Posts by Mickey:
Giving up control.
October 16th, 2009This week’s social media blog posts:
Monday: The two kinds of online consumers.
Tuesday: Creating a Community, Part 1.
Wednesday: Creating a Community, Part 2.
Thursday: Social Media you can own.
Friday: Giving up control.
(This is the twelfth in our series of Social Media posts for the month of October. We look forward to your feedback on this series.)
Where many organizations struggle with the realities and potential of Social Media is in accepting the fact that they aren’t in control of the agenda. Companies cannot force goals on people, can’t control what they say about the brand, can’t spin the facts.
Truth is, the power of Social Media is the ability to hear what customers are REALLY SAYING. There is tremendous opportunity in searching out negative comments and addressing them directly. Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to be responsive. Ignoring the true conversation coming from customers does no one any good. If someone has a bad story to tell about you, you need to accept it is being told somewhere. (See our post on “United’s Sour Note”) Social Media gives you the opportunity to get out in front of such stories and contribute to a solution.
You can’t control what people are saying about you. What you can do is organize that speech. You can organize it by highlighting the good stuff and rationally responding to the not-so-good stuff. You can organize it by embracing the people who love your brand and challenging them to speak up and share the good word.
Here is an example of how Southwest Airlines uses Social Media to approach this:
You’ll note that “Sean” left a post complaining of a specific customer service concern. A few hours later, “Christi” from Southwest Airlines answered Sean directly, and tries to use this complaint as an opportunity for further conversation. Interestingly enough, “Phil” intervened before Christi had a chance to respond, and “stood up” for the airline, essentially evangelizing on its behalf.
This is typical of how social media works. For Sean, it is an easy outlet to contact the company, and list a specific complaint. The company then had the opportunity to address it, or at least acknowledge its intent to make things right. If nothing else, it had to make Sean feel better about the company being that he knows they “heard” him. His post also opened to the door for Phil, a loyal member of the SWA community, to weigh in.
Having loyal customers jump in and “run interference” for you isn’t that unusual, once you demonstrate to visitors that you are willing to hear what they really have to say, and demonstrate that you are trying to facilitate solutions.
Have a great weekend, and we’ll check in with you next week!
Posted by Mickey
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Mistakes of Action
February 11th, 2009I had one of those “ah-ha” moments a few weeks back. You know, one of those little gems that when taken out of context has an almost existential impact on you.
I was reading a story in the newspaper about some fraternity buddies who fell out of touch with one another. The article’s author wrote about how he had known of one of his fraternity brothers’ cancer for a few years, but didn’t contact him because he had no idea what to say after such a long absence and felt awkward. At that point, another frat brother chastised him with this comment: “Let the mistakes we make be mistakes of action, not mistakes of non-action.”
That got me to thinking: how many of the mistakes we make in marketing are due to inaction? How many promising ideas or initiatives did we back off from? This is a business that is supposed to be about “bold ideas,” yet often we’re far too comfortable with the status quo, or too cautious to weather a challenge, to act on them. Then, in a few months, we may read how one of our competitors just did such-and-such, and we moan, “Hey, we had that idea last year!”
Ideas without action are like a kite without wind. No matter how pretty they look, you’ll never know what their true potential is.
So this year, as a belated New Year’s resolution, I invite you to join me in taking the pledge to “be bold.” To act. To acknowledge that I am going to make mistakes, but at least they will be mistakes of action.
You know it’s the right thing to do. But (here’s the irony of it) will you act on it?
Posted by Mickey
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SUPER BOWL UPSET
February 3rd, 2009The biggest upset at the Super Bowl? No, it wasn’t the Arizona Cardinals beating the spread. To me, it was that the top-rated commercial during the broadcast was created not by some hotshot creative team at some gargantuan Omnicom agency. But rather by a couple of brothers from Batesville, Indiana.
Joe Herbert and his brother Dave are living the ultimate ad guy dream. The spot they submitted to Doritos for their “Crash the Super Bowl” contest not only won $25,000 for being one of five finalists picked by Doritos to air during the Super Bowl. It also scored the brothers Herbert a cool million dollars for coming out on top in USA Today’s annual Super Bowl “Ad Meter.” (USA Today’s 2009 Ad Meter: Best Super Bowl Commercials) The self-produced spot beat out 10-year incumbent Budweiser for top honors.
The spot purportedly was produced for less than $2,000 and was shot at a local YMCA.
