Author: Drew Neisser

Start-Up Service Connecting People With Their Medical Reminders

Posted on by Drew Neisser

This is the transcript from my interview with Jesse Middleton, founder of GetMinders, a start-up service that hopes to make missing your meds a thing of the past.

What is GetMinders?
GetMinders connects people with their medical reminders, their medical professionals and their families/support networks all via a quick phone call or text message. Our system calls patients to remind them to take their meds, get to their appointments or do their therapy and then offers to connect them with all of the above people to help keep them compliant, happy and healthy.

We’ve been running a super early pilot and the feedback has been amazing so far. We now have a private beta launched that is making over 350 calls per week and we’re really excited to continue to grow the company, build the product and gain more advice and feedback throughout the industry and from people like you.

Where did the idea for your business come from?
While I was traveling recently I began a discussion with a distant cousin who is a dentist. As we got talking about the needs of his patients I thought of my grandfather, in Florida, who is in a very late stage of Parkinson’s. It’s easy for someone in his position to forget to take their meds, mess up which ones they take when most importantly become disconnected with his family, friends and medical professionals.

Why are you doing this?  I mean why not just get a job at a fast growing company and stop killing yourself?
I’ve been on both sides. I started my first company at 16 and I’ve worked for numerous large corporations and start-ups over the past 8 years. I felt like it was just the right time to take the leap and try to build a business that could help people on my own. NOTE: My wife gave me a kick in the ass to really get the ball rolling. She told me that right now we have some cheap rent and two annoying cats to take care of. One day we’ll have kids and other responsibilities and it’ll be a lot harder to do.

What does success look like for you personally and for your company?
As a company, getting our product in the hands of millions of people that need to remember to take their medications, keep track of their compliance or take care of their loved ones would be pretty amazing for us. For me personally I’d like to make it to a point where I can invest in others’ ideas that can make the world a better place.

How long have you been at it and where do things stand right now?
We’ve been working on GetMinders for only a couple of months. The real coding and build out came only about a month ago. We’re now in a very early stage where we’re making over 350 calls per week and looking at next steps including funding and market testing.

Other than money, what are the biggest barriers to your success right now?
The biggest barrier for us is the need for a real voice. Speaking to the right people in the industry can be hard. Insurance companies are huge, pharmaceutical companies are even larger and medical networks and hospital systems have so much red tape it can take years to get things from idea to production. Making sure that we’re getting the right introductions and talking to the right people are very important to our success now.

Describe some of the highs you’ve experienced thus far
Right after the first weekend I built a very simple prototype we were making over 100 calls per week with our platform. When I put out simple request for testers on Twitter/Facebook the emails were overwhelming. The fact that people jump at the opportunity to help their friends (and others in the same industry) gives me a strong feeling that we will be successful.

Just a day ago I presented at a technology Meetup in Stamford, CT run by Roger Wu. After presenting our product to over 40 people along with 4 other start-ups we won the user-choice award. It wasn’t so much the winning that mattered but the fact that people sat and listened and offered fantastic input as to the future of GetMinders and the health industry as a whole.

And what are the low points?
I’m not sure that there have been any real low points so far. The hardest thing has been cutting back on spending. Having spent a few years in larger corporations (I last worked for LivePerson, a publicly traded tech company in NY) with a real paycheck it was easy to forget about the budget that my wife and I had set out. Now that my partner and I are working really hard on the start-up, I need to really focus on the spending. No one is signing expense reports or bi-monthly checks anymore.

Where has the money come from to get you this far?
It’s come right out of our pockets. My co-founder, Mike, and I have put smalls amounts in where we need it. We’ve had little overhead as we don’t have an office space yet and the minutes and message costs are all pay-as-you-go through Twilio. For now we’ve kept costs low but eventually we’ll be ramping up and that’ll be a whole new ballgame.

How hard has it been to raise money?
Well we’re still in the process so I don’t know that I can speak to the final outcome. What I can say is that the most important thing I learned through the process is that you have to ASK if you want to get money. Too many times I’d end a conversation with thanks for the input instead of, “So, do you believe in us and would you be willing to invest?” Learning to say this sentence has done wonders for us while raising funding.

Looking back, what would you do differently?
I would have done this two years ago instead of now. I was afraid before to go out on my own. Now that I’ve taken the leap I’ve found that the support network that I have spreads much further than I thought. We could be so much further along had we started long ago.

