Customer Crossroads

How not to be boring: be creative with promotional items

I picked up a rubber bracelet at my biz school reunion. I thought it might be kind of fun. You'll recall these items became really hot in 2004 with the Lance Armstrong LiveStrong campaign. Once a promotional item reaches a conservative bastion like a business school, you can be sure that it is anything but trendy, right?

The bracelet says, "Ivey Business School 90th Anniversary."

[Truly, irredeemably boring. Why would I wear it? Why would I share it? Why would I even engage with it?] 

What a promotional item should do for you

Even something as small as a promotional item should have a genuine purpose. A promotional item like this can be used for a few purposes:

• Raise awareness of the brand -- simply show off your name
• Be a pass-along item
• Reinforce an emotional connection or association
• Reinforce existing positive brand associations
• Create new positive brand associations

I thought this could have been done a LOT better. So on the drive home, I tried to think of how to do it better, as an exercise in creative thinking. Then whiteboarded some stuff as seen in the photo above.

There were a few other things I thought the school might have done with this, to showcase the brand better. Some possible objectives that made sense to me were:

• Reinforce the sense of community that the school is always talking about.
• Say something brainy, or at least witty, in the message.
• Say something about the massive new building that was just unveiled.

Yes, your promo items should have objectives. If you are just buying something to give away, you are not making the expenditure work very hard. And in fact, it could be sending the wrong message (I.e. we're boring!)

Brainstorm it better

Here are the things I came up with during the drive home. If you are really doing an exercise like this, you should come up with at least 2 dozen ideas and then choose the best ones.

Ivey turns 90, gets a facelift    [witty reference to the new building]

22,930 graduates | 5,154 female grads | 98 countries    [select some interesting statistics.]

Campuses in London, Toronto, Hong Kong, Mumbai. Coming soon: Ubuntu    [global growth in campuses, and emerging efforts in Africa]

Kevin O'Brien, Sarah Morgenstern, Timothy Hodgson, and me    [Highlight current year alumni award winners, and suggest that the attendee could be among them in future]

Multiple bracelets could have been used to get people looking at each other's bracelets and talking, "which one did you get?"

Even small initiatives in your business can support your brand, if you give them a little creativity. Don't just put your logo on a pen. You can do better than that, right?

What have you seen that you thought was clever use of a promotional item? What made it work?

Context is everything: to understand your market, get out there

If you don't understand how your customers live, work and play, you will make dumb mistakes. It's crucial to get into their environment and into their frame of mind. Because we tend to assume things are the same everywhere, and they just aren't.

I had the pleasure of a short trip to Manhattan to speak at an industry event, and was just overwhelmed with observations. 

Here's one for you -- check out the photos below -- parking:

 

Bicycle parking

I have never seen paid bicycle parking before. In most cities, the bicycles are just chained up here and there. In my own city, we have cleverly designed things to chain them to. But I did not see this on the streets of Manhattan, which made me wonder if the rules are different there.

Segmenting your parking customers - bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, cars and limos

The price segmentation is pretty interesting too. $1 a day or $20 per month for a bicycle is probably what you can charge when the alternative is taking it up to your office. Much more, and people would figure out something else. And the bikes can go on the walls, so it's an easy expansion to make to utilize some wasted space.

Motorcycles take up more room than scooters, so they pay more.

But limos paying more than other cars is interesting. Is it because they can? Because they are a business, not a just someone's personal car? After all, there's only so much you can learn from a sign, and I didn't talk to the parking attendant.

Customer experience in a parking garage

I have never seen a parking special quite like the one in the second photo.All the signage looks great doesn't it?

And just look at how beautiful and bright and nice this place is. Parking in urban centres may come at a premium, but it is still very competitive. In a place like this, you want maximum occupancy all the time, so it makes sense to make the place nice.

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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".

 

 

 

 

Viral greetings: agencies have to do more than nice cards now

If you happen to work in a creative business, you always need to do something creative and clever for the holiday season around Christmas.

