Brand Autopsy

Recently Ben McConnell (Church of the Customer) shared his perspective on the distinction between Word-of-Mouth (WOM) and Buzz. (It’s a good read.)

His post rekindled some of my thoughts on Creationist WOM vs. Evolutionist WOM (video clip). The Creationist WOM marketing mindset is about making the marketing activity something to talk about as in attention-grabbing stunts and gimmicks. The Evolutionist WOM mindset is about making a company’s products, services, and or experiences worth talking about.

Creationist WOM marketers believe Word-of-Mouth just a marketing issue. While, Evolutionist WOM marketers believe Word-of-Mouth is an everyday business issue.

We’ve seen Creationist WOM theory at work recently with Denny’s stunt of giving away 2-million Grand Slam breakfasts for free and all the gimmicky commercials shown during the Super Bowl.

Specific instances of Evolutionist WOM theory at work are more difficult to notice. That’s because these marketing activities are not supposed to be easily noticed by customers. These activities are simply how a business does business. It’s less about marketing and more about how an interesting business operates everyday.

There’s a burger joint in Austin, TX that brilliantly practices Evolutionist WOM thinking — Mighty Fine Hamburgers.

No stunts. No gimmicks. No one-off marketing ploys. All Mighty Fine does is earn opinions by serving up remarkable burgers in remarkable ways.

Let me count some of these remarkable ways.

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#1 – The Queue
Total cattle call. I’ve never been to Mighty Fine when the queue wasn’t at least 10 people deep. You go expecting to wait in line. Anticipation heightens the senses. Besides, long lines that move fast mean a restaurant is doing something right, right?

#2 – Fun Language
If you want Mustard, you gotta say, “Yeller.” “Red” gets you Ketchup and “White” gets you Mayonnaise. Mighty Fine could have gone the common, boring route with Mustard, Ketchup, and Mayonnaise. They didn’t. They decided to make the common uncommon. So uncommon that it’s worth talking about.

#3 – Service
Ask a Mighty Fine employee behind the counter how they’re doing and you’ll likely hear, “Mighty Fine.” They smile. They laugh. They look like they are having fun. Which all benefits the customer experience. Mighty Fine prides itself on hiring only “A Players” who are positive, supportive, and cooperative. To attract “A Players,” they pay above-average wages and offer much better than expected benefits. Mighty Fine knows by astonishing employees, they in turn, will astonish customers.

#4 – Assurance
When placing your order, the Mighty Fine employee writes all your requests directly on the bag. To close the order, the employee again goes over everything with you to best ensure you get exactly the burger you ordered. This process takes time but I’m sure it cuts down on mistakes. As a customer, I appreciate the thoroughness because it brings about assurance.

#5 – Picnic Tables
Old-school family-style picnic tables. Nothing fancy. Nothing fancy needed at a burger joint. This family-style seating makes it comfortable for all ages and helps to encourage conversations between customers from different parties.

#6 – Theater
Taking a page from Krispy Kreme's doughnut theater, Mighty Fine lifts the veil on some of their prep work. The window is wide open for everyone to see the ground chuck getting hand-formed into patties. The krinkle-cut fry cutter is always-on with an employee shooting whole potatoes down the cutting chute. The hamburger cooking and shake-making stations are just behind the counter for everyone to see. Mighty Fine has nothing to hide. It’s operations are in full view of every customer. (Unlike most burger joints.)

#7 – Quality
100% natural beef. Ground in-store. Hand-formed in-store. Fresh cut crinkle-cut fries. Sea Salt is the only salt used. Custom-made beef franks. Hand-dipped and hand-spun milkshakes. Quality is everything to Mighty Fine because they believe quality ingredients produce the tastiest food. (Hard to argue with Mighty Fine here.)

#8 – Smiles
Everywhere you look customers are having a good time. I’m a touch cynical; however, my cynicism subsides when inside Mighty Fine. A good hamburger in a family-friendly setting appeals to young, old, and everyone in-between. (Including this hardened marketer.)

#9 – Mighty Tasty
My Dad is a burger aficionado. In his nearly 75 years, Al Moore has cooked and eaten a lot of burgers. He’s burger expert if there could be one. After visiting Mighty Fine in January, he’s been talking about it with his circle of friends. I asked him what he tells people about Mighty Fine and this is what he says, “The place is awesome. Lots of production people, each knowing their job. The product is even more awesome — a top-notch hamburger. To my surprise, the family-style works. I’ll be back.” That’s one helluva endorsement.

