Taking a Hiatus

Human relationships are founded upon mutually understood - and usually unwritten - social contracts. That is, the trust required for healthy relationships is maintained through the understanding and fulfillment of certain expectations.

A friendship, for example, rests on a social contract that includes respecting one another, standing up for one another, listening to one another, being there for one another, investing time in one another, etc. An employer-employee relationship rests on a social contract in which the employee follows the instructions of the employer, the employee shows respect to the employer, the employee pursues the goals set for him by the employer, the employer pays the employee the agreed-upon wage, the employer provides a healthy working environment for the employee, etc.

These social contracts may vary depending on the culture in which they exist; however, social contracts do exist for every type of relationship, and when a social contract is broken, the relationship deteriorates.

The social contract between an organization and the community stipulates that the organization will provide some benefit or meet some need in the community; that the products or services of the organization will maintain a consistent quality; that the organization will steward its share of the community's resources; etc. The social contract among users of social media includes meaningful interactions, consistency of communication, timely responses, etc.

As a blogger, I operate within social contracts described in my last two examples. My blog is a product offered to readers; the social contract mandates that my blog posts benefit my readers and offer consistent quality, if I am to maintain healthy relationships with my readers. As part of social media, my blog is expected to be consistent in its frequency and responsiveness to readers.

My blog posts have gradually been declining in frequency and consistency. I suspect that some readers may have found them to be declining in quality also. For all of this I do apologize.

As I allocate my resources of time - much like an organization allocates its resources - I am finding it difficult to devote the kind of time it takes to produce well-written, thoughtful, frequent blog posts without detracting from my performance of other obligations. Since I cannot commit the time to fulfill the social contracts implicit in a good blog, I am hereby going to take a hiatus from Haley's Marketing Blog.

This will be my last blog post for some time. I expect - and hope - to return to steady authorship of Haley's Marketing Blog at some point in the future. Until that time, I will not waste my readers' time as they wait for a new post, only to be disappointed.

Be sure that I will continue expressing marketing ideas on Twitter (@HaleyDD), and when the time comes for me to revive Haley's Marketing Blog, Twitter will be the main channel by which I announce the blog's renewal.

For now, I must bid my readers adieu. I look forward to chatting more later.

Blessings to all! Happy marketing!

Thanks for reading,
Haley

To care or not to care?

Last Sunday, mechanical failures caused a four-hour delay for my first flight on the way back from vacation. This delay, not surprisingly, caused me to miss my connecting flight - and all of the remaining flights that day.

When I arrived at my connecting gate thirty-five minutes after the last flight had left, the American Airlines gate agent heard my story and quite promptly provided me with a $15 food voucher, a free hotel stay, and a boarding pass for the first flight out the next morning. Standard operating procedure for flights missed due to the fault of the airline. Have a nice day.

Now, I'm very appreciative that American Airlines has a policy like this. I'm thankful that I can book another flight with no hassle, and that the airline covers my meal and hotel bills incurred from an unexpected overnight stay. I'm thankful that I don't have to fight the airline on this; I'm thankful that they provide these services automatically when the airline is at fault in travel delays.

However, this is not the first time that I've been in this situation and received this response from American Airlines. And this time, the response seemed almost too automatic. The gate agent simply followed procedure; she didn't apologize on behalf of the airline for the inconvenience. It was as if the airline was making things right, but only because that was their system, not because they actually cared about my thwarted travel plans.

Contrast this with the way Disney handles one particular customer inconvenience:

When a family arrives at Walt Disney World with a car full of overjoyed, rambunctious kids, and manages to find the closest available parking space (which still seems miles away from the front gate), and unloads all the kids, packs the littlest one in a stroller, grabs the backpacks and cameras, and begins to dash off toward that land of magic, there is an odd chance that they might lock their keys in the car.

This circumstance, in contrast to my missed American Airlines flight, is completely the fault of the customer. In their excitement, they locked the keys in the car, at no fault of Disney. It's not Disney's problem.

However, when this happens, all a customer has to do is contact Disney customer service. The sympathetic customer service person assures the customer that Disney can help. Within five minutes, Disney's on-site locksmith crew arrives at the customer's vehicle, uses their tools to open the door without any damage, and retrieves the keys for the customer. The customer reaches into his pocket to pull out some cash to pay the locksmith's charges, but the Disney locksmith stops him and says this:

"No charge, sir. I'm sorry the keys got locked in the car. You and your family have a magical day."

I'm sorry the keys got locked in the car. Even when this inconvenience was completely the fault of the customer's absentmindedness, Disney sympathizes. Disney apologizes. Disney solves their problem. And Disney encourages the customer to continue on with a wonderful day at the Mouse House.

Now, this is a standard procedure for Disney, just like the food-hotel-flight-reimbursement is a standard procedure for American Airlines. But when Disney employees follow their procedure, they do it with an attitude of caring for the customer's predicament and wanting to do everything they can to redeem the customer's experience with their brand. When the American Airlines employee followed her procedure, she completed the right actions, but the caring attitude was missing.

And that attitude is what makes the difference.

At your organization, do employees have an attitude of caring, or just following procedure?

Good communication covers over a multitude of sins

We see that communication is critical to any human relationship - that between a husband and wife, between parent and child, between employer and employee, between teacher and student, between roommates, between friends. And between company and customer.

A countdown timer announcing "time until next ride" can help reduce impatience among customers waiting in line for a ride at an amusement park.

A response email acknowledging receipt of a complaint and assuring a quick resolution can help a customer feel that his issue has been heard and is being addressed.

An easily-found set of guidelines for what constitutes an acceptable submission can help customers to contribute better customer-created content to a social media campaign.

A periodic phone call to check on a client can help her to feel that she is cared for and that her vendor is eager to meet her needs.

A notice that a service provider has not received payment from a customer can help to uncover the oversight and elicit payment before service is discontinued.

A voluntary recall of a defective product and an immediate, free replacement can help to prevent customer injury and mitigate ill-will toward a brand.

Good, timely communication is such a simple thing, requiring little of your time, effort, and money. Regular communication - even a quick "how are you doing? what can we do to serve you?" helps to maintain a strong customer relationship. An immediate and courteous response to a frustrated customer helps to restore the customer's sense that the company really does care and really is working to make things right. These forms of communication are quick, painless, and inexpensive (or free).

Lack of communication causes the tenuous, tense, or broken customer relationships that lead to expensive fixes - customer service wars, legal battles, reparation to soothe an irate customer, or a lifetime of value lost when a customer leaves.

What damages might have been reduced, whose reputation strengthened, or which customers retained through simple, clear, timely, reliable communication from your company?

Caring about customers - at home

Yesterday I used my brand-new Kitchenaid electric hand mixer for the first time (baking banana bread - yum!). Inside the instruction manual (yes, I admit that I actually flipped through the instruction manual), Kitchenaid had printed a dozen recipes that involved the use of my mixer - some cream cheese spreads, whipped toppings, coffee cakes, and other desserts.

Now, it's not uncommon for purveyors of foodstuffs to print recipes on the outside of their food packages, for obvious reason: a consumer is more like to purchase a food item if they have a delicious-sounding recipe for which that item is an ingredient.

But why would Kitchenaid bother to print useful recipes in the instruction manual inside the box of a kitchen appliance? In a location where the recipes would only be discovered after the consumer purchased the appliance and took it home?

Could it be that Kitchenaid wants consumers to have a good experience actually using their product? That the company wants their product to be useful to the consumer, not just a wasted expense that sits in a cupboard? That they care about the Kitchenaid brand experience - not only before the purchase, but after?

Sometimes we marketers get so focused on acquiring new customers that we forget to take care of the customers we already have. We spend our time making a product look useful enough for customers to buy, and forget to make it useful enough to use. We work to improve the in-store or online experience, and forget to improve the at-home experience.

As marketers, we ought to spend 80% of our time improving our product - making it more useful and more enjoyable for the customer - and 20% of our time improving the way we communicate about that great product. Sometimes we get this backwards.

It looks like Kitchenaid is getting it right.

Look, Ma, the moon's on sale! Let's buy it!

Allsup's, the convenience store chain local to Texas and New Mexico, is currently offering a promotion called "Pump. Drink. Win."

