There is a story about the Tower of Babel in which a great tower was built in the city of Babylon thousands of years ago. 

Babylon was a cosmopolitan city, many of the citizens were very impressed with themselves.  They were very important.  They did important things.  What they did, what they said eclipsed the value of everything and everybody else. 

Across this city/state there were a myriad of languages spoken, roll all of this together and it was a very confusing and problematic place to be at the time. 

All of this self impression along with the conflicting languages caused things to go badly.

Hmmm.  Does any of this strike a cord?  Did you notice in my blog posting I deliberately mis-spelled Babel?  It’s typed as ‘Babble’.  Dictionary.com defines Babble as “to talk idly, irrationally, excessively, or foolishly; chatter or prattle.” 

Sound vaguely familiar yet?  No?  Ok, I’ll keep going.

How about this.  Earned Media.  Getting warmer?  Tagging? Uh-huh.  Uniques?  Yep.  Web 2.0?  Sure.  Tweets.  Of course.  What about this one:  Link Juice.  Ummmm.

Marketers have their own language that to others sounds like well, babble.  Try an experiment.  Set a meeting request to your company’s CFO and put in the subject line ‘Briefing on Earned Media, Tagging and Link Juice. 

See if he or she accepts or instead, declines and emails you back asking what the @#!&# it is you want to waste their time with. 

Respond saying you made a mistake.  You want to share a few cost-deflection and lost revenue earn-back strategies you’d come across.  You’ll probably get a different result.  You see, marketers speak ‘promotion’, while CFO’s speak P&L (profit and loss).  Accountants speak GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principals), VP’s of Manufacturing speak Lean or Cellular (as in Lean or Cellular Manufacturing).  A few mutants still speak Six Sigma.  Together at some level in the organization, the management committee made up of the C-level and EVP level peeps who make decisions like merge, divest, close the Scranton Office, etc. speak Revenue Center and Cost Center. 

Revenue and Cost center is an interesting language, it has two intertwined dialects.  The first, ‘Cost’ is brutal and gutteral, sort of like Gaelic.  ‘Revenue’, on the other hand is more melodious and sweet; a joy to listen to. 

Those who speak Revenue and Cost see things as, well…generating either revenue or incurring cost.  Revenue and Cost speaks only of black and whites. You as a marketer are part of that world.  Yes!  It’s true.  Unfortunately, you reside more often than not in the Cost side; not always a comfortable place.  Sales sits in the Revenue side, which can be much more fun.  The reason is metrics.  Sales can show direct contribution to revenue.  TV ads and guerilla marketing tactics usually don’t.  Sales are easy to defend.  Without hard metrics, marketing is well, squishy and couple squishy metrics with terms and definitions that others don’t get and you are on thin ice in terms of value and influence.

While the term Earned Media sounds cool and is important to help describe all of which help define the granular inner-workings of some marketing tactic, its impact or outcome, most people outside of the marketing department don’t care or even understand.  Your marketing power points cause some in the organization to spontaneously bleed from the ears (note:  this will usually cause them to exclude you from critical meetings like budget planning).

Not being understood is bad.  If they don’t understand, you’re value to the organization is diminished (imagine getting a new boss who doesn’t understand what you do.  How long will you last?). 

If those who speak Revenue and Cost can’t understand your department or your program’s value, you don’t get the opportunity to actively shape how the marketing promise is delivered. 

Those who control the business enterprise (the making of the widget, the pricing of the widget and the distribution of said widget make their decisions regarding the widget without you.  Your input falls on deaf ears.  Yikes!  Hell on earth!

So what to do?  Don’t live in the chaos of Babylon waiting for the impending doom.  Be proactive!  Learn a second language and communicate.  When we as marketers are as versatile in the other operational languages our peers speak as we are in our own language, amazing things will happen.  One:  You will start measuring your activity and results in ways that are important to others (those who speak Revenue and Cost).  Two:  Your influence and work will amplify in terms of results.  Marketing initiatives will begin to be baked into operational activities and visa versa.

