branding Archives - Page 4 of 5

August 12, 2005

Dell Loses Another Sale

First, the Jeff Jarvis snowball.

Then Dell threatens to close, and then closes, its customer forums.

Now this, from Desirable Roasted Coffee.

“Dell Denmark approached me a half-dozen times over the summer, at least. At minor expense, to be sure, but it adds up. But the hum started by a guy 4000 miles away, whom I don’t even know, who had a bad experience with a Dell subsidiary I’ll never have to deal with, was enough to wave me off. The hum got into my subconscious. And Dell Denmark could do nothing to get back into the front of my brain.”

Still think that interactions between members of a customer community don’t matter?

August 5, 2005

When Customers Blog

Susan Getgood has a great, two-part post on customer blogs (that is, enterprise-sponsored blogs that are written by customers of that organization). Here they are:

Customer Blogs: What type of company should do one? and
Customer Blogs: What you need to do to make it work.

Good stuff, read the whole thing, etc.

Some tidbits, to help stack the deck in favor of success. Susan says consider a customer blog if…

Customers love the product
Customers are already talking in some fashion
Others can learn from the customers’ conversations (Susan calls this “exploting an information gap,” but isn’t it more about conversation and learning, rather than “exploitation?”)
The hosting company is willing to give up control

The last one’s the biggie, isn’t it? It goes back to trusting the customer, I suppose…

tag: newvoices
(what’s this?)

July 28, 2005

PRWeek: Podcasts Open New Doors For Customer Relationships

Keith O’Brien gets it right in this article: Podcasting: Podcasts open new doors for customer relationships. Jason Calacanis has a great quote:

“I think it’s a great channel for companies to go direct to the consumer. I love JetBlue, and if they had a travel show that incorporated where it goes, what you can find at its destinations, and travel tips, I would certainly download it. If you’re a Flash designer and could listen to a podcast each week on Flash design produced by Macromedia, that would be of high value, as well. Just like blogs can engage customers in a conversation, [podcasts] can, as well.”

Additionally, although I normally try to avoid The Mouse at all costs, Disney’s Duncan Wardle also makes a good point:

“Say a single mother from San Francisco is thinking of coming to Disneyland. When she’s planning her trip, what if she listened to a podcast of a single mother talking about what’s good and [bad] at Disneyland? Right now, consumers are in the marketing mix, as they should be. There’s a huge change of focus where you will not be marketing at consumers; you will be marketing with them.”

http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story_free.cfm?ID=239677&site=3

(disclosure: I was interviewed for the article)

June 6, 2005

Asking only workman’s wages
I come looking for a job
But I get no offers,
Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue
I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there
Lie la lie
Lie la lie lie lie la lie, lie la lie
– Simon and Garfunkel, The Boxer

Indulge me in this hypothetical situation. Someone you’ve never met before, with whom you have no prior relationship, comes up to you and says “Hi, I’m going to lie to you, and you should pay me for the privilege.” What would you do? What would you say?

I’m betting you’d put your hand on your wallet (in order to make sure it’s still there), and you’d tell them to take a hike.

That’s the same kind of squicky feeling I get the more I hear about the new Seth Godin book, All Marketers Are Liars. The most troubling quote I’ve seen so far from the book:

“Tell a story that is memorable and remarkable and worth listening to. Seduce your customers, because that’s exactly what they want you to do. That requires ruthless selectivity and creative storytelling—in other words, lying.”

I am continually stunned by this unbelievable disrespect for customers (who, by the way, Godin continues to refer to as consumers). Mindless automatons we must all be, interested only in entertainment, yearning for fanciful yarns that induce us to shell out cash. This assumes all customers are homogeneous with respect to a need and that a great “story” will be the trigger that induces them to buy. I just don’t think this is the situation.

Although Godin seems to find “case studies” (term used loosely) and has retrofit them to fit his needs, the trend is going the other way. Away from homogeneity. Out into the long tail. The trend is toward uniqueness and connections and relationships. It’s not about finding the best common self-deception that consumers (errg, I get the willies just typing that word) have, and trying to mimic it.

Good customers, thinking customers, create their own connections, and their own histories. Customers engaged in a community create their own stories, based on shared experiences.

Say you do follow the “liars” advice, and create a great story to catch a market. When that “story” changes to catch the next fad (as it must), what happens to the customer who bought into the original façade? What is your response? “Screw ’em, time to ship more product, time to come up with a new story and catch the next big thing.” How will that customer feel when the façade is pulled back, when he or she gets to roll around to the back of the lot, and sees that the town was two-dimensional? How long will that relationship last?

I guess I’m not the only one who has a dissenting opinion on this, um, story. Publisher’s Weekly had this to say:

“Readers will likely find the book’s practical advice as rudderless as its ethical principles.”