When customers buy at least eight gallons of gasoline and a twenty-ounce Pepsi product in the same store visit, they receive a game card that gives them the chance to win prizes from any one of a number of brands, including Allsup's, Pepsi, Frito-Lay, Wrigley, Blue Bunny, Jack Links, Kellogg's, Mars, Cadbury, and Tyson.

A promotion like this one is great way to (a) reward customers who purchase gas and Pepsi products at Allsup's stores; (b) motivate customers to purchase Pepsi products over another brand of soft drink - that is, if those customers have no strong preference for one brand over another; and/or (c) motivate customers to purchase a full tank of gas at Allsup's, rather than just a few gallons at a time.

This promotion is meant for those customers who would normally (or who might) buy gasoline and a drink during the same stop at the gas station.

Now, when I stop for gasoline and sees a promotion like this one at the gas pump, I have to avoid the temptation to go inside and buy a bottle of Diet Pepsi just for the sake of getting a game card. I don't normally buy soft drinks when I stop for gas, and I don't need to get soft drinks when I stop for gas. I wouldn't even have really wanted to get a soft drink at the gas station if I hadn't seen the poster. And if I had bought a soft drink and gotten the game card, I wouldn't have really been interested in drinking the soda anyway.

As a consumer, I have to remember that the fact that an item is on sale is not enough reason for me to buy it. As a consumer, I should buy on-sale products when those are products that I needed anyway. Just because the moon is on sale, does not mean that I need to buy the moon.

As marketers, our promotions are meant to provide a product to consumers who needed that product (or a similar one) to begin with. We do not market to convince people to buy products they don't need.

Who Gets the Final Say?

It happens every so often that a marketer disagrees with his client or CEO on how something should be done - how a product should be designed, how a loyalty program should be structured, how a website should be organized. In most cases, the opinion of one party or the other can be swayed into consensus. But sometimes, the difference of opinion cannot be overcome by any amount of persuasion. When such a disagreement occurs, how should the marketer proceed?

A proper respect for authority (or a desire to keep one's job) would say that the marketer should submit to his employer's opinion. After all, the marketer works for the client or CEO; he doesn't work for himself. He ought to follow the instructions of the person who pays his salary.

But what if that client or CEO is wrong? What if the employer's plan will completely ruin the company's reputation and sabotage all of their efforts? What if the marketer is absolutely sure that the employer's idea is a bad idea?

Who should have the final say?

The customer.

The employer's customer should have the final say. After all, both the marketer and his employer do what they do in order to serve the final customer. The customer is the one whose opinion matters. The customer is the one who will be using the product, or loyalty program, or website. The customer is the one who will decide whether it is a good product, a rewarding loyalty program, or a helpful website. The customer is the one who will choose whether or not her experience with the company merits continued support of that company.

So, marketer, find out what the customer's opinion is. Find out what she has to say about your product, loyalty program, or website. Find out what she's looking for, what she needs, what she likes. Research. Ask your customers. Gather data. Discover what your customers actually prefer, not what you or your employer think they prefer.

Let your employer see the customer data. And resign yourselves to act on whatever the data says. Design your product, structure your loyalty program, and organize your website based on what you learned from your customers.

Let the customer have the final say-so in your decision-making.

(Of course, though, if your employer refuses to do what the customer's say, you should ultimately follow your employer's instructions. Then let the results speak for themselves - one way or the other.)

Why Should You Care?

A few nights ago, some friends and I were discussing the differences between various fitness clubs.

One friend observed that sports training clubs - like the martial arts school he attends - care deeply about the attendance of their members, because they are invested in teaching those members and developing their skills. On the other hand, he commented, typical gym owners don't care how often their members visit the gym to work out, since the owners receive the monthly membership dues, and don't require anything more.

As I've been thinking about my friend's comments, I've come to disagree.

That is, I agree that most gym owners probably don't care whether their members work out every day, or once a week, or hardly at all, but I believe that good gym owners do and should care.

Sure, a gym owner still receives the same membership fees whether his members attend once or thirty times each month. But if a customer pays a gym membership, without ever actually visiting the gym, sooner or later she will decide to stop wasting money and cancel her membership altogether.

Even if a customer does attend the gym regularly, but her gym owner doesn't really care, that customer could easily be convinced to switch membership if another gym opens that is closer, less expensive, more lavish, or offers more appealing classes.

But what if there was a gym owner who did care about his members? What if their physical fitness mattered to him? What if he spent time thinking of new ways to help his members stay healthy? What if he helped to motivate his members to work out more, and offered them free services to teach them more about their bodies and about fitness? What if his members knew that he cared about them as individuals? How would that affect their membership?

I suspect that those members would be motivated to continue their membership over many years, that they would be loyal to the gym and fairly resistant to the promotions of competing gyms, and that they would rave about their gym to friends, family, and coworkers.

I postulate that those members will have a longer (and more profitable) relationship with the gym owner.

The good and successful gym owner is the one who actually cares about his members.

The good and successful business owner is the one who actually cares about his customers.

Do you care?

The Company Your Company Could Tweet Like

Earlier this week, the Man Your Man Could Smell Like (whom his fans affectionately refer to as "Old Spice Guy," and who seems to have a mysterious connection via a parallel universe to actor and former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa) spent two days personally responding to Tweets and Facebook posts addressed to him.

Old Spice Guy is not the first to converse with Facebook fans and Twitter followers on behalf of the company he represents. However, he is the first to carry on that conversation through over 150 YouTube videos recorded and posted over two days while in a bathroom, wrapped in a towel. Here's a sample:



In other response videos, Old Spice Guy answers fans' questions, gives shout-outs to celebrities, offers manly wisdom, sweetly reassures skeptics, and even proposes to a man's girlfriend for him. But you'll have to find those videos yourself.

As of this writing, each video has received between 33,000 and 1.9 million views. Most of the videos have received a few hundred comments each. And a few received comments like, "I went out and bought Old Spice TODAY because of this video!"

The Old Spice brand image has come a long way in a few short years. Not too long ago, Old Spice seemed...old. My grandfather used Old Spice. My guy friends did not.

But now, Old Spice seems young. Strong. Robust. Adventurous. Manly. Daring. Thanks in large part to a well-executed campaign surrounding Old Spice Guy, making the claim that wearing Old Spice can help men to smell like a "ridiculously handsome" man who rides horses and whales with equal ease, uses wolverines to apply body wash, bakes gourmet cakes in a kitchen built with his own hands, and wins medals for exotic car-throwing.

Old Spice has created a new image for itself with clever videos that make hilariously absurd boasts of manly strength. Because it has created content that people enjoy watching, it has been able to reach audiences and start converting viewers into fans. And now its amazingly funny personalized video responses have furthered those fan relationships.

I'm not saying that your company needs to start conversing with customers via individual YouTube videos of a man in a towel. In fact, you probably shouldn't. But you should look for ways to connect with customers in an enjoyable way that surpasses expectations and aligns with the brand reputation that you want to have.

If personalized video response tweets is the way for your company to do that, then go for it.

Giving Back, Paying Forward

Susan Boyle - the Scottish singer who broke into the music industry a year ago with her astonishing performance on Britain's Got Talent - is now helping other normal folk to start musical careers. With the Susan's Search contest, ordinary people can audition for a chance to record a duet with Susan for her next album, to be released this November.

Susan explains it this way:

"When I did Britain's Got Talent, I was given a chance by Simon Cowell to show what I could do. This got me thinking about people who maybe missed that opportunity. Susan's Search is about giving other people an opportunity; it's about letting them live the dream that they have always wanted to do."

Because someone gave Susan the chance to show that her singing talent meant more than her outward appearance, her response is to create similar opportunities for other singers who may be "diamonds in the rough."

To give back, or "pay it forward," (as depicted in the movie of the same name) is the natural response of a thankful and humble attitude. When we take into account the number of opportunities we've been given (opportunities that were not created by us, only used by us), and the number of people who have helped us in our journey (people who didn't owe us any help), we should want to create opportunities and offer help to others.

Organizations, like individuals, can find ways to give back. Like Susan Boyle, they can offer a chance to talented people whom the world has ignored. Like TOMS Shoes, they can provide shoes, or clothing, or shelter, or food, or education, to children across the world who wouldn't otherwise have those necessities. They can give unexpected gifts or discounts or freebies to customers and non-customers, in gratitude for the patronage of their loyal shoppers. They can take time to serve the communities in which they operate - communities which provide resources and support for the business.

