How Many Workers Does It Take To...?

While my dad and I were out running yesterday morning, we passed by a group of Comcast workers who appeared to be working on the telephone lines. The entourage included seven Comcast trucks and vans, two Comcast men on ladders, and eleven other Comcast men standing in a group on the ground, observing the two men on the ladders.

[insert joke here: how many Comcast guys does it take to...?]

Now, I like to give folks the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the eleven Comcast men on the ground were in training, and therefore were observing the two on the ladders for training purposes.

If, however, this was not a training exercise, then thirteen men seems like quite a large number for whatever repair work was occurring. Assuming that two ladders were required, with one man on each ladder, one man stabilizing each ladder, and one man to direct everything, five workers could be understandable. (My dad insists that three would have sufficed.)

But thirteen? Things were beginning to look like a Verizon commercial.

The lesson here? Don't send thirteen people to do a five-person job. Unless you expect that doubling or tripling the number of workers will result in work that is twice or three times better.

And if your organization is doing something that seems wasteful, even though it isn't, then communicate. Tell your customers (and potential customers) what is really happening, so that they may continue to see you as a company that is a good steward of its resources. If you are sending ten workers-in-training to observe a three-person job, send with them a sign that says, "Workers in Training." Or "Learning How to Serve You Better." Or something.

Be a good steward of your resources. And communicate with the public - especially when your actions could be misinterpreted.

Be wise. Happy New Year!

A Few Favorites, and Merry Christmas

I write this post from Terminal C of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, as I await the magical metal bird that will carry me home for the holidays. Tonight I will not be sharing any profound marketing wisdom with you, other than this:

Whatever holiday you celebrate, take some time this December to spend it with people who care for you. Shut down your laptop, disable the wireless connection on your iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, or what-have-you, and devote time to really matters: the people in our lives. You can't be a good marketer without first being a healthy person.

That said, below is a brief selection of some of my personal favorite (read: funniest) marketing efforts that I've seen in the past month. Evaluate their effectiveness on your own.

Enjoy! And merry Christmas!

Volkswagen New Polo - Rumour commercial

Last year's viral video from JCPenney, "Beware of the Doghouse"

And the recent sequel, "Return to the Doghouse"

Last but not least, take a moment to call the Nestle Crunch hotline at 1-800-295-0051. After the prompt asks you to press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish, wait 10 seconds. What you hear next is worth it! (Friendly commenters, please don't spoil the surprise!)

Give a Little, Get a Lot: Free Shipping Day

Yesterday, Thursday, December 17, 2009, was the second annual Free Shipping Day online. 742 online retailers offered free shipping all day yesterday for all purchases made online. Plus, as mentioned in a story about the event on CBS' The Early Show, UPS guaranteed a Christmas Eve delivery for all packages that were shipped yesterday.

Events like Free Shipping Day are a win for everyone. Customers save money and still get to purchase those last-minute Christmas presents just in time for a Christmas Eve delivery. Merchants see a boost in their online sales, which, according to FreeShippingDay.com, drop significantly after December 12 each year. And UPS gets a huge influx of shipments, and the opportunity to provide a delightful experience for hundreds of thousands of potential new customers.

Free Shipping Day is just one more example of how a little goes a long way. By covering their customers' shipping expenses, the online merchants relieve customers of that small extra financial burden, and attract those customers to shop at their establishments. And of course, when 742 retailers (not just one) participate in the same offer, the word spreads faster, leading to awareness among more consumers, and thus more customers for each merchant.

What can your organization do to give a little to your customers? And how can you partner with other organizations to spread the reach and give a bit more Christmas cheer to all?

Marketing Lessons from Christmas Cookies

In my family, December is the time to bake Christmas cookies. Snickerdoodles, peanut butter cookies, chocolate no-bake cookies, peanut blossoms (aka Hershey's Kiss cookies), chocolate chip cookies, kolaches, sand tarts, Christmas tree-shaped almond cookies, sugar cookies, and raisin-filled cookies were all standard holiday fare at my parents' house and my grandparents' house when I was growing up.

When I moved off to college, I started extracting my favorite childhood recipes from the memories and cookbooks of my mom and grandma. In that process, I was amazed to learn how many of those delicious recipes were not ancient family secrets or mysteries unveiled in a gourmet cookbook. Instead, the instructions for many of those wonderful treats came from the packages of the ingredients.

The recipe for peanut blossoms came from the back of a bag of Hershey's Kisses. The recipe for Chex Mix was printed on the side panel of a box of Chex breakfast cereal. The recipe for chocolate fudge was found on a jar of Kraft marshmallow creme. The recipe for pumpkin pie was revealed on the wrapper of a can of Libby's pumpkin pie filling.

I think I shall be forever grateful to the makers of these food items for sharing the recipes that have become family traditions.

