Consumer Complaints

I started in this business working at a small direct mail agency.  We did work for various medical specialties.  Whenever a direct mail piece would drop, I would get a call from the office manager.  Generally, the office manager would be upset about phone calls from people who had received a copy of the piece.

"I've had a dozen phone calls from the post card this morning asking to have their names removed from the list," the person would say.

I went to the owner of the agency who gave me the greatest response to this call.

"A DOZEN calls... on the FIRST DAY!  That's PHENOMENAL!  Can I this as a feature in our next promotional piece?"

That generally did the trick... the office manager was reminded that response was the whole reason for advertising in the first place.  The call was a success for me, what the office did with that call was up to them.  Complainers always call first and they are a good gauge of the impact of the message and positive response yet to come.

Now that I'm on the client side, I'm closer to the complaints.  And now, with the widespread use of email, complaints are even easier to lob.  I've gotten all kinds.  My favorites are the ones that complain that the particular ad space that I'm using interferes with the reader's enjoyment of the newspaper and as a result the reader will never shop in my establishment. I generally send these folks gift certificates then I renew my contract reasoning that my visibility is good.

Today I got one saying that a television viewer saw my spot as one of 26 that ran in one hour of programming on one of the broadcast networks.  The writer said that my spot (and the 25 others) was skipped via DVR and that I was wasting the ad dollars.  If I could respond (fake email address) I would like to ask for a "Thank you" instead of a complaint since the ad dollars supported the programming he or she was enjoying.

The creative always brings out the most interesting complaints.  I'm currently running a spot comparing two customers.  One is slightly taller than the other and when we shot the ad the shorter man had the better facial expressions so he got to play the disappointed guy that went somewhere else to shop.  When we run the spot we get complaints that we're discriminating against short people.  Again, I know that the sales will be coming in because people are noticing the spots.

Complainers are a marketer's canary in the mine, a cheap early warning system.  No complainers, no impact.  The challenge is to keep the client from changing course at the first complaint.