Measure. Change.

Fidelity vs. Convenience

2009-09-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

An exclusive excerpt from Fortune magazine of a new book by Kevin Maney which explores the trade-off between quality and convenience and how Starbucks lost its "fidelity."

"Consumers are willing to give up convenience for great fidelity, or ditch fidelity for great convenience. But anything that offers just so-so fidelity and so-so convenience falls into a no-man's-land of consumer apathy that I call the fidelity belly. That's where music CDs, newspapers, and desktop Windows-based PCs find themselves today."

The Power of Access in the Experience Economy

2009-09-08T17:30:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm back on the agency side of the marketing world, I get excited about odd things. Earlier this year I convinced my client to conduct their first-ever digital-specific ethnographic study of their target consumer. It was a great study and among the many actionable insights it generated, consumers said they were open to "getting access" to parties, celebs, experiences...from the brand. Of course they were.

Later this year, as I worked on developing a holistic Relationship Marketing program, the idea of exclusive access arose again. As I was thinking through low-cost, easy to execute "rewards" for loyalists, I started thinking about not only what the brand could provide -- branded merch, product, exclusive experiences...but also what partners could provide -- content, access to events and thought leaders, exclusive experiences...

Any given brand, especially large national and international ones, have all sorts of relationships that can be leveraged to provide ongoing value to consumers. I've found that the opportunities are only bound by our creativity and negotiation skills.

Supporting my theories is a new venture that launches tomorrow -- namedrop. While the feel of the site is slightly off and the business model dubious (the more time you spend, the more people you refer, the more rewards/chances to win...) the idea of ACCESS as it's own business is interesting. Can someone create an ad-sustained business by promoting unique experiences? What other business models could apply? Can you auction off experiences to the highest bidder? Lastly, how can brands partner with synergistic companies to provide real value? Who's doing it well?

What do you think?

namedrop.com

Juice Stimulus Bill Explorer

2009-02-16T21:37:00.000-08:00

Another shoutout to the good folks at Juice for doing what they do. Their newish (awaiting an update) Juice Stimulus Bill Explorer is brilliant for people like me who either don't have the time or are unable to comprehend spending 700+ billion dollars. I love that they've added the simple voting tool and gradient scale, nice.

Social Influence and Persuasion

2008-10-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity to attend a presentation given by Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" last week. His contention is that there are scientifically proven universal tenets of human social influence and persuasion that can be used in speech and in marketing copy to open the minds of your audience to the benefits of your case. This is especially true in times of uncertainty. Here are the six he mentioned:

Reciprocation – people are obligated to give back to you what you provide to them. Give first to open minds and ears and only then should you ask for something. Presuasion instead of Persuasion

Scarcity – people want more of the things that there are less of. People are more powerfully affected by losing something than by gaining something. Employ language that spurs people to avoid loss.
- Ex: If you fail to do this, you will lose
- Ex: Calculate the amount of money you are wasting by not using our products.
- Ex: Bose Speakers - “New Features” versus “See What You've Been Missing”

Authority – if an expert says it, it must be true. Studies show that the credible communicator is the most successful. Credible means both knowledgeable and trust worthy. You must make your credentials known. This is best done ahead of time via a letter of introduction or get a mutual 3rd party to introduce you.
- Before you mention the strongest element of your case admit a weakness – this establishes immediate credibility. Avis and L'Oreal examples
- Berkshire Hathaway always begins their annual statements with a mis-step
- Likewise, build this formula into individual statements by changing the sequence of your words. Put the positive aspect of your statement after the word “but”
- GM CEO said, “We've built a plan to succeed, BUT we have a long way to go.” It should've been “We have a long way to go, but we have a plan to succeed.”

Consensus – people are likely to follow the lead of a) many others and b) similar others.
- Ex: “If operators are busy please call again”
- Ex: “The majority of our customers are saving $X”

Consistency

Friendship/Liking

In times of uncertainty:
- People tend to freeze and not make decisions
- People become very loss averse - Scarcity

Scarcity and Exclusivity of Information
- No one has this information yet
- This is exclusive information available for only a limited time
- Information value decays over time so you need to act on it NOW

Measure Change Social Network on Ning

2008-10-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

http://measurechange.ning.com

Just experimenting...

hulu versus YouTube - Mark Cuban misses the point

2008-06-18T10:18:00.000-07:00

An interesting post by Mark Cuban on his blog makes some good points but completely misses one of the most important differences between the two sites, YouTube is a social network, hulu isn't. For content producers, publishers and marketers, there is no better site (perhaps besides Facebook) for driving rich brand engagment. Sure, as a marketer, I can put an ad on hulu, but it's the same old mass market interuption model...will anyone click? No one will comment, mash-up, respond or subscribe to my content, that's for sure. YouTube, like MySpace and Facebook will continue to evolve their business models, they must and they will. But for now, they have won, and will continue to win because they've created much more than just a internet version of the same old lean-back platform.

