Editor’s Leader

Fifteen police officers and a dozen or so members of the British Army bomb squad surrounded my hitherto leafy, suburban office one lunchtime last month, after a report of a suspicious vehicle parked across the pavement right outside my window. On the back seat of the car was a back-pack with wires clearly poking out of it and stuck on the windscreen was a (badly) hand-written sign shouting: ‘Explosion’.

   After about an hour of being confined to the building (”Step away from the window, Madam”) and with the surrounding area sealed off to traffic and passers-by, about eight buildings – including mine – were given orders to evacuate: pronto. I spent the next three hours sitting in a nearby park, clutching a plastic bag containing my computer back-up gadget, some page proofs and a red pen. Finally, seven loud but apparently controlled explosions shattered the nervous silence and the nice man at the cafe sold out of home-made cake.

   I found out later the car and its contents were part of a campaign by an ‘enterprising’ door-to-door salesman who was promoting a book, titled: Explosion. There followed talk of throwing the book at him . . .

   On the subject of stopping the traffic . . . a friend of mine has been having motorbike lessons in light of a new romance with a Harley-Davidson owner. Uncharitable chums are sniggering about a mid-life crisis and which part of her body she will tattoo with the logo of the Harley Owners Group (HOG. Ho! Ho!), as she desperately bids to look the part amid fellow easy riders.

   I wonder, are Honda riders similarly loyal? Would anyone so proudly print indelibly upon themselves the brand name of Tesco or Burger King? Virgin, perhaps!
   Harley-Davidson has been speeding down the highway of customer satisfaction Shangri-La for years and is now lapping up the elixir of brand advocacy on the ‘super highway’ – the web, where the kings of customer loyalty blog their devotion.

   As for my motorcycling friend – although as thin as a popstar, she is now dieting so she will squeeze into branded leathers she has bought thriftily on eBay, with a nod to the credit crunch. She’s on the right track – why spend hundreds of pounds when you can snap up a true bargain for pennies?

   Why, for example, spend £368 when £1.47 would clinch an equally great deal? Re-read those figures . . . they are an actual example of how cost per acquisition compared in one sexy but £368 ‘above-the-line’ campaign against a switched-on, digital ‘below-the-line’ £1.47 version.

   Now, doesn’t that really get your direct marketing motor running . . ?

Sally Hooton is the editor of DMI magazine.