“Education also involves getting people’s attention. But so does electroshock therapy. No one makes a living saying nonsense like ‘Marketing, at it’s core, is electroshock therapy.'”
(via doc)
When The Customers ARE The Strategy
Today I’m at the Business Marketing Association conference in San Jose, and just had the chance to hear a great presentation by Justin Crotty, who is the VP of Channel Marketing for Ingram Micro, a $28 billion technology distributor (#72 on the Fortune 500 last year, for what it’s worth). A few bits of Ingram’s strategy were communicated. Why does this matter? Because Ingram is in perhaps the most “commodity” business in the world. What do they do to differentiate?
They connect with their customers.
At first, Ingram was going to do an ad campaign around “partnering” with their customers. They pulled some prospective ads together.
The ads were abysmal. Stock shots of the attractive business people of all genders and races, smiling cheerfully at the camera. Ingram knew their customers would (rightfully) call B.S. on them. So, the drawing board was revisited. Here’s the result:
In other words, it’s not that the strategy is aimed at the customers…the customers ::are:: the strategy
Crotty brought up a number of very salient points. In particular, he shared another insight that was spot-on, especially in a commodity business. “If you can get customers to help you develop your go-to-market strategy, the you don’t need to sell to them anymore.” Think about that for a second.
Now, check this out. Last year, CRN (one of the go-to resources for Ingram’s industry) did their annual “Top 25” executives list. Number 19 on the list was Scott Goemmel, one of Ingram’s customers. They promote their customers, relentlessly, according to Crotty. (Apparently this ruffled at least one set of feathers…Ingram’s CEO was listed at #20, behind Goemmel on the list. Heh.)
A couple of other key quotes from the presentation:
- “Relationships create emotional barriers to exit.”
- “Supermarket card programs reward card ownership…they don’t reward loyalty.” (For example, how many times has the checker at the local supermarket swiped a “dummy” card for you?)
- “Every business is a small business…your word is everything.”
Good stuff. Whereas a number of the other presentations have been a little too close to “marketing business as usual” throughout the day, Crotty’s presentation was an unexpected oasis of clue.
You Keep Using That Word…I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
I like words. I mean, I really like words. And yesterday, something happened that rarely occurs…the meaning of a word changed for me. It wasn’t that I learned a new word, or that I learned an obscure definition that consisted of a word I already knew. Instead, a common word, a word that I’ve uttered and heard probably thousands of times, has been changed in meaning, likely forever.
photo: elisfanclub
That word is “creative.”
Now, as someone who has been on the sales and marketing side of the business for a long time, I used to map the word “creative” to something pretty close to the answers.com definition of the word. I used to map it to:
creative: characterized by originality and expressiveness; imaginative: creative writing.
Or perhaps this one:
creative: one who displays productive originality: the “creatives” in the advertising department.
The word used to mean something akin to the above definitions. It also had a number of other overtones: the “creatives” were the people in vintage, mismatched clothing who were “fun to be around” but…ultimately…well, they were the flighty, flaky folks. (You know, the ones who couldn’t hold a steady job.)
This changed yesterday at MeshForum.
Over the course of a conversation, I came to realize that there’s another, truer, sense of the word. One of the other participants stated that he had made a decision to “live a creative life.”
When I first heard that phrase, I naturally mapped the word “creative” to the definitions above. And, since it was uttered by an artist, everything seemed to fit. My worldview was secure in its assumptions.
And then the conversation progressed, and I realized that I had completely missed the point. The word “creative”…perhaps it’s better to explicitly enunciate it “create-ive”…was not meant to indicate “expressive” or “imaginative.” Instead, it was tied to the root meaning of the word create…to fabricate out of undifferentiated raw materials, to bring something new to the world and to bring to life and fruition and success novel, tangible things that have never been seen before.
This idea of “creation” is in stark contrast to the common business tactic of fixing problems. As was stated yesterday, “when you ‘fix’ a broken motorcycle, the best that you can hope for is to end up with a motorcycle that is as good as it was before it was broken.” When you are being create-ive, you bring to life something that is additive, something that propels you, and your company, and society forward.
So…were you create-ive today? Or did you just fix things?
(Dave…thanks.)
MeshForum 2006 – Jon Lebkowsky and Zack Rosen
Quick, great presentation by Jon Lebkowsky and Zack Rosen, talking with the group about the differences between “traditional” (a.k.a. “broadcast”) politics and emerging, network-based political models.
The big comparison:
Strongly suggest checking out both of their blogs, as well as really looking at (as opposed to scanning) each of the points in the table above, sourced from Jon. Most importantly, each of those points of comparison is just as valid with respect to how organizations can choose interact with their customers. Thoughtful stuff.
MeshForum 2006 – Anil Dash
Anil Dash from SixApart is speaking about blogs. First quote: “How many of you know what a blog is?” Contrary to defining blogs as a technology or platform, instead Dash described a blog as “a way to connect.”
Ratio of writers to readers in the SixApart network have changed from 1:40 to about 1:1000 for blogs that are “public facing.”
Two thirds of the users on LiveJournal are female. “A haven for those who want to communicate in a way that’s private and controlled.” On LJ, it’s more like 1:6 or 1:8 of writers to readers.
“You might read 1000 feeds…but you don’t have 1000 friends.”
“Real influence is not measured in raw numbers. Real influence is related to the number of people who you are connected to who really care about what you think.”
“The New York Times thinks they compete with the Washington Post. The New York Times is not competing with the Washington Post. The New York Times actually competes with recipes from my grandmother. The New York Times competes with information from my friends.”
