Church of the Customer Blog
October 29, 2008, 05:35 AM
Watch SWOMfest live
We're not dead. It's that SWOMfest is almost here. OMG, we have been working our butts off preparing.
If you're planning on joining us in Austin tomorrow, SWOMfest will rock. If you can't be there in person, we'll be streaming a good deal of the conference/workshop/party live, starting at 9 am CST Thursday, Oct. 30.
You can watch the presentations in the media player on the front page of the SWOMfest site. Scroll down the page to see the player. Here are the sessions that will be broadcast and their approximate start times.
09:00 am: Opening and welcome
09:20 am: "WOM and the DNA of Your Organization," Ben McConnell
09:40 am: "How to Discover Your Purpose," Haley Rushing, The Purpose Institute
11:10 am: "Creating a Spreadable Story," Yaphet Smith, screenwriter
01:10 pm: "The Science of Networks," Jackie Huba
02:00 pm: "How to Teach WOM at a Big Company," Sean McDonald, Dell
03:05 pm: "Using Social Media for New Markets," Trey Reeme, TDECU
Note: We're using cellphone-based streaming technology for the live broadcast. THX it's not. We hope it works. It might not. Guess it depends on the mood of the technology gods.
October 21, 2008, 04:23 PM
Bailout transparency
Was over before it began, according to a site that is tracking the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street.
BailoutSleuth.com (via TechDirt) has been examining all of the bailout documents released by the Treasury Department and is finding page after page of redacted data, often related to how much money companies will earn for their work with our money. (You'll remember that the first bailout vote in Congress failed, largely because representatives were inundated with calls from angry citizens about the bailout's lack of transparency.)
If a company showed as much contempt for its investors at this administration does for its citizens, the penalties would be significant. Transparency is not conveniently relevant to a desired outcome.
WOM about the race
Chances are you know about the Net Promoter Score, a tool that indicates a strong correlation between the total number of customers who'd recommend your company or product and your future revenue growth.
MotiveQuest is riffing on that idea with the Online Promoter Score, which samples online word of mouth to determine a future trend. They're showcasing their tool with the presidential race.
To compile its numbers, the company says it monitors about 30,000 messages from 6,000 people each day from a few dozen political sites, parsing the positive from the negative.
What do you think: Will the percentages of online promoters on Nov. 4 correlate to within a percentage point or two of the general election outcome?
October 18, 2008, 11:51 AM
Let's talk about Tribes
WHAT: Live conference call with Seth Godin, Ben McConnell, Jackie Huba, and Michael Port about Seth's new book, "Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us." We'll discuss how the Internet has enabled everyone to lead a tribe and create movements with customers, employees or neighbors.
WHEN: Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008 at 2 pm EDT.
HOW MUCH: Free. Sign up here.
Can't make the live call? Not to worry. Register for the call and you'll receive a link to the recorded version.
October 13, 2008, 11:34 AM
Ticket for charity
Andy was planning to attend SWOMfest then realized it's the same day as his wedding anniversary. Smartly, he decided to stay home.
He's auctioning his ticket on eBay, with all proceeds going to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. A SWOMfest ticket is $325; Andy's auction is at $150 right now.
October 08, 2008, 07:06 PM
The word of mouth mayor
To support Austin's participation in Thrill the World, an attempt to break the world record for the largest synchronized “Thriller” dance on earth, Austin Mayor Will Wynn showed off his moves. Not bad for a tie-wearing politician.
Check out the video press coverage.
Being in charge sometimes means doing weird things to build enthusiasm for a program or rallying the troops. Mayor Wynn isn't afraid to venture out toward the weird to generate some word of mouth. It is Austin, after all. The weirder the better.
In his two terms, he has also:
- Strutted down the runway in a revealing outfit to support a local clothing designer
- Jumped off of a city bridge to help promote a local independent film
- Dressed up like a zombie to support yet another local independent film
(Thrill the World Austin is one of the many things you can watch or participate in during SWOMfest's Word of Mouth Weekend. I'll be there doing the dance.)
October 06, 2008, 11:51 AM
How bad is it?
A quote from a shopper in suburban Chicago in the Times today summarizes what many people are experiencing from the increasingly louder drumbeat of bad economic news:
“All the talk about how bad it is out there has started getting in my head."
And the financial crisis hadn't even affected her family. That's the trickle-down effect of perception.
Economists have been warning that the trickle-down effect of the credit crisis on Wall Street will spread to any business that relies on credit as a capital resource.
Has it? Is the credit crisis affecting your company and how it spends money on marketing, sales, or operations?
Take the poll and/or sound off in the comments.
October 02, 2008, 09:44 AM
13 reasons to attend SWOMfest; 10 registrants get a free...
SWOMfest '08 -- the daylong conference/workshop/party on Oct. 30, 2008, to help you bake word of mouth into the DNA of your product, service or overall organization -- is a month away.
It also happens to be the first-annual event for the Society for Word of Mouth, which we founded earlier this year.
SWOMfest '08 is teeming... teeming! with an exciting and eclectic group of experts who'll help you focus on developing a word-of-mouth strategy that delivers long-term benefits and results, not half-baked, short-term tactics that cost big bucks.
