By Ed Pierce, Fleet Industry Marketer
We certainly read plenty of cautionary articles in the press about scams targeting unaware consumers, but you might be surprised that marketing scams are a part of the B2B world, even the fleet industry.
First, a definition of the term “marketing scam”: an offer that is too good to be true. In this month’s column, let’s look at an advertising example:
One day a fleet, risk or procurement manager gets a cold call from a sales rep with a pitch like this: “I represent (officious business or vertical industry magazine title, probably including ‘international’ or ‘global in it,’ that you never heard of).
“Our editors are writing a series of articles on companies like yours that are achieving business success. We would like to feature your firm’s success story in our glossy magazine that goes to ‘business leaders’ around the (country or world).
“Best of all, there’s no cost to you or your company! All we ask is that you provide us with a list of your vendors, who will certainly want to show their support for your business.”
Before agreeing to this too-good-to-be-true opportunity, here are two questions to ask:
With the likes of Daimler, Volvo, and Uber working on self-driving trucks, it's no surprise that the granddaddy of autonomous vehicles, Waymo, is getting in on the big-rig action too.
Waymo (formerly the Google driverless car program, and now a standalone company under the Alphabet umbrella) is working to commercialize its technology, and today confirmed it's exploring how its self-driving know-how can transform the trucking industry.
Self-driving technology can transport people and things much more safely than we do today and reduce the thousands of trucking-related deaths each year, Waymo said in a statement.
Former National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator Mark Rosekind referred to the final years of the Obama administration as the era of Big Recall, but safety groups are concerned that the age of muscular enforcement of federal rules for auto safety may come to an end under President Donald Trump.
Obama's second term saw record fines for automakers: General Motors Co. was forced to pay a then-record $900 million fine over its handling of vehicles with a dangerous ignition-switch defect ultimately linked to 124 deaths and hundreds of injuries.
Volkswagen Group paid $2.8 billion in criminal fines and $1.5 billion in civil penalties for programming its diesel cars to trick federal testers into believing the engines released far less pollution into the air than they do.
U.S. automakers should and almost certainly will ignore President Donald Trump's decision to abandon the Paris climate agreement.
Doing otherwise isn't just bad for life on Earth. It's bad business. Companies rooted in science and technology should acknowledge the mountain of data showing the planet is growing warmer at an alarming rate.
The evidence that human action is involved is overwhelming, but even if it's wrong, the only downside to lower greenhouse emissions and fossil fuel consumption is a cleaner world for our descendants, as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., memorably pointed out in one of his campaigns.
Self-driving cars might make your future commute a lot more pleasant, but they won't eliminate traffic.
Execs like Google cofounder Sergey Brin have touted traffic reduction as one of the many benefits of having self-driving cars on the road. The idea is that autonomous cars will eliminate accidents caused by human error, a major contributor to traffic.
But experts say the vehicles' impact on traffic will either be minimal or negative.