The EDEO Epidemic

The Center for Marketing Disease Control & Prevention (CMDC&P) has just declared a Marketing Epidemic.

The Employee Discounts for Every One (EDEO) marketing virus is no longer contained to just automakers. CMDCP Fields Agents have reported numerous employee discount virus outbreaks affecting national, regional, and local retailers. The widespread outbreak of the EDEO marketing virus has forced the CMDC&P to declare a marketing epidemic.

However, this strain of the EDEO marketing virus has mutated slightly. The EDEO marketing virus affecting automakers lasted for months on end but this new strain lasts only weeks, sometimes just days, and is generally focused on select products only.

For example, FCMDCP Field Agents have filed the following reports:

CompUSA offered employee discounts on select laptop and desktop computers for only two-days

Bealls Department Store offered its customers a 30% OFF employee discount for one day earlier this month

Moana Nursery in Reno, NV, recently offered its 30% OFF employee discount to customers for five-days only

Phoenix AZ-based Condor Golf retailer is currently offering its customers employee discounts ranging from 10% to 30% OFF regular retail priced items
SOURCE | Wall Street Journal article

Short of mandating a moratorium on discounting, The Center for Marketing Disease Control & Prevention is urging all retailers to exercise extreme caution when designing marketing programs to increase sales.

While the CMDC&P is working on a marketing vaccine to eradicate the EDEO marketing virus, the Brand Autopsy Discount Detox Center is once-again making available its Marketing Intervention Guidelines (read below).

The following Marketing Intervention Guidelines from the Brand Autopsy Discount Detox Center will help you positively confront a marketer who is severely dependent and is unwilling or unable to see the severity of their addiction to discounting.

Bring together a minimum of three and maximum of eight people who are important to the business and to the marketer in particular. The best marketing intervention groups have a broad mix of people including some from outside the company such as customers and vendors.

Set up a planning meeting with all participants to discuss the intervention. Be very discreet in all your actions so as not to alert the suffering marketer.

Each group member is to write a letter to the addicted marketer listing how they may have helped to enable the addiction and all the negative consequences caused by the marketer’s addiction. Each letter should close with a statement asking the marketer to seek treatment for their addiction. [Sample Letter PDF]

Rehearse the intervention with all the group members. And at this meeting, set a date, time, and place for the actual intervention to occur. You will also need to create a plan to bring the addicted marketer to the intervention as well as choose a treatment center. If the chosen treatment center is out-of-town, then you will need to make necessary travel arrangements.

The intervention group will need to identify objections the addicted marketer may use to avoid or postpone treatment and then formulate appropriate responses.

Plan to be at the intervention location 30 minutes before the addicted marketer is expected to arrive.

At the intervention, confront the addicted marketer by reading your letters aloud, editing out anger, blame, and judgment. Read the best, most heartfelt and tender letter last. (Usually a letter from a concerned customer cracks any addicted marketer’s wall of denial.)

After the intervention, call the admissions staff at the chosen treatment center and let them know whether or not the addicted marketer has agreed to treatment.

Collect all letters and send them to the addicted marketer’s counselor at the treatment center.