Attendance is limited to 200 at the brand-new Long Center, right along the banks of Town Lake in downtown Austin, so you'd better hustle up, Holmes.
Should you go? Here are...
13 reasons why you should attend SWOMfest:
- To meet other Swomies who understand that, except for one company out of a billion (it sells blenders) viral videos do not translate into sales.
- Big-thinking presenters like Haley Rushing of GSD&M's Purpose Institute and Hollywood screenwriter Yaphet Smith, who bring a unique perspective to word of mouth you won't see anywhere else. (You read that right: a screenwriter.)
- It won't decimate your training and education budget. At $325, SWOMfest is affordable compared to other word-of-mouth conferences.
- No boring and self-serving panels.
- Each attendee gets a hot off-the press book from one of the following authors: Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Dan Roam, Tim Manners or Geoff Colvin. Thanks, Portfolio!
- An optional Word of Mouth Weekend tour in Austin, Texas, after SWOMfest. Explore the city ranked as the most creative (and weird) in the U.S. It has more word of mouth stuff happening than you can shake a blog at. We have mapped out a tour of places that will spark your word of mouth imagination.
- If you're part of a non-profit organization, you can attend for half price.
- Pre-conference '80s party. SWOMfest '08 is during Halloween week, so we'll blind ourselves with costume party science on Wednesday, Oct. 29, the night before SWOMfest. The pre-conference party theme is the '80s. Bring your Devo energy dome and leg warmers. We'll have prizes for best costume. Then we'll adjourn to see the best '80s cover band ever, the Spazmatics.
- Live DJ. DJ Mel has spun at big-name gigs like Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits music festival. Mel will be spinning all day at SWOMfest. Yup, a DJ at a business conference!
- Beer all day. The gonzo guys at Flying Dog Brewery will provide their spectacular craft brews throughout the day.
- The chance to win a Dell 20-inch widescreen, flat-panel monitor. Thanks, Dell!
- John Moore, Connie Reece, Richard Binhammer and Sean McDonald from Dell, the crew from Brains on Fire, and Virginia Miracle, will be there as well as all of these people.
- Bragging rights for being at the first-ever SWOMfest.
Here's one more reason: Jackie and I will host a 45-minute conference call for the companies of each of the next 10 people who register. Just you and us. We can discuss your biggest or thorniest marketing challenge, how to create more customer evangelists, how to convince your boss about word of mouth, what color socks go with brown shoes... whatever you'd like.
Go register.
September 30, 2008, 01:24 PM
Social media as customer service
Some stats from a recent survey conducted about Americans who use social media sites and their interaction with business:
- 60% interact with companies using social media
- 93% say a company should have a presence in social media
- 85% say a company should not only be present but also interact with its customers via social media
- 56% say they feel a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment
- 43% say companies should use social networks to solve customers' problems
- 41% say companies should use social media to solicit feedback about products and services
(Source: 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study, from an online survey conducted Sept. 11-12, 2008 by Opinion Research Corporation among 1,092 adults comprising 525 men and 567 women 18 years of age and older. Margin of error +/- 3%.)
Social media is the new customer service. When social media-driven customer service is combined with the work of citizen marketers, it becomes a force for more credible problem-solving (and less expensive customer service costs). With its inherent market research opportunities, social media has crossed over to the category of obvious strategy.
Update: Nathan tracks real-time examples of one company's social media-driven customer support in the U.K. travel industry. If anything, the example company's responses on Twitter and a travel blog help neutralize skepticism and lightly tinged anger. With the right combination of empathy and problem-resolution, a customer vigilante is sometimes just a few degrees away from turning into a customer evangelist.
September 29, 2008, 04:20 PM
Why the bailout package failed
Here are the headlines from just two pages in today's Wall Street Journal:
- "Financial troubles humble U.S."
- "Tighter terms for car loans promise to deepen troubles for sluggish sales"
- "Jobless report likely to show gloom beyond Wall Street"
- "Rescue may not revive economy"
- "Bailout gives Fed, Bernanke key roles"
Those weren't even the front-page headlines.
Those headlines are a backdrop everyone can understand in this big and complicated story. Yet, today's historic vote in Congress for a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street failed on a vote of 228-205.
Why? One clear reason was the most important backdrop: the story of what the bailout would do. The most important story is always the first one. When we first learned about the bailout, the story we heard was that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would have unquestionable, czar-like authority (by a former head of a Wall Street firm, no less). There would be no review process or transparency about the administration of the program. There would be no (initial) curbs against Wall Street CEO pay, which everyone knows is outrageous and symptomatic of the greed that got us into this mess in the first place.
Those three story points stoked vast numbers of citizens to call their congressional representatives to reject the bailout, no matter how much the plan matured or was made more sane by Republicans and Democrats working together. (One report said calls to congressmen were averaging 100-1 against the bailout.)
Those initial three, easy-to-comprehend points reinforced the existing storyline we've come to know all too well the past eight years: rich, out-of-touch, transparency-unfriendly fat-cats who become bureaucrats, and vice versa, are manipulating the levers of power behind a cloak of secrecy to further enrich themselves. It's a storyline most of the American public has come to find revolting and, frankly, dangerous.