How is your organization "paying forward" the opportunities that it has been given?

Who's Responsible for Innovation?

If a company wants to be innovative, it must create an atmosphere that encourages innovation. A healthy atmosphere of innovation will exhibit three conditions:

1. Innovation - The company must give employees - ALL employees, not just those in the R&D department - the freedom to innovate. Supervisors at all levels should welcome their subordinates to discover creative solutions and to constantly look for ways to do things better. Employees should be allowed to generate new ideas, and should feel that their supervisors will be receptive to their ideas. Employees should be empowered to innovate.


2. Submission - Once an employee develops an innovative idea, she must share it with her supervisor. The supervisor should listen eagerly, ready to assess how this idea could benefit the company and customers. The supervisor should ask questions and coach the employee on how to improve and adapt the idea to best fit the company and the situation. The employee should trust that her supervisor will be an advocate of great ideas; because of that trust, the employee submits to her supervisor's final decision about whether or not - and how - to move the idea forward.


3. Protection - Once the supervisor gives his employee the authority to implement the idea, then the supervisor becomes a protective covering for the employee. As long as the employee follows the supervisor's instructions, she doesn't need to fear the consequences of failure - the supervisor takes those consequences upon his own head. If the employee makes a mistake or makes someone angry, or if the idea doesn't work, then the supervisor bears the responsibility. He protects his employee, because the employee was acting under his authority. This gives the employee the freedom to fail - and the freedom to succeed.

These three measures - innovation, submission, and protection - are essential if a company wishes to be innovative. Employees throughout the company must be inspired to think creatively and to generate ideas, no matter how raw or ridiculous the ideas seem at first. Employees must vet those ideas through their supervisors, trusting that their supervisors will want to bring great ideas to life, and ultimately submitting to the final decision of the supervisor. And supervisors must protect the employees as they start implementing their ideas under the supervisors' authority, empowering the employee to succeed by bearing the responsibility if they fail.

If one of these conditions is missing, innovation within the organization will be stifled. Companies stagnate if employees don't generate ideas. Ideas go awry if employees act without the authority of their supervisors. And employees stop innovating if they can't trust their supervisors to protect their efforts.

If your organization wishes to be innovative, does it have these processes in place?

Whose Team Are You On?

This is the story of two marketers.

Suzy Marketer was the co-founder and marketing consultant of Suzy Marketing Services, L.L.P. A hard worker, go-getter, and experienced marketer, Suzy managed the accounts of several prestigious clients, and earned a respectable income for herself in the process.

Sally Marketer was the co-founder and marketing consultant of Sally Marketing Services, L.L.P. An equally hard worker, go-getter, and experienced marketer, Sally also managed the accounts of several prestigious clients, and earned a respectable income for herself in the process.

But Suzy's and Sally's marketing services were as different as different could be.

Suzy approached her work as an outside consultant. She saw herself as a service provider hired by clients who were utterly unable to market themselves on their own. Her clients hired her to analyze their company, their business model, their products, and their market niche, to tell them how to market themselves, and to execute their marketing for them. The prestige of the clients who hired her was proof that Suzy did her job expertly.

When Suzy landed a new client, she would spend days researching them: poring over their website, their search results on Google, their Facebook presence, and the chatter about them on Twitter; examining their products, testing their services, and analyzing their annual reports. Then she would spend a day interviewing their marketing team and execs to conduct analyses of the brand, their market position, and their goals.

Back at her office, Suzy would develop key messages and a marketing strategy, then hold a brief meeting with the client to present her plan and to convince the client that her plan was best. Once everyone was in agreement with the plan, Suzy would return to her office, and put her team to work at executing the marketing plan. She would call, email, and occasionally visit her client's employees when she needed information, payment, or approval for the next marketing tactic.

Sally, on the other hand, approached her work as a teammate of her client. She knew that her clients were experts on their brand, their industry, and their market, but hired an outside marketing consultant so that they could focus their resources on making great products and serving customers well. She knew that her clients trusted her to learn from them, to adopt their culture, and to partner with them in serving their customers.

When Sally landed a new client, she would spend a day researching the brand online, among customers, and in stores. Then she would spend several days with the client, visiting headquarters, touring the plant, observing their work processes, meeting with each department, building relationships, browsing their corporate history, and absorbing all that the execs, marketing team, and other employees said about their mission, values, goals, culture, brand, products, customers, and previous marketing strategy.

Back at her office, Sally would do more research to see if customers' views of the brand matched the client's view of their brand. Where they didn't, Sally brainstormed ways that her client could serve customers better and communicate with them better. After drafting key messages and marketing strategy based on what she had learned from her client and their customers, she met with the client to adjust her plan. When Sally and the client agreed on a plan that best fit the client and their customers, she and the client planned how to work together to achieve those marketing goals. When she returned to her office, Sally worked in constant communication with her new teammates at the client's headquarters to ensure that her efforts were coordinated with theirs.

Both Suzy and Sally were experts at marketing. Both could analyze, strategize, and actualize marketing communications flawlessly. And both had prestigious clients and generous paychecks to show it.

But somehow Sally's clients always ended up with deeper customer loyalty and a more favorable brand image; Suzy's didn't. Somehow Sally's clients always felt like Sally understood them, like she was part of the gang; Suzy's didn't. Somehow Sally always enjoyed her time with her clients; Suzy, didn't. Somehow Sally managed to maintain long-lasting relationships with a handful of valued clients; Suzy's list of clients was constantly changing.

Sally was part of her clients' team; her view was, "we're all working together."

Suzy was part of her own team; her view was, "I'm working with them."

Whose team are you on? Your customers'? Your clients'? Your company's? Or your own?

Things Worth Doing

As marketers (and as human beings in general), our lives should be about making others' lives better. Meeting needs. Bringing joy to lives. Helping others to succeed. Making the world a brighter place.

We weren't created to be takers, but to be givers.

When I see creations like this one, I think that someone is doing a good job of brightening the world:



Yes, it's a two-and-a-half-minute commercial for Toyota. But it's also a rap song about some suburbanites and their minivan. The folks at Toyota and director Jody Hill spent time and money (a lot of it, I'd imagine) on creating something that would be fun to watch. That would make people laugh. That people would enjoy watching. And these Toyota folks probably had fun in the process.

In the first seven weeks since the video was posted on YouTube, it has received over 3.8 million views. And I can understand why. People need (and want, and enjoy watching) things that make them laugh. That make the day a little brighter.

Marketers, if you're going to do something, then do something worth doing.

• Start initiatives that help people to succeed.


• Create content that makes lives happier.


• Sell products that help people to breathe easier.


• Give service that brings a smile to peoples' faces.

If what you're doing is not making the world a better place, then why are you doing it?

Serving vs. Stalking

An AdAge article yesterday reported on a recent study of the effectiveness of online advertising. The study examined two online ad tactics - targeted* advertising and obtrusive** advertising - to see their impact on consumers' intent to buy.

The results showed that consumers were 0.9% more likely to buy when they saw a targeted ad rather than a non-targeted one, and that they were 0.5% more likely to buy when they saw an obtrusive ad over a non-obtrusive one. However, when an ad was both targeted and obtrusive, consumers were only 0.3% more likely to buy than if the ad were a typical, non-targeted, non-obtrusive ad.

The study suggested that privacy-concerned consumers may find targeted obtrusive ads to be manipulative.

The bottom line is that marketers exist to serve customers, not the other way around. We aren't serving the customer when we use ads that interrupt what the customer is doing. And we aren't serving customers when we interrupt them with an ad that says, "I know you're looking at Product X right now, so you should stop what you're doing and come look at my Product Y to go with your Product X." Even if these interruptions create more "brand awareness," they don't create the brand awareness we want. If it's not serving customers, it's not worth it.

We serve the customer when we make ourselves available for them to choose when they need our services.

As marketers, our attitude should not be one of pushing ourselves, our products, and our messages onto customers, but one of waiting on customers. "Waiting on" customers the way a server "waits" tables. Or the way a servant used to "wait on" his master. Paying the utmost attention, capable and diligent, doing everything in our power to be available, letting them know that you're there for them, waiting for the slightest request, ready to provide what the customer needs.

Marketers, wait on your customers. Don't interrupt their lives.


*Targeted advertising is that in which the advertised product relates to the content of the site, i.e. an ad for camping gear on a site about outdoor recreation.

