Brand Autopsy

Steve Yastrow on the WE Relationship

I love the premise from Steve Yastrow’s recently-published book, WE: The Ideal Customer Relationship. In the opening chapter, Yastrow writes …

Relationships have become powerful differentiators. Customers can’t tell is your product is better than your competitor’s product, but they can tell if they have a better relationship with you than with your competitor.

If relationships are such powerful differentiators, what is the most productive, profitable, and sustainable relationship?

The We relationship.

In a We relationship, you think less about what separates you and more about what intertwines you.

In contrast, if your customer’s view of your relationship is not “We” but “Us & Them,” he will focus more on what he can get from you—and on what he believes you get from him—and less on how you can collaborate to reach your goals together. [Steve Yastrow, SOURCE]

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For those needing to see this premise in a chart, peep the following from pg. 13 of WE: The Ideal Customer Relationship ...

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Learn more about Steve Yastrow and get yourself a copy of WE.

Gravitate to the Physics of Marketing

David Bowman riffs smartly on how some brands have gravitational pull while others don't ... all reasoned in the context of Newton's Law of Gravity.

Good stuff ... READ MORE.

193 Creative Marketing Ideas

Looking for crafty marketing ideas? Consider riffling through Sam Decker's list of 193 Creative Marketing Ideas. You're sure to find some worthwhile guerrilla-ish ideas in Sam's lengthy list.

And, while you're in the guerrilla marketing mindset ... read Sam's snappy answers to nine marketing questions. Smart stuff.

The Internet is your Marketing Department

“Right now, your customers are writing about your products on blogs and recutting your commercials on YouTube. They’re defining you on Wikipedia and ganging up on you in social networking sites like Facebook. These are all elements of a social phenomenon — the groundswell — that has created a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works.”

GROUNDSWELL (Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff)

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If you are reading this blog then you have a clue about the Groundswell that Charlene & Josh detail in GROUNDSWELL. Others you know in the office are probably clueless about this Groundswell. They have no clue about the power to be unleashed from embracing the Groundswell. They do not realize the Internet is your marketing department.

GROUNDSWELL is the definitive guide to what is happening now in the citizen marketer online world we live, work, and frolic in. You’ll learn about the online tools people use and the motivations for why people participate in the Groundswell. You’ll also gain access to previously super-spendy analysis reserved for Forrester clients … such as … ROI of an Executive Blog, ROI of Online Ratings/Reviews, and ROI of Online Community Forums.

Charlene & Josh refresh some of their smartest blog posts in GROUNDSWELL. They’ve written about the Social Technographics ladder before, but the updated analysis in the book will help you better understand the motivations and activities of consumers today. And, their easy-to-understand P.O.S.T strategy to participating in the Groundswell will help many in demystifying how to get started using online media to connect with customers.

GROUNDSWELL is must-read material for all Marketing Managers and Marketing Directors who want to use the power of the Internet as an extension of their marketing department.

[Prerequisite reading includes: THE CORPORATE BLOGGING BOOK (Debbie Weil) and CITIZEN MARKETERS (McConnell & Huba).]

THE Social Media MATRIX

At the GOT SOCIAL MEDIA conference in Houston last week, Kelsey Ruger, from Pop Labs, infused his presentation with elements from The Matrix. Brilliant.

As the above image depicts, companies today can take the Blue Pill and pretend that nothing has changed in the marketplace. Or, companies can take the Red Pill and begin to experience a deeper connection with customers through using Social Media. I hope Kelsey sees how deep the rabbit-hole goes with THE Social Media MATRIX. He is onto something potentially big in helping more people understand why it is important for companies to swallow the Red Pill of Social Media.

For those who missed the GOT SOCIAL MEDIA conference, you can riffle through some of the presentations on SlideShare. (Video of the presentations will also be uploaded somewhere online soon.)

The one-day event was co-organized by Erica O’ Grady, a social media dynamo. She is doing big things and will do bigger things with all this social media stuff. Get to know Erica on her blog and follow her on Twitter.

The line-up of presenters hand-picked for the event were outstanding.

Besides Kelsey, Giovanni Gallucci (aka Digg the Link Hunter) shared his take on how to maximize links and views. Steve Latham outlined a few methods to measure the ROI of social media marketing campaigns. Stephen Anderson delivered a thought-provoking presentation on how design matters in social media. Ed Schipul entertained and informed us about how tapping into the 3 Motivations of People can help non-profits (and for-profits) make a difference. And, Laura Mayes sprinkled smart tid-bits throughout the day. (Unfortunately, I missed Chris Bernard and his presentation.)

Kwik-E-Mart equaled Kwik-E-Sales

The Simpsons movie tie-in with 7-11 got lots of digital ink last summer. Marketers, like Jake McKee, raved about it and shared photos galore. Evangelists created a blog about it. Even Advertising Age critic Bob Garfield cooed about it.

