Our goal, through this newsletter, is to help you increase the success of your marketing and promotional efforts. By sharing it with our clients, vendors and friends, it's a way for us to be better known. We hope you find the advice useful. And if you can't wait for your next issue you can order our book, Morsels from THE BETTER MOUSETRAP. It's available from our web site. Just click here to order your copy. Or visit our website at www.cheshiregroup.com. You can learn more about The Cheshire Group and see samples of our work.

SPIN MARKETING
How to put a "spin" on your products

Denny Hatch, a freelance direct marketing consultant, has come up with a brand new marketing term. As told in the June issue of TARGET MARKETING he discusses the product of a company called VOSS Artesian Water from Norway. According to Hatch, VOSS collects water from a confined, underground aquifer and bottles it in a unique glass container. According to the VOSS web site the unique bottle was the work of Neil Kraft formerly the creative director of Calvin Klein. Kraft is quoted as saying..."We utilized the depth of our experience in understanding how to create a personality that differentiates itself through the entire experience and reflects the true essence of the brand."

Consider what VOSS has accomplished: They bottle a freely acquired substance (water), added nothing to the product and through "dazzling and elegant packaging" have persuaded people in expensive restaurants to pony-up $6.75 a bottle. It's served at the Sundance Film Festival, at the Emmys and at other such events.

If a company in Norway can make this kind of impact with plain water, albeit in a fancy bottle, just think of the spin that you could give your products and service by applying these techniques.

Advertising
AN OGILVY MOMENT
An art form or entertainment?

Advertising, according to David Ogilvy, is neither an art form nor entertainment. "I don't want you to find it 'creative'," he wrote. "I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product. When Aeschines spoke, they said, 'How well he speaks.' But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, 'Let us march against Philip'."

Internet
VITAL STATISTICS & YOUR WEB SITE
Check Your Site.

The web has planted the expectation of instant gratification in the minds of consumers and information seekers. The web is faster than the telephone book, a trip to the library, or an order form traveling by the USPS. If your company uses its site to invite communication via e-mail, then you'd better be sure to check that e-mail and to respond to it promptly. That may mean several times each day.

Here's a tip. Don't underestimate the importance of human contact, even in cybertimes. Include your regular telephone number or toll-free number on that communications page for the occasional viewer who has a need that can't be contained in the e-mail fill-in form. And don't argue that you will be swamped with calls. (You should be so lucky.) This is just good customer service.

Check your site for vital statistics: and make certain that your telephone and fax numbers and your street and mailing addresses are prominent.

Communications
GLOBAL MISCOMMUNICATION

On a sign in a Belgrade hotel elevator:
To move the cabin, push button for wishing floor. If the cabin should enter more persons, each one should press a number of wishing floor. Driving is then going alphabetically by national order.

In an East African newspaper:
A new swimming pool is rapidly taking shape since the contractors have thrown in the bulk of their workers.

In a Zurich hotel:
Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used.

On the box of a clockwork toy made in Hong Kong:
Guaranteed to work throughout its useful life.

In a Tokyo hotel:
Is forbidden to steal hotel towels please. If you are not person to do such thing is please not to read notice.

In Germany's Black Forest:
It is strictly forbidden on our black forest camping site that people of different sex for instance, men and women, live together with each other for that purpose.

In a car rental brochure form Tokyo:
When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor.

Reprinted from Press Sheet