Brand Autopsy

Glenna Moore, my Mother

SlideShare 2.0

When SlideShare made its debut last fall, it was touted by many, including me, as being YouTube for PowerPoint. The ability to easily share and embed PowerPoint presentations into web pages mimicked YouTube. However, the inability to also share the audio portion of a presentation made SlideShare less like YouTube.

That's changed now.

SlideShare has introduced its SlideCast feature where you can upload an mp3 file and sync it to your presentation slides. This application is fairly intuitive, but it takes some practice to get the hang of setting your begin/end markers.

Interestingly, SlideShare has posted a YouTube video on how to use their SlideCast feature. (Not sure why this demo couldn't have been done using SlideShare now that audio can be added to slides.)

I fooled around with the SlideCast feature and have uploaded a "talking version" of my Creationist vs. Evolutionist Word-of-Mouth Marketing presentation. Have a look by AND listen by clicking the 'play' button below ...

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RSS Readers ... click here to view the presentation

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NOTE: My SlideShare presentation archive can be accessed here.

Small Business Marketing Seminar

My friend Jay Ehret is putting on a DIY Small Business Marketing Seminar in Killeen, TX on Wednesday, August 15.

He’s planning to give attendees all the know-how/how-to in developing and implementing effective marketing plans. If you live in and around the badlands of Central Texas, I suggest you consider attending.

Oh yeah, I’m closing the seminar with my BIGNESS OF SMALLNESS presentation.

Learn more here and here. Sign-up here.

THREE READS | July 22

ONE | The NY Times reports on the highest grossing independent restaurant in the U.S.—Tao Las Vegas. In its first full year open in 2006, Tao recorded $55.2 million in sales. The next closet U.S. independent restaurant was Tavern on the Green in New York which pulled in sales o $39 million in 2006. >>READ MORE

TWO | I’m not in Harry Potter. Haven’t read an HP book or seen an HP movie so this primer (.pdf) on the Harry Potter phenomenon from THE WEEK was super-informative. It is amazing to think 66% of children in the US have read a Harry Potter book. >>READ MORE (.pdf)

THREE | Much has been written recently about the John Mackey's “rahodeb” dealio. But this Wall Street Journal article shares interesting insights into Mackey’s hyper-competitive personality. >>READ MORE

No Business Leader is Perfect

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

I’m not trying to make excuses for when businesses leaders fail us. But failure happens. No businessperson is perfect. Yet, we seem to expect businesses leaders to be perfect all the time.

John Mackey, co-founder/CEO of Whole Foods Market, messed up BIG-TIME. No doubt about it. He failed employees, shareholders, and many customers. We now know Mackey is far from perfect. But was it realistic for us to expect him to be perfect?

No business leader is perfect. NONE. Business life is a game of progress, not perfection. No business leader will ever be perfect. It’s an impossibly unattainable goal. But while that goal is unattainable, the most admired, respected, and trusted business leaders always aspire to reach perfection. They always make progressive steps to improve their decisions made and how their business connects with stakeholders. Sure, they will stumble along the way. But the true measure of a business leader is how they recover and forge ahead making progress along the way to overcome their mistakes.

Just like no business leader — 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 admired, respected, and trusted 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.

John Mackey (and Whole Foods Market) will recover. I think employees, shareholders, and customers have it in their hearts to forgive him for messing up big-time. It’ll take time though as well as diligent, proactive, and compassionate action from Mackey and Whole Foods to make progress in earning back trust from its stakeholders.

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.”

John Mackey is regarded as a respected and admired business leader. How he and Whole Foods Market confront and respond to this unfortunate crisis will determine if they can continue down their path in becoming a great endearing and enduring business. I think they can and will.

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This essay was repurposed from an earlier blog posting.

Mackey Apologizes. Internal Investigation Launched.

At first he defended his anonymous postings. (Bad move.)

And now he apologizes. (Good move.)

Whole Foods has done some selective online editing by taking down all of Mackey's earlier blog postings. And removing Mackey's defensive stance on his "rahodeb" postings. (You can still read it here.)

Its Board of Directors has initiated an internal investigation into Mackey's kinky business behavior. (Good move.)

Wouldn't surprise me if Mackey loses his CEO title but retains his Chairman title. (Yeah, I'm going out on a limb here.)

The messiness continues. (Clean-up, aisle 7.)

re: Dijon Ketchup

For a literal companion read to Seth's recent "Dijon Ketchup" post about transforming the good into very good ... check out this vintage Brand Autopsy post on "Ketchup and Malcolm Gladwell."