No doubt ... 3 out of 4 marketers would agree this movie promotion was a creative success. What about a sales success? After all, sales is the true measure of a marketing campaign.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the promotion was a sales success.

"The 7-Eleven chain ... saw major sales lifts at the 11 U.S. stores that were converted for the month of the promotion. The company says total merchandise sales doubled; fresh bakery sales increased sevenfold and customer count went up almost 50%.

Moreover, 7-Eleven says the promotion garnered about $7 million in free publicity. The 7-Eleven Web site on July 11 received 10,420,730 hits. The site typically gets an average of about 400,000 hits a day."

Dilbert's Marketing Wisdom

In STICK TO DRAWING COMICS MONKEY BRAIN, Dilbert creator, Scott Adams, shared the above sharp and snappy business advice on how to predict success. He continues by saying, "The only thing that predicts success is passion, even if only 10 percent of the consumers have it."

When the Dilbert comic strip first started in late 80s, Adams remembers most people didn't love it. However, about 10 percent of its readers did love it and many of them clipped-out the comic from the newspaper and shared it with their friends. These people were passionate about the humorous look at dysfunctional office life portrayed in Dilbert. They decorated their cubicles with Dilbert cartoons. Some even put together homemade books of Dilbert cartoons long before the first Dilbert book was sold. They loved Dilbert.

Scott Adams didn't worry about trying to make the Dilbert cartoon successful by making the indifferent reader passionate about Dilbert. Instead, he relied on Dilbert succeeding by fueling the passions of those most passionate about all things Dilbert.

A greater predictor of successful product introductions is to gain a passionate and loyal customer base, no matter how small in numbers they are.

This isn't an absolute predictor as the abandoned product graveyard is littered with products that failed despite attracting a small, passionate customer base. However, if your product only attracts indifferent customers and fails to attract passionate customers ... chances are, that product will not succeed.

No Photos Allowed

It’s common practice for retailers to discourage and or outright prohibit photography inside their stores. Doesn’t make it a best practice though. As Seth Godin says, “In an experience economy, where a bear workshop or furniture superstore is a form of tourism, photography is part of the deal.”

Seth smartly points out a paradox of pictures exists with retailers that deliver remarkable in-store experiences. Retailers want you to remark about your shopping experiences but not with actual pictures, only with words written and/or spoken.

My friend Conrad Hametner is a foodie. He has a passion for seeking out exotic foods with exotic names. The names get so exotic he likes to use his cellphone camera to snap photos of the foods he would never be able to remember. But recently, HE GOT CAUGHT.

While perusing the cheese section at Whole Foods Market, Conrad sampled a few cheeses and found a new favorite—Gabietou. To help him remember this cheese, he snapped a photo. But a Whole Foods Team Member (employee) sternly told him company policy says absolutely no photos are allowed to be taken in the store.

Conrad went online to find Whole Foods “No Photos” policy. Couldn’t find one. He rightfully argues that this “No Photos Allowed” policy is outdated in today’s networked world.

As a former marketer for two retailers that have helped to popularize the “experience economy,” I understand the irony that exists with creating a store experience customers want to photograph but then, prohibiting it.

Why do retailers prohibit/discourage customers from taking photos? Two major reasons: Competitive Intent and Criminal Intent.

Competitive Intent
When Starbucks began its hyper-growth spurt in the early 90s, they had more than just customers in their stores—they also had curious businesspeople. The businesspeople would come huddled in small groups and everyone in the group would be clutching a pen and a pad. They would stay for hours noting everything from the store décor to menu boards to employee uniforms to operational procedures to customer counts to everything. They also took photos.

Starbucks policy prohibited photos because they didn’t want competitors mimicking their style. (As if a “no photos policy” was really going to stop competitors from learning how to replicate the Starbucks experience.) Today places like Whole Foods Market, Chipotle, Urban Outfitters, Cereality, Which Wich, and American Apparel are attracting curious businesspeople wanting to learn what they do that makes them worth mimicking.

This “No Photos Allowed” policy is still in place at Starbucks but not for the original reasons of dissuading copycat competitors.

Criminal Intent
Another major reason why Starbucks and other retailers prohibit customers from taking pictures is to protect them from the unsavory types casing the joint. Theft for any retail business is a big issue and having front-line employees on the lookout for people snapping photos could help to reduce theft.

However, it can get silly and seemingly ridiculous when retailers confront well-meaning customers (like Conrad) from taking photos. It happens a lot … like here, here, and here. I especially love the irony of the Apple store that told an in-store customer he wasn’t allowed to take a photo using his iPhone.

As Seth said … customers taking photos is part of the deal when you deliver remarkable customer experiences. So its about time for retailers to learn this lesson and solve for dissuading potential thieves with policies and activities other than prohibiting customers from taking photos.

Visual Vampires

Did you see the Brandweek story about Visual Vampires?