Maybe what this financial crisis will finally change about American business and government and the interplay between the two is the unquestionable need for transparency. A Google-friendly form of governance. Let's hope the secret-keepers in charge are finally, and forever, driven from power.
Update: Bob McTeer, former president of the Federal Reserve in Dallas, on why the vote failed:
Every "ordinary American" I talked to about the plan, including family and neighbors, misunderstood the plan and hated it. They viewed it as using their tax dollars to bail out rich corrupt Wall Street types. Despite repetition over and over on TV and in the press that the bailout did not involve ordinary government expenditures but involved a purchase of assets that would be resold, most likely at a profit, that message never sank in. The legislators faced almost unanimous negative feedback from their constituents.
Despite the repetition on TV and in the press (let's call it "the advertising"), the details of the revised bailout never sank in because the first story was the one everyone remembered.
The importance of the first story of a new company, product or initiative can never be overestimated. The first story is the benchmark. It's an encapsulation of greatness, evil or indifference. It's the context for word of mouth, which will almost certainly carry the most credibility.
September 24, 2008, 06:33 PM
Energy vs. quality
Singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, who sold 3 million copies of her album "Solitude Standing," on what it takes to create a hit:
Raw energy and great ideas spark the public interest better than attention to 'quality.'
So true when it comes to (many) new products and services.
September 19, 2008, 11:36 AM
I salute Crispin Porter + Bogusky
Talking about ad agencies and their campaigns is not a regular feature of this blog.
But I have to hand it to CP+B for its recent work with Microsoft, not for the ads -- for resetting expectations of Microsoft. Now, it seems, that Microsoft can take creative risks. Whoa. That'll stir people up!
The first set of ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates were so far out of left field that it was impossible for the big talkers in technology not to: 1. be excited or 2. be sanctimonious. You loved them, hated them, or were baffled by them. That made them polarizing, therefore a strong foundation-builder. (Note: they weren't offensive, the stereotypical route taken by stereotypical agencies to generate buzz.)
The next task: Reframe how your competition frames you. With a new series of ads, Microsoft has reframed Apple's "PC is a stereotype" frame. Take a look:
Now that Microsoft is sitting atop a big pile of word of mouth, is reframing the persona of what it means to be a PC user -- you're not a schlub anymore, as Apple would have you believe -- what next? After all, Microsoft products are still Microsoft products. New and magical unicorns aren't streaming out of Redmond.
Will it reframe conversations inside Microsoft?
Will it encourage Microsoft to take more risks, not with security, but with expectations?
Will it encourage Microsofties to defy convention and not be pummeled into submission?
Will it encourage Microsoft to understand the Apple user, not crucify them (which happened to me and Jackie on the Microsoft campus at the end of a workshop we were conducting!)?
I see this as a campaign to change both external and internal expectations.
Whatever the outcome, it's fascinating to watch the real-time evolution.
September 17, 2008, 02:05 PM
Five years later ...
In 2003, Al Bartholet took a big risk in launching Folk Alley, a web-based public radio station. Public radio is risk-averse, so Al put his reputation, and perhaps his career as a public radio station general manager, on the line by dedicating significant time and money into launching a new, grassroots-driven, online folk music station.
"There were plenty of naysayers who gave me dozens of reasons why we should not invest so much time and effort into what some called a distraction," he wrote yesterday, the station's fifth anniversary. "There was a point early on when [I received] a list of reasons why we shouldn't be moving forward."
Five years later, Folk Alley is thriving; it has accumulated $1 million in pledges, amassed a database of 90,000 listeners (unheard of in public radio) and has set the standard for web-based public radio in the United States. (Disclosure: I'd worked with Al and his crew to launch Folk Alley.)
Building word of mouth into the DNA of your organization involves breeding unconventional thinking, making unpopular decisions and taking more risks than usual. Bypassing the seductive gatekeepers of hierarchy and conformity are often the most difficult tasks.
September 16, 2008, 05:12 PM
When small is big
I'm sharing this video with you for two reasons:
- If you don't know the agency Brains on Fire already, you should.
- Small things can be big ideas without big bucks. Brains on Fire is sending several of its people to SWOMfest '08 next month and decided to buy an extra pass as a giveaway for one of their blog readers. They produced a short video about the giveaway. It could have been a safe and conventional video, but that's not how BoF works, which is why this I'm sharing this video.
Why customer rituals work
You may know I'm something of a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.
Every city I've called home, and many I've only visited, has had a bar where Steelers fans gather to watch our beloved team crush its unworthy competitors. (OK, I get a bit rambunctious when it comes to football.) Here in my relatively new home of Austin, I was happy to find a bar nominating itself as the local headquarters for Steelers fans.
The reality is, it's an OK place. There's one, lineman-sized difference between the Austin bar and the bar in Chicago where I previously worshiped every Sunday: A lack of rituals.
Rituals are the code of ceremonies observed by an organization. They are the shared experiences of a group. They create emotional glue. To an outsider, a ritual can be weird, wacky or just plain stupid. To people inside the organization, they may be metaphors for life, death, or renewal. For never-say-die Steelers fans, rituals can symbolize all of the above.
