Lumenatti

ComBlu specializes in community marketing and influencer programs. Our Lumenatti blog sparks conversation about the best and brightest community ideas.

April 2009 - Lumenatti

Home → Blogs → Lumenatti
  • 04.29.2009

    Steve Hershberger

    What’s in a promise?

    I recall visiting a carnival when I was a kid, maybe 11 or 12.  Outside of the fun house was a carney who was barking into a microphone.

    “Take a visit you’ll never forget.  Walk through the Chamber of Horrors and see unspeakable things.  Be frightened in ways you cannot imagine!'”

    I loved scary things…I had recently walked down the street with a friend and snuck in to see the movie ‘Alien’.  I was 12, it scared the pants off me.  I loved it.  The carney didn’t know it but that was the benchmark I was using for comparison.

     

    I walked up to him and asked, “What’s it cost?”

    “Five tickets, kid.”  He responded.  I hesitated.  He looked down at me and said, “Trust me kid, it’s worth it.  You won’t sleep for the rest of the weekend.”

    '”It’s horrible?” I asked. 

    “Kid, like I said, you’ll be so scared you won’t be able to sleep tonight.  How ‘bout those tickets?  Head right in.”

    Hands Of A Stranger Funhouse montage

    I peeled off five tickets and handed it to the guy.  So did my friend and we walked in, excited to be scared out of our wits in a matter of seconds.  What would we see?  Alien was good, but that was on a screen.  This was real.

    I remember that it smelled.  Half the lights didn’t work and the ghouls and monsters were lame.  The best part was moving catwalk on the second level and the giant tube which slowly spun you had to walk through on your way out.  As we walked out, we both were disappointed.

    “C’mon.  Let’s go back to the Tilt-a-Whirl”, I said.  “Whatta rip off”, my friend muttered. 

    Years later I reflect on this experience regularly as I encounter overtaxed marketing departments and their agencies working hard to generate messaging and deploying new tools and tactics in both traditional and social media spaces to try and get the consumer’s attention.

    The issue is that these folks are getting the attention of their customers.  Then in large part, that’s it.  The experience from employee interaction to product interaction and billing are somebody else’s worry.

    The problem is based in this flawed logic.  Because marketing and their agencies do not directly tie their messaging to the ability of the business (note I do not say the brand) to deliver against this promise, the experience more often differs from the promise.

    So should the Carney have changed his pitch?  Would he have been better of ‘selling’ a mildly amusing and somewhat stinky two minute diversion?  Probably not, he wouldn’t have gotten many takers.  Moreover, he probably didn’t care if I ever went through again.  His job was to collect as many tickets as possible. 

    The carney’s tickets are the equivalent to a customer’s transaction.  Is the focus on the transaction or the experience after the transaction?

    This morning I was in a Lexus dealership getting my vehicle serviced.  I had my 3 year old daughter with me.  I already own the truck and most of the maintenance I was getting was covered under warranty.

    What is more important?  The promise?  Or the execution?

    Here’s the execution I experienced this morning:

    • A staffer takes my 3-year old daughter to the restroom, as the men’s is occupied.  Helps her and washes her hands.
    • I had my laptop but forgot my power brick.  The dealership keeps one on hand for current models of Apple, HP, Sony and Dell.
    • A service representative came out and informed me in 30 minute time blocks (I was there 2 hours) what my eta looked like.  At one point, he made the rounds informing about 10 people.
    • A text message from the dealership as I left, thanking me for my business and visit, as well as, the service manager’s number so I could give them a grade, A-F.  It also indicated that since it was raining and although they washed my car to please return anytime for a replacement wash.

     

    My wife’s car is a Saab (ok it’s really a GM Trailblazer with a some Saabish-style sheet metal and a console ignition).  Recently, I took her car in for servicing.  To say the experience was different that the one I describe above is an understatement    At the GM dealership, the bare minimum was done in terms of supporting the brand promise.  In my wife’s car’s case, everything was covered under warranty.  I paid nothing.  In my case, I had to unexpectedly write a check.  But the brand promise and the businesses operational delivery were a world apart.

    In the case of the Lexus, the expectation (the brand’s promise) matches so precisely meshes with Lexus & Toyota’s ability to execute that I didn’t care about having to write a check (as they explained what and why at the outset in as much detail as I wanted), even used examples/props!

    So, think about putting your brand promise on a set of scales.

    images

    Does your brand promise, your advertising, your marketing, your social media programs pay off your operational activity and abilities?  Are they in balance?  Or not?

    So, what’s in a promise? 

