Category Archives: Customer Relationships

The Cult of Technology

We held our B2B Expert Face-to-Face event yesterday in Redwood Shores, CA. Yes, we asked people to drive to the west side of the bay the same day the Bay Bridge was closed. Needless to say, it impacted our attendance somewhat. But it was also a smaller, more intimate opportunity to really talk about the challenges common in B2B digital marketing. The common themes that emerged what a tendency to “peg” search as direct response marketing, the realization that B2B is slower to adopt digital than B2C, the difficulties presented by the fragmentation of the B2B marketplace and why we’ve tended to silo off our digital strategies from the rest of our marketing. Most of the discussion came from the findings of the BuyerSphere Project, the extensive research we conducting into B2B buying behaviors.

Every timeI talk to a group of assembled search marketers, I can’t help but feel the palpable frustration in the air. The gulf between those that understand digital (particularly search) and those that don’t can seem impossible to bridge. We feel tied down by those within our organization that seem mired in the old way of doing things. Why the hell can’t everyone see the world as clearly as we can. Also, I mentioned that as marketers, we tend to focus too much on technology and not enough on the people that interact with that technology. Few companies invest in qualitative research As we chatted at the Hotel Sofitel In Redwood Shores, a thought struck me. One on the problems may be that we’re all too much alike. We’re suffering from cultural homogeneity.

If you look at most elements of human nature, there it a typical normal distribution curve, otherwise known as the Bell Curve. The majority of the population clusters around the mean, at the center of the curve. As you move further out, you have more deviation from the mean. The diversity of us humans: whether it be intelligence, wealth, behaviors, physical abilities or size, tends to spread out on this curve.

bell_curve

The same is true, as Everett Rogers discovered, about how quickly we adopt technology or (one supposes) adapts to change. His technology diffusion curve followed the typical Bell Curve model. A few of us adopt technology almost as soon as it becomes available. A few of us avoid adopting technology until it becomes common place for everyone else. The vast majority of us fall somewhere in the middle.

technology diffusion
But what happens when you’re constantly surrounded by people at one spot on the curve? What if everyone you knew had an IQ of 123, or you lived in a town where everyone was 6 feet 3 inches tall? Soon, you’d fall into the trap of thinking this represented the norm. If you never saw diversity, you’d start to forget that it exists.

This is almost never a healthy state of an affairs. A common ideology amongst the heads of Nazi Germany lead to a drive for cultural homogeneity. The unbelievable wealth that surrounded the French aristocracy (or the Russian, for that matter) led to revolts of the masses. History has not proved to be kind to groups that are too much alike in one aspect. At best, this homogeneity gives you a skewed view of the world that may cause you to make decisions that don’t map well to the general population.

And that, I realized on Wednesday morning, may be exactly what is happening to us digital marketers. We are in this business because we all love technology. We are all classic early adopters, lying at least one (and I suspect closer to two) standard deviations from the norm, here at the thin leading edge of the Bell curve. And because we are surrounded by others like us, we start to lose sight of what the large bulge in the middle is doing. We chase technology with an obsession worth of sex starved teenagers. Every digital marketer I know has a smart phone. More than half the digital marketers I know have iPhones. If you travel in the same circles as I, you would soon think that everyone has an iPhone. Yet the iPhone market share in the US is  still only 11% (although it’s growing quickly). Like I said, we live on thin edge of the curve.

I think this skewed view of the world makes us exactly the wrong people to be planning digital marketing strategies aimed at the general public. We live in a cult of technology. We’ve forgotten how the common person lives with their hopelessly antiquated mobile phone and without a Linked In profile that includes at least 500 connections. There are many, many people out there who have never Tweeted, don’t have a blog and are unsure what RSS means. They include almost all my relatives. Yet we never seem to take them into account where we’re salivating over the latest strategy for generating buzz on social networks.

So, how does a digital marketer keep their perspective when they’re so far removed from normality? They have to become digital anthropologists. They have to live with their prospects, watching them in their daily routines. They have to discover the way we were meant to discover, by watching other people, helping us to understand and empathasize with them. Evolution has equipped us with some very subtle tools for understanding other people when we’re face-to-face with them. To my knowledge, however, it hasn’t given us an inherent ability to generate pivot tables in Excel. Maybe we should spend more time doing what we were meant to do: hang around with real humans instead of technology.

The Persuasive Power of Face to Face

First published April 30, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Think of the most persuasive person you know. The salesperson you can’t say no to, your mother (guilt always works), your spouse or your six-year-old child.  Now, imagine if you had never met the person in person and they were trying to persuade you over the phone, or by email. Would they be as persuasive? No. Persuasion just don’t work as well if you’re not face to face

Hardwired for Face to Face

Robert Cialdini wrote an entire book on the “Psychology of Persuasion.” He explains the hot buttons that get pushed, moving us toward doing something we might not otherwise have done. But if you look through all the persuasion buttons, one thing is true: they all work much better when you’re face to face.

