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.