Author: Drew Neisser

Baby Your Customers

Posted on by Drew Neisser

If you sell baby products and want to pamper your propects, then hatching a blog for new parents is a welcome as an obstetrician in a maternity ward on a full moon. That is exactly what Graco has done and at least one new parent is singing Graco’s praises on his Community Guy blog:

As a (relatively) new parent, the Graco brand certainly has made a footprint in our household. Through a new Twitter friend, I found out about the new(ish) Graco blog. As a corporate blog, this is one of the best I’ve seen yet. That’s pretty impressive considering the role the Graco Legal Department probably played in this launch, and ongoing maintenance!

It’s absolutely fantastic that when I read the blog tonight, there was 4 entries before I came to one about the Graco product, and even that lacked any blatant “sales”. Instead focusing on the fact that Graco customers created a mashup to showcase where the new product was appearing in stores locally around the US. The Graco blogging team clearly understands that they’re here to connect with parents, and what better way than to talk about parenting? Once the connection’s made, who do you think those parents are going to choose?

If you sell people to people who need rich people then setting up a social network for high net worth people could be more than the luckiest ploy in the world. Leading global headhunting firm, Heidrick & Struggles made headlines in Business Week when they announced they were creating a “A Facebook For The Seven-Figure Set” last week:

A private social networking site for top-flight corporate candidates? Executive search giant Heidrick & Struggles is developing one, in an effort to streamline its recruitment of elite managers.

In beta testing now and set for commercial launch by the end of May, the site will make the 55-year-old firm the first big-time recruiter to adopt the kind of apps—forums for sharing ideas, photos, and videos for presenting personal information—offered by popular sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, the professional networking service.

Heidrick’s site, to be run in partnership with software startup VisualCareers.com, aims to be a cut above LinkedIn, which now has 20 million users. It will focus on CEOs, COOs, CFOs, and the marketing and tech chiefs who work by their sides. And it will be private—just for Heidrick clients and candidates.

Both of these are examples of Marketing as Service in action, each setting out to baby their customers with access and information traditional messaging techniques simply couldn’t deliver.

Honesty Is the Best Policy (even for Wal-Mart)

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Giving consumers the information they need to make smart purchase decisions is a basic example of Marketing as Service. Unfortunately, very few retailers are actually prepared to share the expertise they have about the products they carry in store. Not wanting to annoy any of their suppliers, retailers tend to gloss over any product shortcomings. Ironically, this kind of honesty has been turned over to consumers who critique products online without the depth of expertise a buyer usually has.

I’m not saying that consumer critiques are bad, on the contrary, they have been vital to the continued success of online retailers. A couple of studies have shown that sites that allow for critical assessments on their site enjoy higher sales than those that don’t. Basically the consumer trusts you more if you let your faults be exposed. But I digress.Wal-Mart has not exactly been the poster child for online honesty having tried to pass off company-paid blogs as consumer-generated blogs. For this, they earned near top billing in the very definition of fake blog or flog on Wikepedia:

Walmarting Across America, written by two Walmart “enthusiasts” who decided to journey across America in an RV and blog about the experience as they visited Walmarts along the way. While the two people actually did travel across America for the purpose of this blog, it was revealed to be paid for by Wal-mart.

So, it is with great interest that I read about Wal-Mart’s newest approach in today’s New York Times, an honest blog called CheckOutBlog.com that is being penned by various Wal-Mart buyers. Serving up the straight stuff from the aisles of Wal-Mart, the blog is gaining steam with consumers and the press. Not afraid to call it as they see it, Wal-Mart may be setting the standard for a new kind of corporate blog, one that actually has teeth. Wal-Mart’s computer buyer actually had the chutzpa to criticize Microsoft’s newest operating system Vista, “Is it really all that and a bag of chips?” he wrote on his blog. “My life has not changed dramatically — well, for that matter, it hasn’t changed at all.”