Let’s take just one: reciprocity. Reciprocity, you scratching my back and me scratching yours, is a gut instinct for us. In fact, many of our treasured social institutions, including economic markets and the justice system, are based on our emotional connection to the concepts of reciprocity and fairness. Every single major faith has its own variation of the Golden Rule, which is reciprocity enshrined. But reciprocity is far more potent if the social conditions are set up in person. Political scientist Robert Putnam calls this “thick trust” as opposed to the “thin trust” represented by anonymous rules, law and mores. Study after study shows that even a simple act of giving makes the recipient feel indebted. Something as basic as asking how someone’s day is going makes one feel indebted and more likely to give something back. It’s one of the most powerful persuasion buttons you can push.

Another inherent human trait is empathy. We have an amazing ability to pick up on the emotions of others. We have a special type of neuron, called mirror neurons, that seem to be the seat of empathy. Mirror neurons explain why emotions can be contagious, why monkeys that see tend to be monkeys that do — and why, when you’re talking with someone, you find yourself subconsciously mimicking their actions or even their accent. Mirror neurons aren’t found in every animal. So far, they’ve been discovered in just a few primates, including us humans. Mirror neurons may be why the more you like someone, the more empathetic you are, leaving you more open to persuasion

What This Means for Selling Online

Somewhere along the line, face-to-face contact seemed to be considered superfluous in our new online world. We moved to virtual sales, commerce transacted at a distance, electronically, with nary a handshake, a wink, a smile or an eye roll to be seen. In theory, it should work, but in practice, it leaves a lot to be desired. We were not designed to communicate electronically. We can and do adapt to it, but like any instrument designed for a specific purpose, things just work better when we do what we were made to do. And we were made to connect with others in person.

We’re in the middle of an extensive research project exploring B2B buying and decision-making, and this lack of human contact in online sales strategies proved to be a huge obstacle to success. B2B buying is all about building trust and eliminating risk. It’s pretty difficult to build trust with someone you’ve never met. That’s not to say that electronic communication isn’t effective, but the social foundations have to be built in person. Research has shown that on Facebook, the vast majority of close “friends” that people keep are all people they know and have met face to face. You can find ideological common ground with someone over the Net, but the bonding happens when you can look in their eye and read their body language.

Face to Face in Florida

This is particularly timely with the Search Insider Summit coming up next week. I’ve found in my 13 years in this industry that my enduring friendships are always forged face to face. I knew of David Berkowitz or Aaron Goldman prior to meeting them, even admired their points of view, but I didn’t create a relationship with them until we spent some time together at a Summit. Many of the industry relationships that remain important to me were first forged at an event. Many of the most positive comments we consistently hear from the Summits are about the opportunities provided to bond and network.

Last week, I said one of the most important things we as search marketers could do was to focus on what happens after the click and improve the onsite experience. This week, I add to that. Also remember that trust is built face to face. Look at online as a way to extend and leverage those face to face encounters, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking a cold mouse is a substitute for a warm handshake.

Looking for the Future? Look for Chaos, not Stability

First published March 19, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

This week, someone asked me about sustainable business models in the Internet.  Earlier the same day, another person asked me about defensible models. Both questions left me perplexed. I wasn’t trying to avoid them. I just didn’t know how to answer. So, some 48 hours later, I offer this column as a somewhat belated response. It isn’t an answer, as I’m still just as perplexed. But now at least I know why.

So why are people asking about defensible and sustainable business models on the Internet? Well, if there’s one thing the Internet has done, it’s brought sky-high valuations back to earth. So, investors doing what investors do, they’re suddenly looking for “bargain” companies that have mature business models and trial-tested management.  Hence the quest for sustainability and defensibility. Reasonable, right? It certainly makes sense if you’re going shopping for a private equity fund. But in the last two days, I’ve decided it’s almost exactly the wrong question to ask. It’s like looking for dry ground in a tsunami: it may give you some temporary peace of mind, but don’t count on it to last long.

The Quarter Century Electric Switch

Nicholas Carr’s book, “The Big Switch,”  ties the development of the Internet to a previous discontinuous innovation, the electrification of America. In it, he provides a fascinating recount of the unsung visionary who laid the foundations of the power grid we take for granted today, Samuel Insull.  Insull started as Thomas Edison’s clerk, but soon split with his mentor in his vision of the future of electricity. Edison, for all his brilliance, was thinking too small. He was concentrated on building individual DC generators for industrial applications. Insull saw the promise of a ubiquitous power supply, centrally generated and then distributed. It is Insull, not Edison, who is responsible for the power receptacle that probably sits no more than 10 feet away from you right now.

In the very earliest days of electricity, one would have been a fool not to choose Edison as the forerunner, the candidate most likely to carve a business out of the new frontier. His innovations harnessed electricity and made it usable.