**Obtrusive advertising was defined by the study to include pop-ups, pop-unders, ads in an audio or video stream, takeover ads, non-user-initiated audio/video, full page banner ads, interactive ads, floating ads, and interstitials (ads displayed before a page loads).

Business on Purpose

Why do you make the business decisions you do?

Because it's what you've always done?
Because it's what everybody has always done?
Because it's easiest? cheapest? fastest?

Or do you make decisions because they are the right thing for you and your customers?

Companies get into trouble (or, just as bad, become stagnant and unremarkable) when they aren't intentional about the things they do. When they make choices based on what seems normal, rather than on what is best for their particular customer base and brand promise. When they choose the easiest marketing channels, product features, package design, or shipping strategies, rather than choosing those that fit best. When they don't stop to think about why they do what they do.

It may turn out that what you've always done, or what is easiest/cheapest/fastest is not the right decision at all. It might be that there is a better solution. A solution that provides a better experience for your customers. A solution that more closely aligns with what customers need. A solution that better enables your organization to do what it was meant to do.

Or it might be that the decision to do the comfortable/easy/cheap/fast thing is exactly the right thing to do. It might be that those strategies provide the convenience, affordability, quick service, quality, standardization, customization, status, or other value that your customers want.

But come to that conclusion because you were intentional about it. Because you took time to consider what the right thing is. Not because you were on autopilot.

Context

Meaning comes not just from the words spoken, but also by what is being spoken around them.

For example:

"Alright, Stacey, the show is starting. You're on in five minutes."
"Thanks, Joe."
"Break a leg, kiddo."

versus

"Well, Tony, did you get it?"
"Nah, Boss. He doesn't have the money. What should I do?"
"Break a leg."

In each of these examples, the phrase "break a leg" is given a distinct meaning based on the context of the conversation. The context is affected by the characters involved, the location, the timing, the events leading up to the conversation, and the other words spoken in or before the conversation.

Marketing messages, too, are impacted by context.

• $2.01/gallon for gasoline is a terrific price - on June 3, 2010. In America. When the gas station across the street is selling gas for $2.47/gallon. It's an abominable price on June 3, 1990 in America, when the guy across the street is selling gas for $1.19/gallon.


• An OxiClean commercial starring Billy Mays was a mundane occurrence on June 27, 2009 (the day before Billy's death). The same commercial had a very different effect on June 29, 2009.


• An email offering a 25% discount on an item could be a welcome surprise to a customer - unless the customer is an overworked businesswoman whose inbox is full of 80 similar unread messages and who has just sworn to forever boycott the next company who sends her an email.

As marketers, we need to know the context of a situation before we start spewing marketing messages. Some contextual information can be gathered fairly easily from examining current news, the rest of the market, and the marketing efforts of partners and competitors. Other information (like the number of marketing emails one customer has received, or a customer's attitude toward a particular brand, or the current state of a customer's life) can only be gathered by having a relationship with the customer. By caring about what the customer thinks, feels, and has to say. By keeping track of how (and how much) you have communicated with the customer in the past. By asking for - and listening to - the customer's comments, expectations, frustrations, and concerns.

As marketers, we have to pay attention to context. Our audience's perceptions are acutely shaped by it; our messages are changed by it. We must listen to it.

If I Were an Oscar Mayer Wiener...

...I would be on my way to feed hungry families right now, thanks to Oscar Mayer's Good Mood Mission.

The Good Mood Mission is a partnership between Oscar Mayer (a Kraft brand) and Feeding America (the nation's largest domestic hunger-relief organization).

Visitors to www.goodmoodmission.com can help feed needy families across America by completing a Good Mood statement like, "It doesn't get better than...." or "The best cure for a case of the Mondays is..." By completing the statement "If I could ride shotbun in the Wienermobile, I'd...", they can also enter to win a ride in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile for a day.

For each of these "Good Moods" submitted, Oscar Mayer will donate one pound of food to Feeding America.

For each "Good Mood" shared with friends via Facebook or email, Oscar Mayer will donate five pounds of food.

For each person who becomes a fan of Oscar Mayer on Facebook, Oscar Mayer will donate ten pounds of food.

Plus, folks can visit ebay.com/oscarmayer to bid on the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. The winning bidder will win the Wienermobile for a day, plus a catered Oscar Mayer cookout for 50, and a year's supply of Oscar Mayer wieners. All of the proceeds will be donated to Feeding America. As of this writing, the bid is at $1111.11 - the auction ends June 4, 2010.

This kind of initiative is why I love the idea of social cause marketing. Organizations support - and encourage their customers to support - a worthy cause, and build something fun around the effort. With the Good Mood Mission, people all over the world can contribute to the conversation, enjoy reading others' Good Moods, daydream about riding in the Wienermobile, watch a funny video of actor Ty Burrell with the Wienermobile, and have their days brightened in the process.

Not to mention that when they do so, they are also causing Oscar Mayer to feed hungry families.

If a company is going to make a contribution to a non-profit organization, why not give their customers a chance to get involved as well? And why not have fun doing it, and create a great experience for the customers who join in?

It has worked for Oscar Mayer and Feeding America so far - the goal for the Good Mood Mission was to donate 3 million pounds of food. As of this writing, 2,904,795 pounds have been donated.

As a corporation, find a way to help the world, and find a way to enable others to join in.

"...if I were an Oscar Mayer weiner, everyone would be in love with me!"

Mascots, the Olympics, and Audiences

Yesterday the world was introduced to Wenlock and Mandeville, the mascots for the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The two were fashioned from drops of molten steel that spilled during the pouring of the last beam for the London Olympic stadium. They magically sprung to life, began to learn the Olympic and Paralympic events, and now roam throughout the world on a rainbow, teaching children about the games.

Or, at least, that's the story that is shown in this short film about the shiny, jiggly creatures.

In reality, the two friends are creations of London agency Iris. The one-eyed, bipedal, androgynous creatures were chosen as non-human, non-animal beings that would appeal to children, and whose "skin" could be changed to reflect different nations, events, etc. The orange light atop the head of each represents the lights standard on London taxicabs; while the single eye can be used as a camera to facilitate social, video, and interactive marketing.

The names point to the contributions that the U.K. has made to the modern Olympic Games: Much Wenlock in Shropshire held games that inspired Baron Pierre de Coubertin to found the modern Olympic movement in the 19th century; Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire was the location of the first "parallel Olympics" in 1948 for World War II soldiers with spinal injuries.

Within a day of their introduction, the London 2012 Wenlock and Mandeville are quite active in public interaction - each is on Facebook (I am Wenlock and I am Mandeville) and Twitter (@iamwenlock and @iammandeville), and, of course, they have their own website. And together they are visiting schools to encourage children to live active lifestyles.

Photo from the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG)

Also within the past 36 hours, the duo have received much flak (disdain, scorn, disbelief, derision, contempt) from online audiences. One journalist compared them to a cross between Sonic the Hedgehog and Mike Wazowski; one design critic called them "computerised Smurfs for the iPhone generation."

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), on the other hand, hopes that the mascots will "chime with children," "connect young people with sport and tell the story of our proud Olympic and Paralympic history," and "help inspire kids to strive to be the best they can be."

It would seem that many adults (or at least, many vocal, online adults) fail to see the attractiveness of creatures. We've yet to hear the voice of the children on the matter.

If the main audience for Wenlock and Mandeville is adults, LOCOG may have missed their target. If their main audience is indeed children, they may have hope yet.

Note to marketers: create for your audience.

Just Plain Fun

I love this idea.

Gatorade and Fox Sports are teaming up to give unsettled high school rivalries a chance to settle the score - a decade after they originally played.

In Replay: The Series, old high school rivals are nominated to play again in re-matches organized by Gatorade and Fox Sports. The two companies provide training, coaches, a venue, and the opportunity to bring closure to old competition.

The first season of Replay: The Series featured the 1993 football teams from Easton (PA) Area High School and Phillipsburg (NJ) High School. The 1993 Thanksgiving Day game between these two long-time rivals ended in a disappointing tie. On April 26, 2009, these same players - now 33-year-olds, not 18-year-olds - suited up one final time to determine a winner once and for all.

Gatorade provided eight weeks of intensive training for the teams (as well as sports drinks for the game, of course); while Peyton and Eli Manning served as honorary coaches for the big game.