This site was credited with announcing Wal-Mart’s decision to no longer carry HD-DVD’s which essentially was a death blow to that format. Toshiba announced it was closing up shop for HD-DVDs shortly thereafter. With this kind of power, one Wal-Mart blogger noted on the blog, “To whom much is given, from him much will be required.” This got me thinking about several other cliches that could be relevant to Wal-Mart’s newly chastened approach:

  • What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger (unless you’re in the HD-DVD business)
  • Once burned, twice shy (except when it comes to blogging)
  • Honesty is the best policy (even if it means criticizing one of your largest suppliers)
  • The truth shall set you free (even if you were once caught flogging)
  • Nobody is perfect (and bloggers will make sure that you stay that way)

Bottom line–kudos to Wal-Mart for a true act of corporate bravery.

Cai Guo-Qiang at the Guggenheim

Posted on by Drew Neisser

If you go to one museum between now and May 28th, make sure it is the Guggenheim. Chinese artist Cai Guo-Quiang’s exhibit called I Want To Believe is nothing short of mind blowing. The reviews have been universally strong and far more detailed than anything I can offer:

  • Newsday: If it weren’t so massive, the arrangement of nine full-sized automobiles hung from the top of the Guggenheim’s spiral, might look like a mobile dangling
  • NewYorker: Cai Guo-Qiang, the Chinese installation and pyrotechnic artist, recently told me that as a child he had a recurrent
  • New York Times: Cars and Gunpowder and Plenty of Noise – New York Times The Guggenheim Museum’s retrospective of the work of the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang is nothing if not action packed. The galleries are so rife with the

The guy paints with gun powder. He suspends hurling wolves, exploding cars and arrow-riddled ships. You gotta see it to believe it. And for you Olympic fans, Cai Guo-Qiang is responsible for the pyrotechnics at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Games (August 8-25, 2008).

Serves you right! Round 2 Contest

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Bad service is so common that good service actually catches us by surprise. Case in point–this Monday night, I went online to buy some tennis shoes. I knew the brand, size and model number, so this was clearly a commodity purchase and thus I started with no retailer preference. Googling the brand and model, I quickly determined that there wasn’t much of a price variance, in fact all the retailers listed carried the model within $3 of $69.95 (I know, not cheap but these shoes hold up well on the tennis and paddle courts). Ultimately I selected Zappos because they offered free shipping and I knew they were a legitimate operation. By 9pm Eastern Standard Time I had place my order, expecting delivery any time in the next three weeks (it was free shipping after all). Zappos confirmed my order via email in a matter of minutes and followed up with an email shortly thereafter that they had shipped my shoes. I didn’t really pay attention to the details of the shipping email and you can imagine my surprise when my shoes arrived the next day.

Amazed by this unexpected service, I told several friends about it. What surprised me is that each of them had their own “best service” story and of course, their worst service story. Since the Internet is so famous for tales of woe, I thought it might be interesting to collect some positive stories. The best story of best service (particularly online) will receive a suitable prize, perhaps a customized latte at the “new” Starbucks. In the meantime, save your worst service story for another contest to follow.

GE WHIZ, MARKETING FOR GOOD WORKS

Posted on by Drew Neisser

In marked contrast to his more famous predecessor Jack Welch, about three years ago, Jeff Immelt set about to transform GE from a huge conglomerate into a huge conglomerate that did well by doing good. Here are the four “primary pledges” of his ecomagination plan that at the time seemed like pipe dreams:

  • In R&D, the company has pledged to more than double the $700 million it spent researching cleaner technologies in 2005, to $1.5 billion by 2010.
  • GE also seeks to generate at least $20 billion of revenue in 2010 from products and services that “provide significant and measurable environmental performance advantages to customers.”
  • The third “ecomagination” commitment calls on GE to improve its operations’ energy efficiency 30% from 2004 levels by 2012.
  • Finally, GE is planning to keep the public fully informed of these efforts through various means, including its website and advertising.

