“As one of the worst recessions in recent history seems to loosen its grip, both fundamentally and psychologically, it’s time to take stock in what I hope we’ve learned.

Real relationships took a back seat in business. That’s not what caused the recession, but a quick scan of the worst headlines would suggest that if the major ethical lapses reported on Wall Street could occur, then perhaps even the smallest of firms had let go of behavior that looked something like decency.

As we rebound and even boom, I hope that we will see a return to business relationships built on a foundation of mutual respect, trust and decency.

While words like trust and decency can be hard to define tangibly, there are behaviors that any business can adopt to keep the focus where it should be.

Create more value

Price is a function of value, there’s no question about that fact. And value is delivered in many little ways. Now is the time to deconstruct our products and services, and perhaps more importantly, the way our customers experience our organization, with an eye on making the entire collection more valuable, remarkable, fun, flexible and personal. Doing that can set an organization on the path to a solid foundation of customer loyalty that serves in good times and bad.

Take a holistic view

As we view your customer needs, what if we tried to understand everything they need, including areas unrelated to our products and services? If we can come to appreciate all of our customer’s desires and goals, we can develop a team of strategic partners that can plug into our offerings and help us dramatically deepen our customer relationships.

What if we began to think of our role as a customer booster rocket and “go to” resource for everything they needed? Do this and we also develop a referral network that will turn into our ongoing lead generation machine.

Mine the collaboration universe

One of the greatest developments associated with the growth of the Web is the proliferation of tools that make it very easy to collaborate, both online and off, with prospective customers, vendors, mentors, suppliers, staff and even competitors. We must mine this technology and enable the players in our collaboration universe to expand what they can offer us, our team, and our customers.

And for decency bonus points…

Let’s take a quick look at our closest competitors. What’s happened to them during this downturn? Is there an opportunity to grab market share? If so, resist it and consider lending them a hand instead. I know this may run counter to competitive wisdom, and I’m not suggesting we need to take on their payables, but I do think there’s a long view in being the kind of company that uses their position in the community to establish a statement about what’s really important.

I grew up in a farm community and while it’s unlikely one farmer thought of themselves as fierce competitors of another, they did provide a market with the same products. However, if one farmer experienced a hardship, a broken down tractor, loss of livestock, or need to get the crop in before a big storm, they could usually count on the help of neighboring farms without the need to ask or expectation of payment. Everyone in the community knew that they would probably need this same kind of support and gave a hand willingly. I wonder if today’s small business community could take this view?

Learn from social behavior

Social technology affords us a glimpse into the personal lives of those around us. Certainly this can be abused on both ends, but it also calls out for a new form of leadership that is much more open and willing to blend business and personal.

With mainstream acceptance and sharing on social networks we have the tools to automatically build deeper relationships that take into consideration the challenges and objectives of those around us in ways never before experienced in the business world.

I often use the Mister Rogers quote, “It’s hard not to like somebody once you know their story,” to drive this point home. If we use the shift in social behavior to tell our own stories and learn from the stories of others and we’ll be much more equipped to create a culture of decency throughout.

Say thank you

With the rush and go, always crushed with things to do, it’s pretty easy to get complacent about who and what pays the bills. If we’ve lapsed into this, we need to remake space to thank the people that make our businesses possible.

This process starts with letting our staff members understand how valuable they are and how much we appreciate what they add. (In fact, acknowledging a job well done is the most powerful motivation tool in the box.)

I’ve taken up sending hand-written notes to those I should thank. It’s not that hard to establish a habit of sitting down at a set time each week and sending inked words of appreciation, recognition and observation.

That might be the most decent thing any of us can do.”

Thanks, John, for your thoughts.

Posted by Mickey

In other words, marketing malpractice at its worst.

Like most cases of mismarketing, this one started out with success. Chrysler succeeded admirably at creating buzz for the PT even before its launch in 2001. Described as a cross between a 1930’s sedan and a vintage milk truck, it was the darling of car shows. Pre-orders were strong. Anticipation of the model drove scores of the curious (most of them non-Chrysler types) to dealer showrooms. Early adopters paid well over invoice for the PT of their choice. Fan clubs were formed. Rallies were organized. Aftermarket pimping commenced. It was also the first of the “post retro” crop of vehicles, which has grown to include the Ford Mustang, the Dodge Challenger and the Chevrolet Camaro and HHR.