But if you had bet on Edison to provide a sustainable model, you would have lost. It was Tesla’s AC standard, not Edison’s DC, that proved to be the one adopted. And it was Insull’s vision of electricity as a utility that changed our world.

The idea was simply too big for one man. And it was bringing all the implications of that idea together that proved to be the true agent of change. It launched a shift in American (and global) lifestyles that Edison never envisioned.  But from the initial stages in the final years of the 19th century, that shift took three decades to be fully realized. It took the building of new infrastructure, the development of new industries and the adoption of certain ways of doing things. It took thousands of visionaries, not one, to realize the significance of harnessing electricity.  Imagine then the impossible task of finding a defensible, sustainable business model for electricity in 1895. In hindsight, it’s clearly laughable to even attempt such a thing. But today, we’re trying to do exactly that with the Internet.

Fragmented Functionality

There is one big difference between the Internet and electricity. An electrical appliance is an electrical appliance. Its functionality is usually independent. A blender doesn’t become more useful if you also plug in a toaster. But the Internet lives on mashups and APIs. Apps can become exponentially more powerful if they plug into other apps.

Today, the Internet is a fragmented place. Functionality lies across the grid in a million different shards and chunks. Some of these are larger than others. Search is a particularly large one. And today, we’re just beginning to explore how all this functionality can come together.  The infrastructure has been laid. The grid has been built. Now it’s time to start plugging in apps and see how they can work together. If you think the last decade brought discontinuous change, wait til you see what the next decade has in store. We’re just getting ready to take the Net for a spin and see what it can do.

I’ve come to realize that there’s no such thing as revolutionary change. It only appears so when you look at it in a historical perspective. Instead, there  are tipping points of incremental change. Every supposedly revolutionary development was built on the back of hundreds of other developments. Cumulatively, they indeed change everything, but each development could never have happened without its supporting cast. It wasn’t Edison’s development of the incandescent light bulb that lit up America. It was a thousand developments, by Faraday, Golvani, Ohm, Volta and many others. Each one pushed us closer to the tipping point. When we reach it, we step forward, never to look back.

Back to the Original Question

To return to the beginning: What is a sustainable, defensible business strategy online? I have no idea. I don’t think such a thing exists. For all the excitement, for all the promise, there are no sure bets. The two concepts are incompatible. You’ll have to pay your money and take your chances. To cause investors even more discomfort, almost all innovation comes from small start-ups. They far outpace the level of innovation coming out of corporate America. So if you’re looking to capitalize on the growth of the Internet, don’t look for stability. It’s the wrong place to look.

Brand Religion: A Reading from the Book of Skittles

First published March 5, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

There’s something about Tuesdays. Just when I’m starting to think about what my Thursday column is going to be about, something hits my inbox that seems freakishly timely. This time, it was David Berkowitz’s ode to Skittles.com. My intention was to write about brand religions playing out online, and here, in all its gory, real-time splendor, was a parable made to order. It would be unseemly, not to mention unfaithful, not to read the signs from above and pick up this story thread so graciously thrown in front of me.

Now, let’s get the Skittle Scuttlebutt out of the way, as more has transpired since the last time David spoke. As David said, Skittles.com is no longer a site, but a Flash navigation bar that hovers over live feeds from other Skittles-oriented online destinations. Originally, the home page was a live Twitter Feed, but the ignoble masses had the temerity to use the Skittles name in vain, so that idea was scuttled and the TweetFest was moved back to a section called “Chatter.” Now the home page is a feed of the Wikipedia entry (which has been updated to include the story, so it’s like a never-ending feedback loop). You can also visit the brand’s Facebook “Friends” page. There are some massive usability issues, but that aside, nobody can scoff at Skittles for a lack of courage.  It remains to be seen how successful this is, but the fact is, almost 600,000 fans have signed up on Facebook, and the brand has generated huge buzz.
So, what is a parable for, if not to learn from? And here are 10 commandments for every brand who fancies themselves a religion, if they have the courage to go where Skittles has gone:

1.    Thou Shalt Not Expect Everyone to Believe. As was shown in the Skittles case, if you choose to live by the Social Media Sword, understand you can also die by the Social Media Sword. Opening up the conversation to your believers also means you open the doors to the non-faithful, who will take every opportunity to express themselves.

2.    Thou Shalt Not Build Your Own Churches. Believers like to build their own churches and not have the brand build it for them. This is almost never successful. Skittles is trying to find middle ground by using their site as a shortcut to a few online destinations that help define the online image of Skittles. It’s an interesting move, but I believe it will ultimately be a short-lived one. For one thing, it’s confusing as hell.

3.    Thou Shalt Have No Illusions of Control. If a brand goes down this path, they have to accept (everyone, repeat after me — and that means you, Mr/Ms CEO) that by opening the door to the masses, they abdicate all control. If Skittles.com turns sour, all Skittles can do is pull the plug on their official endorsement. The buzz will outlive the campaign and take on a life of its own.