Or, skip my post entirely and just read Gladwell's take on how Jim Wigon purpled cow'd ketchup. Good stuff.

Interesting Survey of iPhone Buyers

Despite the hype, despite the activation issues, and despite the myriad drawbacks, buyers of the iPhone are a very happy bunch. So says a recent study from Interpret of 200 iPhone buyers.

According to the study, 90% of iPhone buyers surveyed are either extremely or very satisfied with the phone and 85% of them will recommend the iPhone to a friend.

Other interesting tid-bits from the survey include:
>> 30% of iPhone buyers are first-time Apple customers
>> 50% of iPhone buyers switched cellphone carriers
>> 35% of these switchers paid, on average, $167 to make the switch
>> iPhone users are expected to pay $35 more in monthly service fees

Mackey’s Kinky Business Behavior

As a former Whole Foods Market team member and current WFM shareholder, I’m embarrassed by John Mackey’s kinky business behavior.

If you haven’t heard, John Mackey was outed for posting over 1,300 messages in the Yahoo! financial boards from 1999 to mid-2006. In these messages, Mackey hid behind an alias (“rahodeb”) and trumpeted Whole Foods while trashing Wild Oats. (Go here for lots of links on the story.)

This is behavior unbecoming of a CEO no matter the size of the company. This foolishness makes me want to question Mackey's character and judgment. Even when he was outed, Mackey didn't think his actions were wrong. Instead of admitting he made a mistake, Mackey defended his kinky business behavior by saying the FTC is out to embarrass him and that he got his jollies from debating all things Whole Foods-related on the message board.

Go ahead, read his defensive comments culled from the Whole Foods website...

“The FTC discovered my identity as rahodeb through one of the millions of litigation documents that Whole Foods provided to them. They are quoting rahodeb in some of their legal documents and no doubt seek to embarrass both me and Whole Foods through these disclosures. I want to make the following points about rahodeb here:

1. I posted on Yahoo! under a pseudonym because I had fun doing it. Many people post on bulletin boards using pseudonyms.
2. I never intended any of those postings to be identified with me.
3. The views articulated by rahodeb sometimes represent what I actually believed and sometimes they didn't. Sometimes I simply played "devil's advocate" for the sheer fun of arguing. Anyone who knows me realizes that I frequently do this in person, too.
4. Rahodeb's postings therefore do not represent any official beliefs, policies, or intentions by either Whole Foods Market or by me.
5. At no time did I reveal any proprietary information about Whole Foods on Yahoo!
6. All of rahodeb's postings should be read in the full context of the discussions that were taking place on the bulletin board at the time the postings were made. Reading them out of context may lead to serious misunderstandings.
7. All of rahodeb's postings also need to be understood in the context of the time that they were written. Because the competitive market has evolved so much in the last 5 years, older postings mean far less today than they did when they were written."

All of this shouldn’t have a bearing on the case to overturn the FTC’s decision to block the Whole Foods Market and Wild Oats merger. However, this SHOULD have a major impact on Whole Foods if they are allowed to merge with Wild Oats as it relates to new employee morale.

How happy will ex-Wild Oats employees be to work as new Whole Foods team members for a CEO that once had this to say about their old company?...

“Whole Foods is undervalued and OATS very much overvalued. Jennison and Fidelity didn’t buy a large stake in OATS, they chose Whole Foods. There is no value in OATS, it’s run is near the end, stock could be flat to negative for years, the fundamentals need to catch up, bad company, risky investment."

April 19, 2005 |Yahoo! Message board posting by “rahodeb” (aka John Mackey)

If you are interested in digging deep into John Mackey's business kinkiness, read all the "rahodeb" message board postings. You can also read analysis from USA TODAY showing that Mackey would sometimes make 17 postings in a day. Oh my...

This is messy, messy stuff.

The Fading of Advertising

Lenore Skenay, of Ad Age, introduces us to Ben Passikoff, a 17 year-old high school student, and his recently published book, THE WRITING ON THE WALL. Ben has captured the fading remains of advertising’s past with his coffee table book of photos and stories from New York’s vintage painted building billboards.

(FYI ... Ben’s book started out as a high-school project but has ended up as a glossy coffee table book.)

There’s something ultra-cool and ultra-authentic about these fading painted billboard ads. As Lenore puts it … “The lesson one gleans, however reluctantly, is that whatever seems absolutely immutable, isn't. Not what is advertised. Not how it is advertised.”