Visual vampires are images shown in advertising that divert attention away from the advertised product. Think … Wendy’s Red Wig … Robert Goulet/Emerald Nuts … Paris Hilton/Carl's Jr.. (Think 100% Creationist WOM where companies engage in outrageously gimmicky attention-grabbing antics to capture our attention.)

The study Brandweek cites is from The PreTesting Company. Here’s further explanation:

Wendy’s red wig-clad ads are hard to miss. However, new research shows that the characters in pony-tailed toupees greatly overshadow the products featured in the same ads.

“It is a visual vampire. There is high engagement, but when they show the food it drops like a rock,” said Lee Weinblatt, CEO of PreTesting, Tenafly, N.J.

The majority (68%) of viewers of the Wendy’s ad were riveted when the wig was on screen, but when hamburgers were shown it fell to 24%. The baseline for fast food commercials is 50% as consumers expect to be entertained. Other TV ads dominated by visual vampires: Subway (Jon Lovitz), Chrysler (Dr. Z) and Burger King (Coq Roq).” READ MORE

Hmm ... so is there a marketing garlic we can use to ward off these Visual Vampires? Could be. It's something I refer to as the WHAT YOU DO vs. WHAT YOU DID test.

When people talk about your brand, do they talk about the products/serves the company does or do they talk about the advertising it did? If people are talking about the products/services you do, then you've successful repelled the Visual Vampire. However, if all people can talk about is the offbeat creativity in your ads, then the Visual Vampire has probably been allowed to run amock.

For example, I know no one talking about the food Wendy's does. Instead, its all about the edgy red wig advertising the company did. Same goes for the Emerald Nuts spots we saw at the Super Bowl this year. No one was talking about how great Emerald Nuts taste, they were only talking about how creepy it was to have Robert Goulet acting a fool in the spot.

As a marketer, I much prefer people talking about what a company does and not what it did. Reckon the only way to truly repel Visual Vampires is to follow the Sethology of spending marketing dollars to make products/services more remarkable and not to make kookier commercials.

Cyber Monday needs a new name

Does anyone else cringe when they hear someone say Cyber Monday? We are hearing "Cyber Monday" tossed around a lot because online shopping traffic spikes today with office workers using their Internet connections at work to whittle down their Holiday shopping lists.

But the name Cyber Monday feels so 1996 to me. Cyber Monday was hip lexicon in the online world eons ago—back when HotBot and Lycos were hip. But HotBot and Lycos have long lost their naming relevance, shouldn't Cyber Monday?

Let's tap into our collective wisdom and come up with a better, more appropriate, and more up-to-date name to signify the first workday online buying opportunity of the Holiday shopping season.

Share your best name(s) to replace the bygone era "Cyber Monday" term in the comments section.

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UPDATED: Kenyatta nails it. He suggests... Dot-Com Day. Perfect! So can we all agree to start calling "Cyber Monday" by the new name of Dot-Com Day? (I will.)

Whole Foods “Markets as Non-Conversation”

What?
Whole Foods Market has barred executive-titled employees, directors on its board, global vice presidents, regional presidents, and regional vice presidents from participating in any online conversation not sponsored by the company. This change in company policy is the direct result of kinky business behavior from its CEO, John Mackey.

In July, Mackey was outed by the FCC for having posted over 1,300 messages from 1999 to mid-2006 on the Yahoo! Financial boards. In these postings, Mackey hid behind an alias (“rahodeb”) and trumpeted Whole Foods while trashing Wild Oats. About eight-months after rahodeb’s last posting on Yahoo!, Whole Foods initiated a merger with Wild Oats.

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So What?
It is sad to hear a company is unable to trust its executives to be ethical, considerate, and appropriate when conversing online. It’s even more sad for Whole Foods to enforce such a strident ruling given it was founded upon core Libertarian beliefs of maximum freedom and minimum governance.

The Whole Foods business operates under the belief stores should have the freedom to meet the needs of its unique customers and team members. The only governing rule stores must dogmatically adhere to is all food sold at Whole Foods Market must be free from artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, sweeteners, and hydrogenated oils. The company has a Quality Standards Policy, which lists all unacceptable food ingredients. Products containing ingredients on this list are not allowed to be sold at Whole Foods stores.

Here’s where the company’s Libertarian ways truly come to life ... individual stores have the autonomy to stock whatever products they desire so long as the ingredients in the products adhere to these quality standards. The Whole Foods executive team trusts its stores to qualify and disqualify the products they sale.

Yet, Whole Foods is unable to trust its executives to qualify and disqualify how they can participate in online conversations about the company they work for. Interesting. Seems to me, the Libertarian answer to all of this is to develop a Blogging Standards Policy for every employee to follow. There are examples galore of corporate blogging guidelines for Whole Foods to use as a starting point.

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What Now?
As a former marketer at Whole Foods, I find the corporate mandate that execs cannot participate in online conversations disheartening. It’s a knee-jerk, short-sided, and regrettable decision.