In the “liars” world, how do you measure success? The “liars” approach forces one to measure success from the seller’s point of view. For focusing on the customer’s actual results immediately breaks the illusion.

Others talking:

Tom Guarriello: “But, am I the only one who thinks that this “lying” business muddies more than it clarifies?”

Johnnie Moore: “An awful lot of storytelling is done after the event. Stories rationalise action.”

Peter Caputa: “…the Marketing Messiah for scribbling oft-borrowed common sense marketing lessons down in story form.”

Ed Brenegar: “So, what then is at the crux of this interaction? It is the relationship between two people. Or one person and a lot of individuals collectively. We are not telling stories in the aether. We are telling them in a specific social, physical, relational, personal context.”

May 3, 2005

Vespa To Launch Corporate Blogs

Article today in the WSJ regarding how Vespa will be launching a corporate blog ($), which will be penned by U.S.-based Vespa owners. According to the article, VespaBlogs.com will have “four bloggers will be selected to regularly contribute content about the products and broader lifestyle topics.”

A couple of salient points:

Initial statements seem that the bloggers will be be given relatively free rein — a “code of ethics” to which they will adhere, but it doesn’t appear that Vespa will have editorial control.
This is a great application, for the right company. Vespas evoke emotion and passion, and Vespa owners will be apt to build a community around these blogs.

This is similar to the work that was done for Knight Ridder Digital’s That’s Racin’ property, which is home to four racing enthusiast blogs:

Kathy’s Pit Stop (a fan blog)
Rantville (a fan blog, occasional spicy content)
Over The Wall (by a pit crew member)
Checkered Past (by That’s Racin’s editor)

(disclosure: Manifesto co-conspirator Lisa Stone worked with KRD on setting up the TR blog network)

Hopefully, Vespa will be emulate what was done here (in freedom-of-expression and clueful-ness, not in content, naturally), and the Vespa blogs will have the same type of authenticity and no-holds-barred direction that KRD has allowed their customers/fans/evangelists to pursue.

April 29, 2005

Getting Away From McMarketing

Carolyn Elefant has a great piece up today entitled “McMarketing vs. The Real Deal.” Good stuff, generalizable to any industry.

Some juicy bits:

“It’s pretty clear that law marketing has invaded large firm practice – and guess what? They’re all doing the same thing. Two large firm attorneys spoke at the conference that I attended; both had the requisite power point presentations which they’d also printed out on paper emblazoned with the firm logo and contact information. Both attorneys gave polished presentations, explaining just enough, in general terms – but not “giving away the store.” In other words, none of the papers cited the statutory support for the matters discussed or listed references where people might go to learn more. So, that I gathered is Practice 1 of Biglaw McMarketing – give away enough to make ’em call you, but no more.”

(By the way, McMarketing Practice 2 is “Be Elusive,” and Practice 3, “Speak To Industry Associations.”)

Although Carolyn, a solo practitioner, was presenting against The Big Names on the card, let’s see what happened at the end of the day:

“Finally, here’s the beauty of not following marketing rules sometimes and just going with the flow. By the end of the conference, the rumblings about starting a trade association became a true organized effort and I was drafted as Legislative Director and interviewed for the local TV station. Because of my blogging background (naturally, I touted my professional blog during my talk), I was able to throw together a website for our fledgling organization while others started the efforts on the Hill. Had I just waltzed into the conference and left after my talk, this opportunity never would have fallen into my lap. Only I know it really didn’t fall, it’s the product of a foundation that I’ve been laying in this field for at least a decade. ” (emphasis added)

Doing generic presentations with PowerPoint is pretty near the top of the list of Things That Are The Devil. (Happy to add that I think it’s been at least three years since I walked into a customer meeting with a presentation, unless it was specifically requested. The look of circuits popping when calmly stating “No, no presentation…actually was hoping we could chat and you could help us better understand what problems you are having” is priceless.)

While on the subject, here’s a clue. All press releases look the same. Yeah, you’ve written one like this at some point in your career (and, guilty as charged, I have too):

[Company name], a [noted | leading | large] provider of [insert industry name here] solutions is [happy | pleased | thrilled] to announce [a new customer | a new product].

[Paragraph with lame details here]

[Paragraph with glowing quote from executive here, that was written by someone else]

[Paragraph with contrived quote from a customer here, that was written by someone else]

[Paragraph from a “Noted Industry Analyst”&reg here, that took three weeks to get approved through the analyst’s business prevention department]

[Pollyanna penultimate paragraph painting priceless predictions for the future of the industry]

[About Company X, a rehash of the lame stuff in the first sentence of the first paragraph]

I can hear the cries now…”Oh, we can’t be creative and do things differently. We wouldn’t look like the others in our industry, then. And besides that, it’s hard.”

That’s why it’s worth doing.