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Baby, it’s cold outside (and inside too!)

January 13, 2007

Winter has finally arrived in Iowa. Unfortunately it has also arrived inside my house.  As you can see, it’s a balmy 56 degrees right now.  And dropping like a rock.

I’m home alone (everyone else has been farmed out to warmer homes) and I am weighing whether or not I want to suck it up and pay the time and a half or wait until Monday to get it fixed.  So I call my furnace repair shop of choice and I explain to the woman who answers that the furnace will not come on and its getting nippy.

I ask her what the difference in cost will be if they come out tonight or I wait until Monday.  She politely tells me and points out where the cost variations are the most significant.

Ouch.  Okay, I tell her…I think I will wait it out.  After all, I have everyone outplaced and I am from Minnesota.  We live for this weather.  Being this cold will help me stay alert and get some work done, right?

Then, she says, "don’t forget to fire up enough space heaters to protect your pipes from freezing."

Hold up a second!  I hadn’t thought about the pipes freezing.  There’s only one space heater in the house.  My mind does the quick mental math and going out to buy 5-6 more heaters or calling around to our friends and neighbors to borrow a bunch seems like a bad plan.

See what she did?  Sneaky.  She cared about my situation.  She offered good counsel.  She didn’t push her service.  She didn’t argue with my decision.   She actually tried to help me avoid buying from her tonight.  And in doing so, she  let me figure out that  I needed what she was selling.

The very best selling looks a whole lot like helping.

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Shhh! You’re being too quiet!

January 13, 2007

Sometimes we try too hard and inadvertantly create the very situation we were trying to avoid. 

Check out this post I wrote a couple days ago.   What, within the post, do you find your eyes drawn to or distracting you from the message?

Right — the flickr credit. I was trying to make it unobtrusive and instead my efforts have it sticking out like a sore thumb.  I should have just not worried about the type size and let it be.

Much like someone in the theatre shhing someone talking and actually being louder than the original offender — as marketers, we can over think and over do. Sometimes…that focuses the spotlight right where we don’t want it.

Flickr photo courtesy of double cappuccino.

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Apprentice meets Survivor = Biggest Loser?

January 12, 2007

It’s fascinating.

What was this fringe thing that only the "kids" took that seriously is suddenly becoming very mainstream.  We have magazines like TIME and AdAge paying homage to the citizen marketer and social media. And now, we have the NFL, Chevy and Frito-Lay asking Joe Citizen to create ads for them.

Duck…the pendulum is swinging!

How far will this new variation on reality TV/marketing go?  What do you see as  the upsides?  The risks?  Is it just another flash in the pan along this new road or are consumer generated ads the new norm?

And where is the strategic thinking underneath any of these consumer creations?  Or in this new world, doesn’t that matter?

In case the NFL article goes away…  Download NFLad.pdf

 

flickr photo courtesy of Cilest.

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Love me or let me go (part deux)

January 12, 2007

A couple days ago, I suggested that if you couldn’t love your clients — you owed it to them to fire them.   Our clients deserve not only good service and competent skills.  They deserve  our love.

The same, I believe, is true of our employees.  If you don’t love them — fire them.  Of course, loving them doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have to part ways either.  Sometimes the best thing you can do for an employee who’s the wrong fit or can’t wrap their skills or attitude around your organization is to let them go.  Give them the kick in the pants they need to find a place where they can be successful and contribute.

How does loving your employees benefit you, the company and your customers?

• Selfishly, you get to work with people you love 
• It builds incredible trust and loyalty (both ways)
• Your employees care about you, the business and your clients as though they owed the joint
• Better profits, lower turnover, more fun
• They get better because you care enough to help them get better
• It’s authentic

Over at Innovation Compass, Susie de Ville Schiffli paints a nice picture of what a loving company looks like.  If it doesn’t sound like your place of business — what can you do about that?

Flickr photo courtesy of omnia.

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Should I launch this product?

January 11, 2007

I need some advice.  Let me give you the facts.

1. I have a new product that is going to create incredible immediate demand.  No questions asked.
2. It is unique and it will take my competitors awhile to catch up.
3. I will not be able to actually deliver the product until the middle of summer ’07.
4. I have a name for it, but another company owns the rights to that name.

Here’s my question.  Should I announce my product and launch the marketing of it this week?

My guess is that most of you will tell me no.  Deal with the legal issues.  Don’t create demand you cannot fulfill.  And yet, Apple announced the iPhone this week and is now stuck in a quagmire with Cisco Systems suing them over the name and the actual product not being ready for months.

Maybe you’re smarter than I am and can help me figure out how in the world they talked themselves into thinking this week’s announcement was a smart strategy.

