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Todd Sattersten from 800.CEO.READ recently recorded a conversation with Charles Fishman, Fast Company senior writer and author of THE WAL-MART EFFECT. Fascinating stuff.
If you are at all interested in how Wal-Mart plays the retailing game … download the podcast. Charles is a great conversationalist and his stories about Wal-Mart are as captivating as they are informative.
Seems as though making the common uncommon is baked inside the company culture of MINI USA. MINI made the common car uncommon. Through its ad agency, Crispin, Porter + Bogusky (CP+B), MINI made the common advertising campaign uncommon. And now since CP+B resigned the MINI ad account in favor of a much larger Volkswagon assignment, MINI USA has made the common ad agency selection process uncommon.
The normal way companies select ad agencies is to use an outside selection firm to manage the RFP process and then a select number of agencies are invited to make their pitch to the company in a series of boardroom meetings. Afterwards, the company selects their ad agency of record.
MINI began its search for a new ad agency using the normal process of hiring an outside firm to ferret through proposals. However, once MINI narrowed the list of ad agency candidates down to four, things got uncommon … very uncommon.
MINI CEO Jim McDowell organized a weekend-long “boot camp” immersion where all four remaining candidates performed in front of each other. The first assignment McDowell gave the ad agencies was to introduce themselves to each other by creating interesting name tags on the spot. Next, McDowell tested the quick-thinking improv skills of the agencies by asking them offbeat questions like, “If Arnold Schwarzenegger runs for President, who should be his running mate?”
During the boot camp, the agencies were sent out on a scavenger hunt in rainy weather to drive MINI Coopers and collect items to be used in a scrapbook which were later presented in front of MINI marketers and the other ad agencies.
After the boot camp, one agency dropped out citing chemistry differences. The three remaining agencies had open access to the MINI team but McDowell again did something uncommon – he gave each agency open access to every nugget of information requested by one agency. If one agency requested something, McDowell shared that something with every agency.
McDowell put these agencies through this uncommon pitch process “… to get closer to how each agency thought, behaved, and went about their business when unexpected situations were thrown at them.”
MINI ultimately selected Butler Shine as their new ad agency.
Recently I riffed on Michael Levine’s BROKEN WINDOWS BROKEN BUSINESS book which applies the broken windows crime theory to business. Levine contends a broken window in business happens when someone isn’t paying attention to details and that these are telltale signs to customers that a business doesn’t care, that it is poorly managed, and or it has become too big and arrogant to adequately deal with little details.
I hate to point this out but Levine’s website has a major broken window –– he last updated his BROKEN WINDOWS BROKEN BUSINESS blog two months ago. (Ouch.)
Okay ... I'm guilty of being a Starbucks homer. Can't help it. In my eight-plus years working there, the company helped me better understand what meaningful marketing is and now I make a living showing how small-to-midsize companies can also engage in meaningful marketing.
With that said, wander over to Mike Landman's blog for a link/commentary to a contest from the Consumerist on the WORST Starbucks stories. It's bad stuff that's actually good stuff because we can learn just as much from worst practices as we can from best practices.
I can’t begin to summarize the WOMMA Word-of-Mouth Basic Training Conference like the WOMMA Bloggers have done. So instead … I’ll offer up a few takeaways from noteworthy presentations I attended.
1 | Do something cool. Don’t do boring stuff. Be interesting to get customers interested.
2 | Tell your story. Every body loves a good story. Businesses with good stories develop good relationships with customers.
3 | Fans, not Customers. Acquiring customers is one thing … creating fans out of those customers is something better.
4 | Own a Word. Scott owns the word ‘Approachability.’ What word does your brand/business own?
5 | Market yourself Daily. Always communicate the uniqueness of your brand/business. Why? Well, Scott quotes from Hebrews (13:2) "Fear not to entertain strangers for by so doing some have entertained angels unaware."
The brilliance of Reichheld is his ability to simplify business success. For example …
Bad Profits | Good Profits
Reichheld warns of driving growth through bad profits. Hotels achieve bad profits when they charge guests outrageous fees to make local and long distance calls. Airlines achieve bad profits when they charge travelers $100 to change flights. Not only do bad profits alienate customers, they also demotivate employees. Employees become demotivated because they know it is silly to over-charge customers for making long distance calls from their hotel room. Yet, these employees are the ones having to take the verbal abuse of irate customers to help their company benefit from bad profits.