4.    Thou Shalt Understand the Web is a Fragmented Place. What is interesting about the Skittles experiment is that it’s a tentative acknowledgement that the sum total of a brand lives in many places online. The idea of defining the boundary within one Web site is long dead.

5.    Thou Shalt Honor Thy Product. You have to have a pretty damn popular product to take this step. There’s probably nothing more innocuous than Skittles (who could hate a little fruit candy?) and yet some still managed to spout bile all over this little social media stunt. The more beloved the product (and the company behind it), the more secure you can be in letting your fans be your spokesperson.

6.    Thou Shalt Accept What One is Given. If your brand builds a devout following, your customers will take it upon themselves to generously share more than you ever expected about what the brand is, what it isn’t and what it should be. You have opened up more than a dialogue; you have embarked on a weird and wonderful partnership with your customers. Embrace this or lose it. Consider the story of Timberland, who had no idea that they’d become the chosen footwear of hip-hop. At first they disbelieved it, then they ignored it, then they fought it — and finally, they embraced it. Today, you can customize your Timberlands in pink and purple with your own monogrammed tag and customized embroidery: a fully pimped pump.

7.    Thou Shalt Know Thy Flock. If you’re going to intersect your faithful where they live, you have to know something about them. David wondered if Twitter was really the best social media choice for the Skittles target market. If your brand has already established online places of worship, spend some time in stealth mode and get the lay of the land before you go public.

8.    Thou Shalt Listen. Online gives you thousands of listening posts to get the pulse of your brand. One example I saw this week: the iPhone app Dial Zero. It’s a nifty little assistant that gives you tips to avoid the dreaded voicemail dead zones for over 600 companies. A quick look up and you have tips to connect with an actual live person. But what’s even more interesting is that it shows real-time comments from people who’ve recently called.

9.    Thou Shalt Live Up to Your Flock’s Beliefs. With devotion comes responsibility. In return for their brand loyalty, they will hold you to a higher standard. They have emotionally invested in your brand, so if you disappoint them, it will leave a bigger scar than just a passing frustration. Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned.

10.    Thou Shalt Count Thy Blessings Every Day. Brand evangelism. Brand loyalty. The willingness to pay a premium. An unwavering devotion untouched by the millions in advertising spent by your competitors. A much lower cost of acquisition. And millions of pages of customer-generated content. All brands should be so lucky.

Can Brands Keep Their Promise in a Digital World?

First published February 26, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

To speculate on the future of brand advertising is certainly beyond the scope of this column, but I got myself into this mess. I opened the can of worms two weeks ago in the Search Insider by warning that we could be running the search funnel dry. Ryan DeShazer, from HSR, called me on it and asked me what will replace traditional brand building in our new digital environment. Last week, I began the journey by talking about two different types of brands: Brand Promises and Brand Religions. Today, I’d like to paint a hypothetical scenario of where awareness marketing might go for those brands  that are implicit promises. Next week I’ll tackle religions.

Timing is everything

One of the challenges of brand advertising has always been the disconnect between the times in our lives when we’re thinking about a product and the opportunity for a brand exposure. How do you deliver a brand message at just the right time?  The goal of situational targeting became advertising’s Holy Grail. A few channels, such as in-store promotions and well-placed coupons, at least got marketers closer to being in the right place at the right time, but did little to build brand at this critical time. A significant discount might prompt a consumer to try an unfamiliar brand, but the new brand was always fighting the well worn groove of consumer habits. Trying a new product once doesn’t guarantee you’ll ever try it again (reading list suggestion: “Habit, the 95% of Behavior that Marketers Ignore.” )

The disconnect between the purchasing situation and the need to establish brands mentally (literally burn them into our brains) meant marketers played both ends against the middle. They used TV and other branding mediums to build awareness. Then they used direct-response tactics to tip the balance toward purchase when the situation was right. But in between was a huge gap that has swallowed billions of advertising dollars. The challenge facing digital marketing is how to bridge the gap.

Don’t Take Our Word for It
The answer to bridging the gap for a brand that promises quality lies in a few converging areas: the online social graph and mobile computing. Both areas are in their infancy, but they hold the promise of solving the Brand Promise marketer’s dilemma.

If a brand is a promise of quality, we want to hear confirmation of that by someone other than the brand. A brand’s advertising might make us willing to consider them, but we want confirmation of the promise of quality from an objective third party. The Web has made it much easier to access the opinions of others. And, through platforms like Facebook and Twitter, we are now able to “crowdsource” — reach out to our trusted circle of family, friends and acquaintances and quickly poll them for their opinions. But this is still a fragmented, multi-step process that requires a lot of time and cognitive effort on our part. What happens when we weave the pieces together into a smooth continuum?

