Customer Crossroads

Everyone thinks they are Don Draper now: the Wizard's curtain is open, and nobody minds

 

Don Draper, of Tv's Mad Men, fictional ad agency executive

This week in a focus group, a consumer respondent said something like this to me:

 

"Your client needs to fire their current agency and hire some young marketers with fresh ideas that will re-energize their brand for launch in a new market. The stuff you are showing us is dated and will never give them the lift they need."

This is certainly not the first time I have heard such sentiments expressed by people who are considered to be average consumers in some sense (we try not to invite marketing professionals, advertising people, competitors, journalists, and actors as a matter of routine).

I've had people advise me on appropriate positioning for a brand in the context of consumer research. And positioning -- let's be honest here -- is marketing-speak.

Consumers are so much tuned in to the marketing process that they want to give advice to the organization. Their advice may not be good advice, that's not the point here. The point is that they feel like stakeholders in the marketing process, not passive responders.

This trend is becoming more pervasive all the time from what I can see.

 

Oz is exposed, but no one minds

 

It's like the curtain on the Wizard of Oz of marketing is now open, exposing the insides. But instead of being fussed about losing the illusion, consumers are saying, "hey, you should have a social media site" or "why not make the illusion friendlier" or "reposition yourself as a sage, not an ogre", or "update that upholstery, it's hideous".

 

 

 

 

Creative wardrobe assembly online: Polyvore

While investigating Pinterest, I came across this interesting shopping and style site called Polyvore.

Polyvore lets you browse their collections of gorgeous clothes and assemble outfits. Like my feeble attempt shown below, or seen on Polyvore here.The brilliance of this site is that I can now actually shop on line for this entire outfit (for a couple of thousand). I can see things that other people have assembled, and shop for their stuff, too.

Not only that, but with their clipping widget I can import items from other sites I might be shopping at, to assemble my virtual outfit online. (Just in case I find a non-Burberry trench for less than a grand).

 

 

This site would seem to have solved the challenge of trying to piece together offerings from different places. I'm guessing it also gives people with a recession budget a way to go virtual window shopping. Like everything else now, it does of course have a social element: you can create outfits (with help from templates to make you look good), you can ask questions, you can browse other people's outfits, you can search for clothing.

It's got simple drag and drop functionality, and is so easy to use, I assembled an outfit within about 10 minutes. I then had options to post it to a variety of social media broadcast sites.

I may not be buying Burberry any time soon, but a girl can dream, right?

Social media analysis simplified

 

Despite what you may hear, there are really only three types of social media "listening" you can do.

Looking for innovation: Expand the context

I was talking to an executive recruiter recently, who was describing the process of hiring people for middle management and executive level roles. [No, I am not looking for a job, we were sitting beside each other at a Strategic Coach workshop].

I learned that the hiring company's on-boarding process - how good it is -- makes a big impact on the likelihood that the newly hired executive will be a success.

"Great opportunity to expand your services", I suggested."Help your clients manage the on-boarding to ensure it is successful".

Many product and service categories present this opportunity, and you should always look for these methods or approaches. It's simple, really, as the diagram shows.

Every activity has a bigger context. The context might be emotional / motivational. But it might be functional. Or both.

Launching a new look and a new name: theIdeaStudio

It's been 6+ years, a gazillion posts, and lots of fun. It was time for renovations, so today is the start. We tore off the old wallpaper, stuck a dumpster out back and threw in a bunch of widgets, and then got the sledgehammer out.

So today is the launch of a new look, and a new name for this space: theIdeaStudio.