The lack of rituals at the Austin bar makes it simply a place to watch the game. It has low energy. It doesn't do anything to back up the claim of being headquarters -- or a "Stillers" church for the rest of us.
But at the Chicago Steelers bar (and others I've visited), the rituals were abundant:
- A live polka band playing the Steelers' fight song after scores
- Wiping one's feet on an opponent's jersey at the front entrance
- A gregarious fan leading the crowd in the "Here We Go Steelers" chant before crucial 3rd downs
- A ready supply of Terrible Towels to wave when the team makes a great play
- The wearing of Steelers jerseys, t-shirts, hats, earrings, etc.
- Serving Iron City beer (a Pittsburghian brew)
- Reserved tables for regulars
- Tailgating in the bar parking lot before games, just like at home
All rituals. All done regularly, no matter what, for it's repetition of rituals combined with emotional subtext that creates meaning. People will tell their friends and family about the rituals they experience when the context is right. That just leaves it up to an organization being open and brave enough to establish and follow rituals that's difficult, as my Austin bar proves every week.
For your business, have you devised rituals for your customer evangelists? What shared experiences allow them to build a worshipping foundation?
September 15, 2008, 08:01 AM
Your marketing mix
Marketing mix sounds like it could be a box item on a store shelf.
Yet for some reason, that's the familiar term among marketing veeps and managers when it comes to thinking about the coming year. (And it's about that time.)
Here's a great Fishburne cartoon to print out and include in your plan if the boss insists on using the same ol' mix that just doesn't work anymore.
September 12, 2008, 03:36 PM
Microsoft's reframing
There sure are a lot of "I don't get it" comments out there about Microsoft's ad campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. It's continuing today with the release of "episode two."
The comments are everywhere, especially among the tech bloggers, who tend to be driven by instantaneousness, not subtlety. Features are answers. Story is subtlety.
Yup, a lot of comments. Which is part of the point.
With the help of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Microsoft is in the process of reframing the discussion about Microsoft. It is building a new persona.
A persona isn't established by one commercial. Critics of the Gates/Seinfeld program are missing the point. After all, "Seinfeld" the TV show didn't become a lasting cultural force in the United States after a few episodes.
Microsoft is off to a good start with this new persona-building. But here's the real challenge: for Microsoft to have its products, processes and people authentically reflect the smart-ironic nerd concept it has successfully gotten people to talk about this week. Like "Seinfeld," that'll take years, too.
Have an important problem to solve
In researching the science of how things replicate and spread, I've spent time time catching up with the work of Dr. James Watson who, with Francis Crick, discovered the structure of DNA in 1955, eventually earning the duo the Nobel Prize.
Dr. Watson could easily be a consultant about success. He gave a fascinating talk at Google last year and began with "a few reasons why we became famous."
In the interest of replication and spreading his knowledge, here's my summary of Dr. Watson's prescription for work:
1. Have an important problem to solve.
While in college, Watson saw an x-ray photograph of DNA. It captivated him. What was its physical structure? The two-dimensional structure of DNA had already been solved, but no one knew its three-dimensional structure "probably because it was too complicated." Except for Linus Pauling and "some people in London," no one else was working on the answer. That was the motivation Watson and Crick used. "We worked on something before it's time had come," Watson says.
2. Give yourself time, but cap it.
The choreographer Twyla Tharp says the paradox of creativity is that it's better when it's restricted. That squares with Watson's teaching, too. "You shouldn't work on a problem if you think it'll take you 10 years, particularly when you're young. You'll be out of a job." Watson recommends giving yourself three years to solve a big or important problem. "People will sort of of trust you and put up with you for three years," he says.
3. Talk to your competitors.
The x-ray of DNA that inspired Watson was taken by Rosalind Franklin. She was trying to figure out the 3-D structure of DNA, too, but she didn't want to work with Watson and Crick. "She didn't like Francis because he was loud." Plus, Franklin wanted to discover the structure herself. Watson and Crick reached out to their competitors; "you tell them what you think, and they'll tell you what they think and pretty soon, you can get very close to the answer."
4. Never be the brightest person in any room.
If you are, no one can help you. Neither Watson or Crick knew chemistry, even though it was at the heart of what they were trying to solve. Watson had copied diagrams out of a chemistry textbook, but the textbook was wrong. If he and Crick hadn't made friends with a quantum chemist who helped them with their chemistry equations, they never would have discovered the double helix, Watson says. The lesson is that "It was very useful for me to be brought up thinking I wasn't bright because it was very easy then to ask for help."
5. If you need help, ask for it quickly.
"Don't wait a week to ask for help!" Speed matters. After all, you only have three years.
September 05, 2008, 08:11 AM
Customer vigilantes take it to the streets
Zane shares an example of how far customer vigilantes will go to spread bad word of mouth about a company that refuses to resolve a problem.
He took this picture near his home in Iowa. He passes the sign every day, which reminds him to not hire the company in question.
Today, what starts as a local issue can blossom into a PR nightmare via Google and its voracious feeder system, social media.
