Brand Autopsy

"There are two kinds of companies — those that work to raise prices and those that work to lower them." Jeff Bezos, founder & ceo of AmazonMucho kudos to Todd Sattersten for the quote.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a profile on Restoration Hardware and its reemergence as a great brand. Much of the article centered around the design and management style of Gary Friedman, Restoration Hardware ceo and chairman.

“Great brands don’t chase customers, customers chase great brands.” - Gary Friedman

---

The above quote was pulled from Gary explaining how Restoration Hardware, during the recession, resisted playing the low-price value game and instead, doubled-down its efforts to improve the company’s identity and uniqueness. Gary went on to say, “In bad economic times, quality becomes even more important, uniqueness becomes even more important—people need to be inspired to buy something.”

Gary’s right.

Just like people need to be inspired to talk about brands... people also need to be inspired to buy something from brands.

What are you doing to inspire customers to buy something?

At the 2011 WOMMA School of WOM Conference, Geno Church and I gave a presentation titled, “Bringing SEXY Back to Offline Word of Mouth.” It was less a presentation and more a RANT about the importance of not losing focus on real world marketing ideas that can spark customer-driven conversations.

Unfortunately, it’s become decidedly unsexy to talk about anything word of mouth marketing-related that doesn’t involve Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, or scores of other social media thingamajigs.

Geno and I went true school by sharing strategies and ideas for how businesses can spark conversations with customers all day every day in the offline REAL world. (For all those social media experts and practitioners who steadfastly contend social media solves every marketing problem, keep in perspective that 93% of retail sales in America happen offline.)

The following 425 words express some of the key points I made during my 15-minute RANT at the school of WOM. (These words first appeared in a recent CrackerJack Marketer newsletter. Missed it? Rectify it.)

---

Touchpoints as Talking Points

The best word of mouth isn’t a marketing tactic. It isn’t a tweet, a status update, a viral video, or anything else you can find or do on a social media website. The best word of mouth isn’t a publicity stunt or anything done to get some buzz for a day. The best word of mouth is how a business does business not just one day, but every day it is in business.

The word BUZZ needs to be eliminated from our vocabulary. Buzz is exclamation point marketing. It’s a one hit wonder. It’s one and done. Big bang one day, nothing the next day. Too many marketers are relying on the Big Bang Theory to get people talking.

And too many marketers are living for The DOT and not The LINE.

The DOT being a “One Day Big Bang” approach to getting people talking. The LINE being an “All Day Every Day” way to becoming a talkable brand.

The average life expectancy of a Fortune 500 business is 14,600 days and the average life span of a small business is 3,100 days. Clearly, a business is not in business for just one day; it is in business for a series of days — a line.

As marketers, it’s our responsibility to give consumers reasons to talk about brands, products, and services not just for one day... but rather, for a series of days.

To create a talkable brand, we must earn opinions from customers at every touchpoint. Anything a customer can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell is a touchpoint. Customer touchpoints are EVERYWHERE which means word of mouth opportunities are everywhere.

For example, any restaurant that uses a “Please Wait To Be Seated” sign from a restaurant supply catalog has given up on being talkable. This sign is one of the first customer touchpoints someone will experience inside a restaurant. It’s the perfect opportunity to showcase a company’s unique personality by creating a custom sign that expresses the uniqueness of the restaurant.

Starbucks has long practiced the idea of giving people reasons to talk by earning opinions from customers at every touchpoint. One of the simplest ways Starbucks earns opinions from customers is by deliberating calling their drink sizes Short, Tall, Grande, and Venti. The easiest (and least talkable) decision would be to use Small, Medium, Large, and Extra Large as their drink sizes. But there’s nothing interesting in the mundane.

The most talkable brands take common customer touchpoints and make them uncommon... uncommonly talkable. What touchpoints can your business make interesting to get customers interested?