Viral Video Tracking + Reporting

2008-06-16T15:16:00.000-07:00

A great overview of video success metrics for Barak and Hillary by the folks at divinity Metrics. The world of tracking and reporting of online video is finally sprouting...

Fourbuttons.com

2008-02-23T09:12:00.000-08:00

Mobile Decisions Made Easy™

A Call for a Customer/Visitor Profile Standard

2008-01-11T13:01:00.000-08:00

Please, I beg you Jim Stern and the Web Analytics Association, QUICKLY develop a data standard for visitor profile data. Before I contract with 5 siloed vendors that will build proprietary profiles in their black boxes, please define an OPEN STANDARD where vendors can securely share and build upon my aggregated profiles. Google's doing it with "Social Media" profiles, the big analytics firms are selling their black boxes, all online Behavioral Targeting relies on them...you MUST do it with customer profiles, yesterday.

Doing good and doing it well.

2008-01-10T15:31:00.000-08:00

Last night at 11:00pm, as I was putting away the groceries from my late night Safeway run I was listening to a BusinessWeek Cutting Edge Designers Podcast I'd meaning to check out. It was an interview with Hans Rosling, a Swedish professor turned information designer extraordinaire. If you haven't been watching the GapCasts now is the time. This one is a great place to start,

Gapminder - GapCast #5 - Bangladesh Miracle

If you like this sort of data visualization stuff and you don't know about the folks at Juice Analytics, get to know them!

Also, I've recently become obsessed with Good Magazine. these folks have found a way to "give a damn" and to present it beautifully. Subscribe damn it!

Meatball Sundae

2008-01-04T20:59:00.000-08:00

Seth Godin's new book is out. Spot on and taking it to the next level as usual. Preaching the MeasureChange gospel. Excerpts are here:

http://www.squidoo.com/meatballsundae

"New Marketing-whipped cream and a cherry on top-isn't magical. What's magical is what happens when an organization uses the New Marketing to become something it didn't used to be-it's not just the marketing that's transformed, but the entire organization. Just as technology propelled certain organizations through the Industrial Revolution, this new kind of marketing is driving the right organizations through the digital revolution.

You can become the right organization. You can align your organization from the bottom up to sync with New Marketing, and you can transform your organization into one that thrives on the new rules."

Get out in front of the revolution. Change your company more quickly than your competitors. Take all the money away from print and TV, away from anything that gets between or does not immediately enable a direct connection between you and your customers and partners. That means moving money to email, phone, chat, customer service and feedback, blogs, other direct response, Facebook, Twitter, in-person events (if your customers are there). Other ideas? Post them as comments. There are no more middlemenwomen.

eCommerce Vendor Landscape :: It's just too much

2007-12-20T17:22:00.000-08:00

When I was at WebTrends I was entrenched in the online marketing vendor universe. I spent many meetings sketching diagrams about where anaytics and the other tools (email, site search, behavioral targeting...) fit into the Internet Marketing quiver. Now that I'm back on the other side, responsible for marketing leadership and performance, the vendor universe is far more complex and frustrating. Especially for a growing, but still small online business who can't afford (financially or resource-wise) a suite of best-in-class tools, the challenge of prioritizing which tools will have the biggest impact is hard.

Because we are online retailers, the core of our business is our website. We need a top-tier e-commerce engine but we have a well-established CRM/ERP system that is running the rest of our business, so an e-commerce engine will need to integrate deeply with this existing system. We need top-tier analytics and online testing/optimization but unless you go with Omniture, those are 2 more vendors and integrations. We need top-tier email functionality, another vendor...and BT and site search and customer reviews...

It's too much.

I have faith that consolidation will continue and prices will fall as all the big players pick their preferred vendors. Omniture with analytics, BT and optimization is a good start, Silverpop with vTrenz is compelling too. Then there are the "partnerships" between vendors. When customer review vendor BazaarVoice and "guided search" vendor Endeca collaborate it could create really fantastic opportunities...

The power of personality selling

2007-11-09T12:13:00.000-08:00

As I am now focused (obsessed) again on ecommerce marketing I've been doing a lot of research on best practices in online selling.

Yesterday, in my research, I found this short but deeply insightful interview with Jeffrey Rayport on ITConversations. It's definitely worth a listen. He talks specifically about QVC and HSN, about how they both sell similar products in similar channels but QVC is twice as successful...twice. He says that QVC has a very different approach to selling, one that focuses more on bulding relationships than on the immediate sale (HSN's approach). He goes on to say that most retail research shows predictable buying patterns around demographics, price, category, brand...but when they did research on QVC buying patterns none of these held true. He says that the ONLY pattern was the selling host, that people we're significantly more likely to buy repeatedly from the individual people they related to on TV. He stresses the power of personality and of building relationships with customers, even in this context where it's a 1 to millions dynamic.