Did you think it was going to be this hard?
Yes. I’ve heard the stories of how hard it is to start a company, build a product, raise money and then sell the product to people from friends who have been through it. I was lucky enough to enter this whole thing pretty grounded.

Has you business taken any major pivots from concept to where you are today?
Not any major pivots. The idea began with medication only. We’ve branched out to looking at all sorts of healthcare and wellness but we’ve stuck to the same industry.

How much money do you need to raise now to get you to the next stage?
We’re currently looking at a small friends and family round (below $200k). This will let us really figure out the right market, build out an even more stable product and to get even further along with discussions all over the healthcare world (pharmacies, insurance companies, etc).

If your friend was about to start a business, what advice would you give them?
Just fucking do it. A good friend of mine has JFDI tattooed on his arm. He’s been telling me those same four words for a long time and finally did it. If you don’t give it a shot I can guarantee you will not succeed.

Do you see yourself as a serial entrepreneur or is this your one big idea?
I am pretty sure I’ll wind up being a serial entrepreneur. If I do my job right this start-up will grow into a real company. My hope is that my next steps involve helping others do the same thing.

What lessons do you wish you’d learned from others?
As I mentioned in the advice I’d give to a friend, JFDI. So many friends have went off, raised money and built successful companies. They all struggled until they finally dove it and did it. I think I learned that lesson now but it took me a heck of a long time to get here.

An Unexpected Entrepreneur’s Success Story

Posted on by Drew Neisser

The following is an interview I had with “unexpected entrepreneur” Emily Lutzker, founder of OpenInvo, a start-up with an innovative approach to innovation.

 

What prepared you for being an entrepreneur?
Before launching OpenInvo I was an artist and academic, and felt more comfortable at an art gallery doing a performance work in the nude, or moderating a panel of cultural theorists than in a boardroom. But not only now have I discovered that being an entrepreneur is one of the most exciting and creative things I have ever done, but my former life was the best preparation for bootstrapping a business that anyone could ask for.

As an artist, I created sculpture, video and performance works and showed my work internationally. Like many early career artists, I did not make much money from my work, nor did I have big budgets for any productions. When I needed to recruit 5 other performers, costume them, organize rehearsals and film, I normally did it on a shoestring. I can’t remember spending more than $500 on a project. Out of necessity and drive, I managed to wrangle people who were enthusiastic to help and resources that got the job done without spending much money. It does take time, attention, and people skills to get such projects done — the same skills needed for managing a startup. I can go on about this at length, but I think you get the idea.

Since I began OpenInvo, I’ve approached it with the same budgetary constraints and understanding as I did as with an artistic production. I know that the people involved are my greatest assets. That, even though 3 people give you high estimates for a job that there are always alternatives, but most importantly that people like to help. (I like to help people too).  They especially like to help when they see enthusiasm and drive for a project — those things are contagious.

Now, OpenInvo has been in live beta since the end of September, and growing at a steady pace. I do hope that in the near future we won’t we bootstrapping it quite to the extent that we have been in the past, but I do know that just about anything is possible with a little creative problem solving.

 

Where did the idea for your business come from?
My friends were tired of hearing me come up with ideas for new products and services. They all said, “why don’t you do this business or that one — that’s a great idea!” But I had an art career and didn’t want to be a business owner, although I would have loved to prosper from my ideas. Then my (now) co-founder said to me, “Why don’t we have a business selling ideas?” I said, “That can’t be done!” With a mountain of research I happily discovered I was wrong. It’s the only business I ever wanted to be the owner of — so far.

Why are you doing this?  I mean why not just get a job at a fast growing company and stop killing yourself?
I only had a “real” job once. At some point, I was told I was disruptive to the workplace. I’ll admit it,   I was bored. I’m sure I was disruptive. Actually, It never occurred to me to work at a “fast growing company” or hardly a company at all.  Besides, I’m sort-of un-hirable… my resume says PhD, artist, media producer. My web presence says a combination of crazy naked person and esoteric cultural studies scholar. Companies see “troublemaker.” Sure, I’m good for a university Art or New Media department, and I did love teaching, but I’m not a true academic in my heart.

