The Quisenblog

When you publish 12 months of blog posts, some are going to stick out. As we bid adieu to 2011, we thought we’d use our final post of the year to revisit a handful of our favorite posts from the past year.

To succeed in Social Media, think like a B-to-B marketer.

To be a successful business-to-business marketer, you need to spend time building relationships with your potential customers. And guess what. That’s what social media can help you do.

The first janitor in space.

Does everyone in your organization—from the C-suite to the folks who mop floors at the end of the day—understand your company’s Brand Vision? Do they have permission to find their own special way to make it come to life?

Win by addressing customer pain points.

Often times, the marketer that wins in the marketplace is the one that does the best job anticipating and addressing customer “pain points.”

Five Steps to Reputation Management.

With so much being published about you and your company online, how do you go about managing it?

Who is your competition?

Used to be that was an obvious question. But with online search playing a more and more important role, you might have competition you never considered before.

It’s (Im)possible.

For all the “achievable” goals your organization might have in this next year, it pays to have at least one that, on the surface, might seem impossible. Here’s why.

Three words that will supercharge your Brand Vision.

Once you find a way to make yourself stand out in the marketplace, how do you ensure everyone gets it? These three words will take you a long way.

We hope you have a Happy and Prosperous New Year. And we look forward to sharing our thoughts, observations (as well as the occasional rant) with you in 2012. Peace out.

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admin On Clients, On Customers, Ramblings, Social Media, customer experience, strategy B-to-B Marketing, brand vision, No Matter What, Relationship Management, Reputation Managment

“No. Matter. What.”

When Southwest Airlines dedicated themselves to being “THE low-fare airline,” they didn’t address it by saying “we’ll cut costs wherever it’s feasible.” They said they were THE low-fare airline—no matter what. So whenever someone from within the organization presented a business case that the airline could attract more business travelers by having wider seats, or by serving hot meals or by allowing business passengers to pre-board, instead of looking for a way to implement these initiatves cheaply, they dismissed these ideas all together. Because they got in the way of them being THE low-fare airline—no matter what.

When Nordstrom dedicated themselves to providing out-of-this-world customer service, they didn’t put a lot of “ifs” or “excepts” into it. Want to return something without a receipt? No problem. Want to return it after it’s obviously been worn a time or two? Still no problem. Want to return it, even though you don’t even know for sure it was bought there? Chances are they’ll take it. And do it with a smile. (There’s one urban legend that a man actually returned tire chains for a refund, even though Nordstroms never carried tire chains.)

Without a doubt, “No matter what” will cost you money. It may cost you some sales. It may cost you some customers. It may force you to eat some expenses. But if your brand vision is truly meaningful to your customers, and if you’re delivering it uniquely as no other organization can, that doesn’t matter. You just built and owned a valuable niche in your industry. And while others may try to copy your success, they will fail, because they’ll waffle on the “no matter what.”

One of the biggest challenges in implementing what could be a break-through Brand Vision is getting the whole organization, from the C-suite down to the street level, to buy into it and “live it” in their day-to-day transactions.

“No matter what” creates a narrative for your organization that everyone can relate to and re-tell. It eliminates wiggle room for interpreting your Brand Vision. It puts it on steroids, and eliminates the need for case-by-case interpretation. If I’m a sales clerk at Nordstroms, and I know my charge is to offer “uncompromised service, no matter what” I suddenly have permission to do whatever it takes to create a great customer story, without having to run it upstairs or refer to a policy manual.

Would your business look differently, or operate differently, if you added “no matter what” to the end of your brand vision?

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Mickey Creative, On Clients, On Customers, Ramblings, customer experience, strategy brand narrative, brand stories, brand vision, marketing case studies, Nordstroms, Southwest Airlines

Pretty obvious question, you say?

Once upon a time, naming your competition was pretty simple. Your competitors were the businesses in your market area that sold the same sort of products or services as you. But thanks to the Internet (more specifically Google), all that’s changed.

Now your competition isn’t so much who you say it is. It’s who Google says it is.

When your key word search terms are entered, who shows up? Is it the “usual suspects” you’ve been going toe-to-toe with for quite some time? Or are there new “competitors” (online or offline) that show up in the search?

Whichever is the case, before you can figure out how to take on your competition, you first have to know who they are.

For the sake of simplicity, here are four different types of competitors it pays to consider:

1. Brick-and-Mortar Competition
These are the competitors you have a pretty good handle on. They’re the ones you compete with on a fairly regular basis. If you’re Staples, your brick-and-mortar competitors are mom-and-pop stationery stores, as well as chains such as OfficeMax and OfficeDepot. Chances are you know these guys pretty well, and you’ve gotten quite adept at competing head-to-head.