How refreshing! It renews my faith in this business when two guys with a simple, well-produced idea can whup star creative teams from global agencies with all their focus groups, big name Hollywood directors, mega-million dollar effects budgets and PR hype machines.
Of course, Doritos scored big, too. The attention the client garnered by sponsoring the contest along with the post Super Bowl ad reviews gave the client a great return on its investment.
Thank you, Joe and Dave, for reminding us that in marketing, great ideas rule. And such things as big names, big budgets and big egos really mean very little.
Just don’t come to our office expecting free Doritos.
Posted by Mickey
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Bud Robbins and the Capo d’astro bar
January 30th, 2009Back when I was just starting out in this business back in the 1980s, I started a file of interesting articles and ads I’d come across. Over the years, I’ve updated it often. The other day, I was going through it, and found a yellowed, tattered page I stuffed in there some 20 years ago. It was an ad that ran in Adweek magazine. The ad was for an agency called Kresser & Robbins and was written by one of the agency’s principals, Bud Robbins. I kept that ad because of the story it told. I find it as relevant today as it was back in the days before 500 channels, the Internet, social media and viral buzz. With appreciation to Bud Robbins, I’d like to reprise it here. It’s a little long, but I believe you’ll find it worth your time.
“Looking for the Capo d’astro bar.”
By Bud Robbins
Back in the sixties, I was hired by an ad agency to write copy on the Aeolian Piano Company account. My first assignment was for an ad to be placed in The New York Times for one of their grand pianos. The only background information I received was some previous ads and a few faded close-up shots…and of course, the due date.
The Account Executive was slightly put out by my request for additional information and his response to my suggestion that I sit down with the client was, ‘Don’t tell me you’re one of those? Can’t you just create something? We’re up against a closing date!’
I acknowledged his perception that I was one of those, which got us an immediate audience with the head of our agency.
I volunteered I couldn’t even play a piano let alone write about why anyone would spend $5,000 for this piano when they could purchase a Baldwin or Steinway for the same amount.
Both allowed the fact they would gladly resign the Aeolian business for either of the others; however, while waiting for the call, suppose we make our deadline.
I persisted and reluctantly, a tour of the Aeolian factory in Upstate New York was arranged. I was assured that ‘we don’t do this with all our clients’ and my knowledge as to the value of company time was greatly reinforced.
The tour lasted two days and although the care and construction appeared meticulous, $5,000 still seemed to be a lot of money.
Just before leaving, I was escorted into the showroom by the National Sales Manager. In an elegant setting sat their piano alongside the comparably priced Steinway and Baldwin.
‘They sure look alike,’ I commented.
‘They sure do. About the only real difference is the shipping weight—our is heavier.’
‘Heavier?’ I asked. ‘What makes ours heavier?’
‘The Capo d’astro bar.’
‘What’s a Capo d’astro bar?’
‘Here, I’ll show you. Get down on your knees.’
Once under the piano, he pointed to a metallic bar fixed across the harp and bearing down on the highest octaves. ‘It takes 50 years before the harp in the piano warps. That’s when the Cap d’astro bar goes to work. It prevents warping.’
I left the National Sales Manager under his piano and dove under the Baldwin to find a Tinkertoy Capo d’astro bar at best. Same with the Steinway.
‘You mean the Capo d’astro bar really doesn’t go to work for 50 years?’ I asked.
‘Well, there’s got to be some reason why the Met uses it,’ he casually added.
I froze. ‘Are you telling me that the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City uses this piano?’
‘Sure. And their Capo d’astro bar should be working by now.’
Upstate New York looks nothing like the front of the Metropolitan Opera House where I met the legendary Carmen, Rise Stevens. She was now in charge of moving the Metropolitan Opera House to the Lincoln Center.
Ms. Stevens told me, ‘About the only thing the Met is taking with them is their piano.’
That quote was the headline of our first ad.
The result created a six-year wait between order and delivery.
My point is this. No matter what the account, I promise you, the Capo d’astro bar is there.”
Bud’s right, every product has its Capo d’astro bar. And if it doesn’t, you must create it. Not in an ad, a jingle or a tag line. But in the value you add for your customer. It needs to be something that makes your offerings unique, meaningful and real. Something that separates you from your commodity competition. That adds customer value in a way that others have yet to think of.
Posted by Mickey
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Be Radically Unique
January 23rd, 2009The name George Kingsley Zipf is one you probably aren’t familiar with. Yet his observations more than a half-century ago proved prophetic in the world of marketing.