Here’s another lesson about delivering standout presentations from stand-up comics as first seen in HBO’s TALKING FUNNY television show.

Highly successful presenters, like highly successful comics, deeply understand how to affect an audience. The more successful a presenter becomes, they more they know how to say the right things in the right ways to make a connection with their audience.

I’ve seen some very polished presenters make a connection with their audience but the presenter isn’t connected to their own material. In other words, the presenter doesn’t believe in their material but because they understand how to tell a story on-stage, the audience is still affected in a positive way.

These polished presenters make a fabulous living. Give them a topic. Give them stage time. Give them an audience. And, watch them go. They are highly skilled and highly compensated communicators. But have they lost something?

Ricky Gervais touched upon this issue in TALKING FUNNY when he shared, “It’s not just being funny. It’s being proud of your stuff and doing things that other people couldn’t do.”

For presenters, it’s important to be proud of your material. It’s also important to craft your presentation point-of-view that is distinctly you. But it’s most important for you, as a presenter, to speak on topics you are uniquely qualified to talk about.

If you aren’t uniquely qualified to talk about a topic, I urge you to refer someone you know who is qualified to talk about that topic.

From time to time I get asked to give a presentation on an issue/subject I’m not passionate about. These are topics that aren’t important to me but they are important to someone else. Thus, I refer someone who is proud of their unique point-of-view on a topic and who can deliver a killer presentation.

You might be able to positively affect an audience talking about something that isn’t important to you. However, I’m certain someone else you know would be better suited to give that presentation. Consider spreading some love and refer someone you know who could deliver a standout presentation on a topic you aren’t passionate about.

We continue sharing presentation lessons from comedians. These lessons were discussed during HBO’s TALKING FUNNY roundtable conversation between master comics Ricky Gervais, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and Louis C.K.

To develop his comedy act, Louis CK would, “Take my closing bit and open with it. Because then I had to follow my strongest bit.”

That’s smart advice for anyone presenting anything. If you’re giving a presentation, lead with your best material. If you’re pitching a client, lead with your best work and best rationale. If you’re debating someone, lead with your best argument.

By leading with your best material, you will challenge yourself to make sure the rest of your presentation can compare to your strong opening. If the rest of your material can’t compare to your opening bit, then you need to rework and rethink your presentation points.

I can relate to this advice. For my Bigness of Smallness presentation, I lead with my best stuff. Early on, I struggled to make sure everything else that followed my opener was strong enough to keep the audience’s attention. After a few years and continuous honing, my follow-up material has become strong enough to work alongside my opening bit.

Back to conversation from TALKING FUNNY... when Louis C.K. told the others he developed his act by moving his strong close to the opener in order to challenge himself, Jerry Seinfeld said, “You see, that’s how he got good.”

You wanna get good at presenting just like Louis C.K. got good at stand-up comedy?

Try opening with your strongest material and then challenge yourself to develop material worthy of following your great opening bit.

The first CrackerJack Marketer webinar is scheduled for May 18 at 11:00cst. (For those CrackerJacks on the email list, you’ve already been clued in.) For those of you not on the list, you're just now hearing we’re charging an unheard of $4,000* for the webinar.

Why so much?

Because $4,000 is closer to the real value of the information Paul Williams and I are going to share about how a retail business can become a Talkable Brand.

*However, since $4,000 is a ridiculous amount to spend for a 60-minute webinar... we’re giving a massive 99.9% discount when you use the not so secret password of: CRACKERJACK.

That knocks down the price to a reasonable $40.00.

But wait, there’s more... as in, more information about the CrackerJack Marketer webinar.

---

WEBINAR
Becoming a Talkable Brand:
How Customer Touchpoints Lead to Customer Talking Points

---

The most endearing and enduring retailers connect with customers in the most surprisingly meaningful ways. Most of these ways are invisible to the consumer’s eye. (But not to a CrackerJack Marketer’s eye.) The smartest marketers understand any and every place a customer can “touch” a company is an opportunity to spark conversations and form connections with customers.