    Everything.

    Filed under: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    0 comment(s)
  • 04.29.2009

    Jennifer Voisard

    The Right Advocate at the Right Time

    Advocate identification entails more than scrubbing a customer database for demographic and transactional information. Quite often my team must defend the notion of the right advocate at the right time, yet it’s hard to resist settling for the easier quantity over the more challenging quality. The end result usually pays for itself, so keep in mind the old adage: ‘You get out what you put in.’

    The art of identification is really about finding your most passionate and loyal customers, and putting them at the center of your outreach efforts. All customers are not created equal. If you don’t look for specific behaviors they are hard wired to possess, you’ll find it challenging to build a powerful WOM and communication channel.

    The first step is to create an advocate profile. Think about it in terms of baking a cake. Segmenting consumers by the products and services they use is the base, or flour. Flour is an important component, but alone doesn’t give you a cake. Add some sugar and chocolate, time it right, and now we’ve got something. To avoid a recipe for disaster when identifying advocates, you need the right mix of demographic targets, transactional data, brand loyalty, behavioral traits and attitude. Ever see the commercial where the mom mistakenly served a cake made with salt instead of sugar? If you didn’t, the end result was a toxic mess, and a bunch of disappointed kids.

    How does this analogy relate to community? Advocates are the heartbeat of any healthy and vibrant community. Engaging with them at the right times, during community design or new product launches for example, will gain you key insights and invaluable feedback. This is why identification is so important. We have seen advocacy programs where salt was used instead of sugar, and the environment proved to be just as toxic. One community example jumps to mind. A private council of advocates was hand selected to engage directly with the brand. The council recruited another community member, who on the surface seemed like a good fit, to participate. Unfortunately the program became this individual’s soapbox, and negativity spread like wild fire.

    We use this example to educate our clients on the importance of the right advocate at the right time. In future posts we’ll explore the art of identification and all its nuances. Always remember though, it starts with the proper mix. If not, you may be serving up a cake just as toxic, leaving your customers with a bitter taste versus a world class, melt-in-your-mouth delight.

    Filed under: , , , , , , , , , ,

    0 comment(s)
  • 04.27.2009

    Kathy Baughman

    Decession and Social Media

    Recently saw an interview with Jack Welch on Morning Joe. He commented that we need a new word for these economic times…….a descriptor that lands us somewhere between “recession” and “depression”. I guess we’re too sick to be a recession but still have too strong of a pulse for a depression. So: decession it is.

    Whatever we call it, lots of conversation and content focuses on “the use of social media to save marketing dollars” during this decession.

    Let’s press pause and think about this. Regardless of economic conditions, business needs drive marketing approach. Social media only makes sense IF it has a legitimate role in delivering on objectives. Too often we see companies adopting social media or building an online community because a) it needs to be crossed off a list, b) it’s ‘cheap” or c) there’s a new cool tool that is just too irresistible

    The result is a mish mash instead of a strategic mash-up. Said another way, there’s lots of disconnected social media experiments that do not roll-up into a strategy. and offer few meaningful metrics against business drivers.

    Isn’t this current “decession” a good time for us to not only find ways to drive marketing efficiencies but also to thoughtfully integrate social media into an overall strategy that will drive growth?

    Filed under: , , , ,

    0 comment(s)
  • 04.20.2009

    Kathy Baughman

    Community: Biz or marketing strategy?

    I recently did something that was risky; okay maybe even stupid. I got into a debate with a new biz prospect while making a major presentation to win their community marketing business. I can see the eyes rolling back in people’s heads. Why would I do that? Because I HAD to!

    The debate started when I made a simple statement: community is a business strategy and should not be simply viewed as a marketing domain. That made the marketing people in the room uncomfortable. They view anything to do with the brand as their territory and do not want to cede control to other functions or biz units. I argued that while oftentimes marketing gives birth to a branded community, they should not be the sole arbiter of what happens in that community. Many around the table disagreed, but I thought my points were strong so I continued the intellectual sparring:

    · Communities are not campaigns; they are a destination for people to connect and interact in a purpose-driven way. When organizational objectives and member needs align, a company or brand can make community magic. The key is starting with business drivers and following the tangents that end in member motivations.

    · Once alignment is mapped, the business drivers need to influence engagement approach. Many communities are nothing more than blogs and forums that do little to either engage or impact business objectives. Major missed opportunity. Community designers can integrate a variety of fun, engaging, or elegant tools that both serve member purposes and deliver significant, pertinent business intelligence.