Zipf (1902-1950) was a philologist and professor at Harvard. He noted that the most popular word in the English language (“the”) is used ten times more than the tenth most-used word, 100 times more than the 100th most-used word, 1,000 time more than the 1,000th most-used word, etc.
So what does this have to do with marketing? Turns out the algorithm he discovered for the popularity of words is pretty much universal in all categories. What’s true with words is also true for consumer products and services. The #1 automobile model/hair gel/soft drink brand sells 10 times more than the 10th most popular, 100 times more than the 100th, etc. This phenomenon has come to be known as Zipf’s Law.
These findings, when combined with the realization that consumers really only have room in their conscious brain for 2 or 3 products per category, shows how perilous it is to settle for being number 10 in a category (or number four or even number three). Consider the category of online search. Chances are if I ask you to name a search engine, you’ll say Google. If I ask you for others, you may say Yahoo or MSN. If I ask you to name more, you’ll probably be stumped by the time you get to #5. The reason is, you have no reason to know five search engines.
With that in mind, what can you do to get in the top of the heap in your prospects’ minds? It is doubtful you’ll be able to get there by being “incrementally better” than the category leader. You have to offer a true difference. A meaningful, demonstrable difference. A game-changer. Something that is obvious, yet has somehow been overlooked by every other competitor in the category.
An example of this that comes to mind is Reef sandals (http://www.reef.com). Reef set out to make the “ultimate surfer sandal.” One of the things they did to make their sandals radically unique was to put a bottle opener right into the sole of the sandal. Brilliant! How many times have you been on the beach and had no way of opening that ice-cold bottle of Corona? Simple. Elegant. Obvious. And totally, radically unique. There is no other sandal like Reef. The company succeeded in changing the “sandal paradigm” of hard core surfers, and broke away from the pack. They gave their audience a reason to “move them up the ladder.”
I guarantee that if you spend as much time and effort thinking up ways to make your offerings “radically unique” as you now do to improve them incrementally, you’ll have way more to show for it.
Posted by Mickey
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How Loyal is “Loyal?”
January 15th, 2009For the better part of 20 years, I was a loyal customer of the phone company. At least I’m sure the phone company would count me as “loyal.” After all, I paid my bills on time. Never had any big complaints. Weathered rate increase after rate increase. And gave them 100% of my telecommunications business. Yet, a few years ago, when I realized I was using my cell phone five times more than my landline (and got fed up with telemarketer calls), I dropped the phone company like a hot potato. So much for “customer loyalty,” right?
Truth be told, I never felt loyal to the phone company. Repeat purchaser, for sure. Satisfied customer, sometimes. But loyal? Would I recommend them to friends and associates? Sign up for their other offerings without checking out the competition? Or feel that they really “get me” as a customer and feel they valued my business? Heck no.
Yet this is what “loyal” customers do. Just because some customers come back to you time and again and don’t really complain, don’t leap to the conclusion that they are “loyal.” They may be, or it could be that your offerings fit what they need…right now. As conditions change in the future, it’s anyone’s guess whether they stay or pull the plug.
Now is the time to implement a program aimed at turning repeat customers into loyal customers. Start by getting to know them. Who are they? Why do they buy from you? What could you do to impress them? What would they change about you if they could? Then follow up. Start by treating them as if they are special—because they are. Focus on the relationship over the transaction. And keep an open line of communication with them so they feel they always have the opportunity to offer feedback—both positive and negative.
Wonderful things happen when a customer becomes a loyal customer. You’ll find you earn more of their business. You’ll find that they talk you up in the circles. You’ll see how they care about you and your success.
Whatever you do, try to avoid the trap the phone company fell into. They figured, either overtly or through ennui, that they didn’t have to do much to earn my business. And believe me, they didn’t.
Posted by Mickey
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On Creativity
January 7th, 2009If I hand you a brick and ask, “How many uses can you think of for this?,” you’ll probably come back with a dozen or so uses, all of the functional, yeah-I-sort-of-expected-that variety. You may use it to build a wall. Or pave a patio. Build a house. Or even use it as a paperweight.
If, however, I asked you, “What 40 ways can you think of to use this?,” I’m likely to get a whole different kind of list. After exhausting the obvious uses above, you’ll find yourself uncomfortably searching for other unthought-of uses. Some will be totally silly, or non-sequitar. But before long (probably around number 25 or 30), you’ll actually hit on something truly original (paint it gold and hand it out as a Fort Knox souvenir…). It is here, at this uncomfortable point when you think you’ve exhausted all practical uses for the brick, where true creativity lives. It’s where you start to find new connections between the object at hand and the world around you. You start thinking beyond the obvious solutions. Your ego stops judging every passing thought in the name of quantity.