And really, it is a fabulous idea - brightening your customers' celebrations by telling them of wonderful ways to use your product. Consumers will not buy a product (or at least they will not continue to buy a product) that they will not use. Sharing a delicious recipe - for free, since consumers could plausibly glean the recipe from the outside of the package while in the store, without ever purchasing the product - provides valuable information to consumers, and gives them a reason to keep purchasing the product.

Food items are not the only products for which manufacturers and retailers share helpful hints. Arm & Hammer shares myriad uses for baking soda (i.e. cleaning, air freshening) on its signature orange boxes of the product. The Home Depot and Lowe's both share Do-It-Yourself tips on their websites.

How can your organization share with people - for free! - ways in which they can use your product?

AT&T Takes a Step in the Right Direction

In case you hadn't noticed, AT&T has been receiving some flak recently for its less-than-market-leader 3G coverage. Verizon Wireless has been particularly scathing of its iPhone-carrying competitor with its "There's a Map for That" and "Island of Misfit Toys" commercials. AT&T, of course, has put up a defense with its "Postcard" and "Side-by-Side" commercials.

And now, AT&T has put forth a "make-good" effort, in the form of a free iPhone app.

Yesterday, AT&T introduced its new Mark the Spot app into the iPhone App Store. The app enables users to submit a notification to AT&T whenever and wherever they experience dropped calls, failed calls, no coverage, data failure, or poor voice quality. The app can pull the iPhone's GPS information to tell AT&T where the failure happened; alternately, users can manually select a location on the map to indicate where the coverage failure occurred. With the notification, users can also submit additional comments, as well as tell AT&T whether the problem occurs only once, seldom, often, or always.

FAQs within the app reveal what AT&T plans to do with the feedback it receives:

"AT&T will utilize this feedback to optimize and enhance the network. Problems will be clustered to highlight areas for investigation. However, multiple submissions at the same time for the same issue by the same user do not receive higher weighting."

Other commentators seem skeptical about whether AT&T will actually use the feedback submitted via the app to begin patching its coverage gaps. Assuming, though, that AT&T has the resources and infrastructure in place, the company would be unwise to not improve its 3G coverage based upon this information. Not only would such improvements benefit its customers, its reputation, and its sales, but AT&T's Mark the Spot app sets expectations that the carrier will take customers' feedback seriously and work to fix the problems.

Congratulations, AT&T, for taking a step to improve your customer service and effectively repair your reputation. Don't let us down now by doing nothing with the valuable feedback you receive through your new app.

Revising Your Holiday Gift-Giving Strategy

Last week, MediaPost's Marketing Daily published an article entitled, "Report: Gift Cards Are The New Fruitcake." That is to say, gift cards are the new "classic" Christmas present that nobody wants to receive.

According to research firm TowerGroup, store gift card spending is expected to decrease 7% for 2009; an October Consumer Reports survey revealed that only 15% of consumers actually want gift cards.

The MediaPost article and a video by Consumer Reports offer some hypotheses for the reasons behind the gift card's fall from favor:

1. Consumers want to spend money on more practical items (i.e. food and gasoline), not on the non-necessities sold by the typical gift card retailer.


2. Consumers are slow to spend their gift cards. According to Consumer Reports, 25% of consumers who received a gift card in 2008 have not yet spent the gift card.


3. 65% of consumers spend more than the face value of the gift card they receive, meaning that in order to use their own gift, they must spend money.


4. Retailers are maintaining smaller inventories this year; thus, by the time a consumer visits the store to spend a gift card (i.e. after the holidays), the items they might have wanted may likely be sold out already.

Adding to the "fruitcakey-ness" of gift cards this Christmas season is the loudness with which retailers have been peddling their gift cards. It seems that a person can no longer turn on the television or set foot in a store without a bombardment of advertisements touting gift cards as the "one-size-fits-all gift" or the "gift that won't be returned" or the "gift that people really want."

But if folks want to give something better than fruitcake to their loved ones this Christmas, they might be advised to avoid the gift cards and resort to the good, old-fashioned holiday gift strategy:

Giving actual, physical objects as Christmas presents.

When a person gives a physical item - be it a toy, a sweater, cologne, or a toaster oven - it shows that he took the time to consider the recipient's likes and dislikes; he spent time browsing the store aisles or catalog pages (or actually making a gift, like everyone did in the olden days); he spent time choosing a thoughtful and meaningful gift.

Instead of trying to persuade consumers to buy gift cards for their loved ones this year, marketers ought to help consumers pick out considerate and desirable gifts.

Social media seems like one natural venue for this. Help consumers use their friends' profile information (with permission, of course) to determine likes, dislikes, and wants. Design quizzes that enable users to report on their likes and interests, and then output suggested gift items. Enable users to create "Christmas wish lists" to post to their profiles. Create "secret societies" of friends that can share ideas for what to give to a certain someone.