    · Few community managers understand the multiple member personas that interact on their site. Instead of adopting a faceted matrix that considers all types of members, they offer a one size fits all engagement approach. This not only causes member attrition, but also limits the ability to maximize business ROI.

    · Collaboration across business units increases organizational efficiencies and effectiveness. When properly aligned, communities become that elusive horizontal view across the enterprise. While a community will not eliminate organizational silos, it presents an economical way to stimulate collaboration, knowledge sharing, operational efficiencies and deep customer insights. The trick is to embed intelligence into engagement tools, roll-up the raw data into a dashboard that presents actionable insights to each business unit and make people accountable for action.

    · Feedback to the community drives deeper engagement. A wonderful thing happens when the brand reports back to the community. When members hear how they helped with innovation, quality initiatives, customer service improvements, community relations, etc., they are more motivated to do more, tell your story, recruit others to join the community and create links to community content. That’s how it is suppose to work.

    On the plane ride home, I tucked into the latest HBR. Imagine my delight, when I discovered a great article, “Getting Brand Communities Right”. that echoed many of my points. Of course, you know what happened when I landed... I attached a pdf of the tome with my “thanks for the opportunity” email. While I am still waiting to hear if we made the final cut, my grapevine reported that the participants found the conversation stimulating and pertinent to internal challenges they face. I’ll keep you posted when I learn our fate.

    In the meantime, where do you weigh in on the debate?

    Filed under: , , ,

    2 comment(s)
  • 04.20.2009

    Steve Hershberger

    Sacred Cows: USDA Prime

     

    I sat next to a guy recently on a flight who was reading two books at the same time.  One was ‘Outliers’ by Malcom Gladwell.  The other was ‘Groundswell’ by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.

    Most people don’t read two books at the same time unless there is a specific reason.  So I asked.  “Hey, why are you reading those two books?”

    His answer was simple.  “I want to understand what drives marketing.  I want to try and understand where out-of-left-field great ideas come from.”  He continued, “I am trying to get my head around what makes good marketing tick.  There has to be a science in there somewhere.  I at least want to understand there is…or can be a science…that it is more than luck and B.S.”

    Turns out he recently bought a 45 million dollar company that used to be a 100 million dollar company.  He was on his way home from a board meeting he had hosted.  Most of the ‘strategies’ bubbled up by his marketing team and agency were, from his perspective, cart-before the horse- stuff. 

    I said, sounds like you have a lot of bricks but no building.  “Exactly!”  He exclaimed.  We spent the rest of the flight talking about the nuts and bolts of customer engagement.

    “Wow!”  He said.  I’ve never thought that marketing is as much operational as promotional.  Then he was quiet.  '”So why is it that none of my team gets this?”

    Didn’t have an answer for that one, except this. “Sacred cows are hard to slaughter, especially if that cow gives you milk.  Marketers, like technologists, get enamored with Shiny Pennies.  Marketers, more than anyone, love the echo chamber.  Preaching to the choir.  Hearing ‘Amen!’ rather than ‘Hey, wait a minute.’

    The conversation waned and I turned on my i-pod and cued up a podcast I hadn’t listened to in a long time but a sure favorite….twit.tv (This Week in Tech).  There was something about the show’s format…informational, conversational, some relevant guests…a chat amongst smart people with an opinion…who didn’t always agree.  Hmmm.

    I tapped the guy next to me and handed him my Bose headphones.  “Listen to this.”  I asked. “Imagine the topic wasn’t technology but customer engagement.”  I asked him to imagine the conversation being centered around all things customer centric.  The theory and the practices.  Slaying sacred cows, showcasing results, proving the echo chamber to be what it is…a useless indulgence.

    He smiled and said to me, “Well, it would be required listening for my team.  What’s it called?” 

    I responded. “ I don’t know.  You and I just invented it.”  So where ever you are Jim K., thanks!

    This week, Socializing Media:  The Podcast launches.  We’ll air one every two weeks.  Our first guest is Cow-slayer, Emanuel Rosen, author of the best sellers ‘Anatomy of Buzz’ and ‘Anatormy of Buzz Revisited’.  Following that, we have the former CMO of Motorola (and head of Apple’s marketing prior to that), also the brains behind Dell’s Idea Storm and a host of other interesting people with exciting and relevant stories, NONE of which feed the echo chamber! 

    So Sacred Cows beware, I have stocked up on my A-1 sauce.


    0 comment(s)
  • 04.13.2009

    Steve Hershberger

    Turning innovation over to the people

    Ever look at a menu that has gobs of things on it and you still can’t find something that is appealing?  Yep, happens all the time-at least it does to me.