The second season of Replay: The Series culminated in a hockey match last Sunday, May 9, 2010, between the 1999 teams of Central Catholic High School and Trenton High School, both from Detroit. The original 1999 game ended in a draw after a player's jugular vein was sliced open by a skate. Eleven years later, that player inspired Gatorade and Fox Sports to reunite the teams for a final match-up.

I love Replay: The Series simply because it's fun.

It's fun to hear the stories of the original fateful (or non-fateful, however you want to look at them) games.

It's fun to see the passion and anticipation of these former high school athletes and their hometown fans.

It's fun to see grown men get back into shape for a shot at redemption.

It's fun to read player bios, follow the training, and watch the final outcomes of the games on the Replay website.

And it's fun to nominate one's own high school team for a Replay via the Replay Lineup Finder on Facebook.

If you want to build love of your brand, connect better to your audience, and strengthen brand awareness, why not do it with something that's just plain fun for people to participate in and to watch? Create a fun and worthwhile experience; people will remember you for it.

It's Not Just a Bag

Anything that reminds people about your organization is a representative for your brand.

Hence we have logos - visual representations of the corporate identity of a brand. We have advertising campaigns, carefully planned to accurately convey a brand's identity and proposed value to consumers. We have colors, fonts, store designs, soundtracks, and even smells that are strategically chosen for what they say about their respective brands.

But other things speak for your brand as well:

          Your partners (I blogged about that last week).
          Your product packaging (I blogged about that two weeks ago).
          Your facilities (how tidy are they?).
          Your corporate vehicles (how often do you wash them?).

          Your shopping bags.

Shopping bags (and other distribution packaging) have great - and often underused - potential as branding tools. Well-designed and attractively-branded shopping bags provide two marketing tactics in one:

• First, they serve as free advertising - distributing your logo, willingly, through the hands of every customer.
• Second, they serve as social proof - every customer seen with your shopping bag indicates support of your brand to those around them. And as Robert Cialdini would tell us, observing the approval of others towards a brand gives permission to new potential customers to try the brand, too.

Bloomingdales does an outstanding job of using shopping bags as branded items. People notice the cute, clever "Little Brown Bags" with which Bloomingdales customers leave their stores. The more customers shop at Bloomingdales, the more those Little Brown Bags are seen by others, and the more other people see public approval of the Bloomingdales brand.

FedEx also uses their "shopping bags" (aka their boxes) well. Every time you receive a package via FedEx, you see the FedEx logo, and are given another example of a customer who used FedEx for their shipping needs.

Start-up companies can use branded shopping bags to great advantage as they work to build brand recognition. Each time a customer carries out a branded shopping bag, the organization receives another instance of free advertising in the community, and another testimony of a [presumably satisfied] customer.

And to be remarkable, shopping bags need not be simple plastic bags stamped with a logo (although they very well could be). Why not use your shopping bags as another opportunity to exhibit great design? Why stick with a one-color print on plastic? Why not make your shopping bags something that are fun and attractive to carry around? Something that reinforces your brand's personality?

So, how are your shopping bags representing you? Do they speak your name in a clever, fun, innovative, or attractive way? Or do they speak your name at all?

Tell Me Who Your Partners Are...

A familiar adage states, "tell me who your friends are, and I'll tell you who you are."

People infer much about us - about our beliefs and values - by observing those with whom we associate ourselves. That's because we, as human beings, tend to be drawn to others of similar character to ourselves. And we also tend to adopt some of the characteristics of those with whom we spend the most time.

Likewise, we make inferences about an organization based on its "friends" (aka partners), just as we make inferences about an individual based on his or her friends. When Company A partners with Company B - whether as a supplier, distributor, vendor, sponsor, or other ally - we assume that Company A also supports the purpose, actions, and reputation of Company B.

Thus, just as our parents warned us to choose our friends carefully, organizations need to choose their partners carefully.

Great Wolf Resorts, Inc. makes a big deal of its corporate partners, listing them all on its website and featuring them prominently at each of its twelve indoor waterpark resort hotels. (A recent article from MediaPost's Marketing Daily describes the face time that these partners receive at each Great Wolf Lodge.)

According to its website, Great Wolf Resorts aims to "capture the atmosphere of the Northwoods" in an indoor, "weatherproof, year-round destination" where "families [can] re-connect." Each Lodge is designed to recreate - indoors - the fun of the outdoors, and the company is committed to environmental stewardship; each location is Green Seal Certified (Silver), and its Project Green Wolf works to reduce the company's carbon "pawprint" and to educate young guests in green practices.

So, if an organization's partners shape consumers' perceptions of the organization's values, what kinds of partners might make sense for a company like Great Wolf, whose brand celebrates nature, families, and outdoor fun?

• Vendors of outdoor equipment - camping gear, bikes, personal watercraft, fishing gear, and other equipment for wilderness fun would align well with Great Wolf's outdoorsy theme


• Vendors of recycled products - t-shirts made from recycled plastic, tote bags made from recycled fabric, paper made from recycled elephant poo...the possibilities are nearly endless for gear that reflects environmental responsibility (although I would draw the line at recycled food)


• Vendors of healthy snacks - natural and organic foods, trail mixes, fresh fruits and raw veggies, dried fruits, nuts - all of these and other healthy snacks complement the active lifestyles of outdoor-lovers

Some of Great Wolf's current partners mesh well with the values exhibited by the company. Others seem to be partners of convenience or opportunity - fine partners, no doubt, but with little obvious connection to the outdoorsy, active, environmentally-friendly atmosphere of Great Wolf.

If your organization is serious about presenting a unified set of values and personality to your customers, consider how your partners do (or do not) reflect those values. Choose partners whose brands harmonize well with your mission.

Tell me who your partners are, and I'll tell you who you are.

On Judging a Book by its Cover

We judge books by their covers.

The judgment isn't necessarily fair, and it isn't always accurate, but it is a judgment that we make anyway.

I have loved to read for as long as I can remember. When I was a child, I loved going to the library - or, better yet, the book store - with my mother to find a new book to read. However, if a book were to have any chance of my picking it up and taking it home with me to read, the cover had to look appealing. In my mind, the contents of a novel had no chance of being interesting if its cover were bland and boring.

The only possibility for an insipidly-covered book to make it past my "cover test" was if the book already had a strong reputation, or came highly recommended by a friend or teacher. (This exception was quite fortunate; otherwise I might never have picked up some of my now-favorite classics, like the works of Dickens or Doyle or Dumas or Austen.)

As consumers, we make the same judgment. When we encounter a new, unheard-of brand, we take its packaging as an indicator of its quality. If the physical packaging or product design looks clunky, and we have no other information about the brand, we have little reason to trust the performance of the product or the credibility of the company. If the company's website looks like it hasn't been updated since 1995, it may cause us to wonder what else about the company falls below current standards. If the exterior of a local restaurant is dirty, with bars on the windows and a parking lot overgrown with weeds, we often decide to drive past and eat at a place we know and trust instead.

Of course, this packaging judgment can be overcome, if we find a source of trustworthy information to allay our misgivings. If we learn that a brand uses plain packaging simply to maintain low prices, or to help the environment, we might be persuaded to consider purchasing it. If a friend insists that the product she ordered from an online company is the best product she ever used, we might feel better about ordering something from their outdated-looking website. If a coworker raves about this hole-in-wall restaurant that he found, we might be willing to try it, no matter how fearsome the building appears.

But without that other source of information, consumers often have little to go by besides the packaging. If everything about the packaging indicates lack of quality, consumers have little motivation to try to discover the actual quality of the product's contents.

If you're an unknown brand that is trying to become known, pay attention to your packaging. In the absence of other information about your product, we will judge your product by its cover.

My Apologies to the Twitterverse

Yesterday I was enlightened by a survey.

Not a survey that I administered. Not a survey in which hundreds or thousands of consumers responded, and which I, the marketing researcher, analyzed to glean data on consumer attitudes and interests and perceptions.

No. I was enlightened yesterday by a survey that I took.

It was a survey from Twitter, asking about respondents' Twitter usage. In addition to basic demographic information, it asked things like, "Through which applications do you use Twitter?" and "What kinds of information do you like to find on Twitter?" and "What kinds of information sources would you like to find more easily on Twitter?"

The part that enlightened me was my response to this question:

"What is your main reason for using Twitter?"