September 02, 2008, 03:03 PM
SWOMfest: Live DJ, beer and the '80s
Here's some of the stuff we're announcing today for SWOMfest '08 to make our first-annual business conference unlike any other business conference:
- Pre-conference '80s party. SWOMfest '08 is during Halloween week, so we'll blind ourselves with costume party science on Wednesday, Oct. 29, the night before SWOMfest. The pre-conference party theme? The '80s. Bring your Devo energy dome and leg warmers. We'll have prizes for best costume. Then we'll adjourn to see the best '80s cover band ever, the Spazmatics.
- Live DJ. DJ Mel is a turntablist in the purest form of the art; the party rocker. Renowned as one of the most prolific djs in the business due to his wildly popular Rock the Casbah 80s parties, DJ Mel recently returned to Austin from a gig at Lollapalooza 2008 in Chicago. DJ Mel will be spinning all day at SWOMfest. Yup, a DJ at a business conference!
- Beer all day. The gonzo guys at Flying Dog Brewery will provide their spectacular craft brews THROUGHOUT the conference. Inspired by Hunter S. Thompson, with labels by renowned artist Ralph Steadman and a tagline of "Good Beer, No Shit," Flying Dog Brewery is a word-of-mouth case study all its own.
- WOM Weekend. There's more word of mouth stuff happening in Austin than you can shake a blog at. That's why we'll provide SWOMfest attendees a guide to the many fun and interesting things happening in Austin the weekend that follows SWOMfest, including Halloween on 6th Street, the Cathedral of Junk, Airstream Cuisine (yes, gourmet food out of trailers) and a 2,000-person version of the Thriller Dance.
People learn more when they're having fun, which is why SWOMfest will be unlike any other business conference. Register here before it sells out.
August 26, 2008, 05:53 AM
10 questions with Tom Fishburne
Tom Fishburne is the Gary Larson of marketing: He creates cartoons that lampoon the often-ridiculous nature of business processes and marketing.
His inspiration is his work as a marketer at companies like General Mills, Nestle and home-product manufacturer Method Products, where he currently resides as senior marketing director of Europe.
His new book, "This One Time at Brand Camp," is a collection of his work from 2005-2008 (and features a foreword from CotC blogger Jackie Huba). We sat down with Tom (virtually) and tossed a basketful of questions at him.
Q: What's the biggest challenge in being a brand manager today?
Remarkable thinking. Then shepherding that thinking through the organizational gates. Too often the edges of a great idea get sanded, eventually launching as a pale shadow of the original idea.
I love this quote from Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad: "Advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking."
Q: What's the biggest trap most brand managers stupidly fall into?
The mass market trap. Chasing market size. Trying to appeal to everyone and avoiding alienating anyone. By trying to appeal to everyone, no one gets excited.
In my past brand lives, we joked that our target was "a woman, age 25–39, with a pulse." Instead, if you cater to a passionate and vocal niche, you become more meaningful. Consumer loyalty follows. Niche marketing isn't just for small brands. General Mills does a great job of training marketers to find and truly understand your niche's brand champions. You create your products and marketing just for them. When you do, much of the mass market will follow, too.
Q: A central theme among many of your cartoons is the fear of standing out. From your experience at various companies, who typically is the driver in the race to be average -- an internal person/department or a force outside the company, such as Wall Street?
The fear of standing out mainly comes from inside the company. When I started at General Mills, a big product launch called Wahoos had just failed. Many people who worked on it had been let go. That created the Wahoos hangover: If someone suggested a risky idea in a meeting, someone else would say "we don't want another Wahoos." Most companies have their own version of a Wahoos hangover.
When I was at General Mills and Nestle I tacked this quote over my desk from Doug Hall: "Don't be afraid to take risks. Corporations have an amazing array of checks, balances, and safety nets to prevent you from hitting the wall at ninety miles an hour. Be bold and brash. Develop a reputation for it."
Q: How serious is the disconnect when brand managers work 12-16 months on product then, because of the nature of the employment game, move on to a new one? How can you build customer loyalty with such a short timeframe?
It's like that game of telephone we all played in kindergarten. A departing brand manager whispers their insights and brand plan to the replacement, much of which gets lost in the transition. Often the replacement brand manager starts from scratch with research and navel-gazing. As soon as the replacement brand manager gets a feel for the job, they move on, and the telephone game continues.
When I was starting out, I loved the quick transitions because I got exposure to different situations. But it's not great for creating customer loyalty. It sands the edges. It can feel like a different brand incarnation each year. A lot of hard work gets lost in the revolving door.
Q: Provide us, if you will, a brief, state of the union report on retailing today.
Retailing is in flux with the credit crunch. It will make consumers think hard about their brand choices. If a brand has proven that it is meaningful, it will continue to do well. If not, its true colors will be exposed. This is an acid test for meaningful brands.
Q: Who typically has the more insanely inflated ego: marketers or professional wrestlers?
Most of the marketers I've worked with have been down-to-earth. That's why I think ego inflation comes from hierarchy.