This year, I see that agencies are striving to produce greetings that show their social media "this-could-go-viral" chops.

I'm sure there are lots of these out there. Here are two smaller agencies that caught my attention.

Hart offers a guessing contest that had me addictively clicking on their web site to see the next clue. If you want to get involved in the guessing as well, and perhaps win a toy for yourself, check out the contest here.

BTI Brand Innovations offers a digital take on the advent calendar, with different activities on different days, here.

Seen anything especially clever out there?

Must read article: Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy UK on how to measure advertising

Every time I talk about advertising measurement as a 'black art' I get objections from people telling me how their normative metrics are well tested and very useful, blah, blah, blah. Let me be clear here: I do qualitative testing on advertising, and I'm not too positive on that approach either.

Why so negative? Well, there is a lot of good evidence that our actual preferences and behavior are not all that well related to what we say.

A brilliant article, "Questioning the Nature of Research" reports on an interview with Rory Sutherland, chair of Ogilvy UK, who makes a strong case that our current measurements are not strongly rooted in behavioral economic theory.

Sutherland's point is not that research is a bad thing in general, it's that the current norms for how research is done on advertising don't work.

...as you get closer to the point of decision, there are factors at work which never really appear in conventional market research. They are contextual factors, social factors. No-one in any research group would ever say, “If there are four brands of shampoo, I’ll buy the one that has most bottles on the shelf”

This is true, by the way, not just of survey research, but also of qualitative.

The best qualitative research approaches come at the topic from right angles -- indirectly. Like a magician's deception, we want to focus your attention on something so that you respond as naturally as possible. Or we try to mimic the actual circumstances of your decision. Still, no self-report in the world is as good as watching a thing happen. Or setting up experiments that show you what is actually happening.

What we have learned from behavioral economics research is this: "Your preference is a product of your behaviour and not the origin of it." If you customarily go to one drycleaner, you will be able to provide a rationale for that choice, (e.g. quality, service) which is likely to have little to do with the real reason (e.g.location).

A useful and thought-provoking article to get your synapses back to school and making new connections.

 

Missed opportunities: when you do something good for customers, make sure they know

I buy lots of stock photos for use in my work -- either to illustrate concepts for people, mock up new ideas, or to enliven my client reports.

When I got a good-for-one-day-only offer from iStockphoto to get a 15% discount, I was interested and clicked through.

The problem:

• Landing page did not make the discount clear. I thought I was looking at regular prices, and that the discount would show up later
• There was a coupon code box, but no coupon code. More confusion
• When I paid and confirmed, I thought that I would see some kind of "you saved $x" notice. Nope.
• Thinking that I didn't get the discount I was supposed to, I made an enquiry of customer support.
• 8 days later, I received an e-mail response "The coupon was already built into the site when you made the purchase, that is why it does not appear as an additional discount on your receipt."

The mistake here, often made, is the assumption that I am so familiar with the regular price that I would instantly see the discount. The landing page did not make it clear I was getting anything special -- it looked the same as always. So an opportunity to make a little wee splash was missed.

The other odd thing was that this offer arrived on a national holiday. So only us poor fools who were working would receive the offer, and we had to act on it immediately (I think -- the offer wasn't crytal clear on that). Alll I wanted to do was finish up and go play, but instead I had to add something to my urgent to-do list.

My take:

When you do something nice for customers, make sure they know. Don't assume it's obvious.

Reader participation:

Are the "special offers" you get actually special?

Social media use among largest public companies continues to grow

Nora Ganim Barnes at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Centre for Marketing Research has been doing annual studies of social media use among the Fortune 500 (largest public companies) and Inc. 500 (fastest growing private companies). The 2010 study results have just been released, and a summary is available here.

Quick snapshot? The 2008 study was about corporate blogging. The 2009 study added Twitter. The 2010 study added Facebook. This pretty much says it all.