Expect a fast-paced webinar loaded with examples galore of actionable best practice advice on how to engage and encourage customers to tell others about brands they find talkable.

Key takeaways from this webinar will include:

• Marketers don’t decide what gets talked about, customers decide.
• Long-lasting word of mouth is more about living a company’s culture every day than delivering upon a heavy-up marketing plan.
• Every employee is actually a member of the marketing department.
• Plus, oodles of ideas on making word of mouth happen to spark conversations leading to higher sales.

Cost:	$4,000* (MEGA discount available. Read below.)
Date:	Wednesday, May 18
Time:	11:00 AM - 12:00 PM (central)
Registration:	Click To Register!
* Use this discount code: CRACKERJACK and receive a 99.9% discount and pay only $40.00

All attendees will receive a detailed PDF summary of the webinar as well as a boost in confidence.

Presenters can learn a lot from comedians on developing a better act. The process in how a presenter crafts, develops, and delivers a presentation is much the same in how a comedian puts together their act.

Presenters and comedians have much in common.

Presenters, like comedians, must share a unique point-of-view. Presenters must also share their unique point-of-view in a smart way, just as comedians must do. Good presenters and good comedians utilize the power of timing and pauses in their delivery. The very best presenters and comedians go the extra mile by managing to give the illusion of their on-stage performance being a dialogue and not a monologue.

Last fall I delivered a presentation sharing some of the lessons I’ve learned from comedians to hone my act. I put the slides up (without narration but with stand-up clips) as an online video. You can watch it here or click play below.

I’m always on the lookout for more lessons from comedians to help me improve as a presenter. HBO recently aired a program called, TALKING FUNNY. It’s a roundtable discussion between master comics Ricky Gervais, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and Louis C.K.

It’s brilliant. It’s a must watch for anyone in the presentation game.

These comics address so many issues presenters deal with in developing an act, relating to the audience, and finding the funny. Or in our case, finding the pithy, poignant takeaways for attendees to be influenced and inspired by.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be sharing some of the many smart comedy lessons discussed in TALKING FUNNY. I’ll help to translate the comedy lessons into practical presentation lessons.

For example, there’s a discussion between these master comics about how long should a comedian keep the same material in their act. We presenters face the same issue... how long should we continue using the same slides with the same takeaways?

Chris Rock and Louis C.K. throw away their act every year. Meaning, they start from scratch every year and develop an entirely new act.

Jerry Seinfeld takes a different approach. He evolves his act over a long period of time. Jerry knows the first month he starts telling a joke it’s not going to go over as well as it will six months later, when he’s practiced and refined the bit.

In explaining his approach to crafting his act, Jerry relates it to a people management philosophy from legendary ceo Jack Welch: “I like to keep evolving … like how Jack Welch ran GE. Every year he would fire the bottom 10-percent. That’s the way I do it.”

Yes, you read that right.

Jerry Seinfeld applies the Jack Welch 20/70/10 rule to his comedy act. Makes complete sense. Keep the great jokes (the 20%). Continue working on the average stuff (70%) until they become great jokes. And dump the bad jokes (10%) that have no potential to become great jokes.

Turns out, I’ve been using the 20/70/10 rule with crafting my presentations. 20% of my act is proven evergreen material. 70% of my presentations use newer examples with less practiced material. Some of that will become proven, evergreen material and some of it will be destined for the dumpster. And yes, 10% of my presentation material should be put in the dumpster today.

The point is, like Jerry, I cycle through my material. All of us presenters should cycle through our material. Some of us will be more like Chris Rock and Louis C.K. and start from scratch after cycling through all our material within a year. Others of us will be more like Jerry Seinfeld and Ricky Gervais and cycle through all our presentation material after a few years.

Expect more “Presently Smartly” lessons on the Brand Autopsy blog from HBO’s TALKING FUNNY roundtable discussion with master comics.

