Archive for June, 2010

Is there a crack showing in the shiny Mac Apple?

No one would disagree that Apple is a company that get a lot of things right.

  • In 2011 over half of their revenue will come from products that did not exist four years ago. We can safely say that ticks the innovation box.
  • Any company about whom people tweet the following ‘Glad I helped Steve Jobs reach sales targets this month. Feeling quite proud’ has definitely ticked ‘the army of fanatics supporting them’ box!
  • An organisation that successfully launches a new product (iPad) and an upgrade to a core product (iPhone 4) within months of each other gets a tick next to the commercial box.
  • And as for differentiation, there are more ticks than I can mention here!

So why was I feeling uneasy as I left the Mac store on Regent Street this Saturday? My experience there raised some key questions to which I don’t have an answer, but  that does make me wonder if there is a crack starting to show in that shiny little Mac Apple?!

Let me tell you what I mean.

Saturday 2 AM my computer dies and at 9 AM I’m at the Mac store on Regent Street only to be told that the next appointment in the Genius bar for technical support is on Friday at 18.00.

One week to get technical support! ‘This is wrong on so many levels, and it also shows some structural problems. Below are my top line observations.

  • If you’re a life style brand, promoting a way for people to live their lives, then you can’t at the same time turn around and say that it’s OK to be without you for one week.
  • This is even more the case if your product provides some form of utility. I run this fluid world with my business partner and i can safely tell you none of our clients would be happy with me being out of action for a week.
  • Customer service that offers technical support one week later is just not good enough for a premium priced product – it’s not actually good enough for any priced product in this category!
  • Not one member of staff I spoke to disagreed with me, a one week wait is just unreasonable. If your own staff can’t support your customer service level, then as an organisation you do have a problem!
  • It’s clear when you’re in the store that Apple is an organisation that prioritises sales and marketing. The look and feel of the store as you know is great, there are more sales people walking around than I have ever seen anywhere else, and they are happy letting people be on facebook all day long because ‘we’re nurturing future customers’. The problem is that ONLY a handful of people working in the Genius bar, and a sales force that can’t handle even basic trouble shooting, does nothing to nurture your present customers with a pressing problem!
  • And finally, when your staff speaks less than gloriously about you as an organisation to customers, in this case I had to listen to comments like ‘we’re becoming an IBM’, then you really should sit up and listen! Not to mention that the staff also seems totally unaware of the risk taken when speaking so honestly to a stranger (I mean really have they never heard of journalists, bloggers, facebook fans twitterers?!)

I did end up getting help though. One of the young men I spoke to squeezed me in. I had to wait three hours for it all to be sorted out, but it did get sorted (these chairs are really not that comfortable by the way)!

The issue is that the reason my trip to the Apple store was a success had nothing to do with Apple as an organisation, and everything to do with one person breaking a rule. Not a sustainable solution to what I think could be a major problem – a focus on product development and launches on the possible expense of customer service and staff motivation.

I propose Steve Jobs takes a trip down to one of his Mac stores, accompanied by a broken computer and a pressing dead line. I think it would do him some good, but then I suspect they would make an even bigger exception for him than for me :)

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2010
06/21
CATEGORY
Branding
Customer Experience
Organisational Behaviour
Strategy
Thoughts
this fluid world
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Having an army of fanatics = game, set and match!

I’ve been asked to speak at a panel at EGR Live (eGaming Review brand) covering the topic ‘Marketing on a shoestring budget’. My role on this panel is as ‘someone who knows about social media’… and it got me thinking.

Everyone loves seeing an underdog make it. And in marketing land an underdog is someone with little or no budget. So when Paranormal Activity, a movie with a production budget of $10,000 and no marketing budget, makes it into American theatres through an active approach to social media, we pay attention, we pay attention and we want some of that magic too!!!

I love stories like this, but I fear that it gives people the wrong impression of the role that digital and social media should play in marketing.

Marketing does not = advertising, we must therefore look at marketing from a broader perspective

The main reaction marketers have when they think of marketing on a shoestring budget is free advertising, and the solution to this is social media and SEO.

This is a limited view of marketing. If, as a marketer, you truly want to decrease marketing cost you MUST look at marketing from a broader perspective. If, as a marketer, you truly want to be part of the social media tidal wave you MUST look at the role digital and social media can, and should play, in the entire marketing mix.

Some companies are getting this right, and ‘qu’elle surprise’, they are also the same companies we keep reading about in the trade press and hearing about at conferences. The reason they’re such success stories is because they do NOT look at social media as a way of decreasing advertising budget, they look at social media (and with this I mean the power of people) as something that can affect their entire marketing mix. Let me give you some examples, and I know you will be familiar with these.

And finally Zappos, a company who gets it right throughout the value chain, has during the past 10 years grown from almost no sales to more than $1 billion in annual gross merchandise sales. This has been achieved primarily by repeat customers and word of mouth.