Then, today, I saw this blog post and was reminded again of the "social media" version of personality selling...Amazon Unveils Video Reviews for Its Products. Regardless of the Amazon clutter factor, they too know the power of personal selling.

As always, these concepts align nicely with my "authentic value-based marketing" mantra, I'm eager to get started on how we'll begin to leverage these ideas at my new company.

Forrester Groundswell Awards and coBRANDIT!

2007-10-18T22:50:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen them yet, there's a slew of great and quick interviews with really interesting people from the Forrester Consumer Forum 2007 conference over at coBRANDIT...

Forrester Consumer Forum on coBRANDIT

Check 'em out.

Antique hardware and my return to eCommerce

2007-10-18T22:13:00.000-07:00

I've made a measured change. After spending 2 fantastically enriching years as the Manager of Web Strategy for web analytics leader WebTrends, I've taken a job with a small and rapidly growing e-commerce start-up here in Portland, Oregon. I'm now leading the marketing efforts for House of Antique Hardware (www.houseofantiquehardware.com)...look out!

I've been an internet marketer/strategist for over 11 years. I've worked for a non-profit environmental organization, 2 interactive agencies in LA during the first boom, a very successful dot com start-up, the global footwear and apparel giant adidas, WebTrends and now HoAH. I've riden this internet wave through many twists and turns and as I look out at the possibilities I've never been more excited.

At WebTrends I sat on the front edge of marketing web software to marketers in a tremendously dynamic industry. I learned a TON about the world of online marketing tools and the vision of what marketing could/should be. But through it all one basic truth has remained and grown even stronger...marketing must be valuable to be successful. It's a simple but powerful foundation. Not persuasive or entertaining or aspirational...valuable.

I took my new job for many reasons but one of the most compelling is that I've been given the opportunity to grow a company that has become successful by being authentic and by providing value. I've only been here for 2 weeks but I've received at least 4 all-company emails highlighting notes from elated customers. One of the emails was from a woman who was deeply thankful that one of our Hardware Experts had helped her find what she was looking for on another site! She articulated the WOMMA dream "...your expertise was truly valuable, you must work for a wonderful company".

It's refreshing and exciting to work for a company that understands that service is service and that providing value is the only way to be successful.

Competing on User Experience

2007-08-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

If you haven't read or listened to the discussion of Competing on Analytics by Tom Davenport and Jeanne Harris you should. It's packed with deep insight and great examples of companies that are not only leveraging business analytics to improve performance but also to differentiate themselves and beat key competitors.

The concept of leveraging optimized business practices toward competing better in the marketplace is fascinating. A recent experience opened my eyes to another similarly powerful but seemingly under-utilized realm where these ideas should resonate. I call it Competing on User Experience.

I was at the new Bank of America ATM in my neighborhood and had to deposit a check. I looked for the envelopes and was reminded of how I hate to lick them, anthrax? There were none, no holder even. I proceeded to put my card in and enter my PIN, and when it was time to insert the check, the ATM directed me to insert the check directly into the slot. I hesitated, but I did it. It sucked it in and within seconds my check was on the screen and the ATM was waiting for acceptence of the deposit. Sweet, no mis-typing the amount, no envelope, just a quick scan, perfect. I completed my transaction and to my surprise, on the printed receipt was a printout of the scanned check and all the important info about the deposit. An innovative, end-to-end customer experience that eliminated pain points and instilled confidence, both of which added to my loyalty to the brand. If I had planned to leave B of A (I'm too locked-in to online bill pay - another user experience differentiator) I would have another reason to reconsider.

For most companies it's a struggle to meet customer expectations. For companies that can consistently exceed expectations with a disciplined approach to customer experience, the rewards are plentiful.

What are some other ways companies are competing on user experience?

iPhone clearly. What else?

Valuable Marketing? What's Valuable to Whom?

2007-06-14T15:48:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about how marketing is changing. I seem to be always thinking about that. Or at least how my perspective on marketing is changing.

I'm in the process of transitioning from product to solution selling, from horizontal to vertical marketing, from broad market programs to target account programs...wow.

All are about focusing, about defining targets and thier needs and building multi-touch, multi-channel, sustained communications plans that speak directly to them. Target marketing, relationship marketing, 1to1 marketing, whatever you want to call it.

In the new marketing world, where relevance and value win, we must focus our efforts (and dollars) on our potentially most valuable prospects. Once we've done that, we can ensure success by expanding the GOALS of our marketing efforts,

1. Establish/nurture a relationship
2. Gather profile information
3. Influence behavior

Banners, email, blog posts...draw people in with the promise of something compelling; a new product, thought leadership, content or a service. Website activity, reg forms and survey's capture profile information, the best systems and content strategies gather more and more with each interaction. The more we know about our prospects the more targeted both our timing and messages can be and the more relevant and valuable the proposition, the more influential the marketing.