I’ve had some challenging speaking gigs but none more challenging than eulogizing my oldest sister, Lana.

Melana Love Moore Eaves passed away on April 19, 2011. After a prolonged ordeal, her kidneys gave out. She was 47.

I knew this would be a very difficult talk to give.

No more than four minutes. That’s all the time I had to deliver my words. Not nearly enough time to capture the essence of Lana.

As I drove up to Dallas I began to string together something authentic and affecting in my mind. Tears gently rolled down my face as I began stringing together my words.

On Saturday morning I rehearsed my words. I felt confident in delivering an authentic and affecting eulogy.

That confidence waned as I entered the modestly appropriate chapel on Saturday afternoon.

I was overcome with more emotion than I thought. A slideshow of photos spanning Lana’s life brought me to tears. I thought there is no way I will be able to get through my short talk without losing it.

(I prayed for help.)

The service started and this simple video played of my Mother talking about her firstborn daughter, Lana. (Keep in my mind, no one at the funeral had heard my Mother’s voice for several years because she passed away in 2007 from ALS.)

Lolly, Lana’s long-time friend, spoke first. Her talk was from the heart and closed with reciting lyrics from an 80's TV sitcom we all know. So fitting. So lovely. So Lana.

Steve spoke next. (Steve married Lana to her husband, Denny Eaves, in 2008.) He shared Lana’s connection with Christ and ended with reciting verses from Ecclesiastes.

Next was my turn.

Doing my best to keep my composure, I walked behind the podium. Paused. Breathed. And spoke...

I didn’t really know my sister. I knew of my sister more than I knew my sister.

There are many reasons for this.

One reason is age.
When Lana graduated from High School, I had yet to enter Junior High.
There was just too much of a difference in age for me to know my sister.

Another reason is Lana had another family she belonged to ... her family of friends.
Lana chose to spend a lot time with her family of friends.

What I knew of my sister is she always had good intentions.
She meant well.
She wanted to be good to others.

I felt her good intentions when I was in the sixth grade.
One morning I awoke to find Lana at the foot of my bed.
She wanted to be the one to tell me some horrible news.
She wanted to be my big sister and be the one to tell me a friend of mine had committed suicide.

That was Lana’s good intentions in action.

Many, many years passed.
Many Holiday family gatherings passed ... some Lana spent with us and some Lana spent with her other family.

In 2005 I felt very distant to Lana.
So I called her.
Asked her to meet me for lunch.
We talked.
We talked for the first time since I don’t know when.
That felt good.
She better understood my life and I better understood her life.
It was good to reconnect with my sister.

If there is any moral to this story it is to reconnect with someone who you’ve lost touch with.

Call them.
Invite them to lunch.
And talk.
I’m sure they will appreciate your good intentions.

---

{PAUSE ... BREATHE ... hold up the scrapbook}

---

My mother kept a detailed scrapbook during Lana’s early years.

Every little thing was noted and dated.

The day Lana first crawled. Noted and dated.

Lana’s first syllables, "Da-Da." {Look at Dad.} Noted and dated.

And Lana’s first sentence was noted and dated.

Two weeks before her second birthday, my Mother noted that Lana said, “I want to go home, Mommy.”

We’re about two weeks before Lana’s next birthday ... “Mommy, she’s home.”

---

After the service, we met with family and friends in the receiving line. While I managed to not to lose it while delivering my eulogy, I lost it in the receiving line.

Unbeknownst to me, the mother and sister of my childhood friend who committed suicide were in attendance. When they reached me in the receiving line, I lost it. I cried uncontrollably. I also hugged both of them uncontrollably. Anyone who knows me, knows I am not a big-time hugger. Thank you Sherry and Shannon for being there.

And thank you Lana for being my big sister. Although you lived a short life, you’ve taught me life-long lessons. Give Mom an uncontrollable hug from her youngest son.