Creativity can be defined as the process through which the mind finds heretofore unrecognized relationships between two entities, perceptions or ideas. It is something that allows our audience to see something in a different way.
Creativity is hard. It is a trip into uncharted territory. It is bumping into ideas that quite frankly you don’t know how to judge or evaluate.
It is taking the obvious and making it interesting.
Knowing how our mind’s creativity works is the reason few creatives settle on the first idea (or handful of ideas for that matter) they find. The thinking being, if it was that obvious to me, it must be obvious to everyone, therefore there’s nothing new or exciting about it. Truly creative solutions are a bit unnerving, not because they are provocative or irrelevant, but because you’ve never seen something quite like this, and your mind doesn’t know how to evaluate it.
So next time you’re presented with an idea or concept that makes you a little uneasy, avoid the reaction of rejecting it out of hand because it is “different.” Deconstruct it to see how that idea was developed. See if it answers the needs spelled out in the creative brief. Live with it for a time. Then form your conclusion.
Posted by Mickey
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Is Customer-centricity in your DNA?
December 16th, 2008Just as all the women in Lake Wobegon are good looking and all the children are above average, every company these days considers itself “customer-centric.”
But does “customer centricity” mean the same thing to customers as it does for marketers? Is it a set of initiatives you undertake to raise customer satisfaction scores? Is it a system of metrics that measure behaviors (complaints, repeat purchases, etc.)?
There are at least two problems with trying to impose customer-centric initiatives or measurement on your business. In the first place, customer-centricity is a company wide platform. Most every company is successful at being customer-centric in some ways. But then there are breakdowns in other areas. So measuring the performance of one aspect of customer-centricity does little to give you an idea of how well you’re doing organization-wide.
A second issue is that customer-centricity means different things to different people. For some, all you need to do is show up on time and offer a decent value. Others may define it as answering the customer service line with a live body. Or offering a generous return policy. Or following up with a service call after the sale. Trying to approach customer- centricity on a touchpoint-by-touchpoint basis is akin to playing a game of whack-a-mole.
What is it, then, that tends to separate truly customer-centric organizations from the rest of the businesses we deal with? Basically, they know their customers and anticipate their needs. Not necessarily what they want (or rather think they want), but more what they are trying to accomplish, and why they are buying the product or service in the first place.
In other words, these companies understand customer context. As the old adage goes, the customer is not buying a drill, he’s buying a hole. Understanding the context the customer operates in frees you to view your offerings from beyond their functional components.
One other characteristic truly customer-centric organizations have in common is that they are as genuinely interested in the transactional outcome as the customer is. And not necessarily in the “how-much-profit-was-in-this-sale” kind of way, but rather, “was the transaction rewarding to the customer?”
Customer satisfaction scores may give you an indication of how well you meet your customers’ expectations, but that kind of “satisfaction” is really no more than table stakes.
Customer-centricity, as seen by the customer, is about how the company conducts itself, how it “behaves” toward its customers, how those customers are treated, what its values are and how they feel as a result. The customer’s view of customer-centricity is much more about the experience of dealing with the firm than it is about even what that firm sells or the price it charges.
And as far as making a public declaration of one’s customer-centricity? That’s a dangerous ploy. You are setting yourself up for a fall — as soon as there is any sort of breakdown anywhere in your organization, the customer will view your proclamation of customer-centricity as nothing more than empty marketing pap.
True customer-centricity is not something you do, it is something you are.
On a personal note, because of the upcoming holidays and some personal time off, this will likely be the last Quisenblog post for the year. We will return in 2009 bigger and badder than ever. Happy Holidays to all!
Posted by Mickey
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Let’s Lighten Up Black Friday
December 3rd, 2008Black Friday—which earned its name because that is the date on the calendar that moves many retailers’ balance sheets from red to black—has come to take on a darker meaning to the folks in one Long Island, New York village.
As you may have heard, this past Friday, a security guard at a Long Island Walmart was trampled to death by as many as 1,000 “early bird shoppers” hoping to be one of the few to score a cut-rate TV, gaming console or talking Elmo. As tragic as it is that no customers stopped to help the doomed man (or the injured pregnant woman who was also knocked down), one has to wonder whether Walmart store management, corporate management, or even the retail industry as a whole deserves a share of the blame.