The Secret to Building Loyal Customers is …
… treat others like you would want to be treated. Wait. That’s no secret … that’s The Golden Rule. Yet, that is exactly what businesses like Southwest Airlines and Enterprise Rent-A-Car credit for their success in creating loyal customers. Treating customers exactly like we would want to be treated. Hmm … sounds simple. So why don’t more companies create a customer service culture around The Golden Rule?
The Ultimate Question
Reichheld contends companies no longer need to rely on expensive studies and complex statistical models to measure customer loyalty in hopes of increasing sales. Instead, they need to ask just one question: Would you recommend us [the business] to a friend? All this is tied into his Net Promoter Score which you can read more about in this Q&A.
And … Frederick Reichheld is blogging these days. Cool.
He mesmerized the audience with his astute analysis on how the most engaging brands create devoted followers by getting them to believe in the company’s mission and to feel a sense of belonging to the community of the company. Believing and belonging are key to brands creating evangelical customers. And believing and belonging are also key concepts cults use to turn everyday people into exceptionally devoted cult members.
Atkin shared only a snippet of his culting of brands theory with us but the information he shared was incredibly useful. He concentrated much of his presentation on the importance of brands needing to separate themselves from the status quo. Atkin offered up four ways brands can best separate themselves from their competitive set:
1 | DETERMINE your profound sense of difference.
2 | DECLARE your difference via a brand ideology.
3 | DEMARCATE your difference by living it through unique symbolism and iconography.
4 | DEMONIZE your main competitors … make them look sadistic to make your brand look angelic.
Thanks adland for including Brand Autopsy on the ballot for the so-called “Best Marketing Blog.”
Just so you readers know, I don’t blog for awards -- I blog for all the marketing-minded children out there. So ... a vote for Brand Autopsy is really a vote for the future generation of marketers. I really do believe children marketers are our future. We must teach them well and let them lead the way. We gotta show them all the marketing beauty they possess inside and give them a sense of pride … (Yeah right johnmoore … whatever.)
So ... you couldn't make it to the Word of Marketing Summit in Orlando -- no worries. Josh Hallett, Marianne Richmond, and Toby Bloomberg are live blogging all of it from their WOMMA Blogging Porch. They are doing such a great job, I've stop taking notes from the sessions and will rely upon their great sum-ups.
Go ahead ... get lost in all their posts >>> WOMMA Blog.
And ... the fellas over at coBRANDiT are video blogging from the WOMMA conference. Click here to see the short interview they did with me.
UPDATE: Steve Rubel is also live blogging the WOMMA Conference.
I hope you are signed up to attend the Word-of-Mouth Basic Training Conference in Orlando this week. If you are signed up, like I am, you’ll get a deeper understanding in the arts and sciences of the most influential medium in a consumer’s purchase decision – WORD-OF-MOUTH.
Late last year, BIGresearch, a consumer behavior market intelligence company, released their newest Simultaneous Media Usage Survey (SIMM VII). 15,000 survey respondents answered questions on the influence various media play in their purchase decisions. The results give increasing credence to the influential power of Word-of-Mouth.
In this study, Word-of-Mouth ranked as the most influential marketing medium. The "Top Ten" most influential marketing mediums, regardless of demographic age group, include:
1 | Word-of-Mouth
2 | TV
3 | Coupons
4 | Newspaper Inserts
5 | Read Article
6 | Direct Mail
7 | Magazines
8 | In-store Promotion
9 | Cable TV
10| Online Advertising
When you break it down demographic age-wise, it gets a little interesting. Word-of-Mouth clearly has greater purchasing decision influence with people aged 18-34 and 35-54 as it relates to their purchases of cars, electronics, and apparel. Purchase decisions in these retail categories from Adults 55+ are still heavily influenced by Word-of-Mouth, but not to the degree of those younger than 55 years old.
To learn more, you’ll have to find a copy of the Simultaneous Media Usage Survey (SIMM VII) from BIGresearch. If you can’t get access to the report, the following bar charts will give you a little more detail in the influential purchasing power of Word-of-Mouth with A18-34, A35-54, and A55+.
As we know, Starbucks is partnering with Lions Gate Films to promote the forthcoming feel-good movie “Akeelah and The Bee.” And as many folks are pointing out (like Jackie Huba from Church of the Customer) … something just doesn’t feel-good about this partnership. It feels like Starbucks is becoming less like Starbucks and more like McDonald’s.
Starbucks has been quick to point out this in-store promotion will feel much more subtle and nothing like McDonald’s slapping up one-sheet posters, inflating humongous rooftop balloons, and doling out Happy Meal trinkets to promote a blockbuster film.