For instance, when I was at General Mills, all of the executives worked in a separate wing that even had its own parking garage we called the Bat Cave (where all the Jaguars went to park). They had a different dress code in the executive wing and there was very little mixing. The hierarchy was reinforced at every turn. As you progressed in marketing, you moved from a cubicle to something called an "officle" to eventually an office. You could tell the seniority of someone with an office by counting the number of ceiling tiles. I remember an official memo that stated that marketers above a certain level were entitled to leather Filofax binders. Everyone else received pleather. I swear I'm not making this up.
All of this resulted in a medical condition I call Title-itis, where it was assumed that the more senior the marketer, the better their ideas. It's tempting to start breathing your own exhaust in an environment like that.
I love the idea of a "No Holds Barred Title Bout World Marketing Federation Cage Match."
Q: Did your cartoon work help or hinder your landing at Method?
I joined method thanks to my cartoons (tell that to my high school guidance counselor). I discovered method in 2003 and was inspired by the impact they were making with such a small team. Then, I discovered that Eric Ryan, their co-founder, was getting my cartoon each week. So, I drew a cartoon on method comparing them to Apple and their famous "1984" ad where they took on IBM as Big Brother. That was my cover letter. When I actually joined the company a few years later, I told Eric that my last boss often said that if he ever ended up in a cartoon that I would be fired. Eric responded that if he didn't end up in a cartoon that I would be fired.
My cartoons often lampoon the type of business absurdities I try to exploit in my day job working with method as a challenger brand. Many of my cartoons are used around the company, in presentations on our strategy and even in our handbook. Eric often pings me with an idea that he wants to communicate. I'm pretty candid though, so I often cover topics in my cartoons if I think we're making a wrong call, steering in the wrong direction, or becoming too process-driven.
Q: What's your marketing mix for Method?
Eric once calculated that our competitors literally spend more on employee toilet paper than we do on advertising. We can't outspend them. So we think about everything we do as a form of marketing and that everyone in the company works in marketing. We believe in marketing from the inside out, so we start with a transparent culture. We tell our story through products that we take pains to ensure are remarkable and worth sharing. The next ingredient is relationship retail, where retailers help tell the story in-store by breaking category rules to shelf all of our products together as a lifestyle statement (think Apple store).
Next is how we talk with consumers. We don't outsource anything to a call center, because those who take the time to call or email you are exactly the ones you want to talk with directly. In the UK, the phone number on the bottles literally bounce around the office to everyone in the office, so we're all talking to consumers every week, which is really powerful. We spend a lot of time directly talking with a core group of our consumers we call advocates. We're over-generous with them, giving them lots of samples so they share our story with others.
Then, and only then, do we get to traditional awareness and trial tactics. Because we can't compete on advertising spend, we come up with ideas that let us break through the clutter in different ways. One way is to think of our brand as content. Where others focus on "paid media," we think "earned media." We focus heavily on PR; for instance, we just wrote a book called "Squeaky Green," which is a guide to a healthy home. It's not an infomercial (the only time it mentions the method brand is the cover), but it helps show a lifestyle and tell a philosophy. It's marketing that consumers actually pay us to read.
We've also started renting our own retail space to help tell our story in 3-D. Our first pop-up shop was in 2005, when we realized it was less expensive to open a temporary store than to run a billboard ad. So, we built a store to reach a few consumers in a deep way. So far, we've reached consumers this way in San Francisco, New York, Boston, London, and soon Chicago.
Q: How does Method plan for word of mouth?
We start with a story that is worth sharing. I'm amazed how many companies neglect this critical piece, and layer on a social media program as if it's just another FSI or shopping cart ad. The most important filter of everything we do is whether or not it will inspire people to talk about us. We know that it's working when we find consumers like Nathan, who created an entire blog devoted to method.
To help get the word out, we have a separate tier of consumers we call advocates that we've hand-picked from their interactions with us. We're overgenerous to these advocates. We send them a welcome kit with a cool t-shirt and a few pass-along kits to share with their friends. And then we keep talking with them to let them know first about what we're doing.
Q: Is branding dead and if so, where do we bury the body?
Your question inspired this week's cartoon.
I don't think branding is extinct. It's evolved. I used the evolution metaphor to play with a couple stereotypes in the noble profession of marketing.
Doctors have Hippocrates. Lawyers have Atticus Finch. Ask most consumers what archetypes there are for marketers and the snakeoil salesman comes to mind. That's because much of the history of marketing and branding has been about concocting a story consumers wanted to hear, even if the story was a wee bit phony. Charles Revson, founder of Revlon, famously quipped: "In our factories, we make cosmetics. In the store, we sell hope."
Nowadays, consumers are often in the marketer's seat. Consumers have always been the best source for what your brand means. The power used to be with the marketer to sculpt and shape that message. The question to ask now is no longer how your consumers play back the message you told them. It's what message are they spreading to others.
The key is to tell an authentic brand story (but careful that you don't overdo that like the authenticity hawker in the cartoon). Then find ways to help your consumers advocate on your behalf.
Tom's book is released next month; if you'd like an early-edition copy of the book, post a comment by 5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 29 in a Society for Word of Mouth forum dedicated to the ideas that Tom discusses in this Q&A and in his book. We'll draw five random winners from those who've posted a comment. In the forum, you can also see more of Tom's work.