We talk often about how marketers train their customers to behave. Major retailers have created the monster of the 4 a.m. “door-buster sale” on the Friday after Thanksgiving. To entice shoppers, they drop the price of a selection of high-demand products, offering staggering savings, BUT (yes, there’s always a “but”) with the understanding that supplies of those $499 40” TVs or the $10 DVD players is limited to one or two per store. So for those of you not quick enough to get to the electronics aisle before everyone else, tough luck. You would have done better sleeping off the tryptophan.
Suddenly you understand the mindset of those early-hour shoppers. They were “trained” in a sense to exhibit this “every man (or woman) for himself” behavior. Mad dashes down the aisles without concern for employees and other shoppers are not only condoned, they are in a sense rewarded. Little old ladies are just speed bumps. Christmas shopping suddenly resembles festival seating at a Who concert.
The sad thing is, even if retailers were to agree that the whole notion of Black Friday has gotten out of control, there’s not much they can do about it. Die-hard customers have been trained to scour ad circulars on Thanksgiving Day and come up with an hour-by-hour battle plan for Friday morning. And if, as a retailer, you opt out of this game, your potential customers will just move on to some other retailer that’s in.
My hope is that retailers will recognize that customer experience is the most important thing to focus on. Providing blockbuster pricing is part of the experience, but can it be done in a way that treats all customers fairly and provides a safe and sane shopping experience that will generate “good stories” afterwards? How about a free gift card to everyone in line at 6 a.m. to be spent in the store as they please, with no urgency to be the first one to the electronics aisle? Or letting them order special merchandise for limited hours that morning on their PDAs or laptops?
Posted by Mickey
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Words of the Year, 2008
November 24th, 2008You can usually tell what kind of year it has been by looking at the new terms and words it generates. The year 2008 has been rich with neologisms that support the New Frugality, the rediscovered zeitgeist of cutting back on consumption. My favorite new term might be “frugalista,” defined by The New Oxford American Dictionary as “a person who leads a frugal lifestyle but stays fashionable and healthy by swapping clothes, buying second-hand, growing own produce, etc.”
But the year’s winning word according to The NOAD is the verb “hypermile,” which means “to maximize gas mileage by making fuel-conserving adjustments to one’s car and driving techniques.” Hypermilers (the noun form) keep their tires properly inflated, remove roof racks from their vehicles, and turn engines off rather than letting them idle at stoplights. The word even has it’s own website that’s filled with tips that’ll make you feel like a hot-rodding lead foot (”slowly accelerate after stops” and “always know your gas mileage after trips to the pump”). Here in the West, “hypermiling” is sometimes called “EcoDriving.”
A somewhat related term is “staycation,” which is a day trip or vacation taken at or near one’s home.
Other jargon from 2008? How about “moofer” (rhymes with “goofer”), a Mobile Out-Of-Office worker who is basically Dilbert with a blackberry instead of a cubicle. Works as a noun, but I’m not so sure about the verb form (“My employer just moofed me!”).
Then there’s “tweet,” a short message sent via Twitter using a cell phone or other mobile device.
Another newbie is the “topless meeting,” which, while it may conjure up staff meetings at the Playboy Mansion, actually refers to meetings in which electronic devices like laptops, blackberries and mobile phones are verboten.
Thanks to the 2008 Presidential campaign, we now have “hockey mom,” which used to be the winter equivalent of a soccer mom, but now has been conflated with pit bulls, lipstick and Neiman-Marcus shopping sprees.
And of course there’s “toxic debt,” the poorly secured bank loans that were randomly bundled and regifted like a holiday fruitcake. “Toxic debt” is the pre-bailout term. Post-bailout (or, euphemistically, “Post Rescue Package”), we refer to it as “troubled assets.”
Do you have any favorite “new words” from the past year you’d like to share?
Just a little fodder for all you moofing frugalistas out there to tweet to your circle while hypermiling to your staycation.
Posted by Mickey
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About Me
Bio: Mickey Lonchar opted for a career in advertising after many assurances it would not require any math or heavy lifting. Having spent the better part of two decades creating award-winning advertising with agencies up and down the West Coast, Mickey currently holds the position of creative director with Quisenberry Marketing & Design, a full-service advertising and interactive shop with offices in Spokane and Seattle, Wash.
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