Three years later, GE is on track to deliver on all of its pledges, generating a reported $15 billion in revenue from “green” products in 2007 and decreasing internal energy consumption ahead of goal. This is a text book case of thinking big and executing bigger. The ecomagination program has way too many legs to cover here so let me just call your attention to two experiential components.

The first is an online game called GeoTerra that GE launched about two years ago that continues to draw a robust audience. Here’s what Future-Making Serious Gamer had to say about it:

Geoterra is an interactive GE-branded experience that presents game-like attractions that allow players to enhance the well being of an island’s inhabitants and environment through the diversity of GE’s ecomagination products and their ability to create a greener planet.

The challenge of the game revolves around the player’s ability to interact with three eco-challenges and not only score as high as possible, but recognize the best use for each of the GE products and effectively utilize them on the fictitious island. Optimal performance results in a higher Geoscore.

The second is the “imagination center” that is being built right now in Beijing for the Olympic Games. According to the New York Times report today, this two-story building in the middle of the Olympic Green is “half fun house, half museum.”

The exhibits are aimed at adults, with enough just-for-fun features so that a visiting executive need not feel guilty about dragging along the whole family. In the center’s wind energy room, children — or any adult whose inner child is clamoring for attention — can wave their arms to make digital projections of objects sway in the wind they create. In the water purification room, they will walk on a video projection of water, with each step creating ripples.

Meanwhile, GE is building windmills around the world faster than you can say Don Quixote. Here’s to dreaming big.

Serves you right!

Posted on by Drew Neisser

One of the reasons I keep pushing Marketing as Service is that old-fashioned messaging (buy brand x because its great) is a so often an empty vessel. Advertising for years has been a steady stream of promises unfulfilled… this shampoo will make you beautiful, this beer will get you the girl, this car will help you drive like Nascar-winner Jeff Gordon. Many mass marketers have gotten lazy, substituting sizzle when they should be focused on the steak.

This was clearly on the mind of Starbucks founder Howard Schultz when he made the extraordinary statement of shutting down all the Starbucks across the country for three hours yesterday. Schultz simply couldn’t live any longer with the ordinary service standards his barista’s now offered. The Starbucks experience had become more like McDonalds than the classic Italian coffee bar he originally tried to replicate. So, he shut down every store and every news media carried the story. In shutting down the stores, he made an enormous statement both internally and externally. He used the three hours to reiterate Starbucks’ mission via a video message to all employees, to retrain his barristas on the expresso machines, to remind them that personalized service is not an option but rather the key to the company’s success.

Externally, Schultz sent a message to every Starbucks customer, every prospect and every competitor that they were renewing their commitment to the original Starbucks standards of service. Outside each store during the shut down, a Starbucks employee explained what was going on to passersby, turning away customers with the promise of better service afterwards. The media did the rest of the work, carrying Schultz’ message almost verbatim in print, radio and TV. Even with Dunkin’ Donuts opportunistically offering 99 cent lattes for stranded Starbucks’ customers, the media story played out well for Starbucks–no one could miss the main point.

Undoubtedly, this effort will be far more effective than the recent TV campaign Starbucks which offered vacuous imagery and little else. Of course, the onus will be on each individual barrista to deliver on the new promise—better and more personalized service–tender loving caffeine if you will. Should the service improve, so will the word of mouth. Customer satisfaction will rise because the service is better, not because they spend ad dollars saying it is.

So, before you can get to Marketing as Service, you need to remember that no amount of sizzle can make a bad steak taste better or a poorly prepared latte a heart warming experience. But then again, if your service is good, it serves you right!

POSTSCRIPT–a fellow Renegade, Miss Jennifer Steele, visited her Starbucks this morning and noticed a significant change. A greeter welcomed her and directed traffic. The order taker wrote her name on the cup and her Grande non-fat latte arrived faster than usual. After noticing spotty service over the last three years and several times vowing to never return, she has renewed her commitment to a daily Starbucks stop. Serves her right, indeed!

2nd POSTSCRIPT 3/8/08:  Laura Ries writes a very good essay on this topic called Backwards is the New Forwards on her blog.