However, I hope this spurs more Whole Foods Market team members (company term for “employees”) to blog on a company website blog or on a blog they create outside of the company. At the least, every Whole Foods Market location should have a company blog on the Whole Foods Website. And at the very, very least … Whole Foods should have a rich internal blog or some other internal online forum where team members can learn from one another and from those higher-up execs who have been barred from such online conversations outside of the company’s blog moat.

Sure, the company has an informative and snazzy cooking video blog called SECRET INGREDIENT as well a handful of podcasts and blogs. But there is so much more opportunity for Whole Foods Market to share their unique point-of-view on food and the natural food difference.

Here’s hoping enthusiastic Whole Foods Market team members start their own blogs and share their passions for changing the way the world eats, shops, and enjoys food.

Buckley’s: The Good Taste of Bad Taste

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.

QVC and EGM

Yeah I know ... lots of chatter about Employee-Generated Media (EGM) on the blog recently. There just happens to be a rash of instances lately. Here'€™s another interesting example from QVC. (Yes, the home shopping channel.)

QVC recently launched an ad campaign centered around trying to own the letter "Q."

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[SIDEBAR: I always smirk when I hear us marketers make such grandiose statements like we are going to own the letter "€œQ."€ At Starbucks we used to focus some of our marketing efforts to "€œOwn Coffee." I always had to bite my lip whenever I would say something like, "This re-introduced coffee passport program will help enable us to "'˜own coffee.'"€ Starbucks doesn'€™t own coffee. Never has. Never will. Coffee isn'€™t ownable by anyone.]

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Back to the post ...

QVC is putting a lot of energy behind their customer-facing campaign to own the letter "Q" ... a new, bolder logo ... lots of stylish billboards ... an overhauled website. All this activity is focusing on the QUALITY aspect of hyping the QVC experience of Quality, Value, and Convenience.

Turns out this focus on owning the letter Q began as an internal marketing initiative in June 2006. All 13,000 QVC employees were given a logo t-shirt and given the challenge of getting the most spectacular product placement. The winning employee would get $10,000.

I'€™m not a fan of doing gimmicky stunts to capture customer attention. As a marketer, I much prefer to garner customer intention more than capture customer attention.

However, this Product Placement employee contest from QVC is a fun idea to tap into the creativity and ingenuity of employees. According to the New York Times, one QVC t-shirt wearing employee had their picture taken with Donovan McNabb, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, and that picture found its way on the Eagle'€™s website.

QVC employee Peter Fey, brother of writer/actress Tina Fey, had his famous sister plug the t-shirt and QVC during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. (Watch the Tina Fey/QVC video clip here.)

The winning QVC t-shirt product placement came from an employee who organized a belly flop contest for an autism charity. Each contestant wore the QVC t-shirt and a local TV station did a live stand-up from the event.

Fun stuff. I hope more companies entrust and encourage their employees to do similar things.

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SOURCE: New York Times article | Sept. 21

Natural Evolution of Products

Tom Fishburne gets it. His marketing-minded comics are piercingly poignant. Especially this one:

The New Complete Marketer

In its Autumn 2007 issue, Strategy+Business continues its series of articles on how Chief Marketer Officers can become more effective in their role. (I've blogged about past S+B articles on CMOs here, here, and here.)

Gregor Harter, Edward Landry, and Andrew Tipping have written a very worthwhile article outlining six themes that separate under-performing CMOs from out-performing CMOs. You can read the article online or the PDF version. (Be prepared to fill-out a user registration form.)

To entice you to read this article, I've cut/pasted tasty snippets from each of the six themes the authors contend CMOs must have to out-perform their peers.

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1 | Put the Consumer at the Heart of Marketing
"No marketer would ever admit to taking his or her eyes off the company’s prime prospects, so the concept of consumer-centricity may sound mundane. But successful CMOs don’t assume that familiar tasks will necessarily be simple."

2 | Make Marketing Accountable
"For many enterprises, the development of accountability follows much the same path, as marketers learn to transform raw data into actionable planning. Stage one is evaluating what is being measured and how it is being measured; stage two is condensing scores of diffuse reports and metrics down to a useful few; and stage three is creating targeted analytics and a core report to gauge performance and help determine where best to focus going forward."

3 | Embrace the Challenges of New Media
"To be successful in the 21st century, our interviewees agree, marketers must not just select and purchase proven instruments. The ferocious appetite for more access to consumers along with the willingness to go out on a limb and try new ways to connect with them are noteworthy characteristics from a group that, not long ago, took great comfort in the stability of mass mediaent ways.” The CMOs who embrace new media will be the early beneficiaries of this change, and the rewards for this commitment appear to be significant."

4 | Recognize the New Organizational Imperative
"Marketing does much better when it’s incorporated into the greater business, say these thought-leading CMOs. It can drive growth more quickly if it is fully integrated with the different functions, and it can do so in a way that previous CMOs never realized was possible. For a CMO to be fully effective, all of senior management must have clarity about the marketing mission."