What were previously siloed activities will begin to work more harmoniously (i.e. CRM and Social Marketing) and you as a marketer will cease to be viewed by the other non-marketers in the company (whom by the way out number you) as not just the creator of hokey messaging and some un-measurable brand promise but instead the gate keeper of customer loyalty, net profit generation, low-cost win-backs and heck, maybe even a cost deflection source!

Well, we are at the end of this blog posting and the four non-marketers who were reading this have already gotten their fill and left, so I will reveal the big important ah-ha.  One that trumps even decoding Revenue and Cost.

You as marketers will hold the power of the customer in your hands and strong customer demand trumps everything.  You will understand them better than anyone, you will know how to reach and keep them happy.  You will know how to convert more customers using targeted, efficient techniques and tools.  You will balance the promise of your marketing efforts with the delivery of those promises by the operation.  You will be the master of customer engagement efficiency!  You will drive profit, which you can measure and defend…and that is a very good place to be.

That is, if you like that kind of stuff.

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.”

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.

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.

I received a comment from Deb Eastman, the CMO of Satmetrix regarding my recent blog post.  Her comment is below:

Steve, I want to clarify a miserception in your original post, M&Ms is absolutely NOT faking customer engagement.  This site is hosted on the Satmetrix Community platform and MyM&Ms used our technology to collect input from highly engaged fans.  However, Emma is an employee of myM&Ms and was responsible for engaging consumers to provide feedback on how to improve their products and overall customer experience.  They made several changes to their packaging, allowed consumers to put their faces on M&Ms and improved their customer experience based consumer input.  Consumers got the products they wanted and M&Ms increased loyalty in the process.  Everyone wins. 

It's unfortunate that budgets are currently impacting their level of engagement, but I expect we will continue to see myM&Ms engage with consumers and improve their products & services based on customer feedback.

This brand listened and acted on customer feedback.  I think most would classify this as genuine customer engagement.

Deb Eastman, CMO

Satmetrix

I would like to thank Deb Eastman for her point of view.  Since the M&M site was hosted by Satmetrix, they cannot, like many professional marketing service organizations, ensure that their counsel will be either listened to or acted upon.   Like the physician who counsels their patient to stop smoking, they simply can’t make it happen, even if it is the right thing.

Satmatrix is a well respected organization and should be applauded for fine work we see from them across the marketplace.

Deb points out that M&M’s implemented a number of key initiatives that came out of customer feedback.  This is great, but is only a start.  True engagement and subsequent performance results comes from:

1. Actively listening to the customer
2. Providing multiple ways for the customer to engage in this process
3. Organizing what was heard
4. Acting on this insight, across the business (beyond just the marketing group responsible for the initiative
5. Reporting back on what can be acted on, what can’t and why (note: Intuit does this with great success.  Intel is starting to do this in partnership with their hardware OEM’s.  Heck, even small firms have seen a more holistic approach allow them to effectively compete against much larger competitors, as well as, remember where their core advantage lies.)
6. Providing active, intrinsic rewards for involvement.  Note I said intrinsic rewards, not extrinsic.  That’s a slippery slope.  Intrinsic means:
   • Thank you’s
   • Spotlighting users
   • Articulate how their idea was integrated into the process, service or product
   • Tapping them as SME’s (subject matter experts)
   • Engaging them as mentors
7. Systematizing the process of customer engagement as part of the culture of the business, rather than a narrow program.

There are also some helpful tips for engaging influential customers (such as M&Mmbassadors) at WOMMA’s website.

Now, I am NOT saying that M&M has or has not done any of this.  Who knows, there may be a lot going on behind the scenes.  I’d love to hear from them. 

Moreover, I’d love to see this program come back…in full force…bigger and better than it ever was.  Since I am a fan of M&M’s, count me in.

Lastly, thanks to Deb at Satmetrix for her comments as well.