The complexities of corporate structure have been a challenge for the study, which looks only at blogging at the corporate level, not the subsidiary level. This definition must of course seriously underestimate the activity occurring, because a meaningful marketing strategy would be targetting communications (at least one would hope so!)

With this in mind, the continued growth in social media adoption that the study reports is likely understated, in my view.

Private companies are more likely to be using any form of social media, which makes sense, as they are not subject to the potential wild swings in stock price that can result from a social media scandal (remember Domino's Pizza).

The study also has stats for Twitter and Facebook, available in the short summary.

Clearly, social media is now part of the media mix. But traditional media is becoming more social. So media strategy is frankly becoming a bigger challenge for marketers of all sorts.

From my limited vantage point, I don't think most agencies are providing tremendously strong support to their clients in this area -- they are still climbing the learning curve themselves, and still trying to figure out the revenue model. [Would welcome some with more expertise in this area to comment.]

Resources:

The Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging, Twitter and Facebook Usage by America’s Largest Companies, by Nora Ganim Barnes, PhD, U Mass. Centre for Marketing Research.

Social Media in the 2009 Inc. 500: New Tools & New Trends, by Nora Ganim Barnes, PhD, U Mass. Centre for Marketing Research.

 

 

Be interesting or be gone: reaching people in an age of communication overload

Ever get to the point with your e-mail where you're tempted to just Select All {Ctrl+A} and hit {DEL}?

I did today... but decided instead to spend a few minutes trying to clear things out.

I found a number of good intentions there --  someone I wanted to have coffee with back in 2008, and still haven't booked a meeting. [I'm sure W.S. has scheduling problems of his own to deal with... if he's even at the same company now. I have finally surrendered, and deleted this reminder to self.]

How the disciplined among us conquer e-mail

Then I came across this gem, a newsletter item about conquering e-mail.

The actual item, from Fast Company, dates back several months. I can certainly vouch for the veracity of the research, having currently got some 355 newsletter items in my newsletter folder [deleted at least weekly!]. Yes, I could unsubscribe to the stuff that I no longer want, but who's got the time for that?

There are a number of good tips in the article above... if you are the type who can use a disciplined system.

My purpose here, is not to discuss personal productivity. It is to remind you that your brand, your product, your incredible marketing communication, is in this giant morass.

Did you get my e-mail?

Do you, like me, get sales calls that start with: "did you receive my e-mail?" or even worse, "have you read the presentation I e-mailed you"?

Seriously, this is a ridiculous approach. No one has read your e-mail, okay?

Even the information I requested is quite often in limbo, in another folder marked "Must Read", that currently has 12 items in it. 

I can't get through the memory sticks, CDs and downloads that I brought back from the last few conferences.

So if you sent me a sales deck, and I opened it, I sure hope it had some useful information in it. Like pricing, for example. Like screen shots of your product, for example. If it was just circles and arrows, I can tell you now that we are all sorry we wasted our time.

E-mail is the proverbial tip of the iceberg...

I'm also behind on Facebook. People ask me if I saw their clever status update, or the link they posted to the video. [I only wish I had, it was probably really cool. And more interesting than most of the stuff that landed there.]

One smart fellow of my acquaintance has suggested that I would enjoy his book reviews posted on LinkedIn. I'm sure he's right, but I currently have a dozen interesting books sitting on what passes for a credenza, calling out to me.

Your communications have to totally rock

When I'm testing print communications, I often say something like "imagine you were flipping through this magazine". Because none of us have time to study anything that is not intensely interesting to us.

And we are all, the big and the small among us, subjected to astounding amounts of marketing communications. Political communications. And signs encouraging correct behavior. [Like smoking 25 feet from the door, and be sure to wash your hands properly. Don't stand too close to that door. Keep that bag away from babies...]

We can fast forward through your boring skip-intro. We have learned to blot out your boring banner. We are checking our smart phone while your trailer is playing. Heck, many people are checking their phones in the actual movie! I have recently seen people doing this in live performances -- so even messages we are paying to see are not sacrosanct.