2. Competition That Ranks For Your Keywords
Thanks to the Internet, it’s not just local companies you need to worry about. You also have to be aware of your search competitors – the businesses that are stealing customers by ranking for the keywords you want to be found for. The Internet doesn’t care if Jenny’s Book Emporium is run out of her parent’s basement in Nogales, AZ. If Jenny’s ranking higher on the page for your search terms than you are, tough luck. There’s a pretty good shot she’s going to steal some business that under other circumstances would likely come your way.

Let’s go back to our Staples example.

If you’re Staples and you want to rank for “hanging file folders,” your competition isn’t just the brick and mortar guys. You’re also up against Amazon, The Container Store, Walmart, Sam’s Club and who-knows-else. There doesn’t need to be a physical location within 200 miles of your storefront. If their website is showing up above yours (or comparable to yours) in the search results, they’re a direct competitor.

3. Competitors Whose Social Media Pages Rank For Your Keywords
Like most organizations, you’ve probably got a website. You might even have a Facebook page. Maybe even a LinkedIn business page. But what about the competitors who are seemingly everywhere in Social Media? They blog, they contribute to industry forums, they comment on articles. They post videos on YouTube and photos on Picasa. Keep in mind that Google indexes each and every one of these pages. And the more dynamic the content (the more frequently it is updated), the higher it will generally rank, usually against the very words you’re hoping to be found with.

This is a whole new category of “search competitor”: those who get in through the side door while everyone is trying to push through the front. This is a big reason why it’s so important to have a meaningful presence in as many social platforms as you can manage, and why all digital assets related to your brand need to be optimized for search.

4. “Share of Buzz” Competitors
Thanks to social media, there’s another class of nagging competitor to think about – the ones who are winning in the “Share of Voice” battle. These are the businesses that sell similar products or services as you but who seem to be involved in every social conversation out there. People are tweeting their stuff, sharing their links on Facebook, talking up their promotions and referencing their videos or SlideShare presentations in conversations all across the web.

Bottom line, your competitors are no longer just the names you’ve always known; your competition is anyone who gets themselves in front of your customer’s line of sight.

Once you’re aware of the volume of competition you truly have, you can take action to come out on top. Yes, a big part of that is to focus on a sound SEO strategy (more on that here). And it’s also important to have a meaningful presence across several platforms. But more than that, it is important that you truly understand the value your customers consistently say they receive from you that is unique and meaningful. And turn that value proposition into a Brand Vision that is reflected throughout your organization and your communications.

Just as you compete with your local brick-and-mortar types by being uniquely “you,” so too can you successfully compete with virtual entities—as long as you narrowly focus on what you do best.

Heck, you might even show up in your competition’s searches and steal a few sales from them.

If you’d like to read more about competing with search engine competition, I recommend checking out this thoughtful blog post from TopRank.

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In this “micro-post,” we give an “attaboy” to a marketer that’s done a fantastic job figuring out “what business they’re really in.” That marketer is the electronics retailer Best Buy.

If I were to ask “what business is Best Buy in,” you might be tempted to talk about “what they do” rather than “who they are.” You could talk about how they carry the latest technology, have well-versed sales and support people, and even note how they have a liberal return/exchange policy. But all this would be missing one key component—understanding what holds a customer back from buying.

Talk to anyone who’s about to part with hundreds or thousands of dollars in order to get the “next big thing,” and you’ll hear one over-riding concern: the fear that what’s “new” today will be obsolete tomorrow. That’s the way it goes with technology. And most times, that investment you put out for the latest and greatest is gone with the wind.

Best Buy obviously gets this.

This television spot cites an initiative called the “Buy Back Program.” Essentially when your new doo-dad gets outdated, Best Buy will buy it back when you trade up to get the new stuff.

Technophobia may have met its match.

A marketing exec I know once compared obstacles to purchase to the baggage on an airport carousel. The buyer isn’t going anywhere until all the bags are removed.

Best Buy just removed a huge steamer trunk.

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Evidently a lot of folks out there think creative briefs are a waste of time.

That’s the conclusion you could draw from the response to this article over at AdAge.com. Why would so many feel creative briefs have become irrelevant, and who is to blame? Some blame clients for cramming too much information in them, or for being too “boilerplate.” Others blame agencies for not being creative enough in their approach to briefs. Others say briefs don’t take into concern the prospect’s point of view. One commenter even went so far as to argue “The brief is dead.”

