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?

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).

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.

The Home Depot and Edutainment

Majesco Entertainment Company recently released a game for the Wii, featuring home improvement retailer The Home Depot. The game, "Our House: Party!" features 175 mini-games in which players (up to four) complete home improvement projects in order to make their homes the best in the neighborhood. These projects include tasks like construction, demolition, plumbing, wiring, landscaping, decorating, and, of course, racing through The Home Depot store to get the necessary power tools.



Majesco also released a similar version of the game - "Our House" - for Nintendo DS. In the DS version, players start as contractors who must build customer's houses in order to save up enough money to build their own home.

The first brilliant thing about these games is that they're just plain fun. (Or at least they sound fun! I haven't tested them out yet.) The second brilliant thing is that, in the midst of all that fun, Majesco and The Home Depot have combined education (learn, loosely, how to do various projects), branding (The Home Depot, of course!), and entertainment. The game provides instruction and fun in a positive brand experience for The Home Depot's potential customers.

The Home Depot creates other positive brand experiences, too, without forcing customers to pay them a dime. In addition to the caricatured "do-it-yourself" projects of the "Our House" and "Our House: Party!" games, The Home Depot shares scores of free, real-life "how to" videos on their YouTube channel. And, as I understand, anyone can visit a Home Depot store during their project workshops for hands-on instruction in home improvement.

These are the kinds of things that attract customers to a brand. Give people something useful, teach them, provide them a service - for free. In the process you will be building trust, building rapport, and building relationships with people. And then, when those people really do need a product that you sell, with whom will they prefer to spend their money? You've proven yourself trustworthy in a service that does not earn you money; now those people will be ready to trust you with a service that does.

How can your organization provide an honest-to-goodness, helpful, positive, fun brand experience for people, before they ever have to spend a dime?

Features or Benefits?

In a recent article in MediaPost's Marketing Daily, Best Buy's Shari Ballard (EVP of retail channel management) makes the point that consumers aren't interested in simply acquiring technology products, but in using them to do things. Shari says, "We think one of the reasons we exist on the planet is to help people find connected digital solutions that work with their individual needs."

This is the old "features vs. benefits" question. Customers are not interested in all of the bells and whistles - the features - of a product; they want to know how the product can benefit them and meet their needs.

Customers don't want you to tell them that your brand new, state-of-the-art vacuum cleaner has a super-sonic suction machine and a microfiber carpet brush and a 20-foot hose that compresses to two inches. They want you to tell them that your brand new, state-of-the-art vacuum cleaner will help them clean their homes better, faster, more economically, and with less hassle.

Going beyond the business world, how do you - as a person - benefit others? Maybe you are the best wordsmith who ever lived; your writing communicates exactly and compellingly what you intend to say. That is a gift, a skill, a feature. How are you using that gift to serve the world? Are you helping people to understand one another? Are you inspiring people? Refreshing them? Calling them to action? How are you helping others?

What benefit is your product or service offering to your customers?
What benefit are you, yourself, offering to the world?

You are already strong and beautiful and talented and smart and important and loved; you don't need to prove that. You were created to make the world better; don't just show off your features.