Making a hash of customer dialog

I just saw a story in MediaPost this morning about how McDonalds optimistically introduced a twitter hashtag (#McDstories) and invited its customers to talk about how wonderful their McD experiences were.  As the story points out, they should not have been surprised that there were some very unpleasant stories posted, mainly having to do with incidents of food poisoning.  In fact, you should avoid reading the tweets close to mealtime.


I suppose there are two possible lessons from this cautionary tale.  One, of course, is don't do that.  Don't hand your brand over to your customers and assume that they will be kind to it.  Other people do not love your brand like you do.  To you, it is a precious child.  However, to at least some your customers, the brand will seem an uncaring behemoth that has royally messed up.

The second lesson, though, is more optimistic.  If you want to engage with your customers about your brand, do it in a true dialog.  That means engaging people in settings where you can have a real conversation, answering their complaints and concerns responsibly, with a human voice. Twitter, as we have just seen, is a street-corner soap box where the loudest, grossest, or funniest voice is amplified at the touch of a button.  Other settings (your own branded community, or even Facebook) offer you a much more confined space and greater opportunity for conversation.

The bottom line? It makes sense to listen to your customers' gripes; after all, they will be sharing these stories with others, even if you don't hand them the megaphone.  Just do it in a setting where you can provide real help, correct misunderstandings, and nurture relationships. 

Mirror, mirror...

As a recent Yahoo!, Mind Share and
Added Value study points out, people from a wide variety of ethnicities (basically, everyone who is not white) do not "see themselves" in advertising or digital content.  Having worked with many a client and creative team, I can assure you that hours are spent trying to address the issue of diversity.  Most major brands have strong policies that demand ethnic balance.  Why is this effort not perceived as effective?

In creative research projects, I have nearly always heard one primary objection to images of the consumers used in ads:  "that's not me."  This objection could arise because of choices made about a model's age, gender, even style of dress--not necessarily race or ethnicity.

Small wonder, then, that ethnicity is difficult to reflect.  If you so much as put a shirt on the model that just feels wrong for their culture, the respondents will not perceive themselves in the ad.  Once you add factors like age, gender, and region, reflecting diversity becomes a painful struggle.  No wonder, then, that so many advertisers just select a model from a particular group, put him or her in June Cleaver's world, and declare the job well done.

But it's wrong to complain about how much consumers demand to see "me" in our ads.  In fact, it's a compliment.  As we've discussed before, people really want to believe that the brands they buy understand them and care enough to show it. They want to see themselves in your world--is that really so bad?

User created content is one way to address this problem, but only one.  My primary advice is to use ethnography to create more realistic environments to show your brand in use.  Don't fear your customers' reality, but embrace it.  The better you mirror their world, the more they will love your brand.

Occupy their point of view

NOTE:  I have been watching the Occupy movement from two perspectives: as a citizen, and as a marketer.  It's in the latter capacity (and only in that capacity) that I'm writing this blog.

Among the many issues we Boomers need to confront as we ease (gracefully or not) into our golden years, is who our children are.  With parents from the Great Depression, many of us reacted against the notions of frugality and respect for authority that were so close to our parents' hearts.  We raised our own children indulgently and encouraged them to question authority.  We also raised them to respect other people's feelings, and avoid violent outbursts.  Zero tolerance policies on schoolyard fights, for example, were our idea.

The results were not, of course, entirely what we expected.  Our children, given the option, made many childish choices, such as becoming rabidly brand-conscious little materialists.  However, many of our values were absorbed, such as concern for others' feelings--the wireless bill alone shows how much they like to text their emotional support to one another.  As I look at it from a mom's perspective, I don't think we did all that badly in conveying our values.

What we're seeing in the Occupy movement, for me, perfectly captures how our generation impacted this one.  I feel nostalgia when I see them protesting the way we did when we were young, with signs, chants, and music; Crosby and Nash actually serenaded them the other week.  (God, those guys look old.) But there are some fascinating differences.  Get this: they are protesting over material concerns, as in where all the money went and how they are going to get their piece of it.  Their decision not to appoint leaders or worship rock stars, but rather operate by consensus, shows that their respect for individuals and concern for one another's feelings far surpasses ours.  When you look at their behavior and their issues, the Autumn of Occupation feels very different from the Summer of Love. 