It’s true the “traditional” brief leaves much to be desired in these days when marketers are pushing more and more initiatives, talking to more different audiences and being involved in a variety of Social Media platforms that require creative decisions to be made on the fly. The tightly-defined “packaged-goods-era” creative brief (that spelled out everything from the exact size of an ad to what “mandatories” need to be addressed) is way too confining when it comes to developing integrated multi-platform campaigns and programs. What if, for instance, the creative team determines the best solution to a client’s problem isn’t necessarily a print ad, but a web video series? Will the brief let them consider it?

Yet without a brief, how will agencies and clients stay on the same page?

For an industry that supposedly embraces “change” and “bold moves,” it’s interesting how a lot of us have gotten locked into approaching problems the same old way, even when we have evidence that way is no longer working. It’s time agencies and clients reconsidered the brief to once again to make it a useful tool in these days of multi-channel dialogue.

Is there a prescription out there to make the creative brief relevant once again?

Our view is that the traditional agency creative brief is a throw-back to a time when it was assumed that we could manipulate consumer behavior by crafting the “right” message. The overriding question behind every brief was “What do we have to say to make you buy from us?”

Today, the consumer has access to many sources of information (not just the marketer) and in general, she puts less weight on what a marketer says than what she hears from friends, family and her community. As a result, successful marketing is not primarily about communication anymore; it is about transparently demonstrating an understanding of a consumer’s problems and concerns and addressing them in a unique, meaningful way. The question for marketers today is “Who do we have to BE in order to attract you as a customer.” It involves operations as well as marketing, as well as an on-going communication stream. In order to lead to success, any iteration of a creative brief must acknowledge this truth.

The next generation creative brief should start with the organization’s Brand Vision, which answers the question “What’s the one thing we want people to feel (and think of) when our name is mentioned, that is unique, meaningful and true.” Putting this thought at the forefront of every brief, whether for a branding ad campaign, a social media promotion or a price-and-item ad, assures that whatever the communication, it will be crafted with the intention that receivers will walk away with the same emotional take away. The brief itself needs to be acknowledged as a flexible document that serves as the “starting point” for both agency and client.

Yesterday’s “campaigns” have given way to today’s “content platforms.” As conditions on the ground change, and as new opportunities or obstacles surface, so, too does the nature of communication.

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Mickey Creative, Media, New Media, On Clients, On Customers, Ramblings, Social Media, strategy Ad Age, brand vision, content platform, creative brief, multi-channel dialogue

The marketing spoils often don’t go to the marketer with the best product. Or to the marketer with the biggest name. Or the most money. Or the widest distribution. Or even the most loyal customers.

Many times the marketplace winner is the marketer who does the best job understanding and meaningfully addressing its customers’ pain points.

One present-day marketer who has done an exemplary job of crafting its offerings to directly address customers’ true needs is the automaker Hyundai.

Hyundai has always been an underdog in the U.S. auto market. It was a latecomer with a hard-to-pronounce name and the baggage of coming from a place (South Korea) that’s not especially known for producing top-notch automobiles. The logical play for Hyundai would have been to stand first and foremost for “value,” and hang its hat on a position of “being a cheap version of a Nissan.”

To its credit, the automaker knew it had to do something different. “Value” is a nebulous concept that can mean different things to different audiences, so Hyundai had to find a way to connect with car buyers to assuage both their spoken and (most importantly) unspoken concerns. The marketer wisely settled on the concept of “assurance.”

Initially, the automaker manifested this position by offering what was at the time the most comprehensive warranty in the industry: ten years or 100,000 miles. This gave the automaker automatic cred in the marketplace.

But here’s where Hyundai hit a homerun. It understood that “assurance” wasn’t restricted to just a warranty; it was essentially a commitment to take all the risk out of buying a new car.

This was really exemplified in 2008, when the U.S. economy tanked. Financial insecurity ran rampant. Sales of big ticket items plummeted. Well-established auto brands like Toyota, Honda and Ford each saw sales drop well over 30%. It was during this period that Hyundai expanded its “assurance” positioning by offering to let buyers return their Hyundais to the dealer in the event that they should lose their paychecks, with no negative credit ramifications. Immediately, sales jumped 14% (see more about the story in the following video), and before long the other major automakers went to market with their own version of “assurance.”

Most recently, Hyundai again found a creative way to manifest “assurance,” this time guaranteeing a trade-in value for buyers.

Suddenly, this odd-ball Korean car maker has surpassed many well-known marques here in America. And I would wager to say the reason isn’t that the car-buying public fell in love with design and performance of the Santa Fe. It has everything to do with understanding the needs and anxieties of the car buyer and getting to work to build initiatives that might scare the bean-counters, but that emotionally connect with car buyers.