5 | Live a New Agency Paradigm
"The leading CMOs are getting ahead of the advertising profession. They are assembling multiagency groups — a remarkable step that often puts business competitors at the same table and demands that they work together to create a better product. The CMOs may be polite about the new processes, but they’re also being firm. The mandate is to move on or move out."

6 | Remain Adaptable
"Adaptability has to be inherent in every part of the marketing agenda. It’s not just the way you (as a marketing leader) adjust to new media. It’s the way you hire people, train them, and get your senior managers to sit down with a media-savvy mom. Most of all, it’s the way you drive marketing as an integral — and integrated — part of the enterprise, whose role goes beyond measuring the return of specific marketing programs to nurturing the overall health of the business and brands."

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MORE >> Full Article: [html] [pdf]

Pricing Tells a Story

Storytelling in marketing is nothing new. In All Marketers are Liars (Seth Godin), we learned that all marketers tell stories and the best marketers tell stories customers believe. Seth goes on to explain that stories are shortcuts to understanding what a product/service is all about.

While reading the August issue of Inc. Magazine, I ran across the line you read in subject header: PRICING TELLS A STORY. Per Sjofors, managing partner at Atenga, is credited with saying that chewy line. He's right ... every price has a story.

There’s a story behind why Air Jordans are so expensive. By buying a pair of Air Jordans, a middle-aged rec-gym b-ball player can Be Like Mike. There is also a story behind the ultra-inexpensive Starbury shoe. The Starbury shoe story tells us we do not need to get caught up in all the hype and dole out a fortune for a pair of basketball sneakers.

There’s a story that goes along with the price for dining at PF Chang’s. You revel in the experience of enjoying family, friends, food, and attentive service from the PF Changs waitstaff. But there is also the story of paying for an equally-tasty and less expensive meal at Pei Wei. The pricing story Pei Wei tells us is about delivering great Asian-inspired food without the pretense of a full-service restaurant like its sibling, PF Chang's.

There’s a story behind Wendy’s 99-cent Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger. Might not be an interesting story, but a story nonetheless. The Quadruple Bypass Burger from the Heart Attack Grill has an interesting story to go along with its higher price. We’re talking a hamburger experience of eating 8,000 calories and if you and your arteries can survive the gluttony, you’ll be wheelchaired out to your car by a nurse-attired Heart Attack Grill employee.

Pricing is one of the shortest shortcuts a company can take in telling a story about its products. So ... what story is your pricing telling customers?

Pesos por Pizza

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.

Marketing to Employees

Apple is doing a lot of things right in marketing the iPhone. But amidst all the iPhone hubbub, one vital marketing nugget is getting lost:

Apple is giving all its full-time U.S.-based employees an iPhone.

I am a huge proponent of companies spending marketing money on employees. It's simple. Astonish employees and they will, in turn, astonish customers. Giving every full-time employee a $600 (retail value) iPhone is an astonishing act that will only help to feed the already vibrant evangelical corporate culture within Apple. [SOURCE]

At Starbucks, we would also spend marketing money on employees. We knew if we could get Baristas jazzed, they would get customers jazzed. Our biggest marketing to employees expense was producing tens of thousands of T-shirts. For major promotions periods like Holiday and Summer, we would always send stores a box of t-shirts with some cool creative linked to the promotion.

Starbucks Baristas liked receiving a limited edition Starbucks logo'd shirt not only because it was considered cool ... but also because having another company-approved uniform shirt to wear meant less time spent washing work clothes. And Starbucks marketers liked the fact these T-shirts were advertising our in-store campaign when Baristas wore them at work and at play.

Many times our T-shirt expense was the largest line item expense in our retail marketing promotional budgets. Unfortunately, when our marketing budgets would get reduced, T-shirts would be the first to get axed.

I applaud Apple for taking a strong financial stance in showing how much they appreciate employees by giving them a super-spendy iPhone. That says a lot!

Vetting Net Promoter

Last we checked in with Tim Keiningham, SVP at IPSOS Loyalty and co-author of LOYALTY MYTHS, was in December of 2005. At that time I posted some riffs on his LOYALTY MYTHS book.

Keiningham’s book debunked over 50 commonly accepted loyalty marketing practices, one of which was Fred Reichheld’s NET PROMOTER score. In discrediting Reichheld’s NET PROMOTER score, I felt his reasoning was more argumentative then constructive.

Tim emailed me today sharing his recently published article in the Journal of Marketing vetting the Net Promoter measurement. This time around, the reasoning from Tim and his co-authors is much more constructive than argumentative.

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For some of you we need to backtrack with a quick backstory …

Fredrick Reichheld’s Net Promoter measurement contends companies no longer need to rely on expensive studies and complex statistical models to measure customer loyalty in hopes of increasing sales. Instead, a company only has to ask its customers one question: “How likely is it that you would recommend [company x] to a friend or a colleague?" Knowing the answer to this one question allows a company to easily interpret where it stands in creating net promoters (evangelical customers) which in turn lead to sustainable, profitable growth.

