Come gather 'round marketers wherever you roam. And admit that the waters around you have grown. And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone. If your job to you is worth savin.' Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone. For the marketing times they are a-changin'. (My most sincere apologies to Mr. Zimmerman).
So how does it feel? To be on your own? With no direction home? Like a complete unknown? Like a rolling stone? How does it feel to have consumers in charge of what, how, and when they watch, read, listen and click? You feel it, don't you?
The Elephant(s) in the Room
As the story goes, John Wanamaker, the father of the department store, is said to have grumbled that he knew that half of his spending on advertising was wasted, but didn't know which half. Today, for most marketers, that squandered portion is likely much higher than fifty percent. The media landscape has splintered into a plethora of platforms, sophisticated consumers are spending less time with traditional media, and the few marketing messages consumers do receive are suspect, at best.
The funny thing is most marketers, and their agencies, know this. So why do they continue to pour large sums of money down the traditional media drain, and in that traditional top-of-mind-awareness way? Here’s why: most marketers and their agencies, like most human beings, spend most of their time and money . . . staying comfortable, avoiding risk, preserving the status quo. “I’m not going to try that. How do I know it will work? How do I defend it? What’s the CPM? What’s the ROI?”
Instead of trusting their innate knowledge of an audience (their habits, connections, sensibilities, and proclivities) and defending a unique marketing approach with a coherent, persuasive appeal, it’s much easier, efficient, and, at the end of the day, profitable (in the short term) to simply tow the line and toss out the numbers. That’s the truth; the elephant in the room. And it’s also true that those risk-averse advertisers and agencies rarely know for sure who sees or hears their ads, let alone whether the ads influence anyone (the other elephant). So why not try something new?
The Masses Have Left the Tree
The marketplace of old resembled a mass of caterpillars hanging around the tree of traditional media, venturing down the branches of mass distribution, and consuming the offshoots of brand advertisers. No more. The masses have escaped their pupae, spread their distinctive wings, and are fluttering around fields blossoming with an abundance of colorful and succulent offerings. A fleeting glimpse is all one usually gets of them. So what’s a marketer to do in this chaotic environment of abundant products and services, fast-flying consumers, and a rapidly changing landscape?
Will Rogers once remarked, “Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.” Orderly inaction describes today’s ineffectual, status quo marketing. Chaotic action is the new marketing imperative; to wit:
The marketing times, they certainly are a-changin’. Are you changin' with them?
Posted August 30, 2010
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"I'm not an order taker. I'm an experience maker!" -- Jay
Jay used to work at a local restaurant in town. He has since moved on to a new position as a head waiter in significantly greener pastures. When he was telling me the story of the demanding, multiple interview process he was to encounter for his new position, his eyes lit up and he said, "But they hired me on the spot, during my first interview, when I told them that I consider myself an experience maker not an order taker." In my mind, Jay nailed the essence of excellence in customer service. It's about the experience of the customer.
Providing great service is much more than just a job for call centers or online social specialists. It's a strategic endeavor. It's about innovation, operational and technical excellence, and managing -- and influencing -- people's changing expectations and feelings. Make no mistake about it, customer service is a, if not the, key component of marketplace success in an age of abundance.
Here are the four biases of great service brands:
1. Aware - They stay tuned in to marketplace changes and use gained insights to modify their service strategy. Customers' expectations and desires are influenced by their experiences with new technologies, as well as across product and service categories. For example, when people get accustomed to one-click shopping at Amazon.com, they come to expect that same type of speed and convenience everywhere. When they get used to, and prefer, the convenience and speed of pumping their own gas, scanning their own groceries, and self-checking in at the airport, they'll also embrace the self-service concept in other areas of their marketplace lives.
In addition, great service providers stay tuned in to, and capture, customer "problems" and, like the Japanese lean manufacturing principles of kaizen and "respect for people,"develop strategic solutions to eliminate the source of those problems. Yes, great customer service is often defined by how a business responds to inevitable and, in some cases, unpredictable product and service failures. But the best organizations prevent those problems from occurring in the first place.
2. Empathetic - Great service organizations work hard to develop a visceral understanding of their customers' cognitive experiences and strive to demonstrate that they care, first and foremost, about those experiences. They are sensitive people; sensitive to life, to things, to others. They're the types of people who stop to remove a board or nail from the road so no one will experience harm. They ask themselves, "How would I feel if . . ." and then strategically focus on that feeling. If you really don't know how you'd feel if . . . , then put yourself in that exact situation and find out. Here's a great example of empathizing from an old blog post of one of Microsoft's product support specialists:
Sometimes you're on the phone with somebody and you suspect that the problem is something as simple as forgetting to plug it in, or that the cable was plugged into the wrong port. This is easy to do with those PS/2 connectors that fit both a keyboard and a mouse plug, or with network cables that can fit both into the upstream and downstream ports on a router.
Here's the trick: Don't ask "Are you sure it's plugged in correctly?" If you do this, they will get all insulted and say indignantly, "Of course it is! Do I look like an idiot?" without actually checking. Instead, say "Okay, sometimes the connection gets a little dusty and the connection gets weak. Could you unplug the connector, blow into it to get the dust out, then plug it back in?" They will then crawl under the desk, find that they forgot to plug it in (or plugged it into the wrong port), blow out the dust, plug it in, and reply, "Um, yeah, that fixed it, thanks."
