. We know we bang on about data a fair bit, but it really is powerful. When you try anything new, make sure you’ll know whether it works better, or worse, than the other things you’ve tried. This won’t stop well meaning people critiquing you in car- parks, but it might make you feel better about it afterwards.

 

Go-on, make us feel better – let us know your examples of conventional wisdom which doesn’t work for you, or even the best piece of advice you’ve been given in a car park (keep it clean).