Reichheld so strongly believes in the Net Promoter measurement that he says it is “the single most reliable indicator of company’s ability to grow.” His contention is backed by research done on select companies showing a strong correlation between a company’s growth rate and the percentage of its net promoters. According to Reichheld, “The more ‘promoters’ your company has, the bigger its growth.”

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With this paper, Tim and his colleagues set out to bring reasonable doubt to the claim by Reichheld that the Net Promoter score is the “single most reliable indicator of a company’s ability to grow.” To scientifically and statistically debunk the Net Promoter score, the authors attempted to replicate Reichheld’s findings using similar data and similar methodology.

I’ll pass on boring you with all the wonky research methodology used because you can read about it in the paper. Instead, here’s the gist of the paper’s findings …

“We find no support for the claim that Net Promoter is the ‘single most reliable indicator of a company’s ability to grow.’

The clear implication is that managers have adopted the Net Promoter metric for tracking growth on the basis of the belief that solid science underpins the findings and that it is superior to other metrics. However, our research suggests that such presumptions are erroneous. The consequences are the potential misallocation of resources as a function of erroneous strategies guided by Net Promoter on firm performance, company value, and shareholder wealth.”

So statistically speaking, the Net Promoter score may not be the “single most reliable indicator of a company’s ability to grow.” Okay … got it … after all, that’s a HUGE claim to make.

However, the Net Promoter score is still ONE indicator of a company’s ability to grow.

And as a marketer, I feel it’s safe to assume the more evangelical customers a business has talking up its products and services to others … the greater likelihood the business is growing and not declining. If all I have to ask, as a marketer, to determine this likelihood of growth, is to ask customers how likely is it that they would recommend this business to others ... SIGN ME UP.

That’s just my take. Read Keiningham’s research paper and decide on your own.

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UPDATE: Tim Keiningham provided more insights in the comments section.

Doritos X-13D

Eric Ryan, co-founder of Method cleaning products, has been quoted as saying … “There is no such thing as dull product categories, only dull products.”

Think the potato chip category is boring? Think again …

photos from flickr

Just when we’ve been lulled to think the potato chip category was stale, here comes Doritos X-13D. In the latest iteration of customer co-creation, Frito-Lay wants everyday people to “Get it. Taste it. Name it.”

We consumers are to buy this mysterious product. Decipher what it tastes like. Then, submit a product name. The winner gets a year’s supply of whatever the name ends up being for the Doritos X-13D experiment.

Kudos to Doritos for flavoring their newest potato chip with some marketing zest.

Can’t find a package of Doritos X-13D? Try eBay.

Andy Sernovitz’s Blog

A new addition to my Bloglines feed is Andy Sernovitz’s “Damn I Wish I'd Thought of That” blog. Andy is a networker’s networker. He’s also an experienced business professional, college teacher, past CEO of WOMMA, and an unfailing evangelist for Word-of-Mouth Marketing.

Andy contends the best marketing is marketing that earns the respect and recommendation of customers. For his blog, he’s asked a slew of marketers for their answers to a few seemingly simple questions. Andy wants to know …

What is your advice for any company that wants to ... (a) Make people happy? ; (b) Earn respect? ; (c) Get a word of mouth recommendation?

So far, Andy has received advice from the likes of Seth Godin, Geoff Ramsey, Peter Kim, and many other marketing-types (including me).

READ all the answers HERE.

Watch this Wine Evangelist

Gary Vaynerchuk is a wine enthusiast and evangelist. Fittingly, he's the Director of Operations at Wine Library, a wine retailer in New Jersey. Gary has been sharing his passion for wine with daily online videos where he sniffs, slurps, and spits wine all the while imparting wit and wisdom about wine (and about the New York Jets).

Don't expect a prim and proper haughty toddy video lecture about wine. Oh no. Gary ain't goin' out like that. New York Magazine labels Gary's style as an "unpretentious, gonzo approach to wine appreciation." Yep. That's right on.

The so-called wine establishment doesn't know what to do with Gary's unbridled evangelism for wine. In an interview with New York Magazine, Gary answered his critics by saying...

"It’s amazing how intimidating wine is; all the wine geeks want to keep everybody out. I get these real wine-snob d--kheads who think I’m dumbing wine down. And now wineries are starting to get mad at me. I used to be their darling—because I’m a buyer—but some of them don’t want to sell to me anymore because I panned their wine on the show. That’s been really difficult. I get a ton of positive feedback, but I also get a little zing-zing."

Spend a few minutes watching Gary's latest video and think to yourself, who in your company SHOULD do something similar?

Be Online Where your Customers Already Are

BusinessWeek has some straightforward advice for companies as they develop their web communications strategy. It’s about being in places where your customers are already engrossed online. That may mean Second Life, Twitter, YouTube, or somewhere else.