#10 – Job Recruitment
Instead of a pamphlet by the soda machine to attract new hires, Mighty Fine uses a classic grocery store number dispenser like we used to use at the butcher counter. This dispenser is prominently located in the entry/exit way area for potential new hires to see going in and going out. A sign above the dispenser says, “Apply Now.” You pull the ticket and it directs you to a website to learn more information and to apply online. Again, Mighty Fine is simply making the common uncommon. Nice touch.

#11 – Clean Hands
It’s a “jacuzzi for your hands.” That’s what the hand washer says used at Mighty Fine. It’s the same hand washer employees use, so you know it is more sanitary than the common hand sink washer. Kids clamor to use this hand jacuzzi. Parents are always seen lifting up their kids in order for their hands to fit inside the washer. Of course, parents use it too because it’s just so unique you have to use it. Yet again … another way Mighty Fine takes something common and makes it so uncommon it's worth talking about.

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Every one of these 11 examples are WOM-worthy. Each one showcases how Mighty Fine turns mundane business matters into something so special that they earn opinions from customers. Because these activities earn opinions, people talk. And because people talk, there is always a line at Mighty Fine. And because there is always a line, Mighty Fine has opened a second location.

Mighty Fine doesn’t need gimmicks to get customers talking. It just does business every day in such a way that people gladly talk about it.

Mighty Fine understands the importance of Word of Mouth. How do I know? This sign displayed in the exit way tells me...

** Yeah, this post is off-topic ... oh well. **

The above photo is of my older brother (Trip) and nephew (Blair). It was taken earlier this month when Trip's family visited me in Austin.

When folks visit me in the badlands of Central Texas, I make it a point to take them to a top-notch BBQ joint. Smitty's BBQ in Lockhart, TX is one of the top-notch BBQ joints I take people to. And that photo is from a smoky side room inside Smitty's.

The other BBQ joints I take people to include Louie Mueller BBQ (Taylor, TX), Kruez Market (Lockhart, TX), and City Market (Luling, TX). (Snow's BBQ is also on this list but as we know, it's only open on Saturdays [video].)

A few months ago ... two high-school friends visited me and we went on a big-time BBQ Binge. Three hours. Three BBQ joints. For sloppy video of our BBQ Binge, watch below:

Living in the Badlands of Central Texas has some benefits. I took advantage of one those benefits on Saturday morning by visiting Snow’s BBQ in Lexington, TX.

Brand Autopsy blog readers will recall an earlier post about Snow’s BBQ, a small town BBQ joint that was once hardly-known but now is widely-known thanks to hefty praise from Texas Monthly magazine.

Saturday was the day for me to make the hour-long drive to visit Snow’s and experience for myself the littlest bestest BBQ joint in Texas. I took along my itty-bitty camera and clumsily cobbled together this amateurish video of my visit. Enjoy.

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Ben McConnell introduces us (or maybe just me) to the newest poster child business for Word-of-Mouth Marketing ... TOMS Shoes.

TOMS Shoes is a Purple Cow business all the way. For every pair of shoes TOMS sells, they donate a pair to children in Argentina and Africa. Amazing story ... learn more by reading Ben's post.

Ever heard of a “Quit-Now” bonus for new employees? We’ve all heard of severance packages where long-standing employees are essentially paid a bonus to quit now. But a “Quit-Now” bonus for new employees to voluntarily leave after a week on the job … that’s novel.

Bill Taylor, of Mavericks at Work fame, writes how Zappos , a fast-growing online shoe retailer, will offer one-week old employees a “Quit-Now” bonus of $1,000. Zappos will ask new employees this question … “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.”

Why does Zappos do this? The reasoning, as Bill Taylor put it, is …

“Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for. It’s hard to describe the level of energy in the Zappos culture—which means, by definition, it’s not for everybody. Zappos wants to learn if there’s a bad fit between what makes the organization tick and what makes individual employees tick—and it’s willing to pay to learn sooner rather than later. (About ten percent of new call-center employees take the money and run.)” READ MORE

Brilliant! Bloody brilliant!!

Thanks to someone’s blog for the hook-up. (Sorry, I forget who clued me in.)