The Cruiser also proved to be a demographic-buster, appealing to everyone from retirees to customizers to first-time car buyers looking for something spacious, inexpensive and yes, head-turning. (In the spirit of disclosure, I must inform you I purchase a 2002 model, which I still drive today.)

It didn’t take long for Chrysler to squander its success. Here are a few of the marketing sins commited by the automaker on behalf of the Cruiser:

• It failed to reinvest in the brand. We’ve written before about the necessity for marketers to continually add value to their offerings (click here for post). If you see a PT coming down the street, you’d be hard pressed to tell if it was a 2001 model, a 2007 model or a 2010 model. Version 2.0 never arrived. Initial owners loved their Cruisers. But when it came time to trade them in, I suspect very few bought another one. Why buy the same car twice? As an example of an automaker who has done it right, check out the 2010 Honda Civic compared to the 2001.
• It failed to understand its user base. The downside of having a product that appeals to many demographics is that it is easy to lose site of your “sweet spot.” While you never want to turn away buyers, you definitely want to cater to your bread and butter. And Chrysler could never decide who its core market was. Was it the young urban family looking for economical transportation? The boomer who was swept up in the nostalgic looks? The soccer mom who wouldn’t be caught dead in a minivan?
• It allowed the model to become too ubiquitous. This is a tough one. The idea, after all is to sell more units, right? Well, actually the idea is to make more profits, and there are a lot of ways to go on that. The initial demand for the PT should have signaled Chrysler that it had a powerful niche model on it hands, but that’s all it would be. It was too polarizing to become the automaker’s flagship vehicle. By limiting production of the PT, Chrysler could have justified a premium price, which would played into the “individualism” the model inspired. And by upgrading the model (or adding variations: a panel truck, a woody station wagon, a top-less roadster, a club coupe?) Chrysler could continue to appeal to that crowd. Make the product’s Brand Vision “Head Turner.”

A former client of mine who was in the auto business once shared with me his early indicator of when a model was in trouble. “When you see rental car lots full of them, then you know the end is near,” he said. That was certainly true of the PT.

But perhaps the biggest marketing sin committed on behalf of the PT was to take a product that inspired passion, loyalty and camaraderie and allow it to suffer a Saturn-like fate.

Good luck, Fiat. Your work’s cut out for you.

Posted by Mickey

David Blaine, he’s not.  Harry does not create a distance between himself and his audience as most performers do. Instead he wows you with the results of his creativity and endless hours of dedication. And then he lets you in on the gag. At that moment, he becomes an ‘everyman.’ Members of his audience connect with him by thinking, “Hey, with enough practice, maybe even I could pull this off.”

Does this transparency diminish Harry’s act? Does it make his illusions any less “magical?” No. In fact, quite the opposite. Once you have an opportunity to “look behind the curtain,” you can more fully appreciate Harry’s act. By “giving away his secrets,” Harry his making magic more human and approachable. It’s one thing to make a 40-story skyscraper disappear. It’s another to have the magician show you how he did it. It gives you a more complete story. It gives you “expert knowledge” that you can try out on your own or share.  It gives you a deeper connection to the craft.

So how can you apply this to your marketing? Instead of attempting to be secretive about everything that goes into the creation of your products, consider what would happen if you were more transparent. Sure, there is a fine line here: there are always patents, trade secrets and competitive intelligence that need to be protected. But most of what we do on a day-to-day basis doesn’t exactly fall under the auspices of “classified information.” Yet we’re reluctant to share much about our processes.

One thing you’ll find out is that the customers who are truly passionate about your products want to know as much as they can about the organization. Just as Harry’s act creates a more complete story for his followers, inviting followers to learn more about your products, people and processes builds a more complete story for them to share.

Here’s Harry perfoming one of his most famous tricks: the old “needle-though-the-arm”:

And here’s the follow-up revealing how it’s done:

Now that you know how the trick works, aren’t you more likely to talk about it later? A more complete story provides a more complete experience.

