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.

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?

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.

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.

Perspectives from Inside the Organization

To read today's post, see my guest blog post on the Abilene Startup Blog, hosted by my friend @chadhutchins.

- Haley

Lame Excuses for Being Boring - #1

I'm starting to collect a series of lame excuses for why a company doesn't have creative products, services, marketing, or marketing communications.

Here's the first:

"We can't afford to hire the top creative minds."

Then cultivate creativity among the team you already have. Research shows that for persons with enough intelligence to have attended college (an IQ of about 115 or higher), success is less a product of innate talent than of preparation, practice, and opportunity. (Read Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers for more information on this.)

Your marketing department, or product design team, or logistics personnel, or supply chain managers, have the capacity to think of creative ways to better serve your customers. To communicate better, to design better products, to reach them better, to provide better value (greater quality or less expense). You need to inspire them.

How do you inspire their creativity? Give them an afternoon at the movies - watching YouTube videos of excellent tv commercials and human zaniness. Send them to a park, or museum, or art gallery for the morning. Take them to lunch at a themed restaurant. Hold your next brainstorming session in a lime green room full of bean bag chairs, playdough, and whiteboards. Confiscate all pens - write with crayons instead. Have everyone name the most creative thing they've seen this week, then free associate to think of creative things that could work for your brand. Make your team act out a story using puppets (a story they make up as they go along, not one they know already).

Inspire creativity. Expect creativity.

A Burst of Creativity

Customers are tired of boring. They are tired of mediocre, status quo products, services, and marketing. Successful brands are those that are remarkable, creative, and exceptionally good at something. Because people are attracted to great work. And consumers want to identify themselves with something outstanding.

So, is your brand exceptionally good at something? Does your design team (or supply chain management, or finance department, or HR) exhibit superb innovation? Are your marketing communications creative, reaching customers in a fun way?

Or does it seem that your creativity has dried up?

Perhaps your company is like many - it's a good company. But not exceptionally good. Not great at anything. Not noted for creativity or innovation or the pursuit of excellence.

Do you need a boost to get those creative juices flowing again?

While it may be difficult to teach someone how to be creative, it seems to me that one of the best ways to stir up creativity is to immerse oneself in the creativity of others. Surround yourself with creative people and creative work.

Visit websites that showcase creative advertising, design, and marketing - try creativity-online.com, www.luerzersarchive.us, www.oneclub.org, and adsoftheworld.com for starters. Check out what innovative companies are doing - and not just in your own industry. Look at artwork - on Flickr, at artists' studios, in art museums. Search YouTube for old Super Bowl ads, funny videos, and top-rated tv commercials. Ask your friends to tell you the funniest thing they've seen, heard, or experienced recently. Read the comics. Tour a cathedral or historic mansion. Sit at a park and watch children playing. Lie on the grass and look at cloud shapes.

Surround yourself with creativity and excellence. Be inspired. Pursue greatness.

Radical honesty is in your best interest

Do you remember the Miracle on 34th Street customer service phenomenon?

In the 1947 movie, Santa Claus comes to work for Macy's department store, and promptly starts sending Macy's customers to other stores when Macy's prices are higher than those of competitors.

The result? Rather than hurting Macy's sales, this practice draws more and more customers to shop at Macy's, effectively boosting sales and causing competitors to follow suit in sending customers to other stores for cheaper prices.

Why? Why did sending customers to competitors cause Macy's to gain more customers and more sales?

Because customers like honesty. We like people we can trust. When a person (or company) openly admits his weaknesses (like Macy's charging higher prices than a competitor), his listeners believe that he is acting out of their best interests, not his own. The company who practices this becomes known as (to quote Mr. Macy) "the helpful store, the friendly store, the store with a heart." And people like to do business with that kind of company.

Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, and Robert Cialdini cite real-life examples of this principle in their book Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. They quote the U.S. debut of the original Volkswagen Beetle ("Ugly is only skin deep"); Avis rental cars ("Avis. We're #2, but we try harder. When you're not #1, you have to."); and Listerine mouth wash ("Listerine: the taste you hate three times a day." Progressive car insurance proudly advertises its comparisons with competitors - even when competitors' insurance rates are cheaper than Progressives'. Since Progressive began comparing rates, it has continued to grow an average of 17% per year.

What other industries could use this technique to improve customer service? Automakers? Electronics? Universities?

Are you using this principle to better serve your customers? Do your customers know they can trust you?

Trust Comes First

Yesterday I saw I an online ad that read, "Click here to build a custom network for your brand." It had a little graphic and logo and another button that said, "Take 60 Seconds to Build Your Network." I had no interest in hiring a marketing services company, but, being a fellow marketer, I was interested in seeing what these guys were doing with this marketing piece.

I clicked on the ad, which took me to a microsite by a company called Casale Media where I could build a "sample custom network". I was curious; I wondered what Casale Media could do with this "custom network" thing; and I was okay with building a little free sample for fun.

So I picked some random "target demographics" (B2C, Miami area, males, 18-34, interested in fishing) to plug into the form. BUT, in order to submit the demographics and generate my free sample custom network, Casale Media wanted me to submit my Name, Company, Email, and Telephone number. Bad move. I left the site.

See, I knew nothing about Casale Media. Had never heard of them before. Had never seen their work. As a "prospective customer," I wasn't yet interested in Casale Media's services. I was willing take two minutes to check out their product, get a free sample, and learn whether Casale might actually provide a beneficial service to marketers. If they did, and I were a marketing manager at a company, I might have pursued further a relationship with Casale Media.

But, until I could see and learn about what Casale Media actually did, I was in no way interested in giving my contact information to this company about which I knew nothing. They had given me no reason to show them that kind of trust yet. And since I was only curious about the company (and not actively seeking any marketing services), I was happy to leave their site and never give them a second glance, if I could not test their free sample without submitting that information.

They lost me as a prospective customer.

If Casale Media truly wanted to attract new customers (which is ostensibly the purpose of most advertisements), this is model they should have followed:

1. Offer their free, fun little interactive application which generates a sample of Casale Media's "product" (the custom network).


2. DON'T require any personal information to run the app.


3. Let the viewer (who has already taken the first giant step by clicking on the ad) see the results of their very own sample custom network.


4. If the sample custom network shows that Casale Media has a fun and useful product, THEN invite customers to submit their information to learn if Casale Media's services are right for their company, or to visit Casale Media's website to learn more.

Casale Media needs to create some modicum of trust by allowing prospective customers to see a sample of their work. By requiring a yet-unearned level of trust from their prospects, they turn people away and sabotage their marketing efforts.

Trust comes first, Casale Media. Give them something free. Then, if they like it, they will come.

Crowds, Art, and Psychology

Last Saturday evening, my friend Lindsey and I attended the Dallas CityArts Festival, an annual outdoor celebration of visual and performing arts in downtown Dallas. We joined the throngs of people gathered along several city blocks in 100-degree heat to browse artists' booths, listen to music of varying genres, watch dances from different cultures, enjoy free admission to the local (air-conditioned!) art museums, and eat bratwurst and snow cones. Both Lindsey and I are artistic souls (she graduated with a degree in art; I was an art major for two semesters), and events like this thrill us to no end.

Although Lindsey and I arrived after the museums had already closed for the evening (much to our dismay), we thoroughly enjoyed looking at artwork by local painters, sculptors, photographers, and jewelry-makers. However, the plight of these artists saddened me somewhat. Here they were, sitting in stifling heat for the better part of three days, lost in the never-ending row of booths belonging to their fellow artists, watching as hundreds of people surveyed their work without so much as a word to the creators, and hoping - mostly in vain - that someone might actually love some of their work enough to BUY it.

Alas, it seemed that most of the patrons of the Dallas CityArts Festival were more interested in looking at art rather than buying it.