A few weeks ago, I wrote an online essay for Brandweek magazine where I referenced SENDaBALL as having an unconventional business service that requires its customers to think before they purchase. (Sending a ball through the mail, with no box ... just the ball. Huh? Really?) My reference included an embedded link to SENDaBALL.com. The other day a surprise landed in my mailbox — a SENDaBALL.

Michele, from SENDaBALL, followed up with an email thanking me after she noticed a bump in traffic to their website from my online essay. Mucho kudos to SENDaBALL. They monitor the blogosphere and acknowledge mentions in only a way SENDaBALL can.

What happens next? I blog about it and I also purchase two SENDaBALLs ... one for my niece and one for my nephew.

Fascinating post from Jens Alfke, a just-resigned Apple employee — read it here. (Thanks to Steve Chazin for the hook-up.)

In this post, Jens reveals his dissatisfaction with Apple’s reluctance to embrace the open source/social software culture. Other "creative differences" causing this 16-year Apple veteran to leave include the lack of individual expression and celebration within the company.

For us outsiders, this post gives us an illuminating (and incriminating) look into the closed cultural ethos at Apple. Here’s a tasty snippet…

“It’s deeply ironic: For a company that famously celebrates individuality and Thinking Different, Apple has in the past decade kept its image remarkably impersonal. Other than the trinity who go onstage at press events — Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive, Phil Schiller — how many people can you name who work for Apple? How many engineers?

It wasn’t always this way. Apple was very open in the beginning, and treated the members of the original Mac team like rock stars, complete with photo layouts in Rolling Stone. Their signatures were engraved in the inside of the computer’s case. Even in my early years there, applications’ “about boxes” proudly listed the names of the people who worked on them. The OS itself had semi-secret easter eggs that listed everyone’s name. The developer Tech Notes were bylined with the names of the individual engineers who wrote them.

Nowadays, unless you’re a vice president, the only time Apple consents to show your name is if you give a talk at the Worldwide Developers’ Conference, a rather pricey annual event.”

SOURCE: Jens Alfke |GONE INDIE

We all know cough syrup isn’t the best-tasting medicine. That’s why medicine companies have been introducing better-tasting concoctions loaded with sugar to help the medicine go down.

Not Buckley’s.

For years Buckley’s Cough Mixture, available in Canada since 1919, has been highlighting the fact their cough syrup tastes horrible, but it works. Print headlines in the past have been: ** People swear by it. And at it. ** Made with oil of Pine needles. What did you expect it to taste like? ** Your cough won't know what hit it, neither will you. **

Buckley’s is finally entering the US market and they aren’t backing down from their “tastes awful” positioning. TV spots include faux taste tests with blindfolded consumers asking them to tell the taste difference between Buckley’s vs. Used Mouthwash, Buckley’s vs. Trash Bag Leakage, Buckley’s vs. Public Restroom Puddle. Seriously. Click on the above links to watch the short commercials.

Here’s a snippet from one of Buckley’s radio spots:

"If you are inquiring about your cough mixture tasting like expired milk, trash-bag leakage, a postpedicure foot bath, a state fair porta-potty, decomposing meat fat, monkey sweat, used denture soak, New Jersey, or hippie-festival runoff, please hang up. Your cough will be gone shortly."

Buckley’s is also into the Consumer-Generated Media game asking people to submit videos of their first sip of the malicious cough mixture with their Bad Taste Tour contest. Troll YouTube and you’ll also see videos of people trying Buckley’s for the first time.

I applaud Buckley’s for accentuating the hate with their cough syrup. The easier path would have been to reformulate the cough syrup to taste better so as not to turn off customers. But by turning off customers, Buckley’s turns them on. Kudos to Buckley’s.

And Kudos to the Wall Street Journal for the heads-up.

Earlier this year we talked about the pay-what-you-want honor system of Terra Bite Lounge in Kirkland, WA. This is the coffee shop where there are no prices for the coffee drinks, pastries, and sandwiches. Instead, customers pay whatever amount they feel is appropriate.

The Wall Street Journal today gives us an update on Terra Bite Lounge. The honor system seems to be working just fine. According to the article, daily customer counts at Terra Bite average around 200 with each customer paying $2 or $3 per order.