Ben’s photos clearly tell us that old advertising doesn’t die … it just fades away.

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.

Sprint Drops “Demon” Customers

Sprint recently sent 1,000 subscribers a termination notice. These were not dead-beat customers who hadn’t paid their cellphone bills. These were customers who paid their bills on-time but called the Sprint Customer Service department all-the-time.

The terminated customers called the Sprint Customer Service department an average of 25 times a month complaining about billing charges and/or technical issues. In the letter to these disposed customers, Sprint said, “The number of inquiries you have made to us … has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs.”

While the idea of firing customers is counter-intuitive, it’s not new. In the book ANGEL CUSTOMERS AND DEMOM CUSTOMERS (2003), authors Larry Selden & Geoffrey Colvin advocated businesses fire their least profitable customers ("demons") so the business could better focus on satisfying their most profitable customers ("angels").

In an online article, Geoffrey Colvin explains the rationale behind his thinking…

”In our experience across a wide range of industries, companies typically find that the best 20 percent of their customers account for 150 percent of total profits! The worst 20 percent typically lose money equal to 75 percent of profits, while the remaining 60 percent of customers account for the rest. Knowing which customers are angels and which are demons presents an enormous opportunity.

Once you know the true profitability of your customers, you can figure out the reasons behind the numbers. For your unprofitable customers, you'll have to face the reality that you're not offering them a compelling value proposition - a way of meeting their needs so well that they'll reward you with handsome profitability. You'll have to devise new, better, value propositions for them, which our experience shows you can probably do. As a result, you'll start to turn those unprofitable customers into profitable ones, which typically creates a substantial swing in the business's overall profitability.

In the end, you may find that a small percentage of customers just cannot be made profitable. By the time you've figured out who they are, you'll understand very well why they probably aren't worth keeping.”

With over 53,000,000 subscribers, Sprint will feel no pain over losing 1,000 "demon" customers.

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UPDATE ...
Via Seth, by way of gadgettell, we get a look at the letter Sprint sent its "demon" customers:

The End of Advertising as We Know It

From time-to-time, when I need a meaningful marketing refresher course, I riffle through Sergio Zyman's THE END OF ADVERTISING AS WE KNOW IT. It's a classic marketing book with oodles of money quotes.

Enjoy this Classics Edition of my BIZ BOOK MONEY QUOTES series...

RSS READERS ... click here to view the money quotes.

Tasty Quote on Leadership

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Someone could write, and probably has written, a book on the differences between a Boss and a Leader. However, this quote sums up nicely (and succinctly) the major difference ...

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SOURCE: New York Times Sunday Magazine | Generally Speaking | July 1, 2007

The Financial Impact of a Strong Brand Reputation

According to Communications Consulting Worldwide (CCW), if Wal-Mart were to have the brand reputation of Target, then its stock price would increase 4.9% and its market capitalization would increase by $9.7 billion. CCW also estimates that if drugstore chain CVS had the reputation of its chief rival, Walgreens, then CVS’s stock would increase by 6.9% and would add $3.9 billion to its market cap.

Whoa!

It’s no secret that a strong brand reputation has a halo effect within the consumer marketplace and financial marketplace. What’s new is the ability to more precisely measure a brand’s reputation in order to predict how changes in brand’s reputation will impact the company’s stock price.

In this MUST-READ BusinessWeek article, we learn that CCW has constructed a model which is able to link the positive/negative attributes of a brand’s reputation to the rise/fall of its stock price.

Southwest Airlines is a client of CCW and the brand reputation of Southwest is very strong. However, CCW estimates Southwest could improve its stock price 3.5% resulting in increasing its financial market value by $300 million by tweaking its consumer messaging. To accomplish this, Southwest would need to downplay its low fares messaging and instead, highlight its far-reaching routes and frequent schedules. Southwest has followed CCW’s direction and although airline stocks have fallen 15%+ in 2007, Southwest’s stock is only down 5.0%.

Having a predictive model to determine the stock price impact of marketing messages can only help marketers at Fortune 1000 companies to better design and better sell-in their programs.

If you are interested in learning more about how brand management is reputation management, read THE 18 IMMUTABLE LAWS OF CORPORATE MANAGEMENT by Ronald Alsop. It’s a worthy read from way back. You can also read this excellent summary of Alsop’s book.

To further entice you to read the Business Week article, take a look at this graphic. It is sure to intrigue the marketer in you.

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