Despite my "artophilia", I myself, having only recently graduated from college, was certainly not in a position to fulfill the artists' hopes of selling their several-hundred-dollar artwork.

However, I experienced a curious psychological phenomenon as I wandered in and out of artists' booths: when I encountered a booth in which empty spaces and discarded price tags betrayed evidence that someone had actually purchased artwork there, I was much more eager to visit that booth and study the work therein. I was also more willing to investigate whether the artist had inexpensive prints or notecards that I might be interested in purchasing. If someone else had loved a piece enough to actually spend money and take it home, perhaps the artist's work was good enough that I, too, would like it and even want to buy it.

Researcher Robert Cialdini calls this psychological phenomenon "Social Proof" - the idea that we take cues from what people around us do. If others act a certain way, we assume that it is reasonable to act in the same fashion. This is especially true when we encounter new situations in which we are unsure of how to act.

If "Social Proof" affects us so much, maybe the artists at art festivals could use this principle to their advantage. A psychology-savvy artist looking to sell his work could set up his booth and hang his paintings around the tent, but intentionally leave one or two painting-sized empty spaces where a person would expect to see a piece of artwork. Then he could watch and see if more people than normal enter the booth interested in viewing and purchasing the art.

Would this have worked for the artists at the Dallas CityArts Festival? I don't know. But it wouldn't have hurt for them to give it a try.

Marketers, just do work.

One month ago, I graduated from college. With a degree in marketing. Wanting to do interactive advertising.

Which means that, over the past few years (and even more over the past few months), I have been digging through job postings, prowling through lists of "The Top ___ Ad Agencies," and trekking through dozens of agency websites. I was quite impressed with the first several ad agency websites I explored - especially those for interactive* agencies. [for those of you not quite sure what "interactive" means, see my definition below]

Beyond the "coolness" factor of the clean or eclectic, minimalist or avant-garde, always esthetically pleasing, full-of-white-space-and-streaming-video, often Flash-driven sites, I especially loved the inspiring "our philosophy" sections that I would discover on these sites. Wow! these agencies "got it" - they understood things that we had been talking about in my marketing classes. They understood that marketing isn't just about shouting messages at consumers and convincing them to buy stuff so that companies can make money. No, it's about building relationships, and creating value, and partnering research with creativity, and having an integrated strategy, and being remarkable, and earning fans, and starting conversations, and developing trust and transparency.

I was so excited to discover that agencies have this fresh and original look at marketing!

Until, a few days ago, after wading through the millionth obligatory "marketing philosophy" page, I reached an exasperated conclusion: ALL of the advertising agencies that are worth their salt "get it" already. ALL of them understand the current approach to marketing, such as I described above. ALL of them have, basically, this same core philosophy. THEY'RE ALL SAYING THE SAME THING. Which means that none of them are really original any more. They don't need to keep saying the same thing that everybody knows already.

So, my fellow marketers and advertising professionals, quit talking and just get back to marketing. Take your lofty philosophies (most of which I agree with, by the way), and use them! Do marketing! And do it with excellence and effectiveness, and be remarkable, and earn fans for your clients, and stop trying to use your philosophy to prove that you're different. Just do great work.

Yesterday I stumbled upon this article on MediaPost.com, describing the website of NC-based agency Boone Oakley. Boone Oakley seems to be saying the same thing I've been thinking (just in slightly different words than I would have chosen). And actually, their "website" isn't a website at all, but rather an interactive (haha) YouTube video. Check it out: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=107402

*definition of interactive advertising (by Haley) - advertising that involves two-way communication between a company and its customers, rather than the traditional one-way communication found in media like tv commercials, radio spots, billboards, magazine ads, etc. To do this, interactive advertising agencies often use tools like public relations events, customizable products, Internet ads, company websites, online contests, customer review sites, microsites, blogs, text-messaging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, iPhone applications, etc. Hence the website of any agency that does any interactive work at all is typically very creative and...well...interactive.