Let’s keep in mind the owners of Terra Bite Lounge aren’t getting rich from this coffee shop—their café breaks even. However, the owners aren’t doing this to get rich. Instead, this endeavor is more an experiment in the greater good of public honesty.

The owners of Terra Bite explain the reasoning behind their voluntary payment this way…

Terra Bite is not only an experiment into the level of public honesty, it is also a visible demonstration of that high level of honesty. I think that has some secondary benefits.

In my life, there have been times when I've felt like being good and honest, and other times when I've felt cynical. When I have felt cynical, it was usually because I felt that I was surrounded by corruption. On the other hand, when I feel that people around me are good, I feel more like being good.

Well, by existing, Terra Bite demonstrates to the public that they are surrounded by a high level of honesty. I believe that helps reduce the general level of cynicism, even for those that never visit Terra Bite.

The cafe chains base their business on the popularity of coffee. We do also; but we also base it on people's notion of wanting to be good. I believe that this personal notion of "I am a good person" is quite universal; even people who we don't regard as good -- someone in prison, say -- is often there not because they don't have an ethical system, but because they acted out too strongly on their ethical system. So I believe we're on solid ground basing a business on that. READ MORE

Refreshing to hear, eh?

While prepping for a presentation on Word-of-Mouth Marketing, I followed-up on Pizza Patron’s “Pesos por Pizza” promotion that began earlier this year (Q1 of 2007). The promotion is simple: Pizza Patron, a regional pizza chain focused on the Hispanic customer base, will accept Mexican Pesos or American Dollars.

Following on the Word-of-Mouth Marketing maxim of Remarkable Things Get Remarked About, word spread about the "Pesos por Pizza" promotion. Some loved the marketing idea, while others loathed it. Either way, one can’t argue with the results. Sales spiked.

Qipit is a free service that allows camera-enabled cell phones to send PDF copies of digital images to anyone over email. You simply take a photo of something with your cellphone and then, using your cellphone again, email it to qipit. When you include a friend's email address in the message body of that email, qipit emails the image as a PDF to your friend.

Voila! You’ve just shared a PDF copy of something you captured via your cellphone to someone’s email account. (For those needing a visual explanation, watch this short qipit video demo on YouTube.)

So … suppose you are attending a business seminar and one of the handouts you receive contains something interesting about a competitor. With qipit, you can use your cellphone to take a photo of that document and send it to a colleague at headquarters as a PDF file.

You with me? (Good.)

I’m not confused about what qipit does ... but I am confused as to what problem qipit solves.

Sending images captured via cellphone to people is somewhat commonplace. What qipit will do that’s different is it’ll clean up the digital photo and make it crisper (see below). And, by turning the image into a PDF, qipit makes it easier to share the image. (Understood.)

Where I'm confused is what image is so important that it must be captured by your cellphone and shared using qipit’s brightener technology as a PDF? Don’t get me wrong, I think qipit is snazzy. I just believe qipit is a solution in search of problem.

So tell me … what problem(s) do you think qipit solves?

I’ve never been fortunate enough to experience Zingerman’s Delicatessen in Ann Arbor, MI. (Read a lot about this company to know I admire it though. It’s a classic small company that acts big.)

Zingerman’s purposely decided not to franchise its renowned deli restaurant and take it from being local to being global. Instead, Zingerman’s decided to grow itself by adding additional stand-alone businesses like a coffee company, a barbeque restaurant, a bakery, and a customer service training company.

Zingerman’s is now turning 25 years old and at yet another crossroads in its existence. Zingerman’s first crossroads came fifteen years ago when it began asking the difficult question of what it wanted to be when it grew up. Well … with $30-million dollars in sales and its operation of eight distinct businesses, Zingerman’s is all grown up now. So now, Zingerman’s is again asking questions about what it wants to be when it grows up yet again.

Learn more about what’s next for Zingerman’s from this worthwhile New York Times aticle (May 3, 2007). And, re-learn the story about how Zingerman’s first answered the question of what it wanted to be when it grew up from this vintage Inc. Magazine article (January 2003).

Have you heard about Terra Bite Lounge in Kirkland, WA? It’s a coffee shop that sells coffee drinks, pastries, and sandwiches based entirely on the honor system. Yep, there are no prices for anything Terra Bite Lounge serves customers. The expectation is that customers will voluntarily pay whatever amount they feel comfortable paying.