Yes, Boomers, we succeeded.  Each generation has its own window on the world.  As older marketers, we need to understand that we raised these young people to feel entitled to fair treatment and consideration.  They are dedicated, practical materialists who just happen to believe in sharing.  That doesn't fit our idea of either right or left-wing ideologies.  It's a whole new thing--their thing.  Marketers and brands had better get on board--it's their world, now.

How Netflix went from winner to loser

Once upon a time, there was a really, really successful startup--which means that though it's still pretty small, it had a skyrocketing stock price.  And it was doing really well--in a recession!  Awesome, Netflix!

Alas, something happened.  Netflix thought it could always do better.  (There's nothing like the sight of lots of money to make someone want much more money.)  So it made this decision: it pulled the rug out of its customer base by forcing them to pay way more for the service!  In a recession!  Not so awesome, Netflix.


Netflix wasn't stupid; it knew that lots of its customers would leave.  But, alas, more of them left than Netflix expected.  So its wonderful stock price went down. 


But Netflix didn't give up!  No, it sent an e-mail to all of its customers  It even sounded like an apology! How PR of Netflix!

Dear Victoria L,

I messed up. I owe you an explanation.

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology.

Oh, if only Netflix had actually followed through with "respect and humility".  Alas, the rest of the e-mail was spent explaining that because of some operational considerations that Netflix's customers don't even begin to give a damn about, in order to make even more money, Netflix had decided to pxxx off, (sorry children, "disappoint"), all of its remaining customers by spinning off the DVD half of its service into a different company with a goofy new name, Qwikster, thus undoing the whole convenience aspect of its brand promise. 

At the end of the e-mail, Nertflix followed the PR rule book and invited comment.  And boy, did Netflix get it--much of it not respectful. Kaboom.


In my crystal ball, I see what will happen to Netflix.  It will be trounced by its  vastly larger competitors--Amazon is the smallest of them.  To prevent the receipt of yet another self-absorbed "apology", it will be unsubscribed by many, many people who used to send it money every month.  Eventually Netflix will be bought by one of its massive competitors, but for much less money.


Moral of the story:  In the age of social media, why do brands go from winner to loser?  Because they act like a jerk.  Oh ye companies, hark unto me:  you make money because people choose to give it to you.  So don't p-, um...  "disappoint" them.

Be careful what you know: 3 techniques for keeping an open mind

Two stories came across my social media screens today:  one from Pew on how what you "know" about budget deficits is influenced by your political affiliation, and another from Time on how the myth of the independence-seeking male and the marriage-seeking female is a.... myth.  It just goes to show that you should be very careful about what you know.

I am fascinated by what it takes to think creatively, and the most important tool is a knack for keeping your mind open.  It turns out that your frontal lobe is better at openness, and your temporal lobe is better at closing off debate.  Well, if this is a contest that takes place in your brain, then you can be the referee.  

Much of the time it makes sense to learn from experience and apply existing patterns to new problems.  If we didn't listen to the temporal lobe, we'd never have moved on from the invention of fire, because we'd have to keep inventing it over and over again.  However it doesn't always make sense--if it did we'd never have moved from open pit fires to gas heat.  

In other words, you need to re-examine the world from time to time and come up with new ideas, or you're just as stuck as the person who doesn't learn from experience.  For example, when you look at competition do you consider that you are competing for people's time and attention, not just the dollars they spend in your brand's category?  Not that you should think of a dad's kids as your competitors, but you should be realistic about the need for a father to turn off the computer or the TV and spend time playing outside on a Saturday afternoon.

