I’m in a good mood this morning. The sun is shining. It’s Friday. The Yankees starting pitchers actually held their own yesterday, winning back to back victories over the Texas Rangers. No one got injured. There is still hope after all that by October the Yanks will find themselves in the playoffs, despite the fact that they just set a record for using the most starting pitchers (10) in the first 30 days. If you aren’t a baseball fan, you may not appreciate the problems associated with a weak and/or injury-plagued pitching staff. Don’t worry, I’ll relate this back to Marketing for Good momentarily.
Pitching is the single most important variable in baseball. Good pitching inevitably beats good hitting. Over that last six years, Yankee hitting has been awesome during the regular season, only to be stifled by a few great pitchers during the playoffs. You have to go back to 2000 when Andy Petitte and Mariano Riviera combined to shut down the New York Mets in their five game World Series.
In marketing terms, pitching is essentially your product offering. Good products inevitably beat good advertising. If your product stinks, no amount of advertising perfume can save it. Jet Blue struggled this winter as foul weather wreaked havoc on their schedules, causing a blizzard of delays and bad press. Another airline, with the product equivalent of a bad pitching staff, might not have recovered from the avalanche of negative publicity and customer defections. But Jet Blue’s product is fundamentally sound and the customers have returned by the planeful. Sure Jet Blue upgraded the IT system that became overloaded this winter, helping them to get back to the basics that built their brand — strong customer service. The sizzle provided by the “Customer’s Bill of Rights” would not have saved the game if Jet Blue had not truly renewed its commitment to providing a thoroughly pleasant customer experience at every point of contact. Once the product was “fixed”, marketing communications had no problem hitting into the gaps, reminding the consumer of all that Jet Blue has to offer.
Marketing for Good encourages marketers to enhance their product offerings as the primary way to achieve competitive advantage. If your product line-up is not as strong and as it should be (i.e. weak pitchers) you will undoubtedly struggle as the season unfolds. One way to enhance your offering is by turning your communications into a service in and of itself. In the Jet Blue example, their Customer Bill of Rights was essentially a marketing idea that became a product enhancement. Other examples will be forthcoming. And if you are listening, Mr. Cashman (GM of the Yankees), do us all a favor and go buy some good pitchers, pronto.