What does success look like for you personally and for your company?
This is a trick question! Success means changing the world, no?  Seriously… to have a thriving marketplace where people with great ideas get valued for their ingenuity, where companies get true fuel for innovation. Success for the OpenInvo is to be a center for innovation, a support system for the innovation process, and to constantly keep growing and evolving from within. I’d like to think that success is still a starting point, not only a result.

On a large scale, I think that the wonderful things that people dream up should be seen as a commodity. Over the last 50 years, any art form that can be reproduced has become increasingly cheap or free — music, films, books, etc. The people who suffer from that phenomenon are the independent thinkers, not the pop-culture successes. But independent thinking and creation are the assets of humanity, and not to foster that aspect of culture is a shame. I don’t believe we should return to a pre-mechanical reproduction culture, but instead move forward and reinvent. On a philosophical level OpenInvo can inch us towards valuing people’s creativity, rather than valuing “stuff.” Seeing that kind of shift occur will be success for OpenInvo as well as for me personally. I’m a bit of an idealist, and I want to live in a world that fosters and rewards the things that make us human and celebrates our differences.

How long have you been at it and where do things stand right now?
The original conversation that inspired the company occurred more than 2 years ago. I was living in Tel Aviv. A year and a half ago I moved back to New York to start OpenInvo, mostly because my network is here and the innovation business, in terms of content, should be here. I then had a bit of a learning process in the business and startup arenas — it’s still not over, but I’d like to think that I gained some skills and had some that I repurposed from the art and media world. In a way, I could say that I’ve been at it all my life, I just didn’t know what “it” was. It took me until March 2010 to officially form the company, and the first public release of the platform went up in late September.

 

Other than money, what are the biggest barriers to your success right now?
Gaining trust from the would-be Idea Provider community. To have those users understand that not only does OpenInvo NOT want to “steal their idea,” but we actually don’t want ideas to be “stolen” at all.

Describe some of the highs you’ve experienced thus far
I didn’t ask anyone for money, they volunteered. I raised a small amount from friends and family who felt my enthusiasm and believed in me, saying they wanted in. That was an amazing high — to be heard and supported like that.

And what are the low points?
The low points are only the few days when it’s more of a struggle than an adventure — realizing what I don’t know and how much there is ahead. I have an impatient streak, which makes me frustrated when things don’t go as fast as I would like. Also, it would be a relief to not spend time worrying over the lack of budget. It is a bit of a roller-coaster ride… Ohmmm…

 

Where has the money come from to get you this far?
Friends and family.

 

How hard has it been to raise money?
The small amount I raised I got without asking. Now I’m just starting to look for the right investors to grow with. I’ll let you know how hard it’s been when it’s done.

 

Looking back, what would you do differently?
Who has time to look back?

 

Did you think it was going to be this hard?
Struggle isn’t something I was ever afraid of. Yeah, sure I knew it would be hard. When are worthwhile things not hard?

Has you business taken any major pivots from concept to where you are today?
Major, no. Minor for sure. And I’m sure there are some to come. I thought i would raise money earlier, but instead just blasted ahead. I wouldn’t have been able to without the amazing support of the people around me, and perhaps a touch of insanity.

How much money do you need to raise now to get you to the next stage?
Need? I’ll make it work with whatever I have. But with 500,000-600,000 OpenInvo would be able to grow at an optimal rate.

If your friend was about to start a business, what advice would you give them?
I’d just make sure she/he  knew the level of commitment and drive it takes. I would load a bunch of resources into her/his hands, spin her around three times and, say, “go get em! Call me when you need me — for advice, a shoulder to lean on, or a drink.”

 

Do you see yourself as a serial entrepreneur or is this your one big idea?
I can’t imagine not having another big project ahead of me. Whether that will be a for-profit business or not, who knows. Do we have a name for someone who embarks on one big project after another that are not necessarily business ventures? I’m a serial one of those.

Someone said that “any idiot can learn from his/her own mistakes, it takes a genius to learn from the mistakes of others” — what lessons do you wish you’d learned from others?

That business isn’t boring at all. That the language may be different for different industries, but often the skill set is easily translatable. And that when someone offers you a breath mint, take it.

Innovative Start-Up Making Products Out of Recycled Materials

Posted on by Drew Neisser

This is the transcript from my interview with Ashok Kamal, founder of Bennu, a start-up dedicated to making new products out of the stuff you throw away.  This is the first in a series of interviews I conducted for a FastCompany.com post on entrepreneurship that will go live later this week.  I also have Ashok to thank for the pearl metaphor I’m using for my larger story with his comment, “bu diamonds and pearls are made under pressure, and so are great businesses.”

