Scissors

Greetings, moose followers. Your author is a regular listener to Radio 4, particularly in the car, where it invariably provides me with something to shout at rather than at those other motorists who drive to another worldly highway code. Just recently, I was listening to an article, which on the face of it, was a bit of a feel-good piece about a manufacturer of hand made scissors in Sheffield. But underneath the storyline lay what would appear a classic example of the British wet-your-finger-and-stick-it-in-the-breeze school of marketing.

The company concerned had been making scissors and shears by hand and to exacting standards clearly since Adam was a lad. However, the economic downturn had meant that sales had slumped, the staff had been put on a two-day week, the Managing Director, who was obviously a decent man, had sacrificed most of his own income to avoid redundancies. Lady Luck intervened in the form of the Media Department at Sheffield University, who wanted to make a video on manufacturing, and chose our scissor manufacturer for the course project. The completed video was uploaded to You Tube, and shot around the globe much to the delight of the company whose order books are now overflowing. ‘It went viral’ said the MD; a word bandied around with relish by those who have only just discovered it, and rarely with such glee by the medical profession.

Of course it’s a feel-good piece, great for employment, flag waving for quality British manufacturing, etc., etc.. However, look at the underlying logic. No matter how good the video is – and it is, check it out – it is not capable of persuading those people suddenly to think ‘I need some hand-made scissors’; they would have wanted them anyway, but didn’t know that our scissor company existed. The company had said that their sales were all online, which suggests that is also where the bulk of the marketing push was too, but clearly not as targeted as it could have been. One can’t help think that if the marketing department had ever existed, it will have been cut because of the downturn, and if it hadn’t been cut, then it obviously wasn’t doing a very good job.

Those of us who ‘do’ marketing for a living know that half of the job is sleuthing; where are the customers, and how best to sell to them. It’s also very difficult to explain to those businesses whose MD ‘does’ the marketing themselves and claim that it’s worked well that they could have been far more successful had they got a professional in, either outsourced or recruited. It’s still a good story, and despite professional annoyance, I couldn’t help but smile at the outcome.