The founder of Terra Bite Lounge, Ervin Peretz, knows his coffee shop must attract enough honorable customers to offset those customers who will abuse the voluntary pay system. Currently, Terra Bite Lounge serves about 80 customers a day with each paying, on average, $3.00.

Hmm … this social experiment sounds a little familiar.

In Freakonomics we learned about Paul “Bagel Man” Feldman who setup a bagel business built totally on the honor system. Feldman would deliver bagels to offices and leave a money drop box with the expectation that people would pay for the bagels they ate.

According to Freakonomics, the honor system worked for bagels. The payment rate for Feldman’s bagels hovered at nearly 90%.

Feldman kept copious notes on bagel sales data and some of his conclusions are fascinating. For example…

• When the weather is pleasant … people pay at a higher rate.
• When the weather is cold, rainy, windy … payment declines sharply.
• During the holiday weeks of Christmas and Thanksgiving … payment is lousy.
• But, during the holiday weeks of Labor Day and 4th of July … payment is strong.

Because Feldman’s bagel customers were office workers he was able to draw interesting conclusions about how workplace morale affects payment. The more sweeping conclusion was: The better workplace morale at a business, the greater the payment rates. And more interestingly, Feldman came to believe higher-paid executives cheated the bagel honesty system more than did workers lower on the corporate ladder.

It’ll be interesting to learn if Feldman’s bagel honesty findings jibe with Terra Bite’s coffee honesty findings. And given Feldman's data that cold and rainy weather adversely affects volunteer payment, it’ll be super-interesting to know how this honesty system plays in the cold and wet Seattle-area.

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For more on Terra Bite Lounge, listen to this NPR story and read this sum-up from Tim Manners. For more on Paul Feldman’s bagel business, read this excerpt from Freakonomics.

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We are fortunate in Texas to have two grocery stores that have transcended the commodity trap. Instead of competing on lowest possible prices, Central Market and Whole Foods Market compete on highest possible experiences. Both have strong points of view that grocery shopping shouldn’t be a chore but rather, a place to explore.

Central Market is owned and operated by the privately-held and San Antonio-based H.E.B Grocery Company. H.E.B. operates over 300 conventional grocery stores in Texas and Mexico under the H.E.B. brand. Currently, their Central Market concept has eight locations. The Central Market concept differs in that it appeals to the educated and well-paid customer who is attracted to indulgent shopping adventures. Their merchandise assortment runs from upscale gourmet to downscale ordinary. Meaning, you can expect to find familiar products/brands as well as an array of hard-to-find gourmet goodies at Central Market.

When people talk about Central Market, they’ll usually rave about its broad selection and its attractive in-store merchandising. They’ll also rant about Central Market’s forced-flow layout (think IKEA) and its somewhat elitist attitude towards gourmet food.

I’ve written a lot about Whole Foods on this blog partly because of my first-hand experience gained from being their Director of National Marketing in 2003 and 2004. Whole Foods has received lots of media attention for being a prototypical experience economy grocery store that has 180+ location in the US, Canada, and the UK. They are well-known for helping to popularize the organic/natural food movement. And they are well-known for higher prices. But Whole Foods customers believe its prices are appropriate because the food they sell is not only gourmet theater, but also healthy.

I bring all this up because both Central Market and Whole Foods recently opened new locations in the Dallas-area. While in Dallas for the Christmas holiday, I made sure to visit the new Central Market location in Southlake, TX and the new Whole Foods in North Dallas (Forest & Preston).

Being well-versed with the two grocers, I found little new or exciting with these recently opened locations. (Sure, the new Whole Foods has an upstairs Spa which to many is exciting. To this marketer, such a gambit in unfocused opulence concerns me. I’m concerned because Whole Foods is drifting far from its comfortable home of natural/organic food by operating a day Spa.)

While I found little new or exciting at these new stores … you might. So, I took along my Canon PowerShot SD500 camera and captured video of my cart strolling the aisles at the new Central Market and the new Whole Foods. If you’ve never shopped at one of these grocery stores, your eyes will quickly realize that these companies have transcended the commodity trap which entraps most grocers.

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Strolling through CENTRAL MARKET ...

RSS readers … click here to view the Central Market video

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Strolling through WHOLE FOODS MARKET ...

RSS readers … click here to view the Whole Foods video