Church of the Customer: January 2004 archives
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January 14, 2004
The GM guy who creates evangelists
Bob Lutz, the chief of product development at GM, has had a terrific showing at the 2004 Detroit Auto Show. For the past year, he's been shaking up the staid and conservative GM with some cool-looking concept cars.
In this Chicago Tribune interview, he talks about Saturn, the GM division that's built a strong following of customer evangelists with its strong focus on customer community but has struggled because of its overprotective corporate parent. Lutz says that's all about to change.
Outpurpling the purple cow
Our friend Seth Godin has another great idea: A guidebook for discovering the various professionals who can help you become a purple cow (to really stand out from the herd of competitors).
Here's how to apply for inclusion.
January 13, 2004
Dancing with Ginger
Ginger was the code name for the Segway Human Transporter, which, before its release, was a word-of-mouth phenomenon that rivals any viral marketing effort of the past 25 years, perhaps longer.
There are many valuable lessons to be gleaned from "Code Name Ginger," which takes readers inside the development of the Segway well before it was the subject of a year's worth of widespread science-fiction-like speculation. Primary among the book's lessons: Entrepreneur's disease is the single biggest impediment to the success of a company with a hot product or service, eclipsing poor marketing, bad customer service or just about anything else.
The disastrous effects of Segway inventor Dean Kamen's micromanagement continually delayed the project; several eye-popping scenes in the book portray Kamen silently watching members of his team take bullets during secret meetings with infamous venture capitalist John Doerr and wannabe-investor Steve Jobs that Kamen should have taken himself. Unable to transcend his own management shortcomings, Kamen fails to see (or acknowledge) that he is also the product's chief bottleneck. (The book "Growing Pains" expertly explains that most businesses fail because the founder/entrepreneur refuses to adopt professional management practices.)
Other lessons from "Ginger": the right marketing team makes all the difference. Segway's first-generation marketing team seems ill-suited for the task of selling what's clearly a technology product, not an automobile. Detroit-like marketing largesse permeates the Segway's strategic planning (the team spends $50,000 on a video to convince Steven Spielberg to employ a Segway in "Minority Report" -- the video comes off as amateurish and the future envisioned in the movie is sans Segway). One embarrassing scene portrays Segway's first marketing chief unable to formulate a value proposition for the vehicle.
The behind-the-scenes story inside Segway makes clear that a marketing group inside any company has to stand toe-to-toe with a charismatic, forceful leader and make strong, forceful arguments when he's completely wrong. Segway's early marketers didn't do that, so they never earned Kamen's respect. It doesn't help that Kamen categorically dismisses most marketing practices as wasteful.
The first marketing team (which was eventually forced out by the early investors) had huge obstacles well before the widespread "IT" speculation: Kamen's delusional paranoia about corporate espionage. His mostly unreasonable fear envelops the project in total secrecy; the marketing people are prohibited from testing their category-creating product with anyone other than a few engineers' spouses. The marketing group may as well have designed a time-machine than get past Kamen's supersillious secrecy.
For all the hype (and Kamen's secrecy), the Segway hasn't turned in to the runaway seller the hyperbole-prone Doerr predicted: about 6,000 actual sales vs. the prediction of 50,000 for year one. New-category products and services require immense nurturing and a devoted community of customer evangelists.
For marketers, "Code Name Ginger" is a fascinating look into the engineering and sales mind of a technology visionary whose marketing myopia would have squelched the widespread publicity that precipitated Segway's debut. It's also an incisive Dean Kamen biography: brilliant inventor, savvy salesman and lousy manager.
January 12, 2004
Bite-size learning
A British college is employing one of the six tenets of customer evangelism: bite-size chunks.
Northampton College has launched free learning programs to help adults feel better about education. The college's first bite-size program: a do-it-yourself course to navigate the frustrating maze of flat-pack furniture. The free, three-hour course guides students through indecipherable Ikea instructions and understand DIY furniture madness.
The college's marketing manager, Helene Parker, hopes the courses will attract people who think they don’t have the time to commit to a lengthy course or those not seeking a formal degree.
"It’s trying to challenge people’s perceptions of learning," Parker says. "These courses are designed to switch that little light back on and get people back into learning."
Now if we only had a course for deciphering Ikea furniture instructions in the United States.
Philadelphia freedom
Southwest Airlines signed sponsorship agreements last week with the Philadelphia 76ers, the Philadelphia Flyers, and the Philadelphia Phillies.
The sponsorships are part of Southwest's ongoing smart strategy to embed itself into local communities by tapping in to widespread community passions. If anything, Philadelphia is sports-crazy. [We wrote about Southwest's sponsorship of the Chicago Cubs and how the company arranged for Southwest customer Rich Marcotte to throw out the first pitch at a game in our book, an event that Marcotte says made him a lifelong, devoted customer.]
How are you tapping into the passions of the customer communities you serve?
January 09, 2004
Marketing, deli-style
Zingerman's has been called the most famous deli in America.
Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of the Ann Arbor, Michigan, fixture for food, explains his company's marketing strategy in a Reveries Magazine interview:
We create a lot of written materials that we give out in-house, in the belief that the more we share information and education with our existing customers the more they'll be up for buying good food and learning about what we do.
We create a lot of hand-made, colorful, illustrated posters that share information about the food. We work with the press to share stories of what we're doing to keep them up to speed.
It's a lot of simple stuff -- handouts, stuffed bags, talking to customers, t-shirts, emails. It's just realizing that it takes years and years to build up a market for a product. You can't just put out one little promotional piece or one ad and expect that it's going to make much headway.
We don't have big budgets, so we just keep working with inexpensive tools, word of mouth. We try to make substantial things happen so that people are interested in them.
Zingerman's enjoys customer evangelism in bundles, as my co-author experienced in two separate trips to Ann Arbor this year. Zingerman's customer evangelism story illustrates:
* It takes time to build a loyal customer base
* Educating customers about your products is highly effective
* Frequent customer feedback is essential
* Customers like to have fun purchasing from you
* Marketing should be kept simple
Evangelist for: Cris Collinsworth
I'm a big fan of pro football. In this household, many hours are spent each weekend watching NFL games and shows about football (the NFL Films of the 1970s are pure heaven). Other than an occasional cigar, it's a favorite vice.
Consequently, I also watch a lot of football analysts. Most are former players and masters of the obvious. Analysis is a word many of them may be unable to spell, much less comprehend.
For my money, the best football analyst on television today is Cris Collinsworth. He's smart, insightful and doesn't function as a league tool.
Artie Kempner, the head of Fox Sports, understands Collinsworth's appeal:
"He's willing to cross the line, to be dead honest about players -- and that's difficult at times, because players take it personally. Sometimes it has made our job more difficult ... but it's what makes him a good broadcaster." Authenticity spurs evangelism.
On top of that, Collinsworth maintains a grueling schedule. As they say in the game, take a look at Collinsworth's "production:"
* He writes for NFL.com
* He's co-host (with Bob Costas) for the HBO weekly show "Inside the NFL"
* He's in the booth each week (with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman) covering Fox Sports' national game
* Two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Sports Personality/Analyst, 1997, 1998
A Cincinnati Enquirer profile captures this Collinsworth quote:
The hardest thing in the world is to know as much about any team as a good, solid fan in that area. I'm sure some people sitting at home watching a game are thinking, 'We could have gotten Joe from the (sports talk) radio to do the game better than this clown is.' So I'm just trying to be better than Joe from the radio.
The virtuous feedback loop
Tim O'Reilly is hosting a "Digital Democracy Teach-In" next month in San Diego. O'Reilly, the founder of technology publisher O'Reilly & Associates, is one of the smartest guys I know. This new program is classic O'Reilly -- he can recognize a wave at sea well before most others do.
In "Creating Customer Evangelists," O'Reilly & Associates is one of our case study companies, and I love this quote from Tim:
The most successful open source projects are those that have effectively made and efficient market and status, where people get acknowledged a lot -- they get this positive feedback loop. We've done a lot of the same thing by getting our customers involved, giving us ideas, being involved in contributing to our books, writing the books. When the products are available, we already have this group of people who are already invested.
Watering the grassroots, Part II
MoveOn.org has announced 15 finalists for the create-your-own-political-ad contest. The winning entry will be selected Jan. 12.
It's a great idea: tap in to the passion and creativity of your customer universe and ask them to produce their own "ad." It's bound to be more authentic and genuine than a contrived effort from an agency.
If it can work for a political campaign, why not a business?
January 08, 2004
The next gold rush
Digital appliances are the new PC.
Their current growth is phenomenal, especially if you examine the sales of iPods. At this week's Macworld, CEO Steve Jobs said the iPod has a 31 percent market share among all MP3 players sold, and that Apple sold 730,000 of the players last quarter.
Today, their potential for growth seems like circa 1994, when PC sales were about to be lit like a rocket.
With HP now planning to sell a version of the iPod and Apple getting a desktop icon for iTunes on each HP PC sold, Apple is once again creating a pathway for the rest of the industry to follow for digital content, just as it did in 1984 with the graphical interface, the colorful iMac of years ago and the iTunes store in 2003.
Perhaps it's because Apple is the perpetual underdog, or the never-say-die mentality of Steve Jobs continually creates so much buzz, but I think Apple's innovative thinking and marketing creates customer evangelists who sustain Apple's growth when so many competitors have died.
