Church of the Customer: September 2005 archives
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September 11, 2005
God is a helluva marketer
Purpose Driven Life author and pastor Rick Warren is not very happy with the forthcoming book PyroMarketing: The Four-Step Strategy to Ignite Customer Evangelists and Keep Them for Life: .
PyroMarketing outlines the marketing strategy for Warren's mega-selling book. Warren told Publishers Weekly:
The effectiveness of 40 Days of Purpose spread from one pastor to another through word-of-mouth endorsement, not through anyone's marketing plan....Instead it was the result of God's supernatural and sovereign plan, which no one anticipated.
I most heartedly agree with the good pastor about the book's word of mouth among pastors. It's huge. But a "supernatural plan?" Well, that's a pretty big leap of faith. A Forbes article explains the actual, down-to-earth marketing plan:
* Leverage Warren's pastor portal Pastors.com. It reaches 100,000 pastors worldwide each week with e-mail forums, archives of 22 years of Warren sermons and digital prayer requests.
* Invite churches to participate in a "40 Days of Purpose" event to correspond with the book's 40 chapters. [1,562 churches participated.]
* Create a simulcast with all churches in Warren's portal.* Sign up radio stations to run a "40 days campaign" during the same period. [267 radio stations did.]
* Release a CD of "Songs for a Purpose Driven Life" featuring well-known Christian artists.* Ensure the book and CD are available in mass-market retailers such as Wal-Mart, Costco, Barnes & Noble and Borders.
So far, 22 million copies sold.
Not to tweak Warren's nose too much (perhaps it's too late for that now) but there's the theory of intelligent design... and then there's really intelligent marketing.
[Hat tip: 800-CEO-READ]
September 10, 2005
Old school word of mouth
To grow its enrollment via word of mouth, the small, liberal arts school Olivet College didn't hire a PR firm. Or a buzz agency. Or create a game-based viral campaign.
Its word of mouth strategy was about improving operations:
* Reconnecting with alumni
* Asking for the alumni's help to identify ideal high school student prospects
* Personalizing the recruiting and admissions process
As a result, enrollment is up 31 percent. The Lansing State Journal has more details.
September 08, 2005
A perfect job title
Vint Cerf, commonly known as the Father of the Internet, is leaving MCI to join Google with this job title: Chief Internet Evangelist.
It describes exactly what he's done in his past work, and what he'll continue to do in his future work.
The prominence of Cerf with his new title can only add to the cause of those who hope to make it their future job title. A quick Google search produces some notable chief evangelists:
* Connie Smith, Chief Evangelist, Envision
* Simon Phipps, Chief Technology Evangelist, Sun Microsystems
* Bill Durr, Chief Evangelist, Blue Pumpkin
* Paul Strassmann, One NASA Chief Evangelist, NASA
*
Bruce Powel Douglass, Chief Evangelist, iLogix
* Betsy Weber, Chief Evangelist, TechSmith
But for a pioneer like Vint Cerf, it's as if the title should be retired after he does.
Learning again to listen
When my instinct intuition was telling me a few years ago that a consulting
client didn't really believe in customer evangelism and would be impossible
to work with, I didn't listen. We took the job for the money. The
client was impossible. The money wasn't worth the time.
When my instinct intuition was telling me last year that an event planner
wanting to hire me for a speaking engagement was disorganized and callow, I didn't
listen. I accepted the work. He was a terrible event planner and
did his own presentation right before me that borrowed liberally from my work. It made much of my presentation redundant.
When my instinct intuition was telling me last month that my PC was behaving
oddly and that I'd better back up critical data (or spring for a
substantial backup system), I kept putting it off in the name of other
important deadlines. My hard drive failed last week and took with it
gigabytes of critical data, research, PowerPoint files, accounting
records -- you name it.
Our instinct intuition is always there, talking to us. Quietly. The effects of age, adulthood and data overload make it harder to hear.
UPDATE: In the comments to this post, Chris Bailey rightly points out that intution is our inner voice, not instinct, which fuels our inherent disposition toward certain actions. In psychological terms, intuition is instinct seeking voice.
September 07, 2005
Big Moo update
It was just a few weeks ago that Seth Godin announced "The Big Moo, the cool new book project with 33 writers (myself included) to help organizations think about being remarkable. (All royalties go to charity.)
Seth says the 10,000 galleys are sold out. Wow!
The hardcover will be available in October. Pre-order the hardcover here. Better yet, order 1,000 for your organization here.
The bald one also just released a free ebook, too: Knock Knock: The Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web.