Keeping Marketing in Hand
Mobile has the ability to do that, because it provides us with a constant online connection. Consider the implications. As we store more of our “LifeBits”  (check out Aaron Goldman’s columns  on this fascinating project) online and rely more and more on digital assistance to make our lives easier, the odds of determining our intent by  where we are and what we’re interacting with in our own “Web” improve dramatically. Our online persona becomes an accurate reflection of our mental one.  With mobile devices, our digital and physical locations merge and through technologies like MOBVIS, we can even parse our surrounding visually. All this combines to give the marketer very clear signals of what we might be thinking about at any given time.

Now, advertising can be delivered with pinpoint accuracy: think of it as behavioral targeting on steroids. Not only that, it can be the first step in a continuum: we get a targeted and relevant messaging, with the ability to seamlessly pull back objective reviews and opinions on any given product, location or service. Going one step further with just one click, we can reach out through multiple social networks to see if any of our circle of acquaintances has an opinion on the purchase we’re considering. If brands are a promise, this allows us to vet the promise instantly. If all checks out, we quickly check for best prices and possible alternatives within the geographic (or online) parameters we set.

In this scenario, the nature of brand-building for the brand promise product changes dramatically. We rely less on manufacturer’s messaging and more on how the brand resonates through the digital landscape. Brand preference becomes more of a spur-of-the-moment decision. Of course, the brands will still try to stake the high ground in our mental terrain through traditional awareness-building, but I suspect it will become increasingly more difficult to do so. Ultimately, brands will try to move their position from one of a promise of quality (a promise easily checked online) to a religion, where faith can play the spoiler.

Brand Promises vs Brand Religions

First published February 19, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I wish Steve Ballmer would check with me before he does these things. Last week Microsoft announced it was launching Microsoft-only retail outlets similar to the successful Apple Stores. My intention with this column was to follow up on last week’s column, “No Search is an Island,”  which prompted some interesting comments.

My point was that search captures awareness-created demand, it doesn’t generate it. If you want to continue to harvest from the bottom of the funnel, you need something to prime the top. And many, quite rightly, pointed out that traditional methods of priming the top, including TV, are becoming less and less effective. Martin Lindstrom, in his book “Buy-ology,”   references extensive neuro-scanning studies that showed that millions of dollars are being wasted in ineffective brand building.

So what is effective brand building in the new digital world? What is the best way to prime the pump? As I started to think about that, I realized the answer depends on the nature of the brand to be built. And, as I was chewing that over, the Microsoft story hit my inbox and I realized that it captured the essence of two distinct characters of brand: promise and religion. These two characters of brand occupy two totally different places in our mindscape, and so have to be treated differently, no matter what branding channel you choose to use.

The Origin of the Brand Promise

A brand is a collection of symbols, experiences and associations connected with a product, a service, a person or any other artifact or entity.

This is how Wikipedia defines  brand. But here’s the thing. Brands aren’t defined by Wikipedia. They’re defined by each one of us, in a way unique to us. Ford means one thing to you, another thing to me. Every brand has this same inherent characteristic. All Ford can do is contribute the raw materials used to create the concept of the Ford brand in my mind, but it can’t control how I put those things together.

Originally, all brands started as a promise of quality to the consumer. People were familiar with goods produced by local craftsman. The craftsman was the brand: the more skilled the creator, the higher the quality and the more trust placed in the product. Mass production needed to provide that peace of mind, so brands were placed on products as an assurance of quality. But somewhere in the latter half of the 20th century, brands became more than a promise, they became a religion. And that’s where everything became really wacky. Brands moved from a rational evaluation of quality to an emotional connection.

A Religious Experience

All brands want to become a religion, but not all brands have what it takes to make the transition, at least with a substantial number of customers. GM is a promise, BMW is a religion. United is a promise, JetBlue is a religion. And sorry to tell you this, Steve — but Microsoft is a promise, Apple is a religion.

Promises and religions are judged by different criteria. The customer-product relationships are driven by different motivations. If your brand is not a religion, you can’t suddenly build a church and expect people to worship. I see Microsoft retail stores as destined for dismal failure. First of all, Microsoft products are ubiquitous, so why do I need to go to a special store to find them? Secondly, Microsoft products have none of the religious aura surrounding them that Apple products do. The Microsoft brand never became more than a promise.

Brand Starts and Ends at the Core

One thing that both these natures of brand have in common: ultimately they depend on the values, integrity and effectiveness of the organization that creates the brand. If the brand is a promise of a level of quality, you can’t break the promise with immunity, especially in a digitally amplified world of blogs, forums and buzz. Each of the “promise” brands I used as examples, GM, United and Microsoft, stand in danger of their promises losing all meaning with customers. A promise is only as good as the level of trust you’ve built with the recipient.

But if the brand is a religion, the culture of the organization becomes even more important. Irrational decision factors run amok: the perceived culture of the organization, how the brand label connects with who we are, the social circles it places us it, or the circles we wish it would place us in, the values the company stands for, the exclusivity of the brand. The brand relationship becomes a complex stew of beliefs and emotions. We only make this investment for brands that hold a unique position in our mindscape. We feel we have to get as much from the brand as we’re willing to give it in terms of our emotional loyalty. And if a brand doesn’t reciprocate, it is quickly downscaled from a religion to a passing fancy.

I Am What I Buy (Sometimes)

One of the most ironic things about humans is that we seek to define who we are as individuals by the social associations we make. We stand out by joining groups. And this is a huge motivating factor in the brands we chose to give religious devotion to (Rob Walker’s book “Buying In” is a great exploration of this). Using a Mac puts us in the top 10% of the technically cool population (aka Justin Long). Using Windows means we’re lumped in with the remaining 90% of poor, boring schlumps (aka John Hodgman). Again, not a very compelling reason to seek out a Microsoft store.

This dichotomy of branding becomes important when we look at how brand awareness may be built online. First, you have to be brutally honest about assessing whether your brand is a promise or a religion. It worries me greatly that Microsoft seems to be suffering from delusions of brand religion. There’s nothing wrong with being a solid promise. Many brand religions started there. Personally, I believe brands would be much better off worrying more about delivering on a promise and less about becoming a religion. By the way, it’s unusual for the biggest brand in a category to be the religious brand (Coke is one exception). It’s tough to be unique when you’re following the herd.

But the first step is accepting what you are.

The Importance of Touchpoints – every Touchpoint

I got an iPhone on Thursday.

This post has nothing to do with the iPhone..everything to do with where I got it. Being in Canada, Roger’s is the only carrier that has the iPhone. Roger’s is particularly clueless when it comes to brand integrity (perhaps rivaled only by Air Canada in my home and native land). And this was made abundantly clear to me.

I went to a local mobile store. While the store is run by a licensee, the branding is all Roger’s. For all intents and purposes, it’s a Roger’s store. I walked up to the counter and what appeared to be a 13 year old with a five o’clock shadow who managed the store siddled over to wait on me. His assistant, a petulant female, rolled her eyes and went in the back.

I currently have a Roger’s plan, put in place almost 4 years ago. At the time, I put a plan in place that would cover my somewhat limited data needs. To be honest, I don’t really monitor the bills and my assistant finally showed me one. I hit the roof. Because my device now syncs with our mail server while I’m in Canada (I’m on another plan when I’m in the US) my data traffic has increased substantially. Here’s the details of the plan I was on..get this..25 Megs per month for $25 bucks..and 5 cents a kilobyte for overages! 5 cents a kilobyte! My relatively modest data needs were racking up hundreds of dollars in charges. Was I stupid for letting it go? Absolutely. But obviously Roger’s was perfectly happy to leave me on the stupidest plan in the world and rake in the money. That’s their bad.

So, after hitting the roof, I decided to change the plan. Roger’s plans are still highway robbery, but at least Apple forced them to ease the data plan usury in order to get exclusives on the iPhone. Now..I could get 1 GB of data monthly, plus a limited voice plan, for about $70 a month..all in. I could get an iPhone (which I’ve been salivating over for some time) and still save hundreds a month. I still had to deal with Roger’s, but to be honest, their competition is no better (Twitter recently had to discontinue SMS notifications in Canada because our mobile carriers are uniformly stupid). So, hence my visit to the local store.

I informed Skippy, the wonder manager, of all this and he said, “Well, I can get you set up with the iPhone dude, but I can’t change your plan. You need to call Roger’s to do that”.

“Why?”

The answer was painfully incoherent, but it came down to Roger’s not trusting their licensees (remember, this is Skippy’s take on the situation) and trying to lock me into a package that maximized profit for them and minimized usability for me. Skippy walked me through the routine (with many interjections of “Sorry dude, Roger’s makes us do this”) and, as we were wrapping up, pulled out the check lists to make sure he had done all the things he was supposed to. By this time, I was looking for the nearest exit to escape. Yes..you had shown me how the iPhone works. Yes, you explained all the nickle and dime charges imposed on me. Yes, you explained how Roger’s repossesses my home if I cancel early. Yes, you explained why the writing on the contract might not be what I actually get. Just let me go home.

And then, the final straw.

“Okay..you’re probably going to get a call from Roger’s to make sure I did my job right. I only get my points if you answer that you were ‘definitely satisfied'”

“Sure”

“No..I mean it. That’s the only answer that will give me the score I need. Will you answer that.” At this point, I swear to God, he gives me a photocopied sheet of paper with the right answer printed on it, circled with a check mark beside, just to jog my memory for the call. “You will say ‘Definitely Satisfied’, right?”

At this point, I was either ready to beat my self to death with my shiny new iPhone, or burst out laughing. Skippy was on the verge of tears. I could have launched into an explanation of how this was not the way to ensure customer satisfaction (but the irony is, he does this with every customer and it probably works most of the time. Whoever thought up this approach had done their psychological homework) but that would have cost me more precious hours of my life. I smiled my best paternal, sympathetic older dude to younger dude smile and said, “Sure man.”

