Many things can happen to your business via external sources. A supplier may fail you, a competitor may undersell you, A customer may bad mouth you. What ever the reason, your marketing and service function should have a plan ready to all eventualities. Recently a major wind storm blew through our city, wreaking havoc on many structures.
Two of the local area merchants, both national corporations were affected as well. 7-11 and Petro Canada. Both of these retailers had plastic signs with a metal frame. The wind was so strong that the plastic blew out crashing to bits against the pavement. The Petro Can, was right at a major intersection. When I went out for a walk and took these pictures for our community facebook page, the 7-11 had cleaned up the mess leaving just the empty sign. The Petro Canada had not done so yet. It took a couple of days for the debris to disappear as hundreds of vehicles drove over it, risking tire punctures in the process.
So how did these stories affect your image of the businesses? How do you think the people driving over the plastic in the intersection felt about Petro Canada? From a Marketing and Advertising perspective, how much money will it take to make us forget about the bad feelings we have over a bad neighbor?
So if you can't respond to adversity well then be ready to spend a lot of time and money to correct the bad feelings. If you can correct it at all. Until next time, I am Larry "The Ad Man".
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