Brand Autopsy

CONFESSIONS OF A PUBLIC SPEAKER by Scott Berkun gets the Marketing Masterpiece Theatre treatment.

If you regularly give presentations, you'll find yourself nodding in agreement with many of the stories Scott tells about presentations gone right and those that went terribly wrong. You'll also pick-up a few pointers on improving the design and delivery of your next presentation.

(Check-out Scott's presentation style by watching his recent gig at the Web 2.0 Expo 2009.)

Don't expect a drab how-to-present book. This ain't it. Scott mixes in his advice alongside well written stories about his life as a "freelance thinker."

Time to cue Sir Wilton Norman Chamberlain III for his dramatic reading ...

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RSS Readers ... click here to view the video.

[NOTE: I often receive free copies of biz books from publishers and publicists. However, I spent my money for my copy of CONFESSIONS OF A PUBLIC SPEAKER.]

*** Note, my WOM Enthusiast hat is on with this post. ***

When you return from a conference chock-full of insights, it’s difficult to share everything you learned. Sure, you can transcribe your notes but your notes are bound to have some holes. You can also pull insights from summaries other attendees have posted on their blogs.

Or ... you whittle through the thousands of tweets from attendees to carve out a more complete list of insights. That’s the path I’ve chosen to take after returning from WOMMA’s Creating Talkable Brands conference.

Over 470 attendees shared 3,600+ tweets (.pdf download) with the #WOMMA hashtag during the three-day conference. I’ve whittled down the 3,600+ tweets to a more digestible collection of 165 tweets and compiled them into this SlideShare presentation. Enjoy.

Something doesn’t make sense with this poster ad on the DFW Airport skylink tram. Do you see what I saw?
If I’m advertising a “treat yourself” occasion at the airport during the hullabaloo of holiday travel, I’m choosing something more treat worthy than a low-fat soft pretzel. There are lots of "treat yourself" opportunities at DFW Airport that out indulge a basic pretzel.

As a customer loyalty-focused marketer, Jeanne Bliss has been in the marketing game with some notable brands: Lands’ End, Coldwell Banker, Allstate, Microsoft, and Mazda. She has seen how making the wrong decisions can lead to forging customer disloyalty and how making the right decisions lead to fostering customer loyalty.

I’ve known Jeanne for a couple years. Smart gal. And her latest book, I LOVE YOU MORE THAN MY DOG, is a smart read for businesses wanting to earn loyalty from customers. (Since Jeanne is a friend, she gave me a copy to read. Friends are nice that way. Thanks Jeanne.)

Jeanne is onto something worth reading by framing her book around exploring five decisions company’s make (or don’t make) to become a beloved brand.

To summarize key points from the book, let’s give it the Brand Autopsy "WHAT? – SO WHAT? – WHAT NOW?" treatment...

WHAT?
“When you make a decision, it results in action. And the accumulation of those decisions and actions become how people describe you and think of you. It becomes your ‘story.’”

SO WHAT
“As customers and employees, we crave what beloved companies deliver. They enable people to decide and act from a corner of their brain that is congruent with doing the right thing. In doing so, they build an organization with energy and spirit that draws customers to them.”

WHAT NOW?
“[There] are five decisions that set beloved companies apart. These five decisions reveal who they are and what they value.”

Decision #1:
Decide to Trust Customers and Employees
“By deciding to trust customers, [companies] are freed from extra rules, policies, and layers of bureaucracy that create a barrier between them and their customers. And by deciding to believe that employees can and will do the right thing, second-guessing ... is replaced with shared energy, ideas, and a desire to stick around.”

Decision #2:
Decide to be Guided by a Clarity of Purpose
“Beloved companies take their time to be clear about what their unique promise is for their customers’ lives. Clarity of purpose guides choices and united the organization. It elevates people’s work from executing tasks to delivering experiences customers will want to repeat and tell others about.”

Decision #3:
Decide to be Real, Genuine, and Personal
“... beloved companies shed their fancy packaging. Beloved companies strike a chord with customers. They decide to create a safe place where the personality and creativity of their people shine through.”

