Comments on: 10 Reasons Why the Marketing Association of New Zealand’s Website Sucks

By: Sheldon Nesdale

Sheldon Nesdale — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 20:26:13 +0000

Wow, thank you very much for your notes on this Nicole

By: Nicole

Nicole — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 09:05:45 +0000

Thanks Sheldon, both the article and ensuing comments were worth the read! My two cents worth – I really enjoyed reading your critique on the old NZMA site. As a member and user I found the site frustrating and was amused at how accurately you highlighted the issues. But mainly I was interested in seeing your thought process and the commonsense fixes suggested.

The good news is that the new site is vastly improved however you still need to dig to find some of the value. There’s a lot on the homepage which makes it easy to overlook things.

No one likes to hear bad news or criticism but in this case The NZ Marketing Assoc. was provided some useful insights to improve their site for FREE and several of the fixes could have been easily achieved – especially the search function.

I can certainly emphasise with the NZMA, just because it’s helpful doesn’t make it sting less! And usually you get to endure the pain in private through your own testing – having it reviewed on a blog for the world to see ‘rubs salt in the wound’ to say the least.

Sometimes, you need to suck up your pride and try to see criticism as the key to improvement. And I should know, my company is undergoing a total website redevelopment after some brutal external testing (one person even said they were LESS likely to buy our product after visiting it!).

The real question what is better pain of criticism now or go on thinking that there’s no problems?

For my company it was a blessing in disguise, allowing us to secure additional funding to start from scratch and outsource when needed and also provided the momentum needed to embark on the rebuild.

By: Sheldon Nesdale

Sheldon Nesdale — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:17:35 +0000

UPDATE: The new Marketing Association website appears to be on the way! (Yes it's been at least 16 months so far but good things take time)

By: Keith Norris

Keith Norris — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 00:53:59 +0000

Sheldon dear boy,
People who live in glass houses etc.
There are some golden rules in marketing. You’ve managed to break 2 in your short message:

(1) The most important part of any personalised message is the recipient’s name….mine is Norris…not Noris!
(2) Be accurate…I did not “promise a much improved website”. Somebody else maybe. But not me!

You see there is more to marketing than simply having a technically sophisticated online presence!

Keith Norris

By: Sheldon Nesdale

Sheldon Nesdale — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 07:37:08 +0000

It has been 8 months since Lisa’s and Keith Noris’s promise of a much improved Marketing Association website.

Has anything been fixed?

No.

No improvements at all.

By: Sheldon

Sheldon — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:48:00 +0000

Thanks for your input Keith.

Thanks for filling those gaps in my knowledge about the “do not call/mail” list.

Yes, I was taking the risk of alienating my target market and being thought of as a smart ass, but I took that risk because I care about the marketing industry (because I just luuuuuuuv marketing), and I care about change (because we must).

Sounds like you’ve got things under control Keith, but I’d say you need people like me to shake things up a bit who are passionate, driven and challenge the status quo. If you would like to offer me a complementary membership I would gladly accept. Let me know.

By: Sheldon

Sheldon — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:34:37 +0000

Thanks Boyd. Would I like a free critique from other marketing professionals on my client work? Hell yes! Doesn’t everybody? I’d be honoured. You’re right of course about back ground strategy so I’d ignore the ideas that don’t conform to that, but surely they’d be a few ideas in there that I could take action on. (The only risk I supose would be if the client got hold of that report and told me I was incompetent for not thinking up all these ideas myself)

By: Keith Norris

Keith Norris — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 10:01:07 +0000

Oh Sheldon….if only I was as certain of best practise as you!
You’ve made some interesting (if uninformed) points about the M.A. website, but I’d particularly like to comment about the name suppression service.
Are you aware that over 60,000 New Zealanders find this a valuable service ? And did you know that the families of the 180,00 people who have died in the last 7 years are grateful that they don’t get unsolicited marketing communications?. You’d probably be surprised to learn that the Privacy Commission and the Department of Internal Affairs trust us with data that many Government departments can’t access. We didn’t earn that trust by writing destructive blogs!
Are you aware that countries like USA, Canada, Australia, Germany etc all have State operated suppression services.? We don’t, because marketers who care about the freedom to communicate support their industry association.
Call me old-fashioned but I can’t understand why someone who purports to be a “Marketing Consultant” would risk alienating their target market by being a smart ass instead of offering to help.
I’m sure we’ll pass on your tips to some of the dozens of professionals who freely give their time to help us encourage best practise marketing
Keith Norris, Director of Public Affairs, Marketing Association

By: Boyd Wason

Boyd Wason — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 08:41:15 +0000

Some valid points on best practice approach and issues you’d expect that the MA would have under control, but my overall out take is that this is a cheap shot when you don’t have any back ground to the strategy or the development path.

Do you have some client work you’d like to put up to the industry to critique?

By: Sheldon

Sheldon — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 03:55:30 +0000

Great to hear from you Lisa, thank you. I also look forward to your new website. Regarding my assumption that only advertisers that are members of the association get the list, this information came from your webpage: "the Marketing Association cannot guarantee to stop all mailings because not every company is a member of the Association."