The choices were something like (a) To give information; (b) To receive information; (c) To connect with other people; (d) Other.

My first instinct said "a". I use Twitter to give information - blog posts, local news, funny quips, interesting retweets.

And then my marketing brain kicked in. I remembered all of my marketing training - that marketing is about building relationships with customers so that marketers can learn how to serve them better, not just throwing products and advertisements at consumers. That marketing should be interactive. That marketing communication is about dialogue, not monologue. That marketers need to listen to their audiences, so that they can learn what customers want and need and desire and prefer and like and dislike.

And so, for a moment, I was tempted to choose the "right" answer - (c). But, for the sake of honesty, I had to stick with my original answer, (a).

Now don't get me wrong - using Twitter to provide information is a fine thing. People want to gain information from the individuals they follow - be it local news information, lifestyle updates from celebrities, sports scores and standings, personal comments about life from friends, or any other of the many types of information.

Providing this information to one's followers is a good thing. But one needs to be listening to his followers, customers, fans, audience members, critics, etc., before he can provide them the information that they are interested in hearing.

Celebrities and organizations and marketers who do not interact with their Twitter followers can still be listening through other sources - other online forums, blogs, polls, other social media networks, focus groups, surveys, in-store conversations with customers, etc. I, however, have not made it a priority to do these things - listening to people on Facebook, on my campus, on other authors' blogs, or on Twitter. This act of only pushing, never listening, is what gives marketers a bad name.

And for this, I apologize. To the Twitterverse, and to the universe of customers out there. I'm sorry that I haven't been listening.

And to my readers especially, I want to do a better job of listening to you. I want to hear what you are interested in, what you are passionate about, and what you would like to see my write about. Please feel invited to share your thoughts with me at any time here on my blog, or on Twitter (@HaleyDD).

From now on, I'll be listening.

iPad Apps and Adding Value

My alma mater (which is also the university where I work) just released an iPad application for its student newspaper, the Optimist.

Of course, the folks at my university (myself included) are excited about this product, and about the chance to explore what publications can do on a tablet device like the iPad. But a few voices (including those of my friend and critic @chrylis, and MediaPost writer Steve Smith), pulled me from my personal revelry long enough to ask an important question: Why choose to make a native iPad app when one could make a mobile-optimized website instead?

In his critique of the iPad and its apps, Steve notes several apps (particularly, apps of publications) that provide more limited content compared to their online counterparts and fail to make up for that limitation through seamless navigation or personalization. @chrylis questions the utility of an app that runs only on one device, as opposed to a mobile website that would run on many.

They're right.

No new product (including mobile applications) is worth buying (or selling) if it doesn't add some value above the products that are already available.

If a new product does the same thing as something else on the market without doing it better, or more easily, or more conveniently, or less expensively, or with greater access, or with more satisfaction, then it has missed its mark as a new product that meets consumers' needs.

If an iPad app looks like its online counterpart, but with less content, more restricted navigation, less ubiquity, and no additional not-available-via-web features, then the web version will prove more useful to both iPad-users and non-iPad-users.

Steve Smith recommends two ways of differentiating iPad apps from their web versions: personalization and navigation. I would add a third: communication.

Personalization would enable an iPad user to configure an app based on their personal preferences. Maybe this means pulling in information specifically relevant to the user's interests. Maybe it means adjusting viewer settings to fit the user's lifestyle. Maybe it means reconfiguring navigation so that the viewer's favorite features are the easiest ones to access.

Navigation on the iPad should work intuitively, should flow gracefully, and should access data simply. Maybe this means simplifying the menu to just a few categories. Maybe it means reducing visual clutter. Maybe it means letting users customize the menu to their own preferences. Maybe it means expanding or hiding extra content with just a touch. Maybe it means taking advantage of two axes for scrolling "deep" into a topic versus "wide" across topics. Maybe it means a visually-logical arrangement of information, instead of only lists.

Communication should enable iPad users to easily share comments, connect apps with social media, and integrate information from various sources. Maybe this means allowing activity on an app to update a user's status on their social networks (as desired). Maybe it means that comments made in an iPad app would show up on web versions as well. Maybe it means that users can collect articles from various apps into a centralized database, so that users can bookmark pieces of information, cross-link them, and add their own notes.

As Steve Smith pointed out with current examples of successful iPad apps, the personalization and navigation pieces are already being achieved by several app makers. I suspect that the communication piece will require additional development and exploration, perhaps even in the capabilities of the iPad SDK. Regardless, these value-adds must be part of an iPad app if the app is to be more useful than a mobile-optimized website.

With your own products, whether mobile or not, are you adding value for your customers? Or can their needs be met just as well (or better) with another item on the market?

Designer Turned Marketer?

MediaPost's Marketing Daily last week published an interview with Dodge president and CEO Ralph Gilles. Gilles took the driver's seat (pun intended - sorry) at Dodge last October, after 16 years rising through the ranks of Chrysler's design team.

Yes, the design team. Not the marketing team.

It doesn't seem that shifting gears (yes, another pun) from product design to marketing is a typical career move for most. And yet the articles and quotes that I've found online seem to indicate that Gilles has a good head for business. So this got me to pondering: what - aside from his MBA from Michigan State - can lead a design guy like Gilles to have potential for success in marketing, or vice versa?

His biggest advantage, I think, is that years of design work breeds a passion for excellence in product quality. Designers** have an intrinsic love for great design - in the case of product designers, this love encompasses aesthetics, certainly, but also engineering, performance, and product features. More marketers would do well to absorb some of their designers' passion for an outstanding product. When marketers become so focused on marketing communications, distribution channels, pricing tactics, and strategic partnerships that they forget about the product, they run into problems. A drive to continually turn out an excellent product (and services) must be the foundation for good marketing.

Conversely, a marketer-turned-designer would bring another key ethos to his design team: a commitment to customer-centricity. Marketers** constantly think about how they can serve customers. What does the customer need and want? What delights the customer? What frustrates the customer? Marketers create products and plan strategy with the customer in mind. More designers would do well to adopt their marketers' dedication to the customer perspective. When they think about the customer's needs first, designers build products to fit the customer's preferences, not just the tastes of the designer.

So yes, moves from designer to marketer or marketer to designer can provide some distinct insight for each of these realms of the business. We would do well to operate with both worlds in mind.

**Note: I almost said "Good designers" and "Good marketers," but I felt that that would be inaccurate. When I refer to a "designer," I mean someone who designs because design was born in them; a "marketer" is someone who does marketing because marketing was born in them. A person doesn't become a designer because she does design work; a designer does design work because a designer is who she is. She loves design; she is good at design; design is her passion; she couldn't imagine doing anything else. Likewise, a person doesn't become a marketer because she does marketing; a marketer does marketing because a marketer is who she is. These people are the true designers and true marketers, and their design work and their marketing is good, and is naturally done from these mindsets I described. I would assert that "bad designers" or "bad marketers" are bad at what they do because they aren't really meant to be designers or marketers at all. Thus, the word "good" is unnecessary to distinguish the designers and marketers to whom I refer in this blog, because true designers and true marketers are good at what they do, and naturally operate from the mindsets I describe.

Crowdsourcing Love and Chocolate

On February 14 of this year, Lacta chocolate discovered that love was in the air. And on the airwaves. And online.


Lacta - a Grecian chocolate company bought by Kraft Foods in the 1980s, and currently the top-selling chocolate brand in Greece - has made good use of interactive marketing in the past few years to promote love (and, by extension, chocolate). Lacta's most recent project climaxed on Valentine's Day 2010 with the premiere of a love story, brought to film by Lacta customers.

Creation of the 27-minute film, entitled "Love in Action," began in October 2009 with a television ad inviting viewers to submit their own real-life love stories on the Love in Action website, www.loveinaction.gr, for the chance to have their story made into a movie. According to an article this week by AdAge.com, the site received 1,307 submitted love stories.

Lacta, their marketing consultants at OgilvyOne Worldwide, and screenwriter George Kapoutzidis picked the winning story from the 1,307 entries.

In November 2009, Lacta issued another tv spot, asking the audience to view actors' screentests for the film (which were posted in full online), and to vote for the cast of the love story. These online audience members also chose the characters' names and clothing for the film.

In early February 2010, Lacta released a short trailer for "the love story we all turned into a movie."