In-store displays could also give helpful hints to gift-givers. What if stores showed lists of this year's top-selling items for different interest categories: "for the musician," "for the gamer," "for the animal lover," "for the skater," "for the outsdoorsman," "for the fashionista," "for the bookworm," etc.?

This Christmas, consumers may be returning to the notion of giving thoughtful gifts because they care, instead of giving "spend-as-you-like" gifts because a gift is expected. And if consumers are thinking more about the gifts they give, marketers should be thinking more about how to help those gift-givers give meaningful gifts.

Selling Products? or Experiences?

Are you in the business of selling a product, or selling an experience?

Let's take cupcakes as an example. A company could see themselves as a seller of cupcakes. They could choose which flavor(s) to sell - vanilla, chocolate, or a combination of flavors and icings and decorations. They could choose a price for their cupcakes. They could choose their delivery method - in a storefront, to grocery stores, or as an online retailer? As individual cupcakes, or packaged together? Then they could choose to promote their brand: "we sell cupcakes."

Or, a company could approach their cupcake business like Cupdates does.

Cupdates is "a cupcake delivery and catering business, serving the Hampton Roads [Virginia] area," according to the Cupdates Facebook fan page. But they aren't in the business of selling cupcakes. They are in the business of selling cupdates - "sweet and memorable experience[s] that [are] created when two or more people gather together to share in the delight of eating a beautiful and delicious gourmet cupcake." (again, from their Facebook fan page and their website.)

What is the difference?

Most cupcake purveyors think that they are selling cupcakes to customers who want cupcakes.

But most customers don't want to eat cupcakes just any old time, and most customers don't want to eat cupcakes alone.

They want cupcakes as a treat - as part of a joyous occasion. Cupcakes are most delightful when they are shared with friends and family in celebration of a birthday, or holiday, or party, or event.

And so, Cupdates doesn't sell cupcakes. They sell something more compelling and valuable for customers - they sell the experience of enjoying, with friends, the delightful creativity and wonderful deliciousness of a gourmet cupcake.

It is as the saying goes, "a person doesn't want a drill; he wants a hole."

When a company shifts perspective from selling drills to selling holes - or from selling cupcakes to selling sweet experiences - it becomes more able to solve the customer's real need, and enjoys more flexibility in the way it meets that need. The company also takes on another level of responsibility. When you sell experiences, you are no longer responsible for just the product. You are responsible for the delivery, the customer service, the life of product. You are answerable for the solution to the customer's problem, not just for a product you provide.

What might have happened to American railroad companies if they had seen themselves as in the business of transporting people, rather than the business of running trains?

What will happen to Cupdates as they see themselves as selling "sweet and memorable experiences," rather than selling cupcakes?

And what would happen to your organization if you begin to see yourselves as providing experiences, rather than providing products?

A Corporate Thanksgiving?

During last week's Thanksgiving holiday, people around the U.S. gathered together to eat turkey, watch football, and, presumably, to give thanks for the blessings they have received.

We share in this ritual of thanking God as individuals, as families, as friends. The first American settlers (with their American Indian friends) thanked God together as a community who had survived a hard voyage, harsh winter, cruel sicknesses, and new growing season.

Shouldn't our corporations offer thanks in a similar fashion, as a community that has received numerous blessings in good economies and in bad?

Below is my list of thanks-giving to God, on behalf of my organization:

Thank you for air to breathe.

Thank you for the capacity to learn, the capacity to think, the capacity to remember, the capacity to communicate, the capacity to grow things, the capacity to build things, and the capacity to work.

Thank you for the natural resources – earth, trees, water, sun, food, wind, stone, minerals, electricity – and the laws of physics which enable us to live and survive.

Thank you for beauty and strength and goodness and truth and trust.

Thank you for people. Thank you for relationships. Thank you for enabling us people to work together as a team, to learn from each other, to support one another, and to grow together.

Thank you for people who care – who care about their work, who care about the people around them, who care about their families, who care about customers, who care about being good stewards of the things they have been given, who care about making the world a better place.

Thank you for wisdom to make good decisions.

Thank you for leaders who care about their followers, who empower and strengthen their followers, and who lead by example.

Thank you for followers who follow responsibly, who work wholeheartedly, and who support their leaders and one another.

Thank you for families and for generations – for children, for youths, for young adults, for singles, for spouses, for parents, for grandparents, for elders, for those who have gone before us, and for those who are yet to come.

Thank you for ideas.

Thank you for the free market system, and the ability to trade, and the ability to connect to people in other locations and other nations, and the ability to compensate people for the work they do.

Thank you for nations that value and enable freedoms – among them, freedom to speak, freedom to practice religion, freedom to be educated, freedom to work and trade and be paid, freedom to start and run and own businesses, freedom to choose where to live, freedom to care for one’s family.

Thank you for governments that protect freedom and justice and truth and right-doing.

Thank you for the ability to create and the ability to make the world a better place.

Amen.