One of the beautiful things about the “assurance” Brand Vision is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with functionality. It’s not a claim for better gas mileage, better performance, more cargo room or even a lower sticker price. Those things are fluid, and can change. Hyundai succeeded in tapping into authentic customer anxieties that will always be around.

Consumers have real needs, real fears, real anxieties, many of them unspoken. The marketer who does the best job of understanding and addressing these “real needs” stands the best chance of emotionally connecting with the consumer.

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I had the pleasure of hosting a Content Development Workshop through Greater Spokane Inc.’s BizStreet this week. Thought I’d share the PowerPoint deck with you all. Covers things like developing a content strategy, where to source quality content and includes some content best practices (which I pretty much learned the hard way).

I look forward to your comments.

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There is a famous story about President John F. Kennedy’s first visit to NASA’s headquarters back in 1961. While touring the facility, the President’s entourage reportedly came upon a man mopping the floor in one of the hallways. The President stopped to chat with the man, shook his hand, and asked what he did at NASA. The janitor proudly addressed the young President by saying, “Sir, I’m helping to put a man on the moon!”

This story illustrates the idea that everyone at NASA, regardless of his or her position, was in their own way contributing toward the ultimate mission of the organization. Is the same true in your company?

As managers, too often we’re tempted to treat team members or departments as “cogs in a bigger machine,” rather than allow them to share in the mission of the company (what we refer to as your “Brand Vision”). Too often our “greater purpose” never makes it beyond our executive suite (or worse, out of our own heads). By allowing everyone in the organization to take ownership of the Brand Vision and bring their own special “mojo” to it, it makes it much more likely the customers and prospects we deal with on a daily basis, regardless of where in the operation they reside, will see us as we intend them to.

The first step in building this camaraderie and getting buy-in from everyone in the organization is to share how your Brand Vision was arrived at, what it means to your customer, and why it is meaningful, unique and true. Then, turn your employees and departments loose in determining how they can contribute to the expression of the Brand Vision, and ultimately, how they can surprise and delight customers through fulfillment of the Brand Vision.

A few well-known examples that come to mind of companies that give their team members freedom in expressing the organization’s Brand Vision in their own unique way are Zappos (”Beyond-Exceptional Customer Service”) and Starbucks (”Welcoming”). A specific example of how one employee’s actions can elevate an entire organization comes from this previous post we had on Southwest Airlines.

Is knowing the mission of the organization is to put a man on the moon going to affect how a janitor mops a floor? Who knows. But just the fact that he felt a part of that mission surely paid benefits to NASA in some form, probably in a way that NASA management couldn’t have imagined.

The same can be true for just about any forward-thinking organization. Allowing employees and departments to determine for themselves how they can meaningfully bring the organization’s Brand Vision to life in their day-to-day dealings will unleash a collective creativity that will be inspiring to witness. Rewarding ideas and initiatives developed by staff, and sharing successes with all in your organization, are excellent ways management can perpetuate the growth and consistency of the Brand Vision.

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Southwest Airlines has built a monumentally successful business model as a low fare, no frills service-oriented airline. A key component in this model is to “keep the planes in the air” understanding that the longer a plane is on the ground, the less revenue it generates. Southwest has revolutionized the industry by developing systems that allow their crews to flip a plane in under 20 minutes.

So what do you think Southwest Airlines would do if one of its employees took it upon himself to delay a plane by 12 additional minutes, nearly doubling the turnaround time for the flight? One decision by one line employee could potentially have a rippling effect through the entire carrier’s flight operations. Connections could be missed. Passengers irritated. It’s no stretch to say that Southwest would be justified in terminating the “loose cannon” that made such a decision.

But wait till you hear the rest of the story.

As reported by Christopher Elliot on consumertravel.com, he received a letter from a reader named Nancy chronicling the story. I am reposting Nancy’s letter as Chris reported it.

“Last night, my husband and I got the tragic news that our three-year-old grandson in Denver had been murdered by our daughter’s live-in boyfriend.

He is being taken off life support tonight at 9 o’clock and his parents have opted for organ donation, which will take place immediately. Over 25 people will receive his gift tonight and many lives will be saved.

This morning, after only a couple hours sleep, my husband and I began to make all arrangements to get him to Denver to be with our daughter. He is currently on business in LA and is flying Southwest.

While his employer, Northrop Grumman, made arrangements to get his ticket changed so he could get to Tucson today (which he had to do in order to not spend any extra money) I called Southwest to arrange his flight from Tucson to Denver so he would be stepping off one plane and getting on another.