What do you think?

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Love me or let me go

January 10, 2007

It’s really a simple idea.  You need to love your customers.  No, I don’t mean love their money.  I don’t mean love that they send their friends to your business.

I mean love them.  As people.  Collectively as in "I love our clients" and individually as in "I love Lana."

If you don’t love them, you owe it to them to fire them.  Because you will  never be extraordinary.  And every customer deserves that. 

Sure, they buy your brain and knowledge.  And they buy your end product.  Those are the givens.  But the "I’ll care as much about your business as you do" is not on the price list.  It’s not for sale.  You either give it to them freely or you can’t because you don’t feel it.  And if you give it, you give it from love.

At the Conversation Agent blog, Valeria Maltoni talks about inspiring love rather than trust or loyalty, in terms of your product.  I couldn’t agree more.   And the way to get them to love you…is to love them first.

Steve Farber’s brilliant book Radical Leap is all about infusing love into your work.   

I’m not sure why the word love is so taboo in business but it needs to stop.  It’s a big part of why Kohl’s looks like a dump, why Wal-Mart employees were taking out TV ads against their employer, why Enrons happen, and why the people at the drive-thru could care less if you actually get what you order.

As consumers, we’ve not demanded love.  We’ve accepted sullen.  We’ve pardoned rude. We’ve tolerated mediocrity.   As business people,  we’ve offered  acceptable. We’ve delivered good enough.  And we’ve billed our clients for better than average. 

I think it’s time for us to try a little love.  Don’t you?  (Part two coming….)

Photo courtesy of flickr and photographer Aaron Walsh.

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:60 ticks marketing tip: Hold Me!

January 9, 2007

Grab it fast…it’s gone in about a minute.  A :60 ticks marketing tip is 150 words or less…so read it in a minute and implement it in the next!

Don’t waste an opportunity to brand every customer experience.  If you have to put a caller on hold, what happens?  Consider these options over being lazy and just playing muzak or a local radio station.

• Record client testimonials
• Ask provocative questions (the current one at MMG is "if you were a superhero what would you insist went on your utility belt?") that reflect your brand
• Answer a few frequently asked questions

Whatever you do, give them an option to hit a button and get to a live body.  No one’s brand includes frustrating the stuffing out of a caller because they are caught in a voice mail maze.

That’s it.  Go put it into action!

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I don’t get this new math

January 8, 2007

                                                                           

Let’s see if I have this right.

   You make most of your income from current customers
+ Your current customers are happy with you, so they are predisposed to buy again
+ Your current customers know you and take your calls
+ Your current customers have other needs

= You invest 90+% of your marketing budget on chasing after strangers/prospects.

Help me see how that adds up again?

Photo courtesy of flickr.com from the works of lacadaz.

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AdAge jumps on the YOU bandwagon!

January 8, 2007

Following in TIME’s footsteps, AdAge announced that the winner for their annual agency of the year award is YOU. Well not quite YOU.  They defined it as "The Consumer" but basically you win again!

Read more about their choice and rationale and hear from the Editor’s POV why the  stories like  Lonelygirl15 and the Mentos/Coke experiment swayed their decision.

In case the articles are not evergreen, here are PDF versions.

Download adagestory.pdf
Download adageeditor.pdf

But here’s what I am wondering.  So what?   From your perspective, is it just nice validation for those early adopters who are blogging and YouTube?  Does it change the way you intend to market your business? 

Should it?

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Ease into the week – rather fight than switch?

January 7, 2007

I don’t know about you but Sunday nights are time for me to catch up.  On my reading, on my work, on my relationships — all with an eye on Monday morning and knowing that the 180 mph pace is about to resume.

Sundays also seem to be my day for deep thoughts.  I thought it might be fun to ease into the week together with a question that is sort of about branding and marketing but also has a personal element to it as well.  A chance to get to know each other AND talk shop.  Perfect for a Sunday night.

Most of you will be too young to remember the famous Tareyton cigarette campaign which proclaimed "I’d rather fight than switch."    Here’s a flash from the past for those of you who love vintage ads.

So here’s the question to take us into the first 5 day work week of ’07.  What brand would inspire you to utter the infamous line, "I’d rather fight then switch?"

For me, it’s Coke.  If a waitress says "we serve Pepsi" I respond with "I’ll have iced tea."  I fell in love with the brand as a teen.  For me, Coke is Americana, baseball, and being old fashioned neighborly. 

There are few treats I love more than an ice cold Coke in the bottle.  It’s no one I indulge in very often, but it’s one of my favorites.

How about you…what brand is non-negotiable for you?

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