August 25, 2008, 12:47 PM
It's the niches, stupid
To sponsor, or not to sponsor. Always a gamble, especially in the emerging media world of bloggers and "influencers," a concept of questionable merit.
The gossip blog Valleywag, as is its custom, takes a pretty simplistic view of the idea: "Why Sponsoring Bloggers is a Waste of Money." Its single piece of evidence: Seagate's sponsorship of tech blogger Robert Scoble. Because the hard drive maker's stock price is down 35 percent, its sponsorship of Scoble is deemed a failure. As if stock price is a metric of sponsorship success.
These days, sponsorship for most companies is a port into a niche audience, of reaching out to the audience of geeks and nerds of an industry-within-an-industry. It's a multi-level bet based on credibility at a super-niche level. Scoble's a smart geek but hardly anyone would qualify him as a knowledgeable expert about hard drives. That's an industry-within-an-industry.
Today's super-niche sponsorship principle applies to any industry. After spending millions sponsoring Tiger Woods, GM finally realized he can't sell Buicks. He's not a credible car geek. GM kicked Woods upstairs to corporate marketing, which will probably employ him behind the scenes as a draw at events for dealers and suppliers, which is a far better investment.
Sponsoring bloggers is a matter of the right company sponsoring the right blogger at the right time. For your product or service, sponsor the super-geek bloggers who've built their credibility around the category and live, breathe and die by it.
August 19, 2008, 03:00 PM
eBay and the nuclear option
I decided to sell my iPhone on eBay last week. I just got the new 3G one. Bids were going well and the auction ended today. Just as I was about to invoice the winner, eBay sent me this email:
We recently learned that someone was using an account to bid on items without the account owner's permission. For this reason, we have canceled all bids on the following listing:
160271650734 - iPhone 2G 8GB 2.0 great condtion
All associated fees have been credited to your account. Please note that we're working with the account owner to prevent any additional unauthorized activity.
Unfortunately, we're not able to automatically relist the above item for you. To relist the item, you'll need to use either the Sell Your Item process on eBay, or another listing service.
If you have any concerns or questions, you can contact us by clicking "Help" at the top of any eBay page.
We're sorry for any inconvenience, and we thank you for your patience and cooperation.
Sincerely,
eBay Customer Support
Good that eBay spotted suspicious activity. Bad that it deleted my entire listing. To relist my phone, I must start over. From scratch. Too bad for me, even if I had nothing to do with what went wrong.
eBay's reaction -- to cancel all bids, and delete my listing -- is typical among companies that rank cost savings above customer service. Let's call it the Nuclear Option: Protect the company with a companywide onerous rule or process, even if it inconveniences many people.
Some companies favor the nuclear option because they've quantified it as cheaper than delivering personalized service or diplomacy.
But the long-term costs for the nuclear option are significant. Home Depot CEO Frank Blake has had to spend the majority of his tenure cleaning up the radioactive waste left by former CEO Bob Nardelli and his repeated use of the nuclear option, whether it was trying to save labor costs by converting a big chunk of full-time workers to part-time, removing $1 billion of store inventory or spending billions on catering to professional contractors rather than its core customer base. All of which did nothing for the stock price and yet devastated employee and customer loyalty. Good combo!
I'm but one example; have you experienced other uses of the nuclear option at eBay?
August 14, 2008, 10:54 PM
Barack and Roll
You've heard of "rickrolling," the Internet meme for the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up."
Now you can BarackRoll your friends with a mashup of Barack Obama and the infamous Astley song. Even McCain supporters will like it.
August 11, 2008, 02:34 PM
Pictures and storytelling
This remarkable photograph today by Joao Silva of the New York Times is visual storytelling at its best.
The eyes of the man in the taupe shirt bore into us. He's protecting another obviously frightened man on the ground, surrounded by concerned beefy men, some of whom are wearing flack jackets, some not.
A black automatic weapon points downward to the crouched man, highlighting the obvious danger present.
The sprig of a bush in the foreground ironically contrasts against the man-made weaponry nearby.
Finally, a camera lens in the lower left-hand corner is cinema-verite, of being there with others, as it's happening.
Silva's photo documents the unfolding drama in Georgia, as it and Russia square off in a real battle of life and death. Georgia's president was rushed to the ground by his bodyguards when a jet flew very close overhead.
But what Silva's Pulitzer-quality photo really shows is a major fight involving power, fear and determination. It draws us into the story, making it easier for us to understand and talk about.
Great photos come from a substantial investment in telling the story, no matter what it is.
Announcing SWOMfest
Jackie and I are excited to announce SWOMfest '08, an annual event for the members and friends of the Society for Word of Mouth, our lil' ol' social network dedicated to helping companies and brands build word of mouth and customer evangelism into the DNA of their organization.
We plan to make SWOMfest about the building blocks of grassroots-driven word of mouth. It'll be about understanding the culture and science of networks. About creating a buzzworthy company purpose. About telling the story of your company or product in a way that makes it easy for others to spread it.
Here's a quick Q&A:
Where and when is it?
