Church of the Customer: October 2005 archives
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October 19, 2005
The McChronicles of McDonald's
Whether it's ready or not, McDonald's is being pulled into the world of citizen marketing.
The McChronicles is one anonymous man's project to document the ups and downs of being the customer of a company he certainly is passionate about.
McC -- what else are we to call him? -- says he is an evangelist for the world's largest fast-food company. McC began his blog in January after attending a blogging workshop; since then, he has diligently documented customer service, food, store cleanliness and the wear-and-tear of many different store locations. (What makes McC a citizen marketer is that he regularly produces content about the company.)
One delicious anecdote finds McC visiting a store in Little Falls, NY, but is "stunned to see upon entering the store a McDonald's employee (apparently a manager, based on dress) eating a full Subway meal." Sounds like a quick-cut scene from "The Office."
McC also ventures into the dark abyss of analyzing company advertising. His consistent theme: The store experience is the marketing. Expensive ad campaigns are superfluous if the universal experience doesn't match the mainstream media message. It would appear from McC's blog that the chasm between the two worlds is, too often, quite wide.
Apparently, McDonald's HQ and its ad agency pay attention to the McChronicles; McC shares server log data with his readers and shows how company officials visit every day. Good thing they do: the blog is highly qualified secret shopper research with the added benefit of photos and videos.
But no one from the company has contacted him. Is that a good thing? Depends on your viewpoint. It means the corporate lawyers haven't fired up their stereotypical trademark infringement claims. It also means the company hasn't actively engaged McC.
For that matter, McDonald's doesn't really engage its billions of customers beyond the typical store experience. Certainly, the company assembles focus groups to test new products and ad campaigns, and probably employs numerous secret shopper companies.
But just think if the company were to create a community.mcdonalds.com website where the McC's of the world could, after undergoing a training program, become volunteer secret shoppers. A few years ago, the publishing concern O'Reilly had hundreds of people fulfill its request to voluntarily check inventory levels of bookstores around the country. O'Reilly is a fraction of the size of McDonald's.
Just think how a worldwide community could become the de facto test market for products or marketing campaigns by city, region, country, demographic or psychographic. Just think how word of mouth could ricochet around the world from that community and the 100 languages the company represents in its global reach.
Just think if the company were to create the equivalent of a Starbucks card. With 31,000 stores, the data mining opportunities would be unprecedented.
All of those customer engagement efforts represent the new world of customer loyalty, increased comps and fatter bottom lines. They have nothing to do with yet another Monopoly promotion or a new jingle.
Which leads to motives. Some skeptics inside big companies question the intentions of citizen marketers like McC. "What do they want? What's their agenda?" As if it were a guerrilla organization fomenting a revolution. That attitude misses the larger point of customer evangelism, which is built upon the foundation of a relationship, however opaque it seems outside the firewalls that separate workers from customers physically and emotionally. The irony is that revolution is really what they want. It's a polite request, though, loosely organized by highly intelligent, influential customers who want a piece of the action: a sense of ownership. They want to believe.
In an email to me, McC writes: "Today the question becomes, "Where is the reality?" Is McDonald's everything they told us it was? Everything we believed it was when we were so young? Or is it just a bunch of toxic junk food and a horde of thieving executives in an ivory tower?
"If those of us who believe in McDonald's offer an honest, appreciative,and constructive dialog, perhaps McDonald's leadership will gain the courage to do what's right and build the reality up to the brand. I want us, the consumer, to lead by example."
October 14, 2005
Cupcake bakery has the Big Moo
Our podcasts are back! After taking a hiatus to iron out problems with our feed, we fixed things by creating a new podcast blog and new podcast feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChurchOfTheCustomerPodcast
From now on, all of our podcasts will be fed from our new podcast blog, so if you want automatic downloads, subscribe to our podcast blog.
We're glad to see Apple has made some much-need improvements to its back-end podcast subscription engine. Here's how to subscribe to our new feed in iTunes:
1. Open iTunes.
2. Click on Advanced in the toolbar.
3. Click on Subscribe to Podcast.
4. Copy and paste the feed URL above into the box and click OK.
* * * * * * * * *
PODCAST: Cupcake bakery has the Big Moo
While in New York City this week, we visited Magnolia Bakery, which is
credited with starting the current national cupcake craze and is known throughout New York for its lines around the block. We asked a few
customers what brought them there and why it's so popular.
