Outsourcing with a Cherry on top
I was going to make some food, but then I got annoyed.
It’s all the fault of my former colleague Scott Hickey.
During a lazy pre-dinner LinkedIn scroll, I spotted this…
Which jumped out for a couple of reasons....
- I’m always interested in M&A activity. I’m nosey.
- Because I’d never heard of Concentrix until my friend, best man, former colleague (twice) and now colleague again worked for them a few years ago
I’d heard his description of what they did (basically outsourcing*) so I thought I’d have a quick look at their website to see how they spin things.
Yikes.
For a Fortune 500 (in the top 200) company with 100,000 employees - and revenues of £2 Bn, their website looks like somebody took a Wordpress template and just changed the logo.
Short of Lorem Ipsum copy, it really is a showcase in lacklustre marketing.
Actually, having checked, it IS built with Wordpress…
Whilst there’s nothing particularly wrong with that - Wordpress is a perfectly good platform for creating personal Blogs and start-up websites - even the occasional large SME site, it does show how little budget they’ve thrown at their own marketing presence.
You’d expect Marketo or Eloqua to be in their toolkit. Especially since one of their ‘propositions’ is the outsourcing of marketing solutions.
Talk about Cobbler’s children going barefoot.
But I was annoyed well before I went down this particular rabbit hole of checking out their Marketing Tech Stack.
Read their About Us > Company page before continuing.
You see, I have this acid test for shit marketing that has evolved over the years - and this page is almost the perfect example of it.
It's a really simple test...
Count how many self-referential 1st Person Pronouns are used to describe the company..
For those of you who didn’t listen during English at school - think We, Us, Our.
It's all about me, me, me, me, me...
Sure, they've wedged the occasional tenuous customer-world phrase in there, but the majority of the copy on this page is about THEM, not about their customers or markets.
It’s not about the problems they solve for others, it’s about how great THEY are and all the cool stuff THEY do.
Their purpose….
"Any Problem. We’ll Solve It."
Why not start with your messaging, marketing copy and website?
And lose that ‘fist pump’ stock photography.
Who are you kidding?
And the tasteless Glace Cherry on the cake…
Having read the National Audit Office report on how Concetrix ‘helped’ HRMC, I’m not sure their Public Sector credentials are all that brag-worthy.
And, if YOU live or do business in the UK - that was YOUR tax money.
Just saying.
*I'll explain why I think Outsourcing is hilarious in another blog. I'm struggling to find a fitting title to be honest.
I personally had bad experience with Concentix when they were representing HMRC. When I followed your link in their "awards", they seem to still be in 2017!