Another great story, well a sad one really but still a jaw dropper.

One of my previous employers who shall remain nameless ran one of the most costly and ineffective marketing campaigns I have ever heard of (this was before I worked there of course). They had decided to run a big direct mail campaign sending out branded scooters. You know the razor ones that were all the rage about 5 years ago. Somewhere along the line the zip code column got moved around and it didn’t line up with the correct addresses. No one realized the problem until the scooters started coming back. They ended up paying FedEx twice, once to ship it there and once to ship it back because the zip code was wrong. So no one got the scooters and the marketing team had spent their budget on the scooters and all the shipping. Too bad – no one got a scooter.

When I started working there over a year after the Oops, they were still trying to give those darn scooters away. In fact I think I might still have one in my garage….

These marketers were also of the mindset that if you could get 100 t-shirts for $6 a piece then getting 1000 shirts for $4 a piece is a better deal. Even though no more than 100 people ever worked at the company. Saving money by buying in bulk is good but only if you can consume the larger amount.

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