“Blogs. Podcasts. Video-sharing sites. Social networks. Here's a word of advice for companies scrambling to become a part of these conversations. It's not enough to build a hub in Second Life or create a profile on MySpace.com . It's time to shift your focus away from trying out every high-tech platform that comes across your in-box. Instead, home in on your customers. Almost every demographic group you can think of is engrossed in the Web these days, and users are getting smarter about their tools. It won't take long to find the consumers who care about what you're doing—and tune in to what they're doing.”

SOURCE: BusinessWeek | Web Strategies That Cater to Customers | June 11, 2007

Fascinating Wal-Mart Brand Analysis

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Today’s NY Times shares fascinating insights into the Wal-Mart brand from a leaked brand analysis report. (Access the article from the nytimes.com site or from here.)

The report was conducted by Wal-Mart’s then agency-of-record, GSD&M, and according to the NY Times, this report, "... offers a rare glimpse of the concerns that are buffeting Wal-Mart’s retailing empire, from its flagging corporate reputation to the ‘near catastrophic’ economic pressures faced by its working class consumers.”

For example, this report shares insights that Wal-Mart shoppers know other retailers offer smarter choices in a variety of revenue-important product categories. The report outlines the following …

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Smart and illuminating fodder for all us marketers. I was surprised to find a copy of this GSD&M prepared Positioning Report for Wal-Mart (pdf) available on the NY Times website. Go upload and get the download on branding insights into the world’s largest retailer.

Expect to read more from me in the days to come after I've had a chance to fully digest this Wal-Mart Positioning Report. And if you have thoughts ... chime in with comments.

Chris Anderson on Genuineness

In the preceding post, I raved about Deliver Magazine. Also included in the May issue (PDF link) was an interview with Chris Anderson, Long Tail raconteur and editor-in-chief at WIRED Magazine.

Chris shared smart words on what it means to be GENUINE in today’s marketing world where what gets measured gets manufactured. Good stuff ...

“Genuine is an e-mail from a person rather than a company. If the lead singer of some band that I like sends out an e-mail to those of us who have registered our interest, that’s authentic in a way that a record label sending out an e-mail wouldn’t be. If the lead singer responds to his e-mail, that’s even better. A MySpace page is more authentic than a billboard. A blog is more authentic than a press release. It’s all about having a human voice and re-personalizing the connections.”

“The key is in catalyzing word of mouth. If consumers don’t trust institutions and do trust individuals, if they don’t want to be marketed at and do want to be influenced by their peers, how can marketers influence those influencers, those alpha peers? Some companies have done lots of experiments in this. There are fake blogs and fake viral videos and fake buzz marketing. It sometimes works, but if you’re busted, it turns into a PR nightmare.” -- quotes from Chris Anderson

SOURCE: Deliver Magazine | May 2007 | PDF link

Twittering Daily Specials

Twitter is still new on the scene and it has us marketers scrambling to find ways to effectively use it as a marketing medium.

(For those unaware, Twitter is being defined as “micro-blogging service” where users can quickly update people as to what they are doing. Brevity, connectivity, and immediacy are key to Twitter as users can post text-based messages up to 140 characters long yet reach a wide swath of people using the service with their laptops, PDAs, cell phones, etc.)

The best use of Twitter I’ve seen as a marketing medium comes from Panaros, a Buffalo, NY restaurant. Panaros twitters its daily specials. Brilliant.

*** Kudos to the Brand Flakes for Breakfast blog for the hook-up.

Subway Pizza. Yum or Dumb?

Photos from "Slice" off flickr.com

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In 2005, Subway began using speed ovens to toast sandwiches. In June of 2007, Subway is set to use those speed ovens to flash-bake deep dish personal pizzas in 13,000 U.S. locations. Stores will use pre-baked pizzas and customers will be able to top their pizza with any of Subway’s sandwich ingredients.

I know what you are thinking … what’s a sandwich shop doing baking personal pizzas? You are also thinking … doesn’t Subway position itself as healthy fast food? Lots of questions.

But Subway has been answering these questions by field testing the personal pizza concept in select markets. It must have passed store-level operational feasibility tests and sales tests for Subway to roll-out pizzas nationwide. According to Brandweek, one of the NYC test stores sells about 25 personal pizzas a day.

Hmm…

I’m not sold on Subway doing pizzas—smacks of being all things to all people to me. But I’m not opposed to Subway doing pizzas.

It would feel less like a desperate and unfocused marketing ploy if they used their fresh-baked breads instead of using pizza dough. (Think Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza.) Subway could remain truer to its core sandwich roots if it used its bread to bake pizzas. Not sure about the myriad operational and product implications though. On paper, this sounds like a smarter idea than to use pizza dough.

Reckon we’ll have to see if Subway doing deep dish style pizza is yum or dumb. (My money is on “dumb.”)

No Recipe for Originality

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UPDATED | Bill Breen's Fast Company article is now posted.