Posted by Mickey

Posted by Mickey

Marketing purists have used examples such as this to poo-poo the benefits of creative advertising. “What good is over-the-top creativity if no one remembers who the advertiser is,” they say.

Now, however, we’re finding that even when subjects can’t recall the communication on a literal level, they retain much more information subliminally.

Recent research conducted by Melanie Dempsey (Ryerson University) and Andrew A. Mitchell (University of Toronto) proved that advertising messaging actually engages subjects on several different levels. There is the literal, linear level (“what does the communication say?”), which is what most recall testing measures. Beyond that, however, Dempsey and Mitchell mapped out how most of what is communicated via advertising messages is subconscious. The “language” of these subconscious communications is much more primal, primarily emotions, feelings and stimulating visuals.

That would explain why the consumer may remember a spot but not the advertiser the day after seeing it, yet follows through on purchasing the product at a later date for reasons unknown. Dempsey and Mitchell dubbed this effect the “I-like-it-but-I-don’t-know-why” effect.

In short, it’s more about how the consumer feels about the brand than what he knows about it.
To further test the potency of these unconscious brand preferences, Dempsey and Mitchell carried out a second experiment in which the subjects were presented with factual product information that cast their product preferences in a negative light. Despite this, the subjects continued to chose the products they “knew” to be inferior, but for which they had received positive branding associations. In other words, it is the feelings one has about a brand that contributes to brand loyalty.

You can read more about Dempsey and Mitchell’s study here.

The lesson to take away from Dempsey and Mitchell’s work is to recognize that Top Of Mind Recall is just the tip of the communications ice berg. If that is all we’re interesting in measuring, we’ll be short-changing ourselves. What’s most important is what’s subconsciously communicated under the radar.

Posted by Mickey

“Selling by Telling” is how we in advertising and marketing communications have made our livings since the days of Marconi. We told people why our products were just what they were looking for. How their whites would be whiter, their floors would be shinier and their hair more manageable. We skillfully created an itch with the consumer that could be salved with our product. We totally controlled all aspects of the messaging. The customer role in this process was to listen. She only heard what we wanted her to hear.

Time to wave those days bye-bye. Today, we’re not the only source of information for our customers. They’re hearing about us from their friends. From their peers. From media sources. From bloggers. From message boards. From third-party review sites.

No matter how you try to spin it, the information control we used to enjoy has gone the way of the 14.4 modem. What it comes down to for consumers is, who can I trust when making purchase decisions? In an era of perpetual spin, of misleading and manipulative messaging, of being misled and mistreated by marketers, who can blame them for not accepting as gospel everything we say?

I’m convinced that today, the best way to sell to a consumer is to allow them to sell to themselves. Instead of relying on puffery and unsubstantiated claims to win over consumers, let them discover what our product can deliver on their own. Enable communication between peers. Monitor customer reviews. Make information on your products easily available.

This changes the way we would approach marketing communications. Instead of relying on a check list of copy points, we would start with a core platform of a single, understandable believable promise, and a shared set of values. Less argument, more promise.

It also assumes that communication alone is not going to “complete the sale.” To allow someone to sell herself she needs to try our product. We need to do whatever it takes to get it into her hands and let her discover for herself that the promise we are making is true. Old-school tools like coupons, trial sizes, in-store demos and free trial periods take on a more prominent role in the marketing process. Instead of giving us a short-term competitive advantage, those things actually are critical in moving customers up the decision ladder.

Research over the past year (from Nielson and others) shows that coupon redemption is at record highs among consumers of all demos. While one can chalk this up to the stuttering economy, he must also be open to the idea that consumer behavior has made a permanent change to where “trial” has become amplified in the purchase decision process.

As part of your long-term marketing strategy, it makes sense to include initiatives that will allow consumers to use product trial as a way of selling themselves.

Posted by Mickey

Hey, who couldn’t. We’re talking just five measly percent here.

You should be able to achieve that kind of improvement without having to break much of a sweat. You could probably get there without revamping systems, adding new platforms or hiring more bodies, right?

But imagine the impact that extra 5% could have on your brand. If your perceived quality went up 5%. If awareness, interest and preference of your brand went up 5%. If 5% more people recalled your TV spots or clicked through on your banner ads. If 5% more customers recommended you to others, or contributed to your Facebook page.

