Marketing Games WSs Play....

CHR

CHR

Design matters
Nov 28, 2002
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Anaheim
www.avantegardens.com
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CA
Ran across a couple instances of ... let's just say 'dubious' content ... and thought I'd share.

1) We all know 'free vase' claims in advertising just aren't true when it comes to florist-delivered orders. The customer is paying for the vase. Period. No florist I know has ever agreed to deliver a free vase for a WS.

But it's a powerful claim, and is popping up in TF coupons online. (See example below.) Very disappointing.
TF-Free-Vase.jpg

2) 'Free Shipping' is also a false claim when it comes to florist-delivered flowers sold through a WS (and the claim cost 1-800 a couple Million $ and a lawsuit). So I was surprised to run across a TF.com page claiming 'free shipping'. Cunningly, the page viewed by web surfers actually has nothing about 'free shipping' on it all. TF-Free-Shipping.jpg

But if you look at the source code (screen shot) you'll see the webmaster placed 'free shipping' in the title tag to game search engines and draw visitors. TF-Free-Shipping-Source.jpg

Will shoppers be irritated by not receiving 'free shipping'? Likely. But will some continue into the shopping cart and finish the purchase anyway? Likely, too.

Seems 'everybody' is pushing the envelope when it comes to truth in advertising these days.

It's so hard to resist copying what they do - despite knowing it's blatantly untruthful....
pencil.png
 
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Nicole?

This reads like a Bloomstoday ad, it is deplorable. I am constantly amazed at these ploys to furthur erode an already fragile industry and frankly, I'm disgusted to say the least. I don't even know what to say anymore.

What the hell are you thinking?
 
Hard to justify associating with a company like Teleflora anymore! Hard to believe also that the Resnicks have such low business standards!
 
anytimeflowers said:
This reads like a Bloomstoday ad, it is deplorable. I am constantly amazed at these ploys to furthur erode an already fragile industry and frankly, I'm disgusted to say the least. I don't even know what to say anymore.

What the hell are you thinking?
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sorry can't resist..... they are saving the florists :)
 
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What I want to know is:

If flowers are such a sought after gift, why is it that people can be duped into all these gimmicks for them...

Now I went to the grocery store yesterday, in need of some glads, I didn't have the right color and they are in season...The grocery store had 10 bunches of the deadest glads that they told me over the phone they had...When I got there I had a bit of a chat with the girl and asked some questions, on if whe would buy them, her answer was no they are dead, Then I asked well why would you try to sell them to me...her answer, because people will buy them dead or not because they don't know any better....unbelievable...so I say we all just start marking everything up to include all the cockoo charges to everyone and keeping our flowers out to the public that are passed and pawn them off on all those that just don't know any better because that seems to be the name of the game in retail these days...sell it and then worry about it later, cash in your pocket now is way more important than the problems associated with the sale after the fact, disgusting is what it is!
 
I have another grocery store story. My cousin is one of the main floral buyers for the chain "Publix" big here in floirda. One day after a few drinks I told her what I tought of the flowers at her stores.............she replied, "we don't care what we have to throw away" we want the sale first (just like the previous person mentioned) and that the number of returns for flowers in her chain was about 5%. I found that hard to believe at frist that only 5 out of 100 people would buy dead flowers and then when they really die tom. they wouldn't bring them back........................Then to add furthere insult they charge "no labor" factor on the fresh arr. that they make in some stores and her reasoning is "the employees already being paid and hourly rate". So why would we wnat to charge more labor?????? I drank a little faster and then I realized..........they ain't florists...............well I've said enough, she's family.........
 
Sorry, I've been caught up in other things for a few days (my job is changing a bit, so I'll have less time in general to spend working with you all, my apologies for this) and just noticed the new content to this thread now.

I really have no idea about those things, so I'll do some looking and try to find out. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

-N
 
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lori042499 said:
the name of the game in retail these days...sell it and then worry about it later, cash in your pocket now is way more important than the problems associated with the sale after the fact, disgusting is what it is!
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Sounds like a wire service...................
 
CHR said:
1) We all know 'free vase' claims in advertising just aren't true when it comes to florist-delivered orders. The customer is paying for the vase. Period. No florist I know has ever agreed to deliver a free vase for a WS.

But it's a powerful claim, and is popping up in TF coupons online.
Click to expand...