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Bill Breen authored a provocative piece on Brands & Authenticity in the May issue of Fast Company. (It’s a must-read for every marketer but right now its available only in print, not online.) In the piece, Breen asks and offers credible answers for the following questions:

• What does it take for a brand to be authentic?
• How does a brand stay authentic even as it teeters on ubiquity?
• Can a brand truly be authentic when it tries hard to be authentic?
• Can a brand be viewed as cool while still maintaining its authenticity?

Early on in the article Breen shares some smart marketing fodder...

“Both the promise and the peril of ‘getting real’ are, indeed, very real. ‘Authentic’ is derived from the Greek authentikos, which means ‘original.’ And unfortunately, there’s no recipe for originality. Each brand must build its own primary source code for the authentic.”

“There’s no recipe for originality.” Brilliant take. Love it. Love it almost as much as what offbeat marketing professor Stephen Brown says about how authenticity is unachievable …

“… it is important to appreciate that, for all today’s fixation on the authentic, there is no such thing as authenticity, only varying degrees of inauthenticity.

The traditional Irish bar is assembled from mass produced, cod-Celtic kitsch. The free range chickens are free to range around a fetid factory farm. The classic blue jeans are pre-shrunk, pre-faded, pre-ripped, pre-grimed, and doubtlessly, pre-impregnated with pre-washday adolescent aromas. Authentic authenticity, so to speak, is unattainable. But it can be staged, it can be created, it can be evoked.” [source: FREE GIFT INSIDE!! | Stephen Brown (2003)

Read a little more from Stephen Brown in this vintage Brand Autopsy post.

When Does Access Become Excess?

When is big too big? When does convenience crossover from being pleasing to being annoying? When does ubiquity eclipse scarcity? When does access become excess?

I’ve struggled with this access/excess question for years and am no closer today to finding an answer.

Is having nearly 90 million units in the hands of customers excess access? Is having 170+ million albums in the hands of customers excess access? Is having 44+ million weekly customers visit 14,000+ locations in 39 countries around the world excess access?

I dunno.

When a publicly-traded 41 year-old company with 140 retail locations expands into a new market, does that constitute excess access behavior? John Winsor laments that Peet’s Coffee & Tea has become “just another coffee shop” because it now has opened a location in Boulder, CO.

Did American Apparel become just another clothing retailer when it opened up a store on Pearl Street Mall in Boulder?

When does access become excess?

No Business is Perfect

Is it unrealistic for us to expect businesses to be perfect? Are we setting ourselves up for disappointment by expecting businesses to flawlessly deliver every single time? As customers, are we expecting perfection when perfection is unattainable? Is that fair of us?

I’m not trying to make excuses for when businesses fail us. But failure happens. No business is perfect. Yet, we seem to expect businesses to be perfect all the time. One poor encounter with a company’s customer service rep sets many of us off into a rage against that business. One misstep by a company spoils everything for many of us. A series of cancelled flights and thousands of stranded customers can trigger a major backlash. (Yep, I’m talking JetBlue here.)

JetBlue messed up BIG-TIME. No doubt about it. They failed their customers in unimaginable ways. We now know JetBlue is far from perfect. But was it realistic for us to expect JetBlue to be perfect?

No business is perfect. NONE. Business is a game of progress, not perfection. No business will be perfect. It's an impossibly unattainable goal. But while that goal is unattainable, the most endearing and enduring businesses seem to always aspire to reach perfection. They always make progressive steps to improve their business and how their business connects with people. Sure, they will stumble along the way. But the true measure of a company is how they recover and forge ahead making progress along the way to overcome their mistakes.

No person is perfect. NO ONE. As people we also mess up BIG-TIME. We constantly make bad decisions that harm others. We disappoint friends. We betray people’s trust. We cannot achieve perfection. Doesn't mean we should give up and not try. The most endearing and enduring people I know make progress every day to improve themselves and their relationships with others. And when people see progress being made, they are willing to forgive mistakes.

Thank goodness people are so forgiving. Otherwise, I wouldn't have any friends. I've pissed off enough people in enough ways to not have friends. Lucky for me, people are forgiving. I still have some friends. Lost some along the way—but the ones I still have are great.

I think JetBlue can recover. I think customers have it in their hearts to forgive them for messing up BIG-TIME. It'll take time though as well as diligent focus from every JetBlue employee to make progress in earning back trust and friendship from customers.

In GOOD TO GREAT, Jim Collins says one factor that determines which companies go from being good to being great is how they deal with adversity. He says that many of the good-to-great companies he studied faced a company-defining crisis. According to Collins, what separates the winners from the losers is how they confronted and responded to the crisis …

“The good-to-great companies faced just as much adversity as the comparison companies, but responded to that adversity differently. They hit the realities of their situation head-on. As a result, they emerged from adversity even stronger.

JetBlue is considered a good airline. How they confront and respond to this crisis will determine if they can ever progress to becoming a great airline. Time will tell if JetBlue can make the good-to-great leap.