The question of course is, how do you get 5% better?

This is where it is important to be in synch with your customer. To know what compels her to do business with you. What do you give her that is better than anyone else, that keeps her coming back?

Find out why your most loyal customers like you, then improve that element 5%. If they think you have the friendliest staff, look into initiatives that could make them 5% more helpful. If they think you have the best selection, try adding 5% more SKUs. If they buy you because of your reliability, up it by 5%, perhaps by including a no-questions-asked return policy or a longer warranty period. If they buy you because you’re cheaper, investigate how you could trim prices by another 5%, or at least add 5% more perceived value. If they like your advertising, kick it up a notch and challenge your agency to up the engagement by 5%. You get the idea.

Inevitably, the success of your brand will coincides with its perceived usefulness to customers. Make your products and services demonstrably more useful to customers, and you’re golden.

And it all starts with 5%.

Posted by Mickey

Software companies release upgraded versions. Smart phones add more capabilities. Packaged good manufacturers continually tout new flavors/colors/sizes. Your cable or satellite provider adds new networks, HD channels and On Demand options at a blistering pace. In other words, we’ve come to view product development as something that’s never finished.

The pressure to add value has intensified in light of expanded competition, not only within your immediate category but in related categories that also compete for consumer resources. (Example: an entertainment venue not only competes with other entertainment venues, it also competes with anything that vies for a consumer’s discretionary time).

“Adding value” has become ubiquitous, and is something that is pretty much expected in commerce today. If you just released Version 2.0, Version 2.1 better not be far behind.

But the question is, how many of these “improvements”  actually enhance a customer’s experience with the product or service, and how many are simply “change for change sake?”

“Adding value” is best defined as “engineering more into your product or service to help you customer have a better experience while using it.”

The benefits of adding true user value are many, including building a reputation for innovation, enhancing customer loyalty, giving customers a reason to upgrade, and in many cases, justifying a price increase. It is important to note, however, that to qualify as “added value,” enhancements and additions must be seen as being “of use” to the customer. Arbitrarily adding functionality that doesn’t improve a customer’s experience might justify the “new and improved” snipe on your packaging, but will likely garner a collective “meh” from your customers.

What’s really needed then, is a filter. And quite simply, nothing is better than “Does this improvement add to an improved experience by the user?”

One industry that has done a great job at adding value has been the auto industry. Take a look at what your new car dollar bought back in, say 1959, as opposed to today. In ’59 you could buy a new Chevrolet Bel-Air for around $2,600 ($19,500 in today’s dollars). While it bought you some nifty styling and tail fins to die for, it also bought you a car with no airbags, no restraint systems, no anti-lock brakes, no air conditioning, no 100,000 mile warranty, and no radio (those were extra). For roughly that same money today, you can get a new Chevy Malibu with all those features, plus gas mileage that’s more than doubled, improved performance and a lifespan three times the 50-60,000 miles of the ’59.

To visually demonstrate this, we present this video produced by the National Highway Safety Administration showing the effects of a head-on collision between the 1959 Chevy Bel-Air and the 2009 Chevy Malibu.

In fairness to the ’59 however, it did boast a boat load of chrome.

Posted by Mickey

So what’s the hold up? Well, as the accompanying graph (courtesy of eMarketer.com) points out, the big hiccup in the eyes of many organizations (more than 1/3) relates to ROI. How will they know if the expenditures on Social Media will pay off? Is Social Media truly a brave new world where the tools are free and your followers do all the “selling?” Or, is it a giant black hole that’s going to demand more and more resources with precious little to show for it?

Business leaders can be excused for their skepticism of Social Media as a platform for selling more widgets. They see how their teenagers use Facebook. They read about people tweeting what they had for lunch. They see YouTube as a venue for cute cat videos. And, unfortunately, folks in my position haven’t been a ton of help when we talk about Social Media as a forum for “engagement,” not for “selling” (without explaining in down-to-earth language how that engagement is a critical element in the selling process).

One way to approach the ROI barrier is to take a look at how we determine it with traditional media like TV, radio, magazine, outdoor, etc. that we know works. None of the ROI is up front. It’s all after the fact. We spent so-and-so on media for the quarter, and our sales were such-and-such. You can chart year-over-year incremental sales and attribute the extra sales (or increased margin) to your ad expenditure.