Where did the idea for your business come from?

Like any good business, the idea behind Bennu was born out of a problem. The difference with Bennu and other social enterprises is that our problem affects society as a whole, not just individuals. We wanted to address the obscene amount of garbage being dumped into landfills. Therefore, we started Bennu to make products out of recycled materials, both solving a practical consumer need and protecting the environment for all of us.

Why are you doing this?  I mean why not just get a job at a fast growing company and stop killing yourself;-)

To me, entrepreneurship is another word for freedom. Freedom to live your values, freedom to work with people you care about, and freedom to innovate. Once you’ve experienced the freedom of running your own business, conventional employment feels like a prison sentence.

What does success look like for you personally and for your company?

When your lifestyle revolves around your business, the line between personal and professional success is blurred. In the short- and medium-term, my success entails creating a stable enterprise that delights both employees and customers. Bennu’s mission is greening the standard for a new lifestyle so our goal is also to influence peoples’ behavior by promoting sustainability. Over the long-term, I hope the business will outgrow its founders and operate as a well-oiled machine.  At that point, personal success would mean being in a position to help aspiring entrepreneurs to achieve their dreams.

How long have you been at it and where do things stand right now?

My partners and I began working on Bennu during our first year of business school in the fall of 2009. We entered and won the Baruch College & Merrill Lynch Invitational business plan competition and officially incorporated in July 2009. We continued to develop Bennu during our second year of business school and committed ourselves full-time to the venture upon graduation in June 2010. Currently, Bennu is a fully operational, revenue-generating company and we are focused on establishing our brand, designing products and creating marketing programs.

Other than money, what are the biggest barriers to your success right now?

Business is about seeing around corners. As a socially responsible company, Bennu caters to the green consumer segment, which is growing rapidly but still represents a fraction of the mainstream market. At present, the volatile demand for green products is a threat to our business, especially since sustainability adds cost. We’re betting on a green tidal wave that changes consumer preferences such that corporate social responsibility is the expectation, not the exception. The risk we assume is that we’re peering too far around the corner, waiting for a paradigm shift that may or may not occur.

Describe some of the highs you’ve experienced thus far:

As student entrepreneurs who made the leap from classroom to market, a definite highlight was being selected to compete in the 2010 Rice Business Plan Competition in Houston, TX. The event is considered the most prestigious student business competition in the world and participating validated our concept and potential. Additionally, making our first sale was a thrill. The idea becomes viable when a customer agrees to pay for it, suddenly making the business real. As a corollary, it was equally fulfilling to successfully deliver our first order. When customers are consistently made happy, it signals not only the start of a business, but also its likelihood to thrive.

And what are the low points?

Running a startup involves constant troubleshooting. From supply chain disruptions, to managing cash flow, to technical glitches — almost every problem could spell the end of the business because there is little room for error. While no single crisis stands out in my mind, the persistent challenge to withstand shocks and survive can be stressful. Entrepreneurship is an emotional roller-coaster and some days the low points compound. But diamonds and pearls are made under pressure, and so are great businesses.

Where has the money come from to get you this far?

Bennu was awarded $40,000 in seed money by winning the 2009 Baruch College & Merrill Lynch Invitational business plan competition. This capital injection allowed us to start up and earn revenue, and also compelled us to put skin in the game and invest in ourselves.

How hard has it been to raise money?

Bennu is a bootstrapped startup by design. Rather than exhaust resources chasing money for an unproven business, we decided to operate lean and focus on proving our concept. Raising external capital to support an unconventional business model in a down economy would have been extremely difficult. Now that we have an emerging brand, company infrastructure and base of customers, we hope that growth capital will be more accessible than if we had fundraised out of the gates.

Looking back, what would you do differently?

Bennu took too long to evolve. We launched by selling customized backpacks made from recycled plastic bottles. While these Greenpacks have been successful, they don’t suggest the growth of a successful company. A singular product focus is risky and nothing is safely protected from imitation. By listening to both our champions and critics, we realized that our core competency was developing marketing programs for recycled products, which could include but were not limited to children’s backpacks. Our business model became an integrated product development and marketing company focused on the recycled market.  We can help larger companies deal with their waste by offering structured corporate social responsibility solutions based on our diverse products and marketing programs.

