How weak is your superhero?

Not cashing in on Tiger. But what is really going on here?

Mr. Woods is being clubbed to death by the discrepancy between his marketable image and his domestic conduct, and the sport on which he built his pedestal is irrelevant. At the level of his game, sponsors define the scale of the universe, and the sponsors are interested in superheroes. Superman doesn’t pick his nose, Harry Potter doesn’t pass bad gas and Mickey Mouse doesn’t stab Donald in the back.

As marketers, we should be looking very introspectively at how we are crafting our own brand superheroes. You can’t keep a stink in a box – it will find its way out. And it is not beyond belief to suggest that reputable marketers may have secrets of a malodorous nature.

It could be price manipulation, environmental misconduct, child labour, lax quality standards, or just a bad call centre responder. If there is any lesson to the marketing and advertising industry concerning the undoing of Tiger Woods, it is how to make sure that your marketing enterprise lives up to its customer’s system of values. Don’t be anything less than honest with your image, because the truth will out.

Tiger’s innocent smile in victory was worth a billion dollars. This loss of innocence will cost perhaps as much. So don’t flat-foot your marketing. Give your business a good sniff. If it doesn’t come up roses then learn from the lesson of what happens when you catch Tiger wagging his tail.

The awfully seductive lure of debt

As a straw poll I recently Googled “Need a Loan?” (1,370M) vs. “Get Out of Debt” (767M) to see if the inclination to offer more access to deeper debt was still as entrenched in the market. Despite all indications that our economic meltdown is attributed to unbridled excesses of debt over real, economic productivity, the seductive lure of debt subsistence is as compelling as ever. Go figure!

Selling the environment with customer-centric values

Politics is all about customer-centric marketing. What the voter won’t buy the politician won’t sell. The marketing of environmental issues and products has to factor a number of different perspectives that reside within voters and customers and bring conflicting values when making personal choices:

The pendulum swings back and forth:

– “It is the nature of humanity to turn land into garbage and garbage into land.” (Jon Sherrington, 2006). Not a pretty idea, but the drive for consumption does just that. Do we feel remorse? Yes and no. Consider a growing forest that chokes the land of sunlight and lives off its own decay. It creates an environment ideal for its living conditions and all other organisms adapt or die. Is the forest a problem or a solution? It is no different with humans. Humans expand and change the environment to suit themselves and in the process all other organisms adapt or die. Environmentalists want to limit this impact of change, and the general population focuses on the consumption it needs to sustain itself, regardless