Click to listen now:
Show length: 10:49
Show topics
1:00 - Cupcake bakeries in Chicago and New York
2:38 - Interviews with international visitors to Magnolia Bakery in NYC
4:44 - What makes Magnolia Bakery remarkable
9:27 - New podcast feed
Mentions:
Cupcakes bakery in Chicago,
Magnolia Bakery in NYC
Cupcakes bakery in Vancouver
Magnolia Bakery cookbook
Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills
Sex and the City
The Big Moo
New York Times review of Magnolia and other NY cupcake bakeries
Show music:
Intro/close: "G.L.S." by Salme Dahlstrom
Break 1: Sweet Blossom" by Robin Stine
Break 2: "Baja Taxi" by Brain Buckit
Podcast hosting provided by Conference Calls Unlimited
World Moo Day
Proceeds from The Big Moo have already built the school and the Nepalese children in the accompanying picture. 100% of the royalties from the book goes to three charities, including the Acumen Fund, which built this school.
So, thank you. The copies of the book you ordered are already changing the world.
Today is the day to buy 100 or 1,000 copies for your team, clients or church. Give the gift of remarkablity.
But don't take just take our word about the book. Read 309 blog posts about the book here.
October 13, 2005
The last 5 minutes
And now, another episode of "How Much Does It Cost to Print a Boarding Pass at a Hotel?"
For our previous episode, it was $20 at the Silver Spring, Maryland Hilton. A manager on duty refunded the amount after I had registered a complaint.
But there's a new winner in this unreal reality show of buzzworthy fees: a record-breaking $21.35 to print two boarding passes at the Crowne Plaza Times Square in New York City. To add it up: $10.95 for 30-minute minimum of computer access (even though it was just 2 minutes actual time), $8.75 for the printed pages and $1.65 for tax.
No sympathy from hotel management this time. "The fees are what they are," the business center attendant said zenfully.
All of it happened in the last five minutes of my hotel stay. The last five, most impressionable minutes. The last impression I'll have about the Crowne Plaza as I recount my experience with others, such as you.
How well do you manage the last five minutes of a customer's experience?
Staying ahead of the wave
I bumped into two former colleagues at LaGuardia this week, photojournalists William Snyder and David Leeson of the Dallas Morning News.
William and David are icons in journalism. Their work is dazzling; between them, they have won five Pulitzer Prizes. They're icons, too, because they consistently stay ahead of the technology wave. That's pretty remarkable for mainstream media.
When I worked at the News in the 1990s, they were using high-end digital cameras well before most other pros. The News converted its chemical darkroom into a digital darkroom well before most newspapers did. Today, it's standard practice.
At the airport, David showed off his high-definition Sony videocamera (the one pictured). These days, it's his primary tool. David shoots "nearly everything" with the videocamera and extracts still photos from it for the newspaper. "It's the future," he said as I stood there, dumbfounded.
A newspaper photographer using a videocamera as his tool of choice; there's probably more than a few photography directors today who would argue there's absolutely no conceivable reason why it should invest in high-def videocameras for its still photographers.
But overcoming the doubters is just part of the job for prize-winning innovators.
October 12, 2005
Exploitation is not a goal
Bob Garfield of Ad Age is pumped up about citizen marketing:
"If the conversation is dominated by consumers themselves, and they’re paying scant attention to the self-interested blather of the marketer, who needs ads -- offline, online or otherwise? This raises the question of what agencies are left to do. Maybe the answer is obvious: to manage, focus, exploit, maybe even co-opt the open conversation. The real question may be whether the agency world is culturally equipped for the task."
Oh, there's a favored word in the old world: exploit. To exploit something is a me-first proposition and, as is co-opting the conversation, like some out-of-control Deutschian hormones. In the "open source" world, community antennae are highly sensitive to overt utilization of people for the selfish gain of an entity, much less a $3 billion maker of hair-care products.
Perhaps when Bob and the ad agency world disavow even subtle whiffs of exploitation and reorient themselves to authentic, value-driven engagement then the heavenly gates of citizen marketing will begin to open.
UPDATE: You can find Garfield's full, ungated Ad Age piece here.
October 11, 2005
New York state of mind
Completely random items from last night's dinner for "Big Moo" authors in New York:
* A school in Nepal has already been built with the proceeds from the book, which is officially released this Friday.
* Seth Godin and William Godin (Seth's father) are dead ringers for one another.
* Everyone has at least one addiction," Dave Balter claims. His is Phish. Toured with them for years, "officially and unofficially," like a Deadhead.
* How do you fulfill the expectations of others when you have little no input into their creation? That's what Tom Kelley, general manager of innovation firm IDEO, said he contended with growing up in Akron, Ohio. A high school guidance counselor drilled this message into the heads of him, his brother and probably every other young, impressionable student in what was once the tire-making capital of the world: Go to Akron University, then go into the tire manufacturing business. Don't rock the boat. Do what's expected of you. Tom didn't and the world is the better for it.
* Randall Rothenberg, Tim Manners and Tom Kelley all testified how one of Seth's ideas changed their approach to business, their lives. Copious amounts of head-nodding accompanied each testimonial. It was true for all of us.
