Friday, September 21, 2007

Don't Ignore Me Because I Am A Woman

For those of you who don't know this, I hate my car. More than I hate my car, I am beginning to hate the franchise dealership that is responsible for repairing it.

After many attempts to make a service appointment and failing my car broke down. This was a few weeks back but my car lost its clutch with less than 30,000 miles. I was stranded on a hill in the middle of Friday rush hour, which made me late to dinner with my in laws and I loathe being late. So I called the dealership and freaked out about the clutch dying, the car leaking fluids and the paint falling off. I also complained about the fact that the clutch (a fairly important piece of the drive train if you ask me) was not covered under the warranty after 1 year. We also found out that I need a new steering arm as mine is defective. That part was ordered nearly a month ago today but no one called to tell me the part was in (as promised). Instead the parts guy said he sent me a post card that looks like junk mail.......

This whole thing has been a terrible experience right from the get go. The dealership doesn't return my calls (which I have to leave because they never answer the dang phone) or emails, and when I do reach them they ignore my concerns. Now I may be a woman, but I do know that if you have to hit the clutch twice in order to get in reverse then there is a problem.

The Internet says my synchronizing is off and that could lead to the gears stripping....and that means a new and expensive transmission on a two year old car. I have told the dealership that this is happening in every single call and voice mail I have left in the past two weeks, and they still have not called me back. If they were not the only franchise dealership in town I would have gone somewhere else a long long time ago.

Want to know what really irks me? If my husband reports a problem they fix it immediately!!! When they replaced the clutch the car made a funny buzzing sound, and when we took it in the dealership tried to brush me off until my husband said he had heard it too. Once Josh chimed in the technician was all over getting in the car and going for a ride!

Why does Josh have to chime in for something to be broken? Why isn't my assessment of the situation enough? I know more about cars, engines, and troubleshooting then my sweet husband ever will, and yet he is the one they listen and respond to. This very same dealership has relied on me to resolve highly complicated technical issues for them on multiple occasions , but when it comes to the car itself I am ignored.

The end result is that our new car is a Nissan (not the same as my car) and it was bought from a different dealership just down the street. The new dealership was fantastic to close the deal with. Their staff were helpful, courteous, efficient and gave us a very fair deal. The GM even came in to say hi to us a couple of times while we were in signing paperwork. Oh? and if I tell them something needs to be fixed they fall over themselves to find out the source of my concerns. The new dealership even answers the phone!

Google hits the Road

It's late and I am surfing instead of sleeping, but this is to cool not to share. Google is now appearing in BMW's in Germany! This is huge for us in the automotive ppc industry....imagine if I can have my customers ads served to the people who are actually in the car driving to a dealership!! You can't get much more targeted then that.


The article is from myTelus, and is definately worth checking out :).

Have a great night.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Why Read Marketing Pilgrim?

Sorry for no post yesterday the release of Presentation and the live Demo with Googlers stole a huge part of my day.

During my thrice daily review of MP I noticed Andy Beal is offering $500.00 to write about why we read their blog each day. This is a fantastic way to build link juice for themselves (not that they need it) and for a lot less money then if they were buying links.

This is part of the reason I read them every day, they have fantastic ideas on marketing, blogging and provide some very interesting reviews of the latest and greatest in SEM. Andy's blog is one of the few "out of industry" blogs that I read because of the product highlights and new features.

After all, without them, it might have taken me an extra 3 hours to find out that the awesomeness that is Google Presents had finally been released.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Double Clicking is for Windows

Today, while we were doing research for our PPC applications, I sent my co-worker the link to MSN's Ad Center Labs http://adlab.microsoft.com/. The ad with "Search Master Steve"really made me laugh. Sure the ad is targeting non professional SEM folks but I find it hard to believe most people won't consider the ad slightly insulting. How did they miss the lessons that Dell taught with their "Steve" in the early 2000's? I mean come on the guy was arrested for pot possession and completely ruined millions of dollars in advertising...

On initial review there are some cool little tools (demographic approximations!) but the real value seems to be diluted by MSN's outlandishly cartoon like presentation. Any statistical value these tools may actually hold seem to be so far buried in cute that they are rendered pointless. MSN would do well to just give us the info we need in plain html without all the "pizazz".

As my co-worker was reviewing the site he also pointed out that the site was extremely Microsoftish with its bright, surreal, cartoon like graphics and cheesy interface (I knew that was coming as he is a self proclaimed "website snob"). After getting over his "snobbery" he decided to check out some of the links anyways. After a few moments of discussing the relevance of some of the new information potentially available for our PPC campaigns he exclaimed "Double clicking is for Windows not the Internet! No one wants to double click on the Internet!"

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Sunny Sunday


One more day of rest so they say. Although, I can't say that I did much resting this weekend. This afternoon we went apple picking, and I didn't get my donuts. While it appears the orchard didn't start a PPC campaign this year they did run out of donuts and I had to console myself with a nifty new apple corer (my husband is soooo sweet!) and a creamie (soft serv for the rest of the world).


One cool thing I did find over at Marketing Pilgrim was a blog about BlogRush. I am tempted to try this out somehow. I will have to do some more investigating but here is the link in case you want to check this out. http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/09/blogrush-offers-free-syndicated-blog-traffic.html