26 June 2009
The internet changed marketing utterly, but fulfilment is still the same old boring trade. You can use viral adverts to launch a product, Twitter to ramp up a sales campaign and a mobile-optimised website to allow customers to purchase on the go, but delivery still takes place via a van.
Perhaps it’s time for marketers to elbow the logistics guys aside and take charge.
At German precious-metals dealer TG-Gold, the marketing guys are taking gold to the people, using vending machines at airports and railway stations. For €245, speculators now can acquire a 10-gram gold bar as easily as buying a bar of chocolate.
Shoots, a food co-operative in St Helens, Merseyside, delivers boxes of locally-grown vegetables in a horse and cart to promote carbon awareness.
Entrepreneur Oli Barrett, who founded the “Make your mark with a tenner” programme for young entrepreneurs, even came up with a scheme to deliver socks via a rocket, guided to customers’ houses by GPS. Okay, this didn’t work – his firm Sock Rush ended up using Royal Mail for its deliveries – but the germ of a great idea was there.
Fulfilment is too important to be left to logistics guys. It needs a marketer’s touch.
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