“There are only a couple of different ways to connect. A person can connect at a really high level with 6-8 people, and at a moderate level with about 150 people.”
The most popular community on LJ is “Oh No They Didn’t” … a community of about 250,000 celebrity gossipwatchers. Most of those people watch this information on their “friends” page — they intersperse this information with information from their friends and family news.
MeshForum 2006 – Robert Scoble & Shel Israel
Robert Scoble and Shel Israel gave a little bit of background on their book Naked Conversations.
Key points: Listening…a person who starts a blog on “quilting” will be indexed in two hours.
Shel Israel tells a story about Vyew, instigated by Dennis Howlett. Vyew listened to the needs Dennis and incorporated feedback into their product within days. Outstanding.
“A startup can get instant global feedback by an audience who cares…it’s R&D on steroids.”
“One of the things that blows me a way is that during the course of a week, I have conversations with people in a dozen countries.”
“Fundamentals are just that…fundamental. But these things take time. Blogging is not the revolution — conversation is the revolution.” — Shel Israel
Q: What’s the difference between a “group” blog and an individual blog?
A: (scoble) Within Microsoft, group blogs are discussed in a committee. They are vetted and approved, they are slowed down and watered down.
A: (israel) I think group blogs are going to get more unfiltered over time. Right now, if you look at the tech sector, the only big one is TechDirt. (Scoble rebuts, that some teams within Microsoft have team blogs that are very popular.)
Q: As people blog, are the able to be more of themselves? I’m interest in the differences between who people “are” when they’re on a company blog? Are people able to be more of “who they are” when they’re on their blogs?
A: (israel) By companies allowing companies to allow middle level employess to blog, they are creating a culture that is humanizing the company. (ed. – BRAVO!). What is happening…we want to remain humans when we go to work. We want the world to know “I’m more than just the person who sits in cube #72X.”
Q: What would you do if you were going to blog about issues you were having at work with a supervisor?
A: (israel) You’d want to think about that. Yes, test the membranes of the company…but dont be stupid. When you blog, don’t do things that will prevent you from getting your next job — digial lasts forever.
A: (scoble) If you’re going to take on your boss, or take on your management, you have to know that you’re taking a risk. Have your eyes open, and that you’re taking on a culture. Go in with your eyes open and know that you’re putting your job on the line. Someone link Mark Jens broke a rule…talking about financial results, and that will get you in trouble in a public company. He poured fuel around his own feet, and lit it on fire.
Q: How do you deal with comments, especially when the comments devolve in incivility?
A: (scoble) I’m now taking the “living room” rule. If a comment is not something that I’d expect to hear in my own living room, I’ll take that comment out. I don’t want to subject my readers to that.
A: (israel) If you have a company, these kinds of negative comments are going on anyway. For me, the big education is in listening to the negative comments. Skip past the first sentence where they call you names, and go to sentence three where they get to the root of their issue. Companies that can do this inch closer to their customers, and the wisdom of crowds sets in, and companies begin to get a lot wiser.
Q: Christopher Allen asked about the “Tyranny of the Popular.” “I want to take the ‘long tail,’ and cut off the head. The ‘popular’ dominates the first twenty pages.”
A: “Aggregators of the popular like Memeorandum are like purified sugar, and you need some fiber in your life.” – Scoble
More thoughts: Howard Greenstein
Marketers Out Of Touch With Customers
On the heels of the previous post, which has some saying “CRM is dead,” comes a very interesting article by Barney Beal. Here are some points of note from the article, quoting a recent study from the CMO council. (All stats below were sourced from Barney’s excellent report.) According to the study:
- Two thirds of respondents said they have no formal system for tracking marketing’s role in acquiring new customers
- Over one third don’t have a model of their “best” customer or opportunity
- Just under a third have no reliable data on profitability of key customers
- Nearly 50% said someone other than marketers influences the “segmentation and targeting strategy”*
Now, those points noted, there is a huge reliance on existing “CRM” systems. This, however, is frought with some problems. 33% of the respondents cited their CRM systems as their primary information source. Yet the survey found that “40% of the respondents rated their customer data systems as ‘weak’ or ‘very weak’ in timeliness and depth; availability of useful data; reports and analytics; and relevance to marketing strategies.”
* – N.B. I still despise the terms “segmentation” and “targeting” in this context. The first to me seems like it refers to tearing the customer limb from limb. The second seems to indicate a viewpoint that the customer is prey that is to be stalked and bagged like a trophy elk. But I digress.
Customer Managed Relationships
Seth writes:
“It might be more than just semantics. Disney Destinations Marketing has a new department: Customer Managed Relationships. Here’s the quote from them that Tim shared with me, “CMR is our version of CRM – just a slight nuance regarding our philosophy that our guests invite us into their lives and ultimately manage our presence/relationship with them.”
Sounds a little bit like Haystack, doesn’t it?
Also, there’s a nice primer on CMR from CRMToday. According to them, CMR is three things:
1. An ability to rethink, to reshape your organisation and its knowledge so that it is at the disposal of your customers
2. Internet enabled management tools which customers use to get what they want
3. An ability to react to the information being generated and used by customers in order to increase profitability
Here’s a link to the primer.
From The Mouths Of…Blogs?
Tech Note: New Typepad Anti-spam Features Come Online
My amigo del fuego John T. Unger has some good news for Typepad users. Apparently, TypePad has released a new feature about an hour ago that now allows users to ban specific words, including URLs, to defeat spam comments and trackbacks.
This is good news. I (and I would assume many other Typepad customers) have been fighting daily battles against the overlords of spam, especially over the last two weeks or so. Another tool in the arsenal is great to have.