Here are three ways you can help to keep your mind open when your watch is telling you to just make a decision and move on:

1)  Make a Customer Your Colleague.  Look at life through the eyes of a customer.  Pick any customer and imagine what their day is like.  Don't try to jam your imagination into the purchasing lifecycle, just spend a good hour or two empathizing with what's important to them.  Sketch out how they move through a good day, then a bad day.  Map out all of the choices they have to make; the joys and frustrations they might experience.  Give your hypothetical customer a name and keep him or her with you as you strategize.  What would your customer tell you about the problems you're facing in your business?

2) Dream up Scary New Competitors.  Imagine that some entrepreneur was going to come out of nowhere and completely change your category.  What might they do?  This one is fun to do with colleagues.  Draw a map of all of the industries that touch your marketplace; where might the new competition come from, and what might it look like?  Again, don't leap to any conclusions; keep going until your scenarios are completely ridiculous.  (Probably you don't have to worry about competition from alien superbeings; Mark Zuckerbergs don't come along every day.  Phew.)

3) Clear Your Mental Desk.   This one is different; it's a mental exercise that you can bring not only into your work life but also your daily life.  Most of the time, the reason we don't think we have any time to dream up new ideas is that our mind is cluttered up with deadlines, conflicts, and inner turmoil of various kinds.  That puts you in survival mode and your temporal lobe in charge.  How hard would it really be to clear out even fifteen minutes where you turned to a blank wall and just let your imagination fill it?  The more you do this, the easier it gets to flip into frontal lobe territory when you need to. 

Your imagination is a powerful thing; it can touch the hearts of your customers, invent a new product, replant deforested deserts or resolve seemingly impossible conflicts with an angry teen.  The great news is that you, like everyone else with a frontal lobe, have a great imagination.  The key to setting it free is to be less focused on what you already know.

Without Us, We are Nothing

An excellent, long Pew study on American feelings and attitudes about family, and how our lives have turned out, was released just in time for the holidays.  I'd like to focus on a couple of facts and share some Thanksgiving observations:

• Most of us are grateful and satisfied with our family lives, obligations and all.
• Not surprisingly, we also feel most obligated to those who we rely on the most; for the young that is often their friends, for us older folks that's parents and children.

This says a great deal to me.  The role of mutual obligation in our private and social networks is perhaps under-appreciated in this country.  There is generosity and sacrifice, of course, but also gratification in the fact that we have something to give to those we love and depend upon.  Independence is a fine thing, but abandonment is a tragedy--how fortunate we are that families and friends understand that our independence is not the whole of who we are.


I know that I feel grateful for the fact that those closest to me trust me and understand me enough to ask for what they need, and sometimes fault myself that it's so hard for me to do the same.  


This Thanksgiving, let marketers, too, be grateful for the respect that is implied in our obligation to provide safe, healthy, high quality products, and empathetic, honest marketing campaigns.  Without us, we are nothing.


Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!

The redefinition of value

In a recent Nielsen company case study about Greek yogurt (of all things), comes proof that stressed Americans are demanding more value from products, even if the price is somewhat higher.  The equation works like this:  heavy yogurt consumers eat and cook with yogurt primarily because they are health-conscious.  If Greek yogurt is fresher, more nutritious, and better-tasting than lower-priced brands, then Greek yogurt does a better job of providing the core value that is motivating yogurt purchase in the first place.

Still, given the weak economy, why aren't people more focused on price (i.e., so they can save money in case something goes wrong for them, as is happening in so many categories)?  The answer is two-fold.  In the first place, for heavy yogurt buyers, the product is not a discretionary purchase, but a necessary one.  Therefore it's high up on their shopping list, where price is unlikely to prevent them from making a purchase. 

Secondly, the definition of value is emotional as well as rational.  If money itself becomes (or is perceived as) scarce, then it becomes more valuable.  It becomes something you don't want to "throw away" on inferior products.  In this situation, people actually become pickier about quality--because they are just plain mad when a product they buy with their hard-earned money breaks, wears out, or even tastes inferior.

This is potentially bad news for down-price brands--watch for them to pump up their quality message loud and clear!  TJ Maxx is one brand that is emphasizing designer labels over price, showcasing in its social campaigns that you are getting great value for your money (rather than just saving "cash").

Net message?  Message value!