Obviously, Roger’s is trying to police the quality of these licensee touchpoints through these ridiculous QA checklists and follow up phone calls, but it made the entire experience bizarre. I think a better approach would be to create reasonable plans, be proactive with existing customers in moving them into the right plans, be more transparent and fair with promotional deals, insist on better hiring practices and provide more value to customers. If they did all these things, their brand integrity could survive the odd fumble in the hands of a Skippy.

Zappos New Business Model: Have Insight, Will Respond

A story this morning in Adweek about Zappos reminded me of a recent experience with a client. I’ll get to the Zappos story in a moment, but first our client’s story.

This customer wanted to set up a client summit at Google’s main office in Mountain View. Attending the summit were not only their search team but also some highly placed executives. The reason for the summit was ostensibly to talk about the client’s search campaign, but it soon became apparent that the executives were looking for something more. They had specifically asked for someone to spend some time talking about Google’s culture.

Throughout the day, Google paraded a number of new advertising offerings in front of the team. While the front line teams were intrigued, one particular senior executive seemed to be almost snoozing through the sales pitches for Google’s new advertising gadgets and gizmos. It was only when the conversation turned to Google’s business practices that the executive perked up, suddenly taking volumes of notes. It made me realize that sometimes, it’s not only what we sell that has value for our customers, it’s what we are. I chatted about this recently with someone from Google, saying that their corporate philosophy and way of doing business is of interest to people. I urged him to find a way to package it as a value add for customers. While he agreed the idea was intriguing, I think it got relegated to the “polite jotting down without any intention of acting on it” category.

Now, back to the Zappo’s story. That’s exactly what they’re doing, taking their customer service religion and packaging it so that thousands of businesses can learn by going directly to the source. Zappos Insights is a subscription service ($39.95 per month) that let’s aspiring businesses ask questions about the “Zappos way” and get answers from actual Zappos employees.

The service, said CEO Tony Hsieh, is targeted at the “Fortune 1 million” looking to build their businesses. “There are management consulting firms that charge really high rates,” he said. “We wanted to come up with something that’s accessible to almost any business.”

It’s a pretty smart move. There’s no denying we’re going through a sea change in how business is done. And I’ve always felt that there’s a impractical divide between consultants and businesses that are consistently implementing every day. It seems like you can either do, or teach, but not both. Amazing stories such as Apple, Google, Southwest and Zappos have shown that innovation with culture is as important as innovation in what ends up in the customer’s hands. Zappos is trying to blend the two in an intriguing revenue model.

Al Ries Slight Off on GM’s Brand Woes

Who am I to disagree with Al Ries on branding? No matter, I’ll take a swing at it anyway.

In AdAge, Ries takes GM to task (may need a subscription) for not creating strong brands, which in turn was triggered by an article in the Wall Street Journal titled “How Detroit Drove Into a Ditch“. The WSJ article places the blame on Detroit’s failure to understand the nature of the Japanese competition:

“Just as America didn’t understand the depth of ethnic and religious divisions in Iraq, Detroit failed to grasp — or at least to address — the fundamental nature of its Japanese competition. Japan’s car companies, and more recently the Germans and Koreans, gained a competitive advantage largely by forging an alliance with American workers.”

Ries disagrees:

“Nowhere in this entire article is a mention of Detroit’s failure to build powerful brands. Rather the blame is placed almost totally on problems in the factories.”

I have to say, I side much more with the WSJ on this one. Just where, I wonder, does Ries think brand comes from? He seems to think it’s somehow seperated from what happens on the factory floor…that brand is somehow magically concocted in a Madison Avenue boardroom and lives and thrives independent of the crap that comes off the assembly line. It’s a troubling throwback to the arrogant assumption of marketing control that I believe is at least partly responsible for the situation we currently find ourselves in: you don’t have to worry about being good, as long as your advertising is. Consider the examples of successful brands that Ries uses as examples:

“It seems to me that the fundamental nature of Detroit’s Japanese competition is its ability to build brands. Toyota stands for reliability, Scion for youth, Prius for hybrid, Lexus for luxury. “

It’s not a marketing ploy that has determined that Toyota stands for reliability. It’s superior quality control. I question Lexus’s exclusive claim to luxury, or Scion’s claim to youth, but their success in both markets comes directly from the appeal of their products and an acceptance of this by the target market, not by any particular marketing genius. And the success of the Prius as the definition of hybrid comes from engineering excellence and the ability of Toyoto to make it into a practical vehicle. This isn’t marketing, this is just being better than the competition.

Ries seems to suffer from the delusion that brands can be unilaterally built. In the hyper connected reality of today, brands can, at best, be mutually agreed upon. Brand is a label that is connected in the cortex. All the advertising in the world can plant some mental seeds, but if the reality doesn’t connect, those seeds wither and die. It wasn’t Detroit’s ineptness in advertising that killed them, it was their ineptness in every single aspect of their business.