Looking back, did you think it was going to be this hard?

When you feel fear, you can either run from it or confront it. Obviously, an entrepreneur is someone who faces fear head on. The psychological leap forward is scary and nothing can prepare you ahead of time. Accepting that all responsibility falls on your shoulders and there is no safety net is something you can only digest in real-time. However, the anxiety becomes overshadowed by the excitement of positively impacting the world and achieving your dreams.

How much money do you need to raise now to get you to the next stage?

In order to scale up and accelerate growth, we will be looking to raise at least $800,000 by the summer of 2011.

If your friend was about to start a business, what advice would you give them?

First, I’d subject the person to a psychological examination to ensure that they are just crazy enough to start a business. Assuming they aren’t either too sane or too crazy, I’d advise them to become consumer-facing as quickly as possible. Regardless of the idea on paper, the ultimate success lies in the hands of the buyer. The most important feedback, especially at the outset, is also likely to come from consumers, so it makes sense to prototype and test before investing unnecessary resources in a dud. Lastly, I’d remind my friend that passion should be at the center of the business. It’s the driver that will get the person through setbacks and make the victories more meaningful.

 

 

Do you see yourself as a serial entrepreneur or is this your one big idea?

I see the entrepreneurial lifestyle as a chronic disease, and I consider myself hopelessly afflicted.

Someone said that “any idiot can learn from his/her own mistakes, it takes a genius to learn from the mistakes of others” — what lessons do you wish you’d learned from others?

I think you can avoid a lot of unnecessary mistakes by establishing an advisory board from the outset. It’s easy to neglect this task in favor of immediate concerns, but once we recruited seasoned and candid advisors, Bennu became much more efficient and productive.

Dear Social Media Santa, Here’s My Wish List

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Wrapping up 2010 with relief, if not joy, good little marketers are looking at the year ahead with both optimism and trepidation. Even the marketers that triumphed this year know Santa’s lump of coal awaits those who misjudge the rapidly evolving communications landscape as an aberration instead of a permanent shift in power from brand to consumer. To ensure good tidings in 2011, here is a social media shopping list worth checking once — if not twice — to slay your competition.

1. Social Media Strategy

Although more than half of all large companies have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, fewer than 25% have a clearly defined social strategy. Tactical experimentation pleased some, but left many CEOs wondering whether social media like the mythical Rudolph could really drive results. Since yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a social strategy complete with CEO-pleasing metrics, put this on top of your shopping list — finding the expertise internally and externally to make it happen.

2. Dedicated Social Chair

In 2010, social media was treated by many marketers as a part-time affair, assigned to the junior staffers who just happened to have the most friends on Facebook. Unable to dedicate the time required, they also lacked the experience to put social media into the context of broader customer engagement, thus relegating social to a sexy but modest marketing experiment. Fixing this means assigning at least one dedicated professional who can champion social strategy internally, while coordinating execution across all the departments it can and should touch.

3. A Metric System

Given all the roles social media can play, from customer service to product development and WOM to lead gen, putting precise metrics in place is challenging even for those with well-defined strategies. That said, new tools are emerging that should make measuring results easier and well within the budgets of even the most cash-strapped operations. Startup ArgyleSocial, for example, links social media activity with “real business value,” for under $300/month.

4. An Aggregation Plan

One of the unexpected yet joyous benefits of a strong social program is its potential to significantly improve organic search results. But in order to turn social content into the gift that keeps on giving, brands need to aggregate and archive the content on their own Web sites. HubSpot, a software-as-a-service (Saas) platform, makes this process relatively easy for small business. Larger companies will seek out more robust solutions, including a surprisingly strong social offering from IBM.

5. Customer Feedback Loop

While listening to the customer has long been an important business credo, it is only lately that marketers are turning to online tools like Get Satisfaction that truly enable and track instantaneous feedback. In 2011, offering customers the ability to engage with fellow customers right on the company website will become more the rule than the exception, especially as companies come to realize that a few negative comments increase credibility and ultimately increase online sales. These conversations also enhance search results by creating tag-able content.

