Sense and nonsense of image & personnel marketing campaigns: example of Deutsche Bahn in a reality check

Do you have to do everything in personnel marketing because it is currently in? We mean "No” – and give an anti-example.

DB as an anti-example

Tobias Kärcher has a nice article on Wollmilchsau about the current Facebookcampaign “The Welt the DB” written. In it, he mainly asks about their target group and the benefits. I go one step further and ask: How useful are image and personnel marketing campaigns at all if there are already small problems elsewhere?

Marketeers, agencies, Companys, PR and, of course, social media departments love social media campaigns - or what they think: viral videos are being spread or competitions are being advertised that have it all. Everything is so great.

Crowdsourcing and social media - because it's so nice “in”

The books on the subject (advertising)

And especially "in" is crowdsourcing, actions in which users can participate. The Deutsche Bahn has now come up with something like this - apparently to show the diversity of the Deutsche Bahn Group and employer:

via faxebook App can be used by users from August 15.8. Submit stories you experienced with DB. These can be commented on and rated, and at the end a jury headed by DB board member Grube selects those that will be reproduced in the Berlin miniature world LOXX.

Only for railway nerds?

Details can be read directly on Wollmilchsau, whereby Tobias Kärcher rightly criticizes that the somewhat old-fashioned miniature railwaySALE primarily appeals to railway nerds, but does not activate a new target group. This is how he writes:

“The Deutsche Bahn is somehow more than a normal company: It is a quasi-monopolist of the German rail transport system... Basically, the DB is a highly complex German institution - and that is exactly where one of its main problems in public relations lies... Even if it is in filmed model worlds I can't really imagine having nice stories told, that you can pick up people who aren't interested in the topic until now. A video > of a model > of a story > of a railroad fan > that the DB jury liked...Crowdsourcing is 'totally social' - only if there is no crowd to source from, then it will fast 'socially awkward'."

Apart from the fact that the jury from the outset ensures that the action does not look like the thing with the Chefticket 2010 (bad tongues would call the censorship and which is not liked in internet circles as is well - liked) and in the end stories of horrenden train delays or have to be retrofitted:

Marketing more efficiently

Discounts for your success (advertising)!

There are those places where companies could do much better and more efficiently with their marketing efforts without costly campaigns. When it comes to customer service - and last but not least, last week I found a very trivial example: the lost property office!

When I recently left something on the train, several people pointed it out to me. On the corresponding page on bahn.de, a happily smiling customer accepts a found umbrella from a friendly smiling employee. So far for Marketing!

Marketing in reality check

The reality looks different: Umbrellas and similar small items are probably synonymous a large part of the 250.000 items, which are lost annually at German stations.

Although you can enter your loss free of charge and then look in a database then, but after filling out the search mask also immediately pointed out that many found items are only entered after entering the search order there (!!!).

Inquiring is too expensive

But that was it for free: You can call the lost property hotline for 59 ct / min from the German landline. Or "Just place a research order", at least by eMail, The corresponding form will then show the following:

Deutsche Bahn is researching ... objects that have been lost on the railway or in trains (within Germany) and have an estimated current value of at least € 15,00. Items of intangible value, such as B. Books with dedication, photo albums and. However, do not fall below this limit. If you find it, you can pick it up free of charge from the site. The return by post costs € 20 including shipping and packaging costs, € 35 when shipping from the central lost property office.

0 Bock on customer service?

Or to put it another way: you actually don't have any Lustto take care of all the lost umbrellas and other odds and ends. And even if she finds things again, the horrendous shipping costs are likely to be many customers - as well as me - put off.

Even picking it up from the central lost and found office costs 15,30 euros. Which Costs there are in detail is listed here. Incidentally, it also says what the Deutsche Bahn does with all the lost and uncollected items: it auctions them off!

The Deutsche Bahn would like Finderlohn

By the way, the railway also refers to §§ 978 ff. BGB (Civil Code) and at the same time also claims to Finderlohn.

whole Honestly: Every airline offers a free tracking and home delivery service. And is thus in direct competition with Deutsche Bahn.

Marketing: Above hui, down pooh?

But I even have some understanding that you do not want to worry about every umbrella. But I do not quite understand why there is a lost property at all, whose marketing involves very different things.

And even less I understand why then expensive Money for a facebookCampaign is invested to convey a better image of Deutsche Bahn, when I am already confronted with such mundane little things as a lost and found office:

• In terms of image and marketing: We are not interested in the interests of our customers
• With regard to personnel marketing: We save employees all over the place and do not have enough people to take care of our customers

Satisfied customers = Real social media marketing

If the interest in the customer or new employees is so low, then what is the money spent on advertising, which acts as a peeling make-up, the low wrinkles only insufficiently covered?

And if the money was not better invested here - satisfied customers are simply the best brand ambassadors there is: And then even real social media marketing!

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