5 marketing don'ts if you want to stay away from trouble

3. Distracted by 'great ideas' that go bust.

"The Shack" was the name dreamed up for Radio Shack that would transform the company. And it did. It helped make it what it is today: an empty shell struggling to survive. Giving a new name to a supercilious attempt to revive a languishing brand without thought, effort and planning is a prescription for failure.

Then there's JCPenney. Ron Johnson built a success story with Apple's retail stores and then landed at JCPenney saying, "It will be a period of true innovation…" as he instantly replaced some 60-plus sales events and coupons with better known merchandise and reasonable prices.

JCPenney bargain-hunting customers left in droves and sales dropped 25 percent in 12 months. A short time later the company dropped Johnson, replacing him with marketers who understood the JCPenney customers. It's another example of how ego-driven marketing ends in tragedy.

4. Basing decisions on what makes us look good.

Some argue that email marketing is passé and using it dates you. It's also why David Carr caused a stir when he wrote in his New York Times blog, "Bloomberg, Fast Company, The New York Times, Politico and many other news organizations find that they can grab attention and readers in the inbox." That's right, by using email.

Email works because there's just too much 'stuff' coming at us, so we gravitate to orderly messages that have value for us. More are finding that in the inbox.

French winemaker Katie Jones did, reports Dianna Dilworth in Email Marketing Daily. Her vineyard was vandalized, along with her vat of white wine and was on the verge of closing down. Then, the UK-based online wine retailer Naked Wines launched an email campaign urging its customers to help. And it did. It raised £ 200,000 in "forward" wine sales in a couple of hours. The story also found its way to more emails that helped the vineyard stay in business. Then Naked Wines followed up with emails urging customers to rate the wine and then expanding the email marketing to promote other Southern France wine makers that included an email competition to win a trip to the vineyard.

Before writing off what others may view as old fashioned, it's a good idea to recognize what works best for customers.

5. Trying to put it over on customers.

While businesses like to believe that their customers trust them, there's no greater self-delusion. It's so easy for customers to conclude that businesses don't deserve their trust. For example:

• Restaurants that offer specials but tell customers, "We've just run out of the red snapper."
• Companies that change rewards programs to benefit themselves.
• Announcements of a "Huge Sale" but hidden exceptions (often just about everything) in the small print.
• Disguise salespeople as customer service representatives.
• Email marketing campaigns that make it difficult or impossible to unsubscribe or ignore unsubscribe requests.

Chobani, the Greek yogurt company, found that customer trust can be quite fragile. When they put messages on the lids, one caused real trouble: "Nature got us 100 calories, not scientists." The company was accused of being anti-science and misleading (there's a lot of science in yogurt manufacturing). Obviously, Chobani must have missed the "Don't try to put it over on customers" memo.

Since bad marketing and sales ideas far outnumber the good ones many times over, less than desirable results should be expected, something that will continue until more of us start asking, "Shouldn't we think about that before we go forward?"