* Everyone there was curious as to who wrote which Big Moo essay (each is uncredited). Seth said the publisher hated the idea. All of the writers loved it because it introduced a compelling element of discovery and unity.
October 09, 2005
New Jersey Nets got game
I love this: The NBA New Jersey Nets are using grassroots marketing this season to sign up more season ticket holders.
Nets CEO Brett Yormark is calling it the "Ticket Influencer Program," whose idealistic aim is to make the Nets "the most accessible team in sports." Great idea, bad name.
Nonetheless, the program focuses on two tactics:
1. Catered cocktail parties in the homes of "influential" current season ticket holders thrown by the team, with guest appearances from players, coaches or front-office executives. Each reception will be attended by as many as 50 potential season-ticket buyers.
2. A "Pancakes and Hoops" breakfast that includes a Nets player, coach or team executive, who will dine with 10 prospective season-ticket holders at a New Jersey diner to discuss the team and answer any questions.
The program is working, too: ticket renewals are at 96%. The events have brought in more than $1 million in ticket revenue; one event alone generated $70,000. It's a very, very smart plan to bridge emotional connections between passionate fans and sometimes distant, often over-paid NBA stars.
Don't love this: The Nets have also launched a referral program that gives season ticket holders a 3% cash "commission" for every new full or half season-ticket buyer they refer. Nets season ticket holders will receive a form in the mail asking for the contact information of friends or associates. Help us spam your friends, please.
Incentive programs to pimp friends and relationships often appeals only to customers who are in it just for the money or rewards. By monetizing the relationship (and sports is ultimately about the relationship between team and fan), a cash-for-leads programs pollutes the customer gene pool.
Seems like unfortunate program to spoil the otherwise aforementioned great program.
[Andrea Learned says the Nets Influencer program is part of a bigger philosophy to "humanize" one's brand.]
October 06, 2005
The myth that disclosure is damaging
Here's a fundamental myth about marketing and word of mouth: Up-front disclosure of intentions somehow undermines the effectiveness of your campaign.
That's why liquor companies pay marketing companies like Big Fat Inc. to talk up unsuspecting schlubs in bars about their favorite vodka.
That's why product companies like Essential Reality talk up unsuspecting schlubs in coffeehouses about their game glove.
That's why a whole roster of companies pay people to infiltrate chat rooms and talk up music groups.
That's why "The Purpose-Driven Life" author Rick Warren pitched a fit over the publication of "PyroMarketing," which shares the secrets of his book's success.
All of those people believed that disclosing their work to encourage people to talk about their products would ruin the veneer of an altogether fictional moment. (In Warren's case, he believed that the success of "The Purpose-Driven Life" had nothing to do with marketing but was really "God's supernatural and sovereign plan.")
This playground for prevarication is where trade publications have the opportunity to keep the industry free of shady work from companies like Big Fat ("the stuff we do ranges from totally under-the-radar campaigns to drive target buzz to more overt guerrilla marketing efforts." But Ad Age's effort this week was like a bad day on Fox News. "Is Buzz Marketing Illegal?" was the salacious headline on a superfluous article that didn't answer the question. (J-school graduates know better than to write a question as a headline.) Worse yet, the trade mag propagated the myth of disclosure: Douglas Wood, chairman of advertising and marketing law at Reed Smith says without challenge that "since disclosure undermines the value of buzz marketing, advertisers are in a Catch-22."
Since when? By whose measure? There is no Catch-22. It's a made-up reality and resides in the same neighborhood as Iraqi WMD.
A thousand companies can prove a thousand different ways that involving customers in the marketing process can and will contribute to word of mouth. Here's a few: Bike Friday, Ban, Southwest, iPod My Baby, Three Wishes, The Biggest Loser, The Purpose-Driven Life, Olivet College, and The Big Moo. And those are just the ones we wrote about in September.
What successful and effective word of mouth requires is customer involvement before, during and after product/service launches. Customers and prospects can get involved via beta tests, trials, samples, content creation, customer communities, feedback systems, customer advisory boards, backstage tours -- to name a few ideas.
If a product is worth talking about, it will naturally create word of mouth. Engaging in deception, trickery or obfuscation is the sure-fire route to bad word of mouth or expensive lawsuits for fraud.
To argue that disclosure undermines the value of buzz demonstrates a naive understanding of how word of mouth really works.
October 05, 2005
Bike Friday's marketing fans
Bike Friday is a company we love to talk and write about because it focuses intently on customer evangelists and measures their influence.
Although it's a small business, Bike Friday's well-organized evangelist program has helped acquire more than a third of its 10,000 customers. They know evangelists drive revenue, too: Over the last 3.5 years, the company's evangelist program has generated $1.3 million in sales. In 2004, 29 percent of its sales came from referrals.
With this month's issue, CMO magazine picks up on the company's work in this area. Glad to see it. You can read our profile of the company from a few years back.