The financial upside for Starbucks with this partnership is tremendous. It’s my understanding Starbucks is paying Lions Gate NO MONEY. Instead, Starbucks is trading real estate space in its 5,500+ North American stores to promote this movie. By placing signage in-stores ranging from posters, to coffee cup sleeves, and placards alongside muffins in the pastry case, Starbucks will receive a share of box office sales, merchandising revenue, television rights, soundtrack sales, and DVD sales (including sales at non-Starbucks locations). We are talking about Starbucks potentially receiving millions upon millions of incremental dollars that can go directly to the bottom-line.
However, the downside is also tremendous – violating the trust of customers and store employees. Customers and employees have come to expect Starbucks not to treat them like tools in the marketing promotional game.
Starbucks has subtly promoted television ventures before (Ken Burns’ JAZZ and Road Trip Nation [both PBS programs]). But this Lions Gate Films partnership dials up the promotional intensity from subtle to heavy. Is it worth the incremental millions to whittle away the trust Starbucks has built with customers and employees for short-term promotions of this kind?
People expect McDonald’s to aggressively push the newest blockbuster Hollywood movies because it helps customers and employees to feel McDonald’s is hip and cool again. Is Starbucks becoming so uncool they need to borrow coolness from Hollywood?
Speaking as a former Starbucks marketer, there is an unwritten code of marketing authenticity Starbucks attempts to follow with everything it does marketing-wise. One of the tenants in this code states: Never forsake the company’s heritage and personality for a short term gain.
With the “Akeelah and the Bee” marketing promotion, I can’t help but think Starbucks is forsaking its heritage and personality for a short term financial gain. When a company starts appealing to analysts working on Wall Street more than its customers living on Main Street, you know something is askew. To me, there seems to be a trust-destroying downside to this financial-building upside.
“If your brand is clearly defined enough to have the power to attract enemies, it also has the power to attract raving fans. And the raving fans of your brand are the ones who return again and again. They're the ones who will tell their friends about you. They're the ones who will wear your logo. They're the ones that almost enjoy the annoyance of your brand-haters and will keep coming back for more.”
“So don’t fear the hate. Embrace it. Maybe in your next brainstorming meeting, don’t ask how you can appeal to X. Ask how you can annoy the hell out of Y.”
I may be advertising agnostic, but I ain't oblivious to whiz-bang creative. This billboard from McDonald's is wicked good.
SOURCE | Advertising Age | Dec. 19, 2005
I'm deviating from my marketing musings and sharing some family photos. Here's a snapshot look at the Moore Family from Christmas 2005. Enjoy.
The same technology that brought us virtual first-down stripe markers during television football broadcasts is now becoming more prevalent in prime-time television with virtual product placement.
Yep, that bag of potato chips you see on-screen may not have been there when the scene was originally shot in the studio but inserted during post-production wizardry. Virtual product placement is ”… a process that uses computer graphics and digital editing to put products like potato chips, soda and shopping bags into television programs after the shows are filmed or taped.”
Get hip to the latest goings-on in the world of virtual product placement from this worthwhile NY Times article (reg. req’d).
My take? Well, the product placement game is a $3.5B+ business and Nielsen has begun efforts to measure the effectiveness of product placements in stimulating customer purchase. I reckon virtual product placement brings a different dimension to the meaningful marketing adage of “what gets measured, gets manufactured.” And I’m not much into manufactured marketing.
Kick-start your meaningful marketing efforts in 2006 by attending the Word-of-Mouth Basic Training Conference (Jan 19, 20 | Orlando, FL). Save a Benjamin by using the “speakerdeal” code when you register.
You have registered, right? If you haven’t registered then you will miss lots of thought-provoking and applicable word-of-mouth marketing nuggets. Just check out the speaker list and the agenda and you’ll quickly realize this is a can’t-miss marketing event.
I’m looking forward to hearing …
* Bob Garfield’s presentation on the Chaos Scenario
* Frederick Reichheld’s talk from his forthcoming book, The Ultimate Question
* Douglas Atkins’ lunch ‘n learn session on The Culting of Brands
Oh yeah … on Day One, I’m participating in a panel discussion with Mark Hughes (BuzzMarketing) and Jon Gabriel (Cold Stone Creamery). We’ll be talking about if WOM is the result of a campaign or the result of a good customer experience. I’ll have a few minutes to share some thoughts on this way worthy topic. The title of my setup is WOM Creationist vs. WOM Evolutionists and I’ll be sharing my thoughts on WOM Evolutionist Theory.
Hope to see you there.