He has several free flights with them so I couldn’t really do it on the website. The ticketing agent was holding back tears throughout the call.

In LAX, the lines to both check a bag and get through security were exceptional. He got to the airport two hours early and was still late getting to his plane.

Every step of the way, he’s on the verge of tears and trying to get assistance from both TSA and Southwest employees to get to his plane on time.

According to him, everyone he talked to couldn’t have cared less. When he was done with security, he grabbed his computer bag, shoes and belt and ran to his terminal in his stocking feet.

When he got there, the pilot of his plane and the ticketing agent both said, ‘Are you Mark? We held the plane for you and we’re so sorry about the loss of your grandson.’

The pilot held the plane that was supposed to take off at 11:50 until 12:02 when my husband got there.

As my husband walked down the jetway with the pilot, he said, ‘I can’t thank you enough for this.’ The pilot responded with, ‘They can’t go anywhere without me and I wasn’t going anywhere without you. Now relax. We’ll get you there. And again, I’m so sorry.’

My husband was able to take his first deep breath of the day.

I don’t know any other airline that would have done this.”

All of a sudden, those 12 minutes don’t seem like such a big deal.

Why would a pilot feel empowered to rock the boat in order to accommodate just one passenger? I’ve got to believe it has to do with the fact that SWA’s “People First” culture is so ingrained that the pilot and gate agent really saw it as a no-brainer. They didn’t need to run it by anyone upstairs. They didn’t need a corporate directive telling them when they should and shouldn’t take such actions. They instinctively knew it was the right thing to do.

It also created a terrific story. Every passenger on that flight could imagine Southwest doing the same thing for them. And in this age of Social Media, a compelling story like this will spread like wildfire. Check out the airline’s Facebook page for a sampling of what the general public has to say.

We all say our customers are important. We all claim to be customer-centric. But how many of us would be willing to go so far out on a limb for one customer?

There’s an old saying that a principle only becomes a principle when it costs you money. This pilot’s decision may have cost Southwest financially. But it more than made up for it in good will.

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During World War II, the Allied invasion of France on June 6, 1944 (D-Day) had been meticulously planned for years. British, Canadian, and American airborne forces planned and rehearsed for months a precise series of glider and parachute landings behind enemy lines that were designed to secure bridges, road junctions, and other key terrain that would enable the ground invasion forces to advance rapidly inland. The airborne invasion forces took off from England hours ahead of the ground forces, exactly as planned.

It didn’t take long, however, to realize all those long months of planning and rehearsal were for naught.

Paratroopers dropped into unmarked landing zones, miles from their intended targets. Gliders landed in the wrong areas. Thousands of soldiers from different units were thrown together in the dark of night, many not knowing exactly where they or their units were. Plus, as it turned out, the German resistance they encountered was much more fierce than was expected. It had all the makings of a military disaster.

And then something interesting happened. Despite all the misfires and lost opportunities, the military objectives were accomplished in mere hours by ad-hoc units that had somehow banded together to succeed. How could this have possibly happened when it appeared that so much had gone so terribly wrong? Through something known in the military as “Commander’s Intent.”

Commander’s Intent is effectively communicating the objectives of the operation down the line, so that every soldier, no matter what his role, knows what the end game is. In marketing, we also have our own version of Commander’s Intent. Your Brand Vision.

Your Brand Vision is what we refer to as “the one thing you aspire for your customers to say you do better than anyone else.” If you wish to hang your hat on a position of “great customer service,” then sell that vision down the line, and equip your people to deliver on it. Your Brand Vision represents the opportunity for everyone in your organization to work towards a common end, and add a personal touch while doing it.

One interesting thing about implementing a Brand Vision: despite the top-down directives you may put into place to ensure it is being delivered, the most surprising and delightful implementations of it are by the folks who deliver on it as only they could. Military personnel are trained to employ a “Spectrum of Improvisation” when they execute Commander’s Intent. So, too, can you train your team members. If your focus is for your organization to be “helpful and friendly,” rather than sweat over every possible touchpoint opportunity, you can simply hire the most “helpful and friendly” people and let them loose on their own “Spectrum of Improvisation.” Incentivize them to come up with creative ways to express the Brand Vision. Give recognition when they deliver on the Brand Vision.

And just like on D-Day, when the best laid plans start going sideways, an effective Brand Vision gives team members a “compass” of sorts to help them direct their actions. It helps them find their own ways to get to the “end game” that the organization stands for.

Commander’s Intent saved D-Day. And who knows, it could save your day.

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