6. Social Business Enlightenment

In the brave new world of social business enlightenment, all businesses are social and all social is business. Even large companies will want to present all their employees, not just those in customer service and marketing, with unfettered, yet guided, access to social media tools. These employees will begin to see what the fuss is all about, quickly realizing that social isn’t just something their kids do but rather a way that generates leads, captures sales, services customers, and advocates new product development well beyond this holiday season.

If you’d like to add to this social media shopping list, just send me an email, preferably not addressed to the North Pole.

Turning Customer Service into a Marketing Weapon

Posted on by Drew Neisser

How Thor Muller and the gang at Get Satisfaction have helped thousands of companies and millions of consumers transform the fundamental notions of customer service. This article first appeared on FastCompany.com.

Just three years ago, you needed to be a prominent blogger like Jeff Jarvis or Bob Garfield to make an online noise loud enough to inspire a company response to a particular product or service issue. It was about that time that Thor Muller, Co-founder and CTO of Get Satisfaction, developed an online tool that would “allow anybody that same power,” to in essence, “get satisfaction by pulling the company in.”

Forty months later, Get Satisfaction is well on its way to transforming the way companies interact with consumers, turning customer service into the kind of measurably effective marketing that even John Wannamaker could have fully blessed. Gleaned from my conversation with Muller at Get Satisfaction’s San Francisco headquarters early this month, here are eight ways community driven customer service is changing the ways brands go to market.

1. Re-humanizing consumer interactions

For Muller, it is simply not enough that companies use their tools. “We really want people to change their whole approach to what it means to talk to customers,” he explained. “For a long time, maybe a hundred years, we’ve been gradually squeezing the humanity out of our interactions; scripting it, automating it, scaling it.” Instead of asking people to take a number, “Companies now have to revolve themselves around individuals.” Muller noted, adding that in doing so, “we’re making the world a better place, certainly more human!”

2. Elevating the conversation from transactions to aspirations

While traditional customer service is often about addressing transactional issues like resetting passwords, Muller believes that community-driven customer support can go much further. “Customer communities at their best are really tapping people’s deeper goals, their deeper desires,” explained Muller. This requires companies to, “rise above writing help documentation and be more of a good cocktail party host.” Muller links this change with the new staff post of Community Manager who is part therapist, part help desk and part cruise director.

3. Reducing the costs of the traditional help desk

For years, companies have sought to drive down support costs with automation and the ironic goal of minimizing human interaction with their call centers. Part of the reason Get Satisfaction has grown so quickly is that it flips this notion on its head, increasing human interaction but decreasing costs by making support more peer-to-peer driven. Noted Muller, “we’ve seen with our communities at scale typically reduce the number of [service] tickets that go to [call center] agents by 75% or so.” Muller referred me to case histories for Mint.com and Yola, both of which reduced “repetitive support by two thirds.”

4. Extending support beyond your website to Facebook

While most companies recognize the need to engage consumers on social media, only the savviest have begun to offer customer support on platforms like Facebook. For these enlightened marketers, Get Satisfaction offers a Facebook application in two distinct versions, “one for enterprises who have a lot more demand for customization/controls and one for everybody else,” noted Muller. Having a support tab on Facebook gives fans one more reason to “Like” a brand and get the information and support required to encourage and enable over-the-top evangelism.

5. Turning customer support into searchable content

Given the fundamental importance of search to customer acquisition, finding ways to improve organic search results (SEO) is a top priority for most businesses. That said, few have recognized that content generated via customer communities can do just that. Explained Muller, “somebody asks how they can use a particular camera to take better pictures, that is then indexed by Google and then next person who searches finds that conversation. Get Satisfaction] is taking something that used to be a cost center, customer service, and turning it into lead generation.”

6. Listening builds trust in and of itself

Dell famously solicited customer ideas and ended up producing a Linux based laptop that no one bought. This kind of listening and responding is not the ultimate intent of Get Satisfaction. While community members are encouraged to offer ideas, Muller does not advocate, “design by committee” or conclude that the customer is always right. “Even if [a brand doesn’t] build what I want them to build or do what I want them to do, I may be less likely to change to another product because I feel close to them,” explained Muller.

7. Integrating customer conversations with your CRM system

Many sophisticated marketers, especially in B2B, rely on well-honed CRM systems to track leads through the funnel. Get Satisfaction allows these companies to take this one step further by connecting the social web with workflow systems, trouble tickets and project management tools. Explained Muller, “Knowing who a customer is, what their buying history is, and what they care about is important to servicing them well.” Suddenly a customer complaint becomes “actionable within an organization,” given the CRM integration concluded Muller.