These are all examples of excellent marketing, and in some cases of advertising on a shoestring budget!

Create an army of fanatics

There is another thing these companies have in common; they have what Jonathan MacDonald, my business partner at this fluid world, refers to as an army of fanatics supporting them. An army of fanatics are people that produce and create for you, talk about you, promote you, sell your products, and in tough times defend you!

Shift marketing investment to earlier stages of the value chain

When we at this fluid world work with organisations that are looking at decreasing their marketing budget (often through social media), we recommend that they shift their investment to an earlier stage of the value chain, in addition to focusing their attention on creating an army of fanatics, rather than on how to advertise as cheaply as possible. Why? Because we know that this will save organisations money across the board.

We recommend:

  1. They tap into the zeitgeist “the spirit of the times”, soak themselves in the cultural and spiritual climate, live breathe and eat what people do, think and talk about
  2. That they create extreme value, be it in utility, convenience, enablement, connectivity, coolness or reward; within and around everything they do. This can only be achieved if stage one is taken seriously, and done well
  3. After having created something extremely valuable make sure it’s ultra findable. The distance between inspiration and satisfaction must be reduced toward instantaneous. Be everywhere! Yes this is where search comes in – but only as a part of it
  4. And finally make sure it’s super shareable. It seems such an easy concept but the efficiencies of distribution become significant when people who like something can share it with others. The ‘viral’ campaigns we see working best are those that have an instant way of sharing between people. This accelerates the advocacy effect of armies of fanatics

Gaming is all about armies of fanatics

As you can imagine, creating an army of fanatics is easier said than done, especially if you’re in the business of selling sugar water or you are, for example, an energy company…

But if you’re reading this and you’re in gaming, than you’re incredibly lucky because you’re in an industry that by nature is made up of fanatics! People who game love gaming, people who game breathe gaming! You already have the army of fanatics to tap into by default. They are there, waiting to connect waiting to play (literally!).

So what does that mean to you? It means that your job is to make them YOUR army of fanatics!

Look at Zynga, the makers of FarmVille, and FishVille, with 230 million users each month (using a limited advertising budget) and Mafia Wars with its 12,104,521 facebook fans (as of 2nd of June 2010). These are games that have created and tapped into fanatical armies at great success!

This, by the way, requires following the same recommendations outlined above. Gaming is the perfect environment for a brand to create THEIR army of fanatics, and for social media marketing to prove itself in every part of the marketing mix.

If the gaming industry gets it right, I believe it could do to social media marketing what porn did to the Internet – accelerate its success!

And for whoever does this well, it will be game, set and match!

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2010
06/14
CATEGORY
Advertising/Media
Challenge the obvious
Competitive Advantage
Marketing
Social Media
Strategy
Thoughts
this fluid world
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Bye bye dialogue, bye bye engagement, and bye bye potential lifetime customer!

Most marketers would agree that being honest about your offer is an important part of marketing and communications. It’s so crucial to anything we do at this fluid world transparency is one of our ‘eight absolute truths of engagement’.

Why? Because no one likes being lied to, no one likes to engage with people that are not honest and not truthful. So why would we want to engage with brands that breaks such a human basic rule?

Yet in the age of dialogue, engagement marketing, and the pursuit of life time customers companies continue to be just that – not transparent.

The other day my friend Sara received this e-mail.

The campaign in their own words “Everybody knows that social networking is realer than real life. So don’t mess around with a profile pic that depicts you as any less stunning than the supermodel you are. Put your best Facebook forward with Estée Lauder’s Your Beauty. Your Style. Your Profile. extravaganza this week at Selfridges. During your appointment, beauty advisors will bronze, line, lacquer and do whatever it takes to perfect an effortlessly gorgeous visage. A professional on-site photographer will snap your best angle and provide you with a print and USB key for instant portrait uploading”.

Fair enough I say. Nothing wrong with a great facebook picture and absolutely nothing wrong with looking stunning on-line!

But to me the campaign breaks the cardinal rule of transparency.

Firstly the communications never mentions that there is a cost of £15 attached to this. I let them off the hook on this one as they do mention it when one makes an appointment.

The major issue is with the end product. Spot the problem?

It certainly isn’t the makeover; there is a Venezuelan lady on the Estée Lauder counter in Selfridges who get full marks!

But what’s up with the branded background? Let’s not forget that this campaign is not for a makeover, and it’s not for Selfridges, it’s for a great facebook profile picture!

I don’t know about you but to me it feels like Sara has just paid 15 pounds for the privilege of advertising Selfridges on her own on-line property!

I’m not sure many people would choose to do that, and I suspect Estée Lauder’s and Selfridges know that (hence their silence), but hey who cares, they do have their 15 pounds!

Except people care, and people remember, and people talk, and brands abusing people’s trust by not being honest = people walk.

Bye bye dialogue, bye bye engagement, and bye bye potential lifetime customer!

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2010
06/06
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
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