In other words, you’re doing it on faith. Not ill-placed faith to be sure. But the naked truth is that you are betting numbers with lots of zeros behind them on projections. On forecasts. The same way you decide how to dress based on a weather forecast. It is only after-the-fact that you see if your projections were correct.

But for many business leaders, this kind of faith has no place in the discussion of Social Media. What we need are hard numbers.

The irony is, of course, is that Social Media gives you access to plenty of hard numbers. Hard accurate numbers. Even free analytic tools allow you to measure your impact in Social Media with a real-time accuracy that would be the envy of any offline media, which still pretty much rely on historical data from set-top boxes and diaries.

Analytics can show you how many people are talking about you, what they are saying (positive, negative or neutral), how many are joining your communities, how many site visits you have, how many downloads you’ve issued, where your visitors come from, how many times they’ve come to you, how many thought leaders have linked to you, and so on.

But alas, even these numbers have little to do with sales or ROI. In fact, I would submit that the most important aspects of a Social Media program will never be measured. Because Social Media is conducted on a one-to-one basis (in front of thousands of spectators), Social Media’s strength is its ability to strengthen the relationship between marketer and customer. To resolve customer service issues before the customer decides to take a powder (or vent elsewhere). To reward frequent and loyal customers with special access and considerations (and giving them the tools and permission to talk you up in their communities). To get input from customers on possible product offerings and initiatives. To conduct quick-and-dirty surveys. To work casual customers up the loyalty ladder. To provide several new portals through which to engage the organization.

Just because you can’t measure stuff like this doesn’t mean it won’t have a huge impact on your business’s bottom line.

All it takes is a little faith.

Posted by Mickey

Hotel management knew it had to do something. Experts were consulted–engineers, architects, contractors. These experts were universal in their recommendation: add a second elevator. This undertaking was not going to be cheap—it was anticipated to cost around $1 million as well as cost the hotel the permanent use of five guest rooms to accommodate the infrastructure of the new elevator. And it wasn’t going to be quick—construction was estimated to take upward of four months.

Management felt as though it had no choice. It needed to address the concerns of its clientele, even if it meant absorbing this huge expense and subjecting guests to the inconvenience of hotel construction. A few weeks before work was scheduled to begin, the hotel manager confided his dilemma to a long-time guest who happened to be an inventor. After the manager finished his story, the guest, who was quite familiar with the hotel and its clientele, said he could solve the hotel’s problem for $1,000. And in addition, he could have the work completed in less than one week.

The manager knew this man well, and trusted him. Yet he could not understand how he would be able to install a new elevator in one week for just $1,000. But he figured, what did he have to lose? If it didn’t work out, there was always the million dollar solution in the wings. He agreed to the man’s proposition and they shook hands.

One week later to the day, the manager walked in to the lobby and was amazed by what he saw. Instead of a new elevator, the inventor had installed a huge floor-to-ceiling mirror adjacent to the elevator. Almost immediately, guest complaints of the elevator died down.

What the inventor/guest understood was that the problem wasn’t that people were waiting too long. It was that they had nothing to do while they waited. By installing the mirror, guests could preen themselves or observe the rest of the lobby area while they waited for the elevator.

This is what is universally known as an “elegant solution.” An elegant solution is one in which the maximum desired effect is achieved with the smallest or simplest effort.

Often, what we think of as the “problem” isn’t the real problem at all. It is really just a symptom. The problem in this instance wasn’t that “It’s taking too long to get to my room” or “I’m waiting too long in the lobby.” It’s that “I’m bored.”

The behavioral psychologist Abraham Maslow once famously stated, “If all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.” His point is that by relying on “experts” to always solve problems, the solutions are all going to look pretty much the same, growing from what the experts know best. Often the most elegant solutions come not from experts, but from creative “generalists”—thinkers who are adept at understanding the true nature of the problem and are willing to entertain or design a wide range of possible solutions.

So next time you find yourself in a situation where you feel it will take an “expert” to design a workable solution, consider also talking to a few generalists and see what they come back with. They might just blow you away.

Posted by Mickey