3. Honest - Great service providers tell the truth before it's asked of them. People today are incredulous of marketing, institutions and the media. The only way to cut through skepticism (especially when a problem arises) and create trust, is to act as a real human being and get to the truth, whatever that truth may be. If you screwed up, say, "We screwed up." Better yet, if it was you who screwed up, say, "I screwed up." Simply drop your defenses, take off your mask -- your title, your expertise, your bureaucratic language and technical jargon -- and connect with people with honest, simple, and engaging language. Be on the level. Tell them what you know, what you believe, and what you think.
4. Enlightened - There's a Chinese proverb, "A man without a smiling face should not open a shop." I would modify it to, "A person without a sense of enlightened humor should not interact with customers." And by "sense of humor," I don't mean skilled at telling jokes. I mean understanding that the purpose of business is, to paraphrase Jung, to kindle a lightness in the mere darkness of marketplace transactions. Great service people are great hosts. They put everything that happens in perspective and, through their enlightened senses of self and of humor, help customers do the same. And as the great humanities teacher Gilbert Highet once said, "When people laugh together, they become a single group of human beings enjoying its existence."
Bottom line: Great service providers help us enjoy our existence together. They don't flame out and jump off the plane.
Posted August 23, 2010
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The New York Times ran a short opinion piece in last Saturday's Business Day section titled, "Innovate, Yes, but Make it Practical." The author, Steve Lohr, begins his piece as follows:
"BUSINESS is a field not of theory but of practice. The central intellectual inquiry of the science of management is simply this: What works?"
The central intellectual inquiry of business is "what works?" "What works" is a pretty shallow and nebulous question. It can be defined in many short-term, self-serving, spirit-killing, and planet-destroying ways. In fact, all of the problems in and with business can be traced back to that one "practical" rationale, "It works."
Until it doesn't.
Then what? Maybe you can "rebrand" the company? Or perhaps you can try to persuade your people, your clients and the community that you were just kidding, that you really do care -- about fairness, the environment, them? Good luck.
And that's why business is not a field of practice, but rather a field of theory, of philosophy, of mythology even. What's the purpose of business? What's its role in society? What are its moral obligations? What lessons are we teaching our children?
Think about it. Then think about how Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard would feel about the symbolism of HP's present narrative, if they were alive today.
Business is philosophy. Brand is philosophy. I'm in the philosophy business. You should be too, because your beliefs determine your direction and your legacy.
Steve Lohr and the crowd are wrong. Please don't follow them.
Posted August 20, 2010
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In the book Human Motivation, Harvard psychology professor David McClelland points to three things that drive everyone:
Ask yourself, What are we doing, as an organization, to motivate our customers, to feed their hungers and desires? Are we helping them achieve? Are we feeding their hungers to be recognized, to be liked and loved? Are we helping them feel good about themselves and their decisions? Are we connecting them with like-minded people and empowering them to empower others?
Now, list precisely how you are uniquely going about it. Ta-da! There's your brand strategy.
Posted August 18, 2010
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See more at this slideshare link: http://bit.ly/9uKi4H
Posted August 14, 2010
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This is the ten year anniversary of the publication of my inaugural business book, Sandbox Wisdom, so I thought I'd share what I've learned - and discovered - about business, brands and marketplace success during the new millennium.
Read "Ten Years After" when you get a chance. I hope you enjoy it. And as always, please let me know your thoughts.
Here's the link (PDF): http://bit.ly/aYqm0k
Also, if you haven't already, please sign up for advanced notification of the release of my new book at this link: http://bit.ly/c7W8YM
Thanks!
Posted August 12, 2010
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One of the most powerful and dangerous mindsets in business today is the mechanistic, Newtonian model of reality. It's a pervasive myth. Most organizations continue to respond to our complex, rapidly changing and increasing uncertain marketplace with simplistic, cause-and-effect thinking and actions. Executives anxiously pursue marketplace success, trying to cause it to happen through an uninspiring hodgepodge of techniques and tactics, albeit measurable ones.
The marketplace is not an objective process, like a physical science where you try to influence the behavior of chemicals in a beaker or balls on a pool table. Appealing to customers (and employees) is a subjective blend of art and science, where you're subtly attempting to influence feelings and, as a result, behavior. You're dealing with the perceptions and actions of intelligent, curious, socially influenced human beings.
Think of yourself as a magnet and your audience as iron filings. You could either say that you - the magnet - cause the iron filings to move towards you. Or you could say that the iron filings value movement towards you. Scientifically speaking, both statements are exactly the same. But metaphorically speaking, they are very different.
To believe that you cause your audience to move towards you implies certainty. To believe that your audience is attracted to you implies preference. By pursuing success, by adopting the cause-and-effect metaphor, you’ll have a tendency to follow formulaic thinking even in the face of changing customer preferences and declining business. It's a common mistake; one that has punished once great brands like General Motors, Blockbuster Video and Barnes & Noble.
Don't pursue marketplace success. Attract it! Stay tuned in to your audience’s changing preferences and be turned on to continuously seduce them with emotion, passion, and daring creativity. Continue to challenge yourself and your people. Continue to move forward. Stay interesting, inventive and vital. It's working for Apple. I know people who are still holding out for the elusive, white iPhone 4 (I told you people are crazy).
(Rest assured, we will never provide your email address to anyone. Period.)
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Tom is timely, thought provoking and all about the new brand vision packaged as a Seinfeld stand up. I went to school on his ideas.
Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com and CEO, Eons.