This is your target -- skilled at filtering

This is the market you are trying to reach or trying to serve. Busy. Inundated. Unable to read it all. Wishing you were more succinct. Hoping your knowledge base has a good search tool. Skilled at filtering. And the young are even better than the old at filtering what is of interest and what is not. 

Social media certainly had a novelty factor initially. But it is quickly becoming a necessity, and bringing the same baggage. New channels are not displacing the old, they are adding to the load.

Yup, it's scary out there.

Using social media right - Tungle does brilliant video that made me look

Was just checking out my Twitter feed, and saw something interesting from @thealzel. I know that @thealzel only posts brainy, thought-provoking stuff, usually related to her VC work. So when I saw "Time waits for no one. I like the shot of the last poster of this video," I thought I would click through.

It's a lovely video. Watching it, at first I thought it was a video from Sunnybrook Hospital. It's not. Then I became so absorbed wondering where it would go next that I forgot to wonder what the message was.

At the end, I looked down at Tungle and thought: "I've never heard of this." And took a few minutes to click through.

Turns out Tungle is a linked calendar service; something I was looking into recently, but didn't find anything that seemed to meet my needs. This might.

OK, it's a hideous name. It sounds like the name-tag on a Beanie Baby.

But their video made me look.

It works because it doesn't address the issue directly. It comes up along side you and reminds you that your time is important. That you can do amazing things in small amounts of time. It feels like a connection to what's real and what's important. And reminding you of that earns the right to a click.

So simple. So complicated.

A bank introduces Woops feature: ING Direct New Free Chequing

I never expected ING Direct to launch a chequing account. Why enter the ugly and expensive transaction part of the business? Well, they have proved me wrong, and good for them.

Their new Thrive chequing promises to give back the average $185 a year Canadians pay in bank fees.The pitch: unlimited free chequing, and access to deposits and withdrawals at ATM machines. (ING has no branches, only a few ING Cafes in major markets).

The splashy launch included women in orange bathing suits jumping in fountains, billboards that reveal themselves when passersby remove coins, and fun contests.

The marketing message at launch: "Today we bring you Freedom." Nice insight behind that one -- speaks to deeply felt wishes, especially in a tough economy.

Where the Woops comes in

The Woops feature offers to cover your mistakes up to $250. A much better name than "Overdraft Protection" and again, speaks to the reality for most people, that an unintended overdraft is a mistake, not a moral failure.

There are also e-mail alert features included, to give people quick updates about their account balances. Another nice touch that acknowledges the reality that few people maintain detailed banking records now. And also leverages mobile without having mobile transaction capability.

How to reach people -- send the President to a shopping mall

Imagine a bank president speaking at a shopping mall -- that's what happened here. Of course ING Direct is a consumer bank, but even so, this is a big departure from the staid and stodgy approach we usually see.  And of course, what a great way to reach people from coast-to-coast, in a major tourist destination.

They've also added scarcity to the mix -- the account is only available initially to 10,000 of their million plus customers.

Yup, there's a social media strategy.

Finally, clever leverage of social media, with Flikr, YouTube videos, a Facebook site, and Twitter. With some content worth following, at least for a while.

Full disclosure

I didn't do the qualitative on this project. I just wish I had, because I think they have nailed it.

My take

So there's some new disruption in the marketplace. It should make for some interesting times.

What do you think?

More info: Finextra story, ING Thrive Microsite

Is it time to rethink the direct marketing model of web advertising?

Have you noticed how good you have become at not seeing the advertising on many web pages? You know where it is, and you don't look over there. (With the possible exception of the tooth whitening and acai berry advertising, which seem to be everywhere.)

By comparison consider that television, billboard, transit, and print advertising all have to work without the possibility of a click-through. The click-through possibilities of electronic were so exciting, that the direct marketing model has come to dominate it.