Defining targets and is never-ending hard work. Managing and optimizing integrated communications takes a lot of testing and creativity. Delivering value from the first touch point takes deep understanding and long term vision. Sustainable success is life-altering.

Big Brand Second Life Hubs More Like Black Holes

2007-06-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

Generally, the realization isn't surprising, but the metrics are. In this quick-hit report from BizReport, some of the big brands trying to "gain a foothold" in the virtual world aren't able bring in a sustained 500 visitors a month. Yes, Coca-Cola's Second Life hub doesn't get 500 repeat visitors a month, that's amazing.

The author thinks that maybe

Attempting to create a virtual hub for a brand may simply take time and money away from online marketing that does work: a branded microsite or creating a presence on a social network. Advertising on social networking websites, creating paid search campaigns and including display or online video ads are also proven methods of online advertising.

Have they seen the Coca-Cola Second Life Virtual Thirst hub? It's got nothing to do with spend, it's just a deeply bad way to try to engage customers.

Brands don't fare as well in virtual space - Research - BizReport: "Brands don't fare as well in virtual space"

A New Breed of Branded Entertainment: Honeyshed

2007-05-09T11:10:00.000-07:00

There's a good Business Week article this morning on the news that Publicis and some of it's top thinkers are launching Honeyshed, a new video site for branded content. Despite the down-home/"creative"/emotional name for the site I think it's got HUGE potential (sarcasm).

Honeyshed intends to erase the line between branding and entertainment altogether. But its content won't be traditional online advertising. No banners. No rollovers. No 30-second spots. Instead, it will provide a mix of live programming and character-driven sketch shows paid for by—and promoting—sponsors

Ahhh, the line between branding and entertainment was erased in 1984, that's not innovative. They state the core objective as "...overt advertising based on the idea that people love brands." People love some brands, Apple, Mini, BMW...but that's because these brands consistently PROVIDE A LOT OF VALUE.

To Business Week's credit, they do ask the right questions...

The biggest conundrum, of course, is whether consumers really do love brands as much as those working for brands and their agencies do. And even though transparency has been a buzzword in marketing for a while, will viewers really choose to navigate to a site with such blatant consumerism at its core? Unlike sites such as eBay (EBAY) or craigslist, this still seems like something of a one-sided deal.

BUT, ebay and craigslist aren't brand marketers they are marketplaces where blatant consumerism is the whole point.

Assuming that Marketing is one of the most important customer touch-points (aren't they all important?), why can't Marketing provide value too? What happens when we start doing authentic marketing that provides value to customers...from the very beginning? Entertaining a customer is valuable, that seems relatively clear, but, at the end of the day, it's really just a way to pay the ad agencies. I'm not convinced that this is the future of online advertising.

Building A Lifecycle Marketing Program: Day 1

2007-04-21T12:58:00.000-07:00

1. Define the behavioral steps that a customer must take to adopt your product.
2. Overlay the touch points at which you can measure some piece of data about an individual's relationship to your product.
3. Turn each touch point into a mutually exclusive stage or state in your customer's adoption lifecycle.
4. Connect the way this progression of customer lifecycle state is measured in product, marketing and sales to create the top-to-bottom funnel.
5. Communicate more relevantly to each customer based on their individual lifecycle state as well as the demographic profile that you already have.
6. Turn on. Measure. Refine.
7. Scale to millions of customers. Change the company.

Inauthentic authenticity and how to fake keeping it real

2007-04-17T17:08:00.000-07:00

An article (not yet online) in the most recent May 2007 Fast Company about authentic brands (my new obsession) led me to a character-driven branding organization called...Character...here in gorgeous but rainy Portland, Or.

This is a beautiful case study on how they approached reviving an old brand character with "enormous equity" who's most compelling characteristic is now inappropriate...Punchy is pure gold.

Back to Fast Company...when I saw the tout on the cover of the magazine saying "Selling Authenticity: BMW, Nike, Starbucks and More" I was compelled. I've been thinking a lot about authentic marketing lately, about "transparency" as a way to dimensionalize the brand, to expose and share passions that are rarely shared in the marketplace. Could this be a new and transforming force in the marketing world?

This piece is about manufacturing and maintaining the perception of authenticity. I'm jaded, there's no denying that, but when I read about Juan Valdez and the challenges that the Coffee Growers of Columbia are having maintaining his relevance I get nappy (not Don Imus nappy, like I want to take a nap, nappy).

Am I a silly idealist to think that authentic authenticity might work? Instead of letting the people of Second Life interpret the "essence" of your brand, why not try to be really real?

