Church of the Customer: December 2003 archives
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December 18, 2003
Is this any way to sell a car?
Without question, telemarketing, pop-up ads, and spam occupy the lonely waiting room of desperation-marketing. If your counter is, "Yes, but those tactics result in some sales, so they must work," then you also believe that end results (an average conversion rate of 0.2%) justify any means (99.8% failure rate). By and large, the world's largest companies avoid desperation marketing and its first cousin, sex-based ads.
However, a smoke-filled headline today in the Wall Street Journal indicates what must be a hot fire of desperation burning inside Daimler-Chrysler: "Chrysler's Dodge Brand Moves To Drop Out of Lingerie Bowl."
What promises to make the "Bud Bowl" appear brilliant, "the Lingerie Bowl will be a tackle football game between teams of seven models wearing bras and panties" according to organizers. Dodge signed on as a sponsor in November to the pay-per-view event, which will be broadcast during the Super Bowl.
Problem is, Dodge dealers hate the idea. So do employees and customers, who see it as a sexist stunt. Then who's left to love it?
Julie Roehm, the Chrysler executive who signed up the carmaker for the Lingerie Bowl deal. (Alert readers of the book "Creating Customer Evangelists" will remember her as the former Ford marketing exec who paid actors to pretend they were enthusiastic new Ford Focus customers in cities around the country.)
This isn't to minimalize a "Lingerie Bowl" of barely dressed models (the website says, "We're hoping the clothing stays on"). It will probably do pretty well, especially considering the hackles it's raising. In many instances, companies and their leaders do well to be "slightly outrageous" amidst of sea of corporate vanilla.
But being outrageous is rooted in a belief system of defying expectations by exceeding them, not pandering to the carnal-curious. Pandering works well for the porn industry, though. Maybe Julie Roehm has a new opportunity there.
December 15, 2003
Link-o-rama
Mark Ramsey of Mercury Radio Research asked some great questions about radio and customer evangelism. You can read our Q&A here.
John Moore, posting on the Fast Company website, nominated "Creating Customer Evangelists" as one of the books of the year. Thanks, John!
December 12, 2003
Saving neighborhoods from intrusive ads
They're slowly creeping in to the big cities: big-screen TVs zombified into flashing, obnoxious advertising billboards on buildings and public transportation entrances.
Ad agency executives probably think this is brilliant -- a new way to capture attention for 5 seconds! New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority likes the revenue from leasing space near subway station entrances. In the big picture, if you will, they are nothing more than potent additives in the existing advertising smog choking all of us to death. More importantly, it's probably dangerous by significantly distracting drivers from keeping their eyes on the road.
One New York neighborhood fought the arrival of the invader(from Clear Channel) and won.
We need an enforceable non-proliferation treaty from the advertising superpowers.
December 11, 2003
An "A" for content, and "F" for omniscience
The Wall Street Journal is, by far, the best information source in the world. By and large, it is expertly written, reported and edited. I can't imagine living without it.
If the Journal has an achilles' heel, it is reporters who make grandiose assumptions and present them as fact. For instance:
* It regularly reports as fact that declining record sales are due solely to peer-to-peer music exchanging. The Journal rarely takes in to account an out-of-touch recording industry. When an artist like Norah Jones wins a cart of Grammys and goes platinum, the industry is shocked. Shocked! Nevermind that the industry works hard to alienate as much of its customer base possible with thuggish behavior.
* It reports as fact (as it did today in a story by Shawn Young) that phone companies are raising their phone rates because "they have little choice. After years of self-destructive price wars, they need to wring more profit from their current customers." Try telling that to Walmart, or any other company that continually focuses on wringing higher levels of efficiency from their systems and lowering their prices for customers, not raising them.
December 10, 2003
The Dean Effect
Great story in the Sunday New York Times about the organizational structure of the Howard Dean campaign for president:
"Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager, says the campaign's structure is modeled on the Internet, which is organized as a grid, rather than as spokes surrounding a hub.... When people call and ask permission to undertake an activity on behalf of Dean, they are told they don't need permission."
In business terms, the Dean campaign has turned over its "brand management" (my least-favorite term, right after "you need a root canal") to the hundreds of thousands of supporters the presidential candidate has mustered thus far for his campaign. Here, the market is the network, and vice versa.
The article continues:
"People at all levels of the Dean campaign will tell you that its purpose is not just to elect Howard Dean president. Just as significant, they say, the point is to give people something to believe in, and to connect those people to one another."
That's customer evangelism.
December 09, 2003
Doctor, heal thy customer service
This flu season looks scary. So, a flu shot was in order this week.
A call to Advocate Health Care yesterday to confirm flu shot vaccines were available. No problem, they said. Come on in to our Lincoln Park center.
Today, at the center, the first bad sign: As Jackie and I wait in line at the receptionist desk, one of the receptionists rolls her eyes as a frail and elderly woman with a walker asks her to call a cab.
Receptionist: "We don't call cabs for patients. You have to go to the security desk out front." When the elderly woman asks again, the receptionist makes a big production out of her distaste for calling a taxi, embarrassing no one but herself and Advocate Health Care's hiring and training practices.
Second bad sign: We can't have a flu shot, another receptionist explained. The shots are just for people who are high-risk. Yesterday's confirmation call was for naught; "I'm just a temp," she says. "They changed the policy yesterday, I think."
When our receptionist asks the Big Production receptionist for guidance about our situation, we became invisible. "Tell them we just ran out and we're stockpiling it for the high-risk people." We're standing three feet away from both of them.
Not being high-risk candidates, we can understand that position. However, this center did not exactly have a line of flu shot customers out the door. A customer-focused organization -- whether it's health care or retail -- would have apologized and said, "You were told to come in? Well, sign here and we'll take care of you. When it comes to this flu, the more people who get vaccinated now, the better. Again, I'm sorry about the mix-up."
I have been a customer of this Advocate Health Care Center a few times, but not anymore.
My Mini and me
I just put a deposit down on a new car, and so far the buying process has been, dare I say, pleasant.
No pressure-wracking salesperson. No probing questions about a trade in. No hours spent haggling over price with back-and-forth between a manager.
I have been admiring the BMW Mini Cooper since its 2001 launch, so I decided it was time to make the leap to ownership. At the dealership, my "motoring advisor" Christina was calm and sweet; I've encountered more pressure-driven salespeople at Nordstrom. The test-drive proved what I already suspected: These babies are too cute, and they handle well, too. With only a few on the lot and a rare automatic among them, Christina said a handful were in transit from assembly in England, including the object of my desire: a silver automatic with leather seats.
Would the dealership work on the price? No, Christina said. The Minis sell fast and retain their value well, so there's no haggling. At first glace, Christina seemed to be hardly trying to sell. She said to take time to decide. Her approach was personal, straight-forward, and her main goal seemed to be educating me on the car's features and benefits. But her opposite-of-sales approach worked -- my experience was the opposite of what I expected, therefore I felt doubly comfortable making a decision. How are you outdoing standard expectations within your industry?
I was hooked. I called Christina the next day and put down a deposit. Three weeks to go. If you're unfamiliar with the Mini, here's one similar to the future Jackiemobile:
