Church of the Customer: December 2005 archives
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December 19, 2005
Typepad and evangelism
One key benefit of cultivating customer evangelists: When problems occur, many of your evangelists will rise up to defend you.
We saw that last week with Typepad's recent outage, which surfaced critics but plenty of evangelist-defenders, too. The evangelism for Typepad is a testament to the customer relationship work Six Apart has cultivated since its inception. A good portion of that has been via the accessibility of its founders and key leaders. But rock-solid evangelism takes years to develop. For Apple-like evangelism, it takes a generation.
And in the fast-moving world of Internet services, operations affect loyalty. More than anything else. That's why Pete Blackshaw argues that evangelism for Typepad is probably now in a "holding pattern." (That there is so much discussion about this outage is also indicative of Typepad's influence.)
If Typepad gets through this period of operational growing pains and doesn't inflict more outages on its customers, it should be fine.
But to keep evangelists engaged during a widespread problem that affects them and almost all customers, key leaders (or the CEO) do well to provide copious updates about the problem, what's being done and preparations for the future. Like, hmmm, through a blog :)
Psst: Mena, don't wait to craft a detailed and perfect post about what's been happening. Even if you say nothing, say something. Your evangelists await.
Talking back at ads
Yes, people do want to talk back to advertisers, but the advertisers probably aren't ready for this:
It's like a public art/social commentary version of PostSecret. Sort of like Web 2.0 for traditional marketing.
[Hat tip: Todd]
December 17, 2005
Typepad's growing pains
Typepad's growing pains have caused this message to replace the image of our holiday card video post below: "Image being restored this weekend."
Typepad's servers conked out on Friday, making it nearly impossible for most of its customers to write new blog posts. For awhile, our entire blog had vanished on Friday, unreachable to us or our readers.
It's the second time in a month that Typepad has been crippled by a major service disruption. With some 60,000 new blogs created every day, Typepad and its competitors are in the right space at the right time. Blogging is here for the long term.
Which brings to mind the stories of Compaq and Osborne, two computer companies that debuted PCs at roughly the same time.
Both grew quickly. Monthly sales were in the millions not longer after their debut. As Osborne grew, it focused heavily on sales and dealer relationships. But it took a short view of resources. It focused on building new products fast. People and engineering resources to support products were added as problems arose.
Compaq took a longer view: It bet that the PC industry would grow exponentially for years so early on it invested heavily in infrastructure, operations and production before growing pains turned nearly every new product or operational upgrade into a crisis. Infrastructure requires buckets of money and A-team talent.
Osborne declared bankruptcy after three years in business. Compaq went on to become the world's second-largest computer maker and was in business 20 years until HP acquired it.
The difference between the two companies was that, as Flamholtz and Randle explain, Compaq successfully managed the transition from entrepreneurial management to professional management during the period of chaotic expansion. Osborne did not. Entrepreneurial management collapses, typically, once a company makes more than $10 million annually.
As Steve Rubel notes, eBay faced similar system outages in 1999. eBay CEO Meg Whitman eBay successfully managed the expansion leap. Will Six Apart, the company behind Typepad, manage the leap?
December 13, 2005
Dog Days of Christmas
See what happens when you exchange your PC for a Mac?
The annual paper-based holiday card becomes a holiday video.
Our video stars mascot Mini on a holiday adventure. It won't win any awards at Cannes, but Mini had fun making it. [Click on the video image to play.]
Happy holidays!
Love,
Ben, Jackie & Mini
December 11, 2005
Fans film new Star Trek episodes
Brand Autopsy has the scoop on Star Trek fans who are keeping the TV series alive by filming new episodes themselves.
One of the fans behind the new episodes has spent the last 20 years assembling a life-size replica of the Starship Enterprise, piece by piece. Wow!
December 09, 2005
The anti-corporate evangelist
How can you not love Bill Talen, aka Rev. Billy?
Bringing his performance troupe to Chicago yesterday, replete with gospel choir warning Michigan Avenue shoppers of the forthcoming "shopocalypse," Rev. Billy's business is to poke fun at the world of big retailing and its customers. "Rudy Giuliani was simply culturally
cleansing our neighborhood," Rev. Billy said of his inspiration, the former New York City mayor who was "cleaning up" Times Square.
"People who didn't have credit
cards, they were thrown in jail or shelters."
With his tour being filmed by a documentary crew, Rev. Billy probably scares the hell out of store managers, security guards and PR people but otherwise provides a few moments of levity to an over-marketed season.
(Photo from Chicago Tribune.)
December 08, 2005
The surprise Christmas hit
The hit children's holiday book this year is "Has Anyone Seen Christmas?"
It's a fortuitous grassroots success story, too. Publisher Mackinac Island Press has no sales force with tiny marketing and publicity departments.
Here's what happened: Author Anne Margaret Lewis did a reading of one of her other books this summer at a New Jersey Barnes & Noble store.
Smartly, she brought along an unbound version of her Christmas book. The store manager asked Lewis to read it, too. The savvy store manager saw how the children reacted, so she sent an email to other New Jersey B&N stores saying "Has Anyone Seen Christmas" was going to be the surprise Christmas hit for 2005. Those stores ordered copies and passed the word to other B&N store managers.
The word of mouth spread nationally, with stores comparing it to "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and other classics. That led to it becoming the number-one book at the New England Booksellers and Great Lakes Booksellers shows. Then the American Booksellers Association selected it as one of the top Christmas books of the year.
Barnes & Noble has ordered 7,000 copies, typical for a title it plans to promote nationally across its 819 stores. The publisher has already printed 50,000 copies, and should have a total of 90,000 in print by the end of the year.
Talk about a snowball effect: An author smartly shared her work with a very small group of people, but they were the right people at the right time. That audience included a savvy (and evangelistic) store manager who helped launch a hit and a career.
[Tip o' the hat: Kyle Coolbroth]
December 06, 2005
Exposing PR flunkies
The Publicity Hound (PR expert Joan Stewart) is out to publicly expose "the PR flunkies."
She writes:
One of the worst ways that PR agencies rip off their clients is by forcing new hires to make those idiot phone calls to journalists asking questions like “I’m just calling to see if you got my news release and if you know when it will be printed?”
These calls infuriate the reporters. The company mentioned in the news release looks bad. The agency comes across as naive and clueless. And the poor client gets billed an hourly rate for all this foolishness... maybe together we can shame enough agencies into ending this ridiculous and nonproductive practice.
Excellent PR can be a vital ingredient to word of mouth. The PR busy-work Joan describes is word of mouth anti-matter.
Outsourcing ads to your customers
Two ways for citizen marketers to create ads for their favorite products:
* Firefox fans can submit video testimonials and 30-second ads to spread the word about the browser.
* Seth Godin is looking for web-ad submissions for the The Big Moo. The ad will be appear on the front page of MSN.com. Get details here. Deadline is Monday.
Who needs ad agencies when creative people at home have Macs and iMovie?
December 05, 2005
Customer planning in 2006
Right now, a lot of companies are putting together their plans for 2006. They're setting stretch goals and brainstorming ideas for reaching new markets.
Many of the people in the 2006 planning meetings arrive armed with data from research firms, stacks of magazine and newspaper articles, perhaps analytics from customer behavior and certainly their own experience and intuition. What's often missing, though, from these meetings is customer input from a board of loyal (and early-adopter) customers who spend major dollars with the company.
As Kevin Eikenberry puts it, "Who better to give you feedback about future direction? Who better to help you find your blind spots?"
It's never too late to ask customers for feedback.