Reckon I should close this year of blogging with my favorite Brand Autopsy posts from 2005 like I did back in 2004. Enjoy.
My riffs on the whole BzzAgent HomeCafe debacle generated lots of spirited comments.
While my marketing mindset doesn’t sync with the ‘bigger is better’ and ‘lowest price is best’ business mentality of so-called Category Killers, author Robert Spector adds a touch of retail reality in this post.
As long as a business has sound fundamentals, how can it be the more a business sells ... the less it makes? Two words : WAL*MART.
With upscale retailers like Neiman Marcus & Nordstrom attracting the affluent shopper and with downscale retailers like Wal*Mart & Target appealing to the bargain shopper … it doesn’t leave much space in the middle for retailers selling moderately priced goods. Yet, this is exactly where JC Penney is banking its retailing strategy on – the Missing Middle.
This post summarizes a Marcus Buckingham penned Harvard Business Review article outlining the traits of great managers. Learn why great manages play chess, not checkers.
There are lots of good marketing nuggets to mine in this recap of the first Conference put on by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.
If you’ve read Freakonomics, then you know the takeaways are not readily apparent, nor immediately applicable in a business sense. However in this post, I share four lessons marketers can learn from this best-selling book.
I thought it would be interesting to take a congregation is smarter than the preacher approach by throwing out the same questions marketing Professor Philip Kotler answers in his According to Kotler book. Lots of solid comments from us marketing bloggers.
This post contains my business-minded learnings after completing 18 weeks of improv comedy classes.
Brand Autopsy served as a stop on the Business Blog Book Tour stop for Seth Godin’s All Marketers are Liars book. Besides summing up the crux of Liars, this post shares ideas on how best to approach reading this polarizing titled book.
I added some context and visuals to The Deadprogrammer’s Café post on the evolution of the Starbucks Coffee logo.
Was there a car manufacturer in 2005 that didn’t use an “Employee Discounts for Every One”(EDEO) pricing strategy to drive sales? Don’t think so. And boy did I have some HMOs (hot marketing opinions) on this pricing strategy.
In Improv Wisdom, Patricia Ryan Madson shares lots of great thoughts on how to become more open, accepting, and spontaneous in one’s personal life. We struck up an email conversation and Patricia shared ideas on how to apply Improv into one’s business life. Good stuff.
Methinks I should do more dramatic readings of marketing/business writings in 2006. I only did three in 2005 but I plan to do at least one per month in 2006. Links: One, Two, Three.
Given all the hype and hysteria over the Employee Discounts for Every One pricing strategy, I felt compelled to establish a Discount Detox Center to help rid businesses of toxins accumulated by rampant abuse of discounting pricing strategies.
As a public service, the Brand Autopsy Discount Detox Center made available its Marketing Intervention Guidelines for concerned businesspeople wanting to conduct a marketing intervention. If you know a marketer who is severely dependent and is unwilling or unable to see the severity of their addiction to discounting, please consider confronting the discount addicted marketer with a marketing intervention.
In August, the Brand Autopsy blog said good-bye to Brand Examiner Paul Williams. These days you can read from Paul’s never-ending sandbox of ideas on the Idea Sandbox blog.
The riffing on discount addiction continued with the publishing of The Circle of Discount Addiction. This post explains the stages every discount addicted marketer experiences when abusing low price marketing schemes.
Over at the WOM vs. ADV blog, I contributed five images illustrating the differences between Word-of-Mouth Marketing and Advertising.
You’ll be reading more about Starbucks Tribal Knowledge in 2006. Consider these nuggets as idea-starters with many more nuggets to come.
Having spent time as WFM’s Director of National Marketing, I experienced first-hand how the company’s decentralized infrastructure fosters bottom-up innovation (not top-down direction) to drive sales and build the brand. To give a better insight into the unique business and marketing culture of Whole Foods Market, I outlined 10 core philosophies the company follows.
Learn why as a marketer, I want people talking about what a company does and not what it did.
While on a panel at The Blogging Enterprise Conference in Austin, I talked about how blogs help small companies look bigger and help big companies get smaller. I also shared thoughts on how companies can be more compelling in their blogging efforts.
RSS is big topic for marketers these days. I had some HMOs (hot marketing opinions) after reading a Seth Godin posting urging his blog readers to get on the RSS wagon.
Applying the Broken Windows theory to business works outrageously well. I love the concept. Love the concept so much I tried to sum-up a 162 page book on the topic in a blog posting of less than 400 words.
UPDATED | Jan. 7, 2007
These are a few of the marketing/business-related blogs I read ...
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