The hole that GM (and Detroit) has dug for themselves has been built over the last 40 years. And contrary to Ries’s opinion, Detroit has been extraordinarily successful in creating brands. Consider the cultural legacy of the Mustang, the Corvette, the Cadillac, the Jeep. These are brands that were once rich with meaning..with mental connections that resonated and rang true with enthusiasts. But the meaning has been eroded away because the products didn’t live up to the promise. And the reasons had nothing to do with advertising, it’s was squarely rooted in what came off of the factory floor, and everything that contributed to it: shoddy workmanship, antagonist relationships with workers, squeezing vendors for every last cent, arrogant management, lack of respect for customers and poor service in the dealer network.

What is true is if the product doesn’t deliver on the promise, word spreads much quicker now. And perhaps that was the final nail in Detroit’s collective coffin. The new connected marketplace allowed us to call bullshit in a way that is heard much further and much louder.

It’s not that Detroit can’t build a brand. It’s that they just can’t build a very good vehicle.

Thank God for Product-Centric Leaders

First published May 1, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

All you who have Google stock, take a moment to thank Larry and Sergey. You who have fallen in lust with your iPhone, stop and say a silent prayer for Steve Jobs. And you parents who spent many a peaceful hour thanks to your kids being glued to a Disney movie, face towards Disneyland and bow to Walt himself, may he rest in peace (or a freezer, as rumor has it). Thank God for product-centric leaders, because they are few and far between.

Customer-Centricity: More Than Just Words

I have spent many an hour in conference rooms listening to the new “religion” of customer-centricity that has suddenly taken hold of the mega-corporation X, Y or Z. The scripted lines are typically “We are here to serve our customer. We will find optimal strategies to maximize customer experience and revenue opportunities. We embrace good design.”

It may sound good in the annual report, but it’s not that easy. When you talk about balance, I hear compromise. Somebody is losing, and it’s almost always your customer. Because as Sergey, Larry, Steve and Walt will tell you, there can only be one person driving this bus. Either it’s your sales manager, or it’s your customer. Come to any intersection and one will tell you to turn right and one will tell you to turn left. Who are you going to listen to?

Now, obviously, Apple, Google and Disney have been known to make a buck or two, so customer-centricity can be profitable. It depends on which route you want to take to get there. If you take the customer’s route, it means having the courage to say no to a lot of people inside your company (and out) along the way. And really, the only person who can say no and get away with it is the leader of the company.

The Product-Centric Leader

Here’s a shocker, coming from me. The more I think about it, the more I don’t believe customer-centricity is the key. It’s not a goal, it’s a by-product. It comes as part of the package (often unconsciously) with another principle that is a little more concrete: product-centricity. Product-centric leaders, the ones that are obsessive about what gets shipped out the door, are customer-centric by nature. They understand the importance of that magical intersection between product and person, the sheer power of amazing experiences. The iPhone is amazing. Disney classics are amazing. My first search on Google was amazing. Steve, Walt, Larry and Sergey wouldn’t have it any other way. They focus attention on the importance of that experience, and know, somewhere deep down inside, that if they get it right, the revenue will take care of itself.

The other thing about product-centric leaders is that they don’t have to do extensive customer research. They may, and many do, but they already have a gut instinct for what their customers want, because they are their own customer. Larry and Sergey invented a new search engine because the old ones were fundamentally broken and they were fed up with them. Walt built Disneyland because he was tired of sleazy, grimy amusement parks. And Steve knew that some people need a lot more than a beige, generic box because he’s one of them. They have user-centricity baked into their core, because they’re building products they want to use. They don’t compromise in the drive to create a product that’s good enough for them. It’s a happy coincidence that there are lots of other people who also love the product. It’s an intuitive connection that 99.9% of corporate leaders can’t imagine, let alone do.

Managers Are Almost Never Product-Centric

The typical corporate manager has no special bond to the product. Along the line, too, many compromises have been made in the name of profitability. Whatever amazement the product may have once had has been sold off, bit by bit, along the way. The sales manager and the bean counters have taken over the steering wheel. They turn out bland, uninspiring products they wouldn’t use themselves. They are not product centric, they’re profit-centric, and profit really doesn’t inspire anyone.

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how so many companies can preach customer-centricity, yet continually miss the mark by so much so often. Look at the ones who hit the bull’s eye regularly. It turns out that it’s not so much customer-centricity they’re aiming for, it’s delivering products the leaders are obsessed with because they can’t wait to use them themselves. That’s a key element “Good to Great” and “Built to Last” author Jim Collins missed in his Level 5 leadership. Steve Jobs would never be mistaken for Collin’s or Stephen Covey’s ideal leader, but if I were looking for someone who’s going to turn out a product that blows me away, Steve would be my guy.