I'm off to read the latest Wired that's touting "radical transparency" on it's cover...I can't wait...

What are the key consumer drivers in your market, and in what order?

2007-04-03T09:51:00.000-07:00

The Fable of the Misinformed CMO: "Virtually 99% of CMOs cannot accurately identify the order of importance of drivers for their categories."

Here's a really interesting article on chiefmarketer.com about determining and ordering the key drivers in your market. The idea, generally, is that marketers tend to rely on their own sense of their market, after all, they [should] know it very very well. But the truth is that we don't know our market like our customers and prospects know our market, we know it too well.

In today’s marketplace, consumers are always right and CMOs are frequently misinformed. And I wish that were the moral of the story, but there’s more. We are talking about brands and not the Elgin Marbles, so you have to constantly monitor how consumers “see” the categories because the categories constantly morph and consumer values constantly shift. And with those changes we always see the category drivers shifting their order.

Having the tools to monitor and re-order the drivers and the discipline and processes to adjust strategies based on the findings is essential to success in the new world of marketing.

User-Generated Advertising is Stupid

2007-03-12T12:14:00.000-07:00

PSFK: Advertising Doomed? Or Web 2.0 Entrepreneurs?

A quick opinion on user-generated advertising from the style watchers at PSFK. Definitely watch the video, it's annoyingly smug...but I do love John Batelle's comment that marketers are the ultimate laggards.

I agree with the PSFK assessment. User-generated content is interesting, it's broad and silly and infinitely creative. Asking users to generate your traditional ads is misguided. I recenly saw the Dove commercial where they present an ad made by a teenager in Sherman Oaks, the winner of their competition. I was looking forward to it, I thought it would be different. It wasn't. It was the same Dove ad I've seen a million times. They completely missed the opportunity. They didn't take the most interesting submitted videos and make something new out of them. they didn't ask participants interesting questions to increase the likelyhood that the submissions would be interesting. This is really disappointing when you go to the "Real Beauty" part of the Dove website where the ideas are new and the content is interesting are authentic.

Back to the Business 2.0 video...why can't advertisers understand that it's less the medium and more the message? Banners versus email versus a TV spot versus a billboard...urgh...anything that captures even the smallest bit of attention can effectively influence behavior. It just comes down to ROAS (return on ad spend). Spending a gazillion dollars having Ronald McDonald tell me the new hazelnut coffee is fabu is a mistake. spending far less money but lots of time gathering and sifting through boring Dove commercials is a costly mistake. The messages are wrong...and will become more and more wrong. The TV commercial isn't wrong, I watched them.

It's silly to even ask the question "is advertising dead?" it shows you don't get it. A better question would be "What are the most effective ways to advertise?". Then we'd hear an interesting discussion.

Contextual text ads!
Movie theater pre-roll!
Word of mouth at book clubs!
Customer events!

The Internet has changed everything and the REALITY is that all sorts of advertising will work. It takes more work on the content side and a lot more work on the tracking and reporting side but how else can you both advertize AND optimize. Am I wrong?

The Rewards of Innovation

2007-03-08T10:15:00.000-08:00

Harvard Business Online - HBR Ideacast - The Rewards of Innovation

I listened to this podcast occassionally and found the most recent version on Innovation versus Invention interesting. Not necessarily a new idea, but well-articulated.

Invention is the development of new ideas, what we like to do when we brainstorm and think we're being entrepreneurial. Innovation is actually bringing new ideas to market that generate a tangible return.

Worth a quick listen and then maybe picking-up the book...

Rethink Marketing

2007-03-08T09:44:00.000-08:00

MediaPost Publications - Ducati Cuts Marketing Department, Increases Sales - 03/08/2007

Another interesting article to file under the changing world of Marketing. Not surprisingly, brands with existing strongly loyal customers are finding that "relationship" marketing around, through and by their loyal customers can increase market share.

Ducati is still focused on acquisition and conversion, they're just not lazily relying on the traditional ways of aggregating and speaking down to demographic niches. They're taking a more personal targeted approach, creating brand experiences that are accessible and compelling, not aspirational and upscale for the sake of positioning.

I also love that the key success metric is North American sales...ah, a real sense of what marketing should be accontable to.

Trendspotting on a Retro Set

2007-02-21T22:19:00.000-08:00

I'm not afraid to prophesy and I don't hold it against others who do, but, ah it's late February and the good folks at the Interpublic Emerging Media Lab have finally revealed their list of emerging media predictions for 2007. The wrapper is Dick Cavett with contemporary frames, the content was just OK for me, dog, a bit pitchy.

POV: Emerging Media Predictions for 2007

I would be remiss if I didn't include my own emerging media trends for 2007, written in December 2006, before the deadline for such self-important pontifications.
---------
December 2006
Here's a short list I just put together, fun stuff to think about...