8. Measuring C-Sat on both a qualitative and quantitative basis

While some pundits strive to simplify customer satisfaction to one basic metric like Net Promoter, this may not be the ideal approach for your particular business. Having witnessed thousands of customer comments and complaints, Muller encourages clients to take a “more holistic approach” and “measure satisfaction in various ways.” Having developed something called a Satisfactometer, that explained Muller, “might be something fun like an emoticon and other times might be something more structured and numeric,” Get Satisfaction is delivering both sides of the measurement equation.

Final Note: Having recently hired a CEO to drive the company forward, Muller is re-focused on his true love, product development, so we can expect even more satisfying features from Get Satisfaction in the days ahead.

The State of Guerrilla Marketing

Posted on by Drew Neisser

The following is a Q&A with yours truly on the current state of affairs in guerrilla marketing.

Q: How has guerrilla marketing evolved?

Guerrilla thinking has evolved tremendously in the last 24 months. Press seeking guerrillas have shifted away from street theater to something with online legs. Part of this is fishing where the fish are. Part of this is that if you can gain Likes or YouTube channel subscriptions, your initial contact can turn into a more lasting relationship. Part of this is the press itself—the press is more likely to wax on about a social program than a purely street program at this moment in time.

Q: What’s up with street stunts?

Frankly, I’ve never been a fan or promoter of the street stunt approach. They are typically a brief encounter with little residual value. The challenge with guerrilla has always been to provide a reasonable exchange of value between brand and consumer. In exchange for a consumer’s time, the brand must provide some value, either genuine utility or at least a good laugh. The reason the HSBC BankCab is still on the road after seven years is that the value exchange is extraordinary. First, people love to see an old Checker driving around the streets. Second, when they get in the BankCab, it is a refreshing experience complete with a truly knowledgeable cabbie. Third, HSBC customers get a free ride when engenders brand love. We recently renovated the HSBC BankCab, enabling it to run on compressed natural gas, thus making it a more “green” experience. As street programs go, this is about as good as it gets.

Q: What’s cool right now?

The most exciting area of guerrilla right now, is the social to offline movement. Skittles “Mob the Rainbow” program is one great example of this. Skittles solicits ideas from its 10 million strong Facebook fan base, which sometimes lead to hilarious offline executions. For example, fans suggested sending Valentines to a particular postal worker. Skittles did just that and produced a funny viral video which brought the program full circle. JetBlue is using its strong Twitter following in a similar fashion. Earlier this year, @JetBlue tweeted they were on a particular street corner in Manhattan giving away tickets. In a matter of minutes, 300 eager travelers showed up and of course, JetBlue got some nice ink for this as well. In this way, social media has replaced email as the ignition switch for flash mobs.

Q: How does social fit into a guerrillas plans?

Any marketer considering a physical guerrilla interaction would be crazy not to also bake in a social component. The social component should give the program legs, extending the offline interaction online. It also provides a home for videos and or photos taken of the physical interaction thus sharing these experiences with a larger audience. The social component also helps amortize the cost of the potentially expensive offline component. Finally, the social component provides an opportunity for feedback something that is not always easy to get in the physical arena.

Q: Is the physical street experience dead?

Since marketing success has often been about zigging when others zag, a few enlightened marketers will renew their emphasis on the physical experience and the true engagement opportunity it represents. Touching someone deeply often requires a physical touch. Online dating sites do the matchmaking but typically the fire doesn’t flame until the couple actually meets.

Q: What roles are left for guerrilla marketing?

Guerrilla thinking has never been dependent on one particular type of interaction. It has always been about making more out of less, breaking the ice in order to build meaningful and hopefully lasting relationships. Social marketing has proven its ability to maintain and nurture relationships but the jury is still out on its ability to generate trial from new customers.

Q: How has Renegade evolved from a guerrilla standpoint?

I see social marketing as an evolution of our long-time guerrilla practice. The goals haven’t changed but the tactics  we use continue to grow and evolve. Five years ago, three out of four incoming calls would be from clients seeking guerrilla ideas. Now those same clients are requesting social marketing ideas. The impetuous for the calls is the same—help us engage customers cost-effectively.

[“Delivery.com Street Stunt in October”][]