SWOMfest '08 will be at the Long Center for the Arts, a beautiful, new facility in the heart of funky-cool Austin, Texas, ranked as the most-creative city in the United States. There's more word of mouth stuff happening here than you can shake a blog at. The date is Oct. 30, 2008, starting at 9 AM and lasts all day. We will get together Wednesday. Oct. 29 a a local Austin watering hole the night before, so book your travel accordingly.
Who should attend?
- People who believe that word of mouth should be built into the DNA of their business
- Busy entrepreneurs striving for long-term, organic growth
- Marketers in small, medium or large businesses who want a deeper understanding of building word of mouth into their product, services, departments and organizations
So what am I going to learn, dude?
We'll divide SWOMfest into three blocks:
- Discovering your company's purpose: Are you in business to make money or change the world? You'll get an inside look at how companies and brands with a strong purpose and cause inspire buzz and evangelism.
- Telling your company's story: How can you tell the story of your company, or product, in a way that makes it easy for others to spread it? We'll venture beyond the realm of traditional PR and give you the tools to think about building and telling a buzzworthy story.
- Understanding networks and communities: Paying people to secretly spread buzz within networks is unethical. Some say it's evil. It's against the law in some countries. How, then, does your company's purpose and story spread through networks and communities? In this session, we'll jump into the science of information flow among networks and how communities coalesce toward action.
Are sponsorships available?
Absolutely. Contact Jackie at (512) 495-9707 for more information.
How much and how many seats?
Attendance is limited to 200. Cost is $325 but a limited number of seats are available for $199 and $229.
And I register where?
Right here!
August 07, 2008, 01:27 PM
What should Whole Foods do?
Yesterday, Whole Foods had a bad day. It reported third-quarter profits of $33.9 million, a 31% decline from the previous year. Sales growth at stores open more than one year slowed to 2.6%, down from 6.7%.
It plans to reduce the number of new store openings by nearly 50% and suspend its 20-cent quarterly dividend.
Yikes.
Whole Foods is known for quality products and high prices, so it recently started a "Great Deal" campaign that aims to show people how Whole Foods can be economical. It's hosting "Value Tours" in stores to help customers find the best deals on products.
Is that enough? Is it time for Whole Foods to bite the bullet and lower prices? (My co-author says they should, but primarily on the products where Whole Foods competes with the discount stores.)
What should Whole Foods do now, if anything?
UPDATE: The Austin American-Statesman did a price-comparison with other Austin supermarkets and found that Whole Foods is more competitive on price than expected, with some exceptions.
August 06, 2008, 02:37 PM
"See you at the debates, bitches"
When you get called out, as Paris Hilton recently was by a political ad that tried to paint her and Barack Obama in unflattering light, you have three options:
- Ignore it and hope it goes away. Might happen, but Google never forgets.
- Profess your outrage. Then you risk stoking the fires of others who like to pile on to drama.
- Cleverly make fun of yourself and the situation. Bonus: come up with a catchphrase that trumps the trumper.
Paris Hilton followed option three with this video, which has now been seen 3 million times. Of course she employed the bonus of option three, which is "See you at the debates, bitches."
As Mark Cuban once said, everything he knows about PR he learned from Paris Hilton.
August 04, 2008, 11:23 AM
Apologize or not?
Regular readers may know I'm a big fan of J.Crew, the apparel retailer.
My affection deepened with this email. I didn't know the company was having problems with the website, but a quick Google search showed people having issues. Bad word of mouth from mistakes spreads quickly when others experience it simultaneously.
Mickey Drexler and Tracy Gardner effectively dumped a big load of neutralizer on the spread of bad buzz, and they set expectations for anyone else who might run into the problem. They didn't do it behind a cloak of corporate anonymity or force a spokesperson to absorb the hit.
To admit a mistake is to humanize your company.
Then, of course, work like crazy to fix the problem. Go overboard in making things right. That can turn the spell of bad word of mouth into good buzz.
BONUS LINK: A great discussion on SWOM is about the in's and out's of apologizing to customers for mistakes.
July 28, 2008, 06:57 PM
Customer evangelism case study: TOMS Shoes
Here's a customer evangelism case study in the making: TOMS Shoes.
TOMS was founded in 2006 by Blake Mycoskie, a former contestant of "The Amazing Race" who was inspired by the low-cost alpargatas (espadrille-type shoes) during a trip to Argentina.
His idea was to bring alpargatas to the U.S. and give them a fashion makeover.
Blake was also struck by scenes of poverty in Argentina; so he launched TOMS based on the premise of giving away a pair of shoes to shoeless children in third-world countries for each pair he sold.
So far, he's sold 200,000 shoes and given away the same number. He's struck licensing deals with Ralph Lauren and distribution deals with all sorts of department stores and retailers like Whole Foods (where I first saw TOMS last month). Blake has also created an evangelistic following; one restaurant chain in New York outfits all of its servers with TOMS because of the cause.
TOMS Shoes has buzz for a variety of reasons, which include:
- An uncommon product amidst of sea of commonality.
- A simple, yet inspiring story that's easy to tell and therefore spread.
- An accessible and well-spoken leader who'll tell the story to anyone who'll listen.
- A strong culture of participation among employees and customers that's ingrained into the DNA of the company.
JJ Ramberg of MSNBC has an excellent piece on the magic behind TOMS.