[obvious]
online video/audio
duh.

mobile marketing
will the opportunities materialize in the US like they have in asia and europe?

local search/gps/location services
mostly smartphone based but askcity.com, yahoo and google maps are starting to converge with location-aware devices and rich products and services will be in demand

gaming
xbox live is selling more movies than anyone else and both console and online gaming, including non-competitives like second life, continue attracting a wide range of participants. xbox is a huge channel for Microsoft's consumer products, don't be surprised if they start bundling the Zune with it...every iMac comes with an ipod?

[less obvious]
digital home
apple's iTV will change everything, what opportunities will it create?

marketing automation
online marketing and relationship marketing, for example, require integrated automation tools and like search marketing, they're becoming too complicated for us humans to both manage and optimize

integrated customer experiences
the at&t commercial with the people watching the football game on the TV, the computer and the cell phone...sorta dumb but, customer view 360 is becoming more possible every day

personal analytics
the nike+ system that tracks running metrics on your ipod was a huge seller this holiday season, people want to track important things in their lives and products that let them do that will gain popularity...and cement brand loyalty

attention
online video, rss, WOM and citizen generated content are changing media from impression/page view based to attention/gesture-based. analytics tools that track attention and can infer interest and intent will be incredibly valuable for marketers

simplicity and usability
as marketers finally begin to mature their analysis skills they'll demand easier and easier tools to manage all the data. i'm seeing more and more discussion about usability/simplicity/experience as key differentiators in all sorts of markets

a few simplicity links,

John Maeda's The Laws of Simplicity
Simplicity versus Elegance
The Complexity of Simplicity
Simplcity 'aint so simple

Customer Experience Management

2007-02-21T22:09:00.000-08:00

A great article in the current issue of the Harvard Business Review titled Understanding Customer Experience.

Customer Experience is yet another surprisingly neglected and misunderstood corporate discipline. Until recently it was difficult to get robust data around customer experience, especially in inudstries where customer touch points are diverse and mostly 3rd party. The article states that many executives don't adequately appreciate what focused customer experience learning and analysis can reveal. The authors present the 3 main reasons this gap exists; Too much money lavished on CRM, lack of attunement to customer needs and fear of what the data may reveal. Fascinating.

If I spent money on the wrong systems, didn't work diligently to understand my customers and was fearful of the data, I'd be fired.

A select quote,

Ideally, good design makes both the most routine and the weightiest customer experiences—checking a price, getting a question answered, or placing a multimillion-dollar order—pleasant and efficient. However, even when dissatisfaction or wariness arises, artful control of consumer experience can overcome it.

I love this idea. I love that the holy grail of web and experience design is purposeful elegance..."the artful control of the customer experience". This is tied nicely together in 2 interesting pieces about elegance, innovation and simplicity... one by the boys at Juice Analytics and their source of inspiration at Change This. These pieces are about innovation at Toyota and how it's guided by the principles of simplicity.

“Toyota is in pursuit of “elegant solutions to real world problems. Not grand slam homeruns, but groundball singles implemented all across the company by associates that view their role not to be simply doing the work, but taking it to the next level…An elegant solution is one in which the optimal outcome is achieved with the minimal expenditure of effort and expense…[and is] recognized by its juxtaposition of simplicity and power.”

Lastly, the great John Maeda at the MIT Media Lab has been working on this stuff for a long time. Study the Laws of Simplicty and definitely keep an eye on John if you're not already.

Tip of the Day for Apple

2007-02-12T19:57:00.000-08:00

Don't use a "w" or two "v"s right next to each other in your product registration codes. It causes unnecessary phone calls to customer service when you are using online support for a defective Shuffle.

Putting the Music in Your Marketing

2007-01-30T22:34:00.000-08:00

Get in tune! Studies have shown that advertising and brand recall last five times longer when the ad has a sound signature or "music identity" as it is called by Paul Anthony, the founder of Rumblefish, in Portland, OR.

With the global success of various sound brands like Bum, Bum Bum Bum (Intel), or Bum Bum Bum (NBC), or Yahooooo! as well as the global success of everything music including the iPod, MTV, the $3 billion dollar ringtone industry, the $5 billion dollar concert ticket industry, etc. there is no denying that music is one of the most universal and powerful methods of communication available to marketers.

An incredible event to experience is the collective response of an audience. Everyone laughing together in a movie theater or in a comedy club. Everyone cheering at a sporting event. Everyone dancing and singing and screaming and crying at a concert is my favorite. Being a marketer is much like being a musician playing live (or maybe live on tape). You create something, the audience receives it, they respond and it resonates or it doesn't.