I'm not sure that really makes sense. Because you just aren't in the market for a new CRM system every day. Or a new printer. Or even a weight loss remedy, as the ad below has. 

A typical example, from today's LinkedIn page:

 

Most of the ads I see online are about as exciting and engaging as reading the classified section of a newspaper. Or the obituaries. Neither of which most people read unless they are looking for something specific. 

Advertising in other mediums has to be engaging enough to make an impact without the call of the click-through. In fact, traditional direct advertising is often significantly more engaging than online. I mention the printer example because I know at some point I will have to replace my trusty HP Laserjet 3600. And when the time comes, I will think about a Xerox solid ink printer. Reason: a lot of good advertising in a variety of media that has created a positive impression. 

I really think it's time for a rethink in the model. The click-through has its place, but it has enjoyed too much status for too long.

The battle for your attention in social media

Markets for interesting ideas

I liked the title of Michael Bungay Stanier's latest e-book, Stop the busywork!, so I went to the download site. Which turns out to be ChangeThis, another creation of marketing maestro Seth Godin.

I knew about ChangeThis, but was curious to see what they are up to, so I browsed around a bit. Not only have they got some impressive design work happening here, but some impressive stats as well.

We know that 30,000 of you subscribe via email and RSS feed, and that you download around 500,000 to 700,000 manifestos a month

The site publishes four to six manifestos each month, based on reader voting on proposals. Submit a good proposal, get it voted up, and then you will be invited to submit the 2,000 to 4,000 word document. Manifestos remain up indefinitely, so can reach very high download numbers if popular.

The ChangeThis site is now managed by 800-CEO-Read, a site that sells and reviews business books. Many of the manifestos posted on ChangeThis are actually extracts or themes related to business books, so there's a bit of a fit there.

Their submission criteria are interesting, too:

Passion. Conviction. Knowledge. Education.
Thought. Persuasion. Freedom. Appeal. Change.
Point of View. Self-Betterment. Inspiration.

I believe one reason their e-books are so successful is that they control the presentation, and the e-book format they use is gorgeous and highly readable.

A point of view is the price of admission

Although ChangeThis is about disseminating ideas, those in the idea business find it a useful place to support their brand building efforts. For example, Tom Peters has seven manifestos published.

You can only get your manifesto published when you can take a point of view in a highly engaging way, and offer thoughtful and useful information to readers. This is a tough thing for a larger organization to do, and there isn't a lot there published by a large organization. Notable exception: Amnesty International has something called Stop Child Executions. 

This kind of point of view is very difficult for corporations to take, but is pretty much essential if you are going to attract readers. And not just on this site, but in most social media. 

To win attention you must be interesting

In our information-laden world, if you want people to pay attention to your message, you must be interesting.

• You can be interesting by having a point of view on an important topic. e.g. ChangeThis
• You can be interesting by being funny. e.g.YouTube
• You can be interesting by being informative. e.g.Instructables

I personally believe corporate messaging -- aka advertising -- can be interesting. But most of it simply is not.

When you hear/see/read a lot of hand-wringing about the challenge of winning eyeballs, this is what it really comes down to. You win eyeballs by being interesting.

Boring only works in the interruption model

Last night I was watching 24 on tape. I confess, I fast-forwarded through most of the advertising. Not because I hate advertising. Just because nothing caught my attention. And boring only works if you are forced to watch.

Social media takes the attention stakes up -- way, way up. Even though a lot of social media is drivel, it is often funny drivel. Which beats boring.

Above the line and below the line: advertising industry explained

Andrew Crighton has posted a new slideshow that I think is brilliant.
Here it is.

People have been explaining this thing to me for years, and finally I get it!

[Above and below means something different in every industry, apparently. In financial services, I always thought it meant direct expenses e.g. interest versus overheads. And then there's above and below the fold, from newspaper publishing, that has made it's way to web pages generally. Even though there's no fold.]

Resources

Andrew Crighton's blog, Articulate[d]

The source of the slideshow