Originally scheduled to release solely online on February 14, the "Love in Action" film also broadcast - at no cost to Lacta - as part of the Valentine's Day programming on Greece's leading tv station, MEGA Channel.

In March 2010, Lacta published a fourth and final tv commercial for the campaign, showing the film's ending and announcing that the film was based on a true love story.

(See the film and the entire campaign process at the Love in Action blog.)

And it seems that interactive romance stories work well for Greece's leading chocolate brand. In the quarter after the Love in Action campaign began, Lacta's sales were up 0.6% while the overall chocolate market was down.

This was not Lacta's first foray into interactive storytelling, either. In 2008, OgilvyOne had helped Lacta to release an online "choose-your-own-ending" love story, entitled "Love at First Site". Visitors made choices to move the story along to a happy (or unhappy) ending. Codes on wrappers of Lacta chocolate bars provided clues as to the right choices to make on the site.

Due to the success of the crowdsourced romance - according to AdAge, "Love in Action" was viewed by 12% of Greek television watchers, and was viewed 150,000 times during its first few weeks online - Lacta plans to create another interactive online love story based on one of the other 1,306 campaign entries.

Love, chocolate, and audience participation. Seems to be a winning combo for Lacta.

Permission to Buy Your Product

People need permission to buy your product.

Permission from themselves. Permission from their friends, family, religious communities, civic organizations, and sub-cultures. Permission from their peers, colleagues, coworkers, and superiors.

For most routine purchases, for purchases of well-respected brands, and for purchases that are considered to be a "reasonable" cost, this permission isn't usually a hang-up for consumers. Permission has already been granted, in the form of a generally accepted view that this is a "legitimate" purchase.

But for non-standard purchases, for large purchases, for purchases of little-known brands, and for purchases that carry a high "cost" (in terms of price, time, inconvenience, reputation, future success, etc.), permission from self or others isn't automatically guaranteed. And this permission is crucial; without it, the buyer feels like he or she must choose another brand, or abandon the purchase altogether.

Some examples:

• When a straight-A high school senior is considering an unheard-of college while his friends are applying to Ivy League schools, he needs permission to attend this obscure university. He needs permission from himself (that this school, though small, will provide him the best education he could find); permission from his friends (that they can accept that he has chosen an academically challenging college, although it does not have nearly the reputation of their own); and permission from future employers (that a degree from this university will enable him to get a good job in the future).


• When a mom is trying to take better care of the environment and beautify her home while being a good steward of the family's finances, she needs permission to buy the unfamiliar brand of weed killer that is 20% more expensive than the recognized brands but comes in the ergonomically-shaped green bottle with a name and package that sound environmentally friendly. If she is going to pay 20% extra for a brand she doesn't recognize, she first needs permission from herself and her family (by being sure that the product will work well and will be less harmful to the environment).


• When a husband wants to buy an expensive sports car, he needs permission from himself (that he deserves it, that the car is a good deal) and from his wife (that they have enough money to pay for the car, that the car gets good gas mileage, that the car will last the family a long time).

As a marketer, how do you provide this permission for consumers to buy your brand?

First, excellence. Second, communication.

The unknown university needs to be excellent in its academic quality, in the credentials of its professors, in the opportunities it provides to students, in the atmosphere on-campus, and in the success of its graduates. And it needs to communicate that excellence to prospective students, to the parents of prospective students, and to the general public.

The obscure "organic" weed killer needs to kill weeds effectively, and needs to do so with less environmental impact than the standard brands. And it needs to communicate to consumers - on its packaging, on its website, and in its advertising - exactly how its ingredients are better for the environment and how its performance compares to the leading brands.

The luxury sports car needs to provide an exceptional, enduring, and fuel-efficient driving experience. And it needs to communicate its performance, its ratings, its gas mileage, and its value through its marketing materials, advertising, and personal sales.

With your own brand - especially if you represent a new company, or a new product, or a new brand - be excellent, and communicate. Give people permission to buy your product.

The Art of Thoughtfulness

Most of the time, most people treat others only according to what is expected.

We are polite, but we're not caring. We're not rude, but we're not kind, either. We say "please" and "thank you" (maybe), but we don't show people how much we truly appreciate them.

And that's fine. We're not being rude, after all. No one expects anything more of us.

But in a world where avoiding rudeness is all that is required, a little thoughtfulness goes a long way.

• The college professor who remembers the name and one interesting fact about every student he meets - so that when they meet again, he can say, "Hello, Elizabeth! How's your little brother's baseball season going?" - is thoughtful.


• The woman who makes sure there are gluten-free foods available at her party when she invites her friend who has a gluten allergy, is thoughtful.


• The man who brings back a well-chosen souvenir from his Hawaiian vacation for his coworker who has always dreamed of going to Hawaii but has never been, is thoughtful.


• The girl who knows that her friend doesn't really care for birthday cake, and bakes her a birthday pie instead, is thoughtful.

Such acts of thoughtfulness are not required, or even expected. But they are very meaningful to the recipients.

Thoughtfulness requires a bit of extra work, and a bit of extra thinking. In particular, thoughtfulness requires that we think about the other person - what they like and dislike and need, rather than what is socially normal. It requires that we take time to listen, and to learn the people around us, and to look for ways to make their days brighter. It requires intentionality.

What would happen if marketers took the time to be thoughtful?

If we thought about what our customers need (or what we would need if we were in their shoes)? If we took time to listen to our customers and to find out their likes and dislikes? If we learned their wants, both on a collective level and on an individual level?

• Would we provide umbrella-drying racks inside our doors for rainy days?


• Would we provide hand lotion, in addition to soap, in our public restrooms, for the dry, chapped winter hands?


• Would we remember that Customer Tom's favorite band is Journey, and send him two tickets for a Journey concert near him to thank him for being a valued customer?


• Would we take note that Customer Julie tends to purchase a lot of Product X from us, and send her a coupon for a free unit of Product X on her birthday? (And a coupon for Product Y to Customer Bill, and a coupon for Product Z to Customer Myra?)

Again, these acts of thoughtfulness are not required. They are not even expected. And they require extra work, extra listening, extra thinking.

But who says that we should only do the expected? And who says that a little extra thoughtfulness isn't good for us?

Creating for Your Audience

Ad Age published a white paper this week called "Shiny New Things", exploring the influence of those customers known as the "early adopters".

The term "early adopters" was introduced in 1962 as the valued second category in Everett Rogers' diffusion of innovations theory. The theory asserts that all consumers can be grouped into one of five categories - innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards, consecutively - according to their willingness and quickness to adopt new ideas and products.


Rogers' diffusion of innovations curve. From the Wikimedia Commons.
For a good, brief online explanation of these five categories, I recommend ProvenModels.com/570.

Of these five categories, the early adopters are the consumers whom many marketers seek to impress when they release new products (hence the motivation behind Ad Age's white paper). Early adopters are revered as the consumers who can "make or break" a product's success. They are the ones who will tell the rest of the world whether the product is worth buying or not. They tell the world this by their words (increasingly so, in the days of social media), but also by their actions (are they seen actually wearing and using the new product or brand?). And they are the ones to whom the rest of the world listens.

(Of course, very few brands or products would do well to target the early adopters exclusively. As Seth Godin is quoted as saying in the Ad Age white paper [and in his blog], "if you want to stick around for a while, you need to make the difficult sales to the middle of the market or have a ready supply of new stuff ready to entertain the never-satisfied early adopters.")

The Ad Age white paper expanded on Rogers' theory by sharing findings from a study done for Serena Software that dissected the diffusion of innovations curve beyond its original five categories. The Serena Software study broke the "early adopters" segment into five micro-segments of its own by characteristic (rather than by adoption rate):

• Alphas - "These are the tech elite, immersed in technology. Alphas see technology as having a significant, positive impact on their lives and ability to communicate. At work, they are delegators, developing solutions to hand off."


• Accidental - "Not as comfortable with technology as Alphas, Accidentals still have a deep understanding of how technology can improve their lives. With a less direct approach at work, they consider technology a tool to solve problems, but not the key to everything."


• Practical - "Using all the technology that most other types are excited about, but they are less enthusiastic about the devices. They typically report to the Alphas and Accidentals at work, but are focused on implementation."


• Balanced - "Although similar to Accidentals, they do not place technology or work at the center of their lives. Approaching their jobs as a means to fund other things they enjoy, this group leads more relaxed lives than other types, and are hesitant to adopt emerging technology until they see how it relates to their personal lives. The most likely to be students and the least likely to be workaholics."