Aaand, it's not true here, either. I suspected this was the case, but am glad I held my response until I confirmed with our affiliate marketing person - this is unsupported copy from an affiliate marketing partner. Some partners take it upon themselves to try 'juicier' language than we usually use and in the case of these kinds of promotions, we do send correction letters asking them to remove the content when we see it. That is exactly what we have done in this case.

So, to be clear, this was NOT a Teleflora approved offer and we have already asked them to remove that language.

I'm still following up on the 'free shipping' thing.
 
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CHR said:
'Free Shipping' is also a false claim when it comes to florist-delivered flowers sold through a WS (and the claim cost 1-800 a couple Million $ and a lawsuit). So I was surprised to run across a TF.com page claiming 'free shipping'. Cunningly, the page viewed by web surfers actually has nothing about 'free shipping' on it all. View attachment 13204

But if you look at the source code (screen shot) you'll see the webmaster placed 'free shipping' in the title tag to game search engines and draw visitors.
Click to expand...

Happy to report that was an honest error, as well, Cathy. We hired an outside SEO company to do some optimization and 'free shipping' was one of their suggested terms - we didn't notice that they'd instituted it on a page (they did a few hundred pages and individual edits) and this one slipped past our SEO team. They're happy for the help finding this mistake and will be removing it quickly. We're committed to only responsible SEO and certainly never engage in shady practices when we know better.

Thanks!
 
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NicoleAtTF said:
We hired an outside SEO company to do some optimization and 'free shipping' was one of their suggested terms
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Nicole - thanks for the follow-up.

I'm curious how/why a company would SEO for 'free shipping' when they don't/can't offer it. Hard to believe TF would allow an SEO company direct access to it's servers without having controls/reports to track and monitor all changes made by the firm.

As far as the 'overzealous affiliates' go, isn't someone in the office assigned to monitor the claims being made?

Speaking of overzealous affiliates: Can someone take a look at this claim of $20 off any TF product on the site? Except for a very few items, the OG has marked up the TF Suggested Retail Price by $20 to discount it back to the 'original' price. This is a clear violation of FTC rules - and the company is using TF products and the TF network (plus TF web hosting for the shopping cart portion of the site). TF's web hosting team is surely aware of the scam since they had to program the software to show the 'prices' and 'discounts'.

These kinds of scams are exactly what local florists need saved from. Thanks!
 
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CHR said:
As far as the 'overzealous affiliates' go, isn't someone in the office assigned to monitor the claims being made?
Click to expand...
Naw... it's just like the US Congress... it's all good until you get busted, then you say you're sorry and move on.
 
CHR said:
Nicole - thanks for the follow-up.

I'm curious how/why a company would SEO for 'free shipping' when they don't/can't offer it. Hard to believe TF would allow an SEO company direct access to it's servers without having controls/reports to track and monitor all changes made by the firm.

As far as the 'overzealous affiliates' go, isn't someone in the office assigned to monitor the claims being made?

Speaking of overzealous affiliates: Can someone take a look at this claim of $20 off any TF product on the site? Except for a very few items, the OG has marked up the TF Suggested Retail Price by $20 to discount it back to the 'original' price. This is a clear violation of FTC rules - and the company is using TF products and the TF network (plus TF web hosting for the shopping cart portion of the site). TF's web hosting team is surely aware of the scam since they had to program the software to show the 'prices' and 'discounts'.

These kinds of scams are exactly what local florists need saved from. Thanks!
Click to expand...

Cathy-
We do have someone for affiliates, but she's one person, so if they get a bit overzealous, it's difficult for her to police these things alone. We do have approved language, but again, sometimes in the interest of doing a little better, our affiliates 'tweak' the language we give them, and in this case, they tweaked it to say 'free vase'.

As for the SEO thing, again, we do have controls in place, but with the volume of work that the vendor did on our behalf, that one instance was kind of like a needle in a haystack. We didn't find it for all of the other content, but you did when you accidentally got poked... I hope that helps?

We do sometimes stretch ourselves thinly so that we can cover more ground, which means that sometimes oversight isn't as tight as it might be otherwise.

Oh, forgot to respond to your Q about Wesley Berry - I'll see if it's anything we had to do with. It's entirely possible that Wesley Berry has decided to subsidize the discount themselves, though. We'll see what I find out.
 
my question to the whole "free shipping" thing is that TF doesn't ship!!


Yet !
 
looks like they need to hire another person to work in the "affiliates" part of TF since they are having a problem keeping up with all the dishonest business practices! Since this is such a huge area to keep track of & they only have ONE person working in that department, give me a break! hum.......maybe that is done on purpose, just wondering...
 
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