Decision #4:
Decide to Deliver Thoughtful Customer Experiences
“Beloved companies think and rethink how to conduct themselves, so they earn the right to their customers’ continued business. Their ‘experience’ is far more than the execution of an operating plan. [Beloved companies] leave customers thinking, ‘Who else would have done this?’ ‘Where else could I get this?’ ‘I want to do this again.’”

Decision #5:
Decide to Apologize
“When a beloved company apologizes for something that goes wrong, the intent and motivation is to make customers whole—to earn the right to continue the relationship. Many companies consider the apology as admitting defeat. In actuality, the reverse is true. A well-executed apology: one that is timely and delivered with humility and remorse ... often build a much stronger relationship. Both the customer and company win.”

Decision #6:
Decide to Read I LOVE YOU MORE THAN MY DOG
(This is a bonus decision you should make.)

John Nese is a modern day soda jerk. He’s passionate about “flavored water with a lot bubbles.” Soda makes him smile, makes him happy. He’s the proprietor of Galco’s Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles. His store sells about 500 different sodas from small, independent-run soda makers. His business is a prototypical purple cow, worthy of word-of-mouth.

Watching the video below will not only make us smile and happy, it will make us smarter about business strategy and jealous we don’t have the same passion for what we do that John Nese does.

We’ll become smarter because we’ll see first-hand how passion propels performance, how being more selective makes a business more effective, and how sharing inspired expert knowledge will never go out of style.

We’ll become jealous because we’ll see someone who has made the necessary sacrifices in life to pursue their calling.

Enjoy. (Thanks Seth and Neal for bringing this video to my attention.)

RSS Readers ... click here to watch the video.

Lots of chatter online about the revamped Starbucks “rewards” program. Starbucks will discontinue its Gold Card program it began a year ago. The Starbucks Gold Card program was designed like many membership rewards program where customers pay a yearly $25 fee and in return they receive free refills on brewed coffee, free wi-fi access, and 10% off on all purchases.

Beginning December 26, Starbucks will replace its Gold Card program with a "My Starbucks Rewards" program offering customers a free beverage after 15 purchases. (There are a few other small perks in this program but it's essentially a Buy 15 Drinks, Get 1 Free program.)

Starbucks is touting its new rewards program as an improvement because of its simpler design and the no annual fee.

However, the consensus from the online chatter is this new program benefits less frequent Starbucks customers (2-to-3 visits a month) than the very frequent Starbucks customer (8+ visits a month).

Obviously the redesign of this program will benefit Starbucks more financially. Perhaps offering a 10% discount to Gold Card members on all purchases was profiting heavy-spending customers more than it was profiting revenue-needing Starbucks.

Whenever I read about new Starbucks business happenings, I refer back to the book I wrote about Starbucks foundational business practices. In TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE, there’s a short section on fostering customer devotion where I give the old school Starbucks perspective on “Preferred Shopper” loyalty schemes, such as a Starbucks Gold Card program or the new My Starbucks Rewards program...

“These ‘Preferred Shopper’ promotions also reverse the logic of great customer service: they ask customers to sign up for a card or buy a certain amount of product before they can enjoy the benefits of being part of the club. Do you really want to create two classes of customers? One that gets the ‘good stuff’ at a good price, the other that gets a raw deal? If you want to foster true customer devotion, don’t make your customers jump through hoops just to feel welcome, or 'preferred.'

Businesses operating like this treat their customers like cattle, doing whatever they can to attract attention. When companies are more focused on their own bottom line than their customers, both will eventually fall away. These programs lack soul and meaning to stand the test of time.”

The last paragraph in this chapter shares a thought more businesses, especially Starbucks today, need to pay attention to:

“Customer loyalty works both ways, and Starbucks knows that. Of course Starbucks wants to maintain its profitability, but it does this by helping the folks who come into its stores, not by working against them. If you want customers to stay loyal to you, stay loyal to your customers—treat them as people, help them as individuals, offer them something extra, and they’ll come back for more.”

You can read the full chapter, TRIBAL TRUTH #28: Foster Customer Devotion, in the box below:

Foster Customer Devotion