• Lite - "The most resistant to adopting new technologies before they are mainstream, they are less likely to take risks, actively solve problems or create efficiency. At work, they may adopt a new process once it is proven effective in another department. The most risk averse segment in relationship to technology, their work life, and at home."

These five micro-segments intrigue me. I want to discover how I can reach these customers - that is, how I can design products that fit their needs (rather than trying to convince them to buy a product that they really don't need - a much more difficult and much less honorable sell).

If I were to create a product with these five groups in mind, here are the steps (and priorities) that I would take:

1. Build for the Accidental. These are the consumers who see technology as tools, not as toys. Accidentals expect new technology to solve a problem. They will be my most valuable critics - the ones who tell me whether a new product is actually worth the materials from which it is made. They will tell me if a product actually meets a need in consumers' lives. If my product is going to be worthwhile, it needs to work for the Accidentals.


2. Support for the Practical. The Practicals are the ones who implement the technology, and are responsible for making sure that it works for their (or their organization's) needs. They use all the new technology, but they rarely get excited about it - they have to work around all the bugs, and make the solutions work for their supervisors or clients. Having technical support - especially, letting them tell me where all of the quirks and faulty solutions are, and then working my hardest to correct those things - will be key for these folks. The Practicals will be the ones who tell me how to make my product function the best.


3. Design for the Alphas. The Alphas get excited about technology, and are most likely to agree that technology has a positive impact on the world. If a new product has some new, better feature, and if some group of fanboys say that the product will be the next great thing, the Alphas will eagerly adopt the product, expecting great solutions. For this group, products should have good functionality, but also good form. Sleek design and intuitive user interface, added to great features, indicate quality to Alphas. If I care about design, I should design products that Alphas would be proud to carry.


4. Connect for the Balanced. These guys care about life, relationships, and well-being outside of work. They will adopt new technology if it improves the quality of their personal lives and social interactions. If my new product is a time pit or an end in itself, the Balanced won't accept it. My product should help them to simplify their lives, or connect with friends, or save time for the important things. If my product can possibly benefit people in a personal or social context, I should look to the Balanced to see how I can make it happen.

If I can create a product that meets these consumers' demands in terms of functionality, support, design, and connectedness, then I can sleep at night feeling that I've created a product worth buying. If my product satisfies the needs of these four micro-segments, and if the rest of my marketing mix can deliver my product to the world, then my product has a chance of being adopted by the other groups from Rogers' bell curve.

Can Social Save Chevrolet?

Several months ago, shortly after it was announced that GM would be selling Pontiac, my friend Savannah asked me to write about marketing strategies that GM could use in order to maintain market share after the divestiture.

Shamefully, I neglected to write such a blog post at that time.

However, many months later, General Motors (or Chevrolet, anyway) is making some marketing moves that give me some hope for the company: Chevy is one of the sponsors for the South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas, March 12-21, 2010.

SXSW is an annual pilgrimage for many in the music, film, and interactive media industries. The conference showcases the top talent and thought-leaders from each of these industries (the music side alone features nearly 2,000 musical acts), not to mention that it aggregates nearly 200,000 creative, innovative, artistic, tech-savvy, and entrepreneurial attendees into one city.

Chevrolet is using SXSW as an opportunity to test some new interactive and social media marketing initiatives:

• Gowalla couponing - When smartphone users check in via Gowalla at any of several locations in Austin during the conference, they will receive text messages with free offers from Chevrolet and SXSW. One such offer: a ride from the airport to downtown in (what else?) a new Chevrolet.


• QR & iReveal augmented reality - Chevy will be placing Quick Response (QR) codes on its vehicles that are on display at SXSW. When visitors photograph a QR code using their smartphones, a microsite opens that provides more information about the vehicle. Plus, a mobile application called Chevy iReveal allows users to view 3-D models of several Chevy vehicles.


• "Chevrolet Volt Recharge Lounge" - Chevy provides a "charging station" for SXSW attendees near the northwest entrance to the Austin Convention Center. At the Lounge, visitors can recharge their electronic devices, grab a drink, receive a massage, and check out the 2011 Chevy Volt.


• "Catch a Chevy" - SXSW visitors can ride through the city of Austin in style, by hopping a ride on complimentary shuttles between several SXSW locations - in one of 14 Chevy vehicles, of course.


• "See the USA in a Chevrolet: A SXSW Road Trip" - teams from eight U.S. cities participate in an "Amazing Race"-style road-trip/scavenger-hunt to get to SXSW. Along the way, each team must complete 50 different "challenges" (all submitted by Chevy Twitter followers and Facebook fans). The winning team will be the one that completes the most challenges and interacts the most with their Twitter and other web communities.

Chevrolet seems to be putting forth a good effort to provide a fun experience for SXSW attendees and online participants. And, as Christopher Barger (GM's director of global communications and technology) was quoted in MediaPost's Marketing Daily, Chevy also hopes to use this opportunity to learn from the brilliant and connected visitors to the conference.

Of course, successfully [re-]building a brand requires more than an outstanding social media effort. The promotion that Chevrolet is doing at SXSW is just part of one of the "4P's" of marketing. The others - product, price, place - are just as important for creating what Barger calls "a better experience" for customers. Chevy needs to invest just as much - if not more - time in creating remarkable vehicles for their customers, as they do in creating a fun interactive marketing campaign.

Brands do not live by social media alone. But if Chevy can put the same amount of effort, service, and ingenuity into its products as it does into this promotion, I have reason to believe that this brand, indeed, will live.

How Clever Is Too Clever?

Marketers like to be clever in their communication.

When they develop brand messaging, or an advertising campaign, or a product name, they want to create something that (1) attracts attention, (2) reinforces the desired "personality" of their brand, and (3) sticks in peoples' minds.

Sometimes marketers muster all of their cleverness and creativity to produce marketing communications that truly get noticed, and truly stick, and truly remind people of the brand. When I think of successful marketing efforts, I think of brands and campaigns and slogans like these:

• Twizzlers. "Makes mouths happy."
  Did this slogan leave us with any doubt that Twizzlers were a delightful thing to eat?


• Fuddruckers.
  The name itself is so funny to say - and the selection of burgers and toppings so fun and delicious (ostrich burger with peanut butter, anyone?) - that this restaurant chain is pretty unforgettable.


• GEICO. "15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance."
  After seeing that random, Australian-sounding gecko and hearing that slogan over and over and over again, who could forget that GEICO can save you money on car insurance?

When these brands and campaigns delight consumers and stay in their brains, the cleverness and creativity of their marketing teams has paid off.

But sometimes, cleverness actually sabotages the marketers' goals. A few examples:

• The Oneders.
  This was the original name of the band for whom Tom Hanks' character served as manager in the 1996 movie That Thing You Do. The band members tried to be clever with their name by replacing the "won" in "wonder" with the number "one." Unfortunately, their audiences didn't get it, pronouncing the name as "The Oh-NEED-ers" instead of as "The ONE-ders." Later in the movie, the band dropped the clever spelling and renamed themselves simply "The Wonders."


• The Brew.Net Internet Cafe
  This is the name of a coffee house in my town - a rather good one, actually - that offers free wi-fi (hence the allusions to both coffee and Internet in the name). But customers - and potential customers - never seem quite sure how to pronounce the name. Is it "The Brew Net" (sounds like "brunette")? Or "The Brew DOT Net" (sounds like a web URL)? Here again, cleverness obstructs customers' pronunciation. And if they can't pronounce it, how can they tell their friends about it?


• Super Bowl commercials - generally speaking.
  How many times do we see brilliant, extreme, hilarious Super Bowl commercials - ones that we share with our friends and laugh about for weeks - but which leave us with absolutely no recollection of which brand the commercial was promoting. Was that a Hyundai ad or a Nissan? Sprite or Sierra Mist? If the viewers can't remember the brand name, it doesn't matter how much they loved and laughed at the ad.

In marketing, clever can be good. Clever can make your brand surprising and remarkable and memorable. Or it can make your brand get lost in the confusion or hilarity of your messaging.

If you must be clever, make sure that your cleverness reinforces your brand, rather than distracting from it. A clever ad that leaves viewers without a clue about your brand is much less worthwhile and effective than a non-clever ad that clearly tells viewers who you are.