The resonance of the creation. Striking a chord. If you can create something and it resonates with the audience so positively that they do something they wouldn't have done otherwise like open, click, slam into each other in the mosh pit, purchase, provide positive and/or helpful feedback, give you their email address, update their profile in your database – now that's what I call being in tune with your audience! The audience, creative expression, their response, the resonance of the message. This is what marketing, and frankly communication as a whole, is all about.

Obviously there is also the alternative to resonance known as “reverse-resonance” which in marketing or in music is recognizable as booing, leaving, throwing bottles, unsubscribing, never doing business with you again, tuning you out. Needless to say, those reactions are not the result of Marketing in Tune^TM.

However, keeping track of these negative interactions, determining how they effect your relationship with your customers and determining which customer relationships you really care about is the essence of marketing effectively in a world where increasingly the customer is in control.

This will bring us to L.O.V.E.^TM . . .

Advertising Awesomeness

2007-01-24T16:17:00.000-08:00

Miller Repeals 'Man Law': Shelves Crispin Campaign as Sales Flag for Lite Brand

Did you hear? Did you hear that the Miller Lite "Man Laws" commercials did an amazing job of driving people to the website to add man laws to the man law encyclopedia but...sales of lite beer continue to fall...and the campaign has been killed.

The "brand experience" failed to increase sales? Shocker. The halo effect of participating in the manlaw social phenomena didn't make it's way to the bar stool or the checkout line. Hmmmmmm.

Here's my favorite quote,

When asked, Miller executives said they believed "man laws" would gradually seep into the popular culture and eventually boost sales. But their patience appears to have run out.

Marketing plans based on disseminating messages that gradually seep into the popular culture are so Oscar Meyer, and require a lot of patience. The times they are a changin'.

Here's an idea, take 1% of the campaign spend for the year and execute interesting medium to long term campaigns into the 100,000 aggregated man lawers (my word).

Publish the encyclopedia with tear-out coupons and distrubute it at every Nascar event and NFL football game. Leverage consumer-generated content?
Create stupid local events at bars where "scholars" read from the tome and discuss the finer points. Invite the creators (database) to help generate local buzz.
Drink a lot of beer and kill the campaign. Fire the agency.

When will they get it? When will marketing executives have enough balls to spend a fraction of their budgets on "database marketing" and not as an afterthought, as an integral part of the overall campaign?

Truth in Advertising

2007-01-17T20:04:00.000-08:00

This Magazine Publisher's of America site makes me sick to my stomach. Be sure to click on one of the magazines in the Flash animation if you want to feel my nausea.

This site does what desperate people do when they have a fundamentally bad idea and a big stake in making you believe that it is a good idea. These advertiser advertisers are actually selling "Engagement" as a value of magazine advertising. Read what it says: "In an age of interruption, magazines and magazine advertising engage. Find out why readers consider advertising a valuable part of magazine content."

Yeah, that's the ticket. I like print advertising. It's valuable and very engaging. It does not interrupt me when I am reading an article while snuggling on the couch with my wife, Morgan Fairchild, and I have to flip through 4 pages of ads to get to the rest of it.

I love advertorials too. You know when they have writers at the magazine shill an article for an advertiser and then pass it off as part of the regular editorial content with small print indications of it's true advertising motivation. They make me feel so well-informed and respected.

Give me a break. Do these pliers of persuasion write political ads in the off season? Oh yeah they probably do.

When marketers invoke and ascribe concepts to their products that are the exact opposite of what the product does that is some deep-rooted evil. It's time to do some weeding, marketing executives. Slash and burn the print ad budget and start facing up to the truth about how much you are spending, how little you are getting in return and realize that whatever you are getting it is impossible to accurately measure it.

p.s. If you want to read a really impressive (and truthful) treatise on engagement marketing I suggest this one, by Hans-Peter BrØndmo.

p.p.s. This Seth Godin book seems appropriate as well.

Why Segmentation Is for Suckers

2007-01-15T19:52:00.000-08:00

There are two kinds of data with which marketers concern themselves. Explicit data and implicit data. Explicit data is that which a customer tells you about themselves and their behavior. Implicit data is what a customer does. Their actual behavior.

A person's behavior is far more predictive of what they will do in the future than what they say they will do or whom they say they are.

Job title and decision time frame are both explicit data points and are both poor predictors of future behavior. Clicks (when tied to a standard meta data model) and purchases are both pieces of explicit data and are much more indicative.

The level of commitment associated with a type of behavior is important as well. An individual's shopping cart data is implicit and indicates a medium level of commitment. It is as such a pretty good predictor. An individual's purchase is both implicit and high commitment and thus acts as one of the best indicators of future behavior.

The reasons for this are related to small protein molecules within our bodies called peptides. These peptides act upon every cell in our body and tend to be self-perpetuating. The more of a
particular peptide in the bloodstream the more receptors there will be for it on the cells, etc. That is as far as I will get into the biology except to say that peptides, their receptors on cell
membranes and their relationship to your emotions form one of the message/feedback pathways through which the different systems in your body interact with external stimuli. It makes up the framework for how you make decisions based on the current situation as well as your past history.

Current behaviors indicate future behavior because that is how our cells learn what we need to survive and to thrive in different situations.

Anyway - segments are an OK way to try to aggregate behavior but to predict future behavior you need to be looking at individuals and how they behave in relation to their own past behaviors not how they behave in relation to the group. You certainly do not want to be making decisions based on old world marketing ideas like self reported segments based on a bogus statistical sample.

Yes that's right you should stop doing, TV, Magazine, old world web ad networks, list rentals, etc. Stop now and forever.

Get a grip. Start changing your bad behavior. Stop shouting at the masses and start having conversations. Communicate, don't broadcast.

Perpetuate new peptides.

Marketing Measurement in a Brand Marketing World

2007-01-12T21:44:00.000-08:00

I've had a few interesting revelations recently about the role of marketing accountability in some of the world's best marketing departments. When I speak to friends in large corporations there's a real sense that marketing measurement is antithetical to the status quo. This isn't surprising news.

By clinging to interuption marketing, to mass media broadcast (tv, print and out-of-home), to brand inititatives with no depth, these marketing leaders are short-sighted at best and left behind at worst.

Having been a web producer for 11 years, I only know marketing through the lense of the internet. But it was only in the last 2 years that I've seen the light of marketing measurement.

The experience of seeing the power of web analytics, the power to optimize campaigns in real time, the power to know and craft real success is truly enlightening.

Designing a powerful national advertising campaign that generates trade press and wins advertising awards is exilerating, I'm sure. But watching acquisition, conversion and retention efforts create an end-to-end customer experience, watching the word-of-mouth machine generate momentum and always knowing that market share is being gained...is scalable, sustainable and game-changing.

For the world's best marketing organizations, we're talking about marketing that generates a return that can add-up to millions and millions of new dollars. It's time to change you perspective...and your organization.

Change Marketing

2007-01-11T21:48:00.000-08:00

Think about how destructive a force silence can be. When something is taboo it causes fear, confusion, erroneous conclusions and perhaps most deleteriously it causes stagnation, lack of change and as a result in some cases, yes, silence can cause death.

Think about how many times you have held your breath, let it go, decided to fight that battle another day, took one for the team and as a result the outcome is one that is annoying, wrong, hurtful or even disastrous.

It's like that in marketing departments at many companies today. I've spoken to about 20 of my Internet Marketing Manager colleagues from around the globe (Germany, UK, Mexico, US, China, France, Australia, Singapore, Greece, Korea, Japan) and I get the sense that they think they might be different. They're not always 100% sure of themselves but they think they might be attracted to an approach that radically shifts the meaning of their lives (at least at work). It's an approach that at a very basic level changes the vocabulary of day-to-day interactions in marketing departments.

But they're scared. They don't feel comfortable talking about it. People warn them not to "rock the boat" or they'll be called "weird" or tell them to "stop thinking that way" or "I don't understand/like where this is going." It's like that when they bring it up in the office and even when they bring it up outside of work at the bar after the lame holiday party where everyone talked about the guy who anaphlaxed at last year's party because of a cake-mislabeling.

Fear of change and fear of the risk of being different are literally choking our businesses through respiratory paralysis.

Open up world!! Start allowing these conversations to happen.

Conversations that could prevent your own death:

"Hi everyone, I have a peanut allergy. Please take care to let me know if there are peanuts in the dishes you prepare for the holiday pot luck."

Conversations that will ultimately relax you and allow you to see truth in your business instead of forcing you to leave the rest to Lunesta.

Conversations that will allow your company to say with certainty:
"I know what my customers want. I know where each customer is in their decision cycle. My team is able to treat every single interaction with our customers (scaling to millions) as part of a long term relationship building and learning path that ultimately allows me to determine if and how much I L.O.V.E.* ^TM them."

As Rush says in the 1980 song titled Tom Sawyer, "Changes aren't permanent. But change is."

Change can be comfortable and can become part of your company's DNA when you create an environment that consistently allows and rewards open dialog about tough and potentially controversial subjects. It will make your business more competitive and allow you to react more quickly to the dynamics of the marketplace.

Ideas rule and the staus quo no longer exists. Your company attracts the best and becomes a great place to work.

It can't happen overnight (give us 6 months) but you'd better begin the process now because once you've noticed the need for change the change is already reality and you are behind the curve.

Once you start shifting your business focus and strategy toward change the best way to make change addictive is to measure it.

Let us show you how it's done.

* Lifetime Opportunity Value Equation (L.O.V.E.) ^TM