This is the way it's done here
Mark Sicignano of SoftwareTime told us a story of customer service so remarkable that he was compelled to share:
My friend was in a wedding recently and he went with the groom and the other groomsmen to pick up their tuxedos. Turns out he's missing the vest for his tuxedo. He approaches the counter and points the absense of the vest to the woman. She tells him that they'll call and have another one shipped out and he could pick it up the following day.
He explains that he's really busy, and has to work, and would prefer if they could ship it directly to him. It would save him a lot of time and the inconvenience. She snaps at him that this is the way that it's done and he'll just have to come tomorrow to pick it up. So he points out that it was their mistake and it shouldn't be his inconvenience. She basically says, "Tough." So he's annoyed and loudly asks, "Where is the customer service in this place?"
So he retreats to talk it over with the groom and he returns to the counter to explain that he will in fact be willing to pick up the vest the following day. She hands him a receipt and says, don't worry about it. I've refunded your money on your credit card and you can go find a tux someplace else. We don't want your business here.
I understand that at that point, the groom and the other groomsmen all requested refunds and found another local place that was willing to work with them on a rush. There goes thousands of dollars in current and future business all because they couldn't deliver a vest to a paying customer and make his day.
Why do businesses which specialize in rentals often have the most disorganized, even foul, customer service?
Mmmmm, Kool-Aid
IBM is about unveil a massive advertising campaign for its multi-million dollar, B2B consulting services.
And Business 2.0 is as giddy as a schoolgirl:
According to Ogilvy group creative director Andy Berndt, who helped dream up the campaign, here's how it works: "You take boring, complicated stuff and explain it. Since the topic isn't that interesting, you need to add some dialogue and characters with humor." To round out this human connection, the spots and related website are accompanied by a playful, soaring musical score by Brian Banks of Ear to Ear.
The strategic marketing effect of IBM's narrative-cum-humanistic techniques, Berndt says, is to show consumers that Big Blue -- on some basic human level -- understands their problems. "I don't think CEOs or the guys leading the IT departments want to see an ad specifically about supply chain management," he says. "They want something they can identify with that's humanistic, funny, and witty. They want to see that IBM gets it."
September 06, 2005
Turning up the heat on reader communities
Cooking Light magazine has the right theology: Encourage readers to meet one another via magazine-sponsored "supper clubs."
While dining over foie gras or ribs, the informal gatherings allow readers to meet one another in person in locales around the country and share their passion for food. By extension, that passion is collected under Cooking Light's community umbrella. In today's NYTimes, Stuart Elliott writes:
Cooking Light's effort to transform a reader's idea into a thriving promotional event is among the steps magazines are increasingly taking to meet the challenges posed by other media like television and the Internet. The goal is to present magazines in more tangible forms, so that current and potential readers and advertisers can experience them beyond the static page.
Magazines and newspapers are not just content sources. The bit-based printed publication that arrives in a reader's mailbox is really a permission asset into that reader's home or office. Perhaps their lives, too.
For the vast majority of media companies, the arrival of the printed product represents the end of the customer relationship. But potentially, it's just the beginning.
Hard-core evangelists of any publication would love to meet their fellow evangelists, whether it's for The Weekly Standard, the Daily Kos or Selling Power.
Podcast problems
We haven't podcasted for several weeks. One reason why: iTunes does not recognize our podcast feed anymore. If you subscribe to our podcast in iTunes, you receive a PDF from one of our blog posts, but no podcasts. We realize that's not very helpful.
The very nice team at Feedburner, which syndicates our blog's RSS feed, has been looking into this problem on our behalf. One issue is that our podcasts are embedded in our blog. The Feedburner folks suggest we have separate feeds for our blog and podcast.
But that would mean deleting our podcast from iTunes and resubmitting it, or changing the feed address in the iTunes directory. Yet Apple does not provide any technical support for podcasters. C'mon, Apple, what gives? How about a bulletin board with a support person?
Any fellow podcasters have experience with this type of issue?
UPDATE: Just found a podcasting discussion forum on the Apple web site. Unfortunately, it is for both iPod users who want to download podcasts and people who produce podcasts -- people with very different questions. There seems to be one Apple employee, called iTunes Mike, who is assigned to the forum. But Mike is not very responsive, leaving most of the questions unanswered.
Can't see the forest for the brand
From the funny and talented Tom Fishburne.
Jackie posted Tom's cartoon at the WOM vs. Advertising blog that the Word of Mouth Marketing Association is hosting as part of a forthcoming one-day event of the same name Sept. 28 in New York City. (I'm one of the day's panelists.)
It promises to be an illuminating conference: Seth is keynoting, and the word of mouth evangelists will try to help the traditional advertising holdouts world see the light. :)
(Discloure: Both Jackie and I are advisory board members to WOMMA.)