    Why is this?  It’s because even though there is a lot of stuff on the menu, the right thing isn’t there, so I have to settle for what’s already there.  More times than not, when this happens, I am disappointed.

    Virtually every brand has loads of products and services.  A niche product for every niche market.  Wait, isn’t this in part why GM got in trouble?  Having a bunch of brands and each brand having multiple products and each product available with a host of different options.  Sounds sort of like taking the shotgun approach to me. 

    I can see it now.  A focus group convenes somewhere in Dallas, each member happily pocketing their $100.00. 

    Executives sit behind the glass and hear what they want to hear.  They fly back to Michigan (coach) and close the doors and get to work.  We’ll give the people what they want!  More importantly, we’ll give them what they need!  True innovation all in one package, which just so happens to share the same chassis as the Trailblazer, seats as the Enclave and instrument dash as the Vue..but never mind that!

    The result?  A very time consuming and expensive do-do egg, which arrives with a thud and then silence (remember the Aztec?)

    Why is it that marketers rarely learn from their mistakes and routinely try to own the entire process, keeping it locked behind an iron door?  Ok, I get the whole ‘because open-sourcing innovation eliminates the competitive advantage and element of surprise argument.  But when you as a brand face a particularly vexing problem, why not tap advocates and uber users to help innovate?  Let them help to create the lighting in a jar.  Once the idea hits a critical mass, bring it in house and do what most successful companies do best.  Manufacture, distribute and market.

    Here is an example I want to keep an eye on.  In blog post, Michael Arrington created a call to action.  We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet For $200. Help Us Build It.

    Here was his call to action:  I’m tired of waiting - I want a dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen web tablet to surf the web. Nothing fancy like the Dell latitude XT, which costs $2,500. Just a Macbook Air-thin touch screen machine that runs Firefox and possibly Skype on top of a Linux kernel. It doesn’t exist today, and as far as we can tell no one is creating one.  Some people raised their hands, and presto.  In a very short time (think 1/10th to 1/50th the development time of a traditional manufacturer at what I guess was 1/500,000th the cost) they went from this (the ID mockup):

    1

    to this (the alpha…where’s the can of Diet Mountain Dew? Oh, wait, there’s a Red Bull.  Phew!):

    2

    to this (yep, Apple sexy):

    3

    Some influential people watched on with growing curiosity and began to comment.  As did the people…specifically the niche that would snap this up.  Here are a few verbatims:

    Chewbenator Why doesn't the Kindle look like this? 

    (My insertion: Well, Amazon, why doesn’t it?)

    Leomar Grullon
    8:14 PM on Thu Apr 9 2009

    This think looks sweet. I don't care about the specs. Do you take paypal?

    Aaron Leibowitz
    9:16 PM on Thu Apr 9 2009

    It exists?! I thought this thing only popped up every year to give us that false glimmer of hope. It's like the oversized ipod touch I always wanted.

    Eric Sheline
    11:20 PM on Thu Apr 9 2009

    Very excited about this! I definitely see cheap tablets (or MIDs, etc. - whatever you want to call them) as being more popular soon. There is just so much information on the web, and a tablet is the perfect device to read with while not at a desk. It just has to be fairly cheap ( <$400, less if possible), have decent battery life (5+ hours), and have a minimum 800px-1024px wide screen. I wrote up an article about this trend two weeks ago on my blog, google "Techognized" if you are interested (I do not want to be spammy by linking directly!).

    tehdahl um. want. plz.

    These folks represent the same type of people who would stand in line for hours to get an i-phone instead of walking into a Verizon store and immediately getting a Samsung.  Gee, I wonder if there are enough of those type of people to make a market?

    So big businesses and sophisticated executives understand the concept of buy vs. build.  M&A’s happen all the time (except for the period from last October until now, unfortunately) so they can act faster.  Somebody smaller and more nimble creates something cool that is worth a lot.  The bigger guy buys them and takes it to market or makes the market bigger.

    The model works.  Why don’t we apply this standard elsewhere in the business?  Why not tap advocates, subject matter experts and uber users to help with development, product support and even messaging?  Give these folks the keys and let them drive for a while.  Not only might brand avoid future Aztec’s but they might save some money (in terms of mistakes and mis-cures) along the way.  Not to mention the huge demand for a product that can be built up in advance of its launch.

    But hey, what do I know?  I will keep tabs on this to see how it plays out, so more later.

    Filed under: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    0 comment(s)