Church of the Customer: March 2005 archives
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March 31, 2005
The doctor is in
What's one way to stand out at your next industry conference? Don't dress like everyone else.
That's what Brand Autopsy examiner John Moore did at this week's WOMMA Summit. Most everyone at the conference (myself included) dressed in dark suits.
But John stood out -- not only because he's about as tall as Dirk Nowitzki -- because he wore a doctor's smock. It was the real deal, replete with monogrammed stitching and a laminated doctor's badge.
His business cards? Toe tags.
Dr. John (sorry, I couldn't resist) says his ensemble sparked at least 25 individual conversations.
"I had one guy tell me, 'So, you're the one with all the buzz here,' " John said later.
Good work, doctor.
March 30, 2005
Izze's good karma
The marketing strategy of beverage maker Izze is anti-marketing.
The company focuses on quiet, yet extensive "natural sampling strategies," as co-founder and CEO Todd Woloson described it during a session today at the WOMMA Summit.
Simply put, the company's marketing strategy is to put bottles of the carbonated fruit juice in the hands of attendees at all manner of events in a way that is unannounced.
Boulder-based Izze doesn't promote its involvement with events, which tend toward non-profits. There are no banners, sponsorship cards or other traditional marketing materials trumpeting Izze. It's all part of a"turn marketing on its head" word-of-mouth approach that Woloson says is fun.
"It's easy to take these chances when you're a small company, but I'm not so sure it's true for the big brands," he says. "Plus, it's good karma," he says.
And Izze's karma seems to be in full mojo -- the company does not pay any slotting fees. "Target called us, Starbucks called us, Whole Foods called us, all because of customer demand... I do everything in my power to avoid traditional marketing and advertising because it doesn't work."
Apple marketing department: 911
Several times during the WOMMA Summit I've heard people refer (most likely, absentmindedly) to "the Sony iPod."
Recognizing citizen marketers
Is our citizen marketer meme spreading?
Pam Talbot, president and COO of PR firm Edelman, mentioned "citizen marketers" today in her presentation at the WOMMA Summit to describe the evolving world of customer involvement in marketing products and services.
After describing the democratization of media and broadcast-media tools, Pam mused during her presentation that "I used to be able to understand how media worked, but things are so different now that it's like I'm Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. One day I woke up in a different world."
How not to suck
Best line from Guy Kawasaki's presentation at the WOMMA Summit: "If you're one of those companies that requires 16 fields of personal information before you let me try your product, you suck."
March 29, 2005
Is ethical marketing mythical?
During the ethics track of the Word of Mouth Summit, WOMMA CEO Andy Sernovitz described the "four horsemen" of deceptive word-of-mouth practices:
1. The abusers: Companies that practice or encourage outright deception
2. The accommodators: Agencies that hire abusers on a "don't ask, don't tell" policy
3. The bystanders: Big WOM players who decline to back ethics efforts
4. The enablers: Companies that pay for results and don't ask how they occurred
It seems the future of WOMMA includes functioning as a Common Cause-like advocate for exposing companies and agencies that engage in unethical word-of-mouth marketing. Keeping marketers and companies honest these days is more than a full-time job. It's a calling.
How WOMMA would create ethics alerts is still up for debate.
The word of mouth experience
Both Jackie and I are at the inaugural Word of Mouth Summit today and tomorrow in Chicago. The Summit is 350 marketers confabbing about all things word-of-mouth.
Dave Balter, founder and CEO of BzzAgent, served up a few tasty morsels during his presentation:
* 80% of the word-of-mouth conversations that happen among BzzAgent's agents are face-to-face
* 50% of negative word of mouth is the result of "injustice" experienced by customers
* 22% of all conversations include some form of word of mouth
* Sales of the Pontiac G6, the car that received oodles of buzz when Oprah gave away 276 of them to her audience one day, are down 30%*
* UPDATE: Michael Wiley of GM, who was at the WOMMA Summit, disputes this contention in the comments section for this post.
Mark Cuban's new cause
Mark Cuban is paying for Grokster's legal defense as it goes before the Supreme Court later today to argue a landmark case about peer-to-peer networks. It's a case not totally unlike a case 20 years ago about the then-burgeoning VCR industry.
On his blog, Cuban writes:
It wont be a good day when high school entrepreneurs have to get a fairness opinion from a technology oriented law firm to confirm that big music or movie studios wont sue you because they can come up with an angle that makes a judge believe the technology might impact the music business. It will be a sad day when American corporations start to hold their US digital innovations and inventions overseas to protect them from the RIAA, moving important jobs overseas with them. Thats what is ahead of us if Grokster loses.
That's quite a statement from someone who's a content owner (and a wealthy one). But then again, that's why Mark Cuban has a devoted following.
March 28, 2005
Illinois' feedback gathering: a first step
A state government agency is taking a few steps toward creating evangelists: by creating a cause and soliciting widespread input on fulfilling it.
The Illinois Department of Transportation wants to reduce the number of deaths on state roads from 1,300 per year to less than 1,000 per year by 2008. That's the cause, and it's a good one.
The DOT is using another strategy in the evangelism playbook, too: Solicit widespread feedback on how to reduce the number of deaths. As this Chicago Tribune story declares, if you have an idea, the department wants to hear it.
But then reality hits: The DOT's idea gathering has been limited to a few summits with engineers and transportation industry officials. A good step -- if it were still 1980.
If the DOT really wants citizen involvement -- not just the opinions of transportation-industry stakeholders -- it should widen its survey circle exponentially. It should launch a web-based campaign that generates ideas, spurs discussion and, perhaps, conducts polls or votes on specific ideas. From the number of messages posted alongside the Trib's story today, there's no shortage of ideas, some good, some not, depending on your viewpoint.
And that's the point: How will the DOT finalize its plan? What transparency can citizens expect as ideas are discussed? Will the ideas it adopts be molded, shaped or discarded behind closed doors by industry lobbyists? How can citizens who are truly interested in this cause follow the program's progress toward fulfilling the cause?
There are precious few answers to these questions on the DOT's website.
The DOT's wish to include greater numbers of people in the process is great, but it simultaneously requires a higher level of transparency into the eventual creation and execution of its plan.
The congregation of citizens is smarter than the preacher, as the DOT seemingly recognizes, but it should give its congregation greater authority and accountability.
Then it has planted the seeds of evangelism for tackling bigger and bolder causes.
March 27, 2005
Signs of life in the recording industry
Organized customer evangelism strategies are under consideration at EMI and Sony, according to Business 2.0:
Called super-distribution, the technology lets users download digital content to their cell phones and forward it to friends. Have a hip-hop MP3 you like? Send it to your pals, who get to hear it once for free. For a few bucks, they can keep it and share it again. Fans become evangelists, and labels get another bite at the $30 billion digital-music pie. "A friend's recommendation far outweighs an ad," says EMI senior VP Ted Cohen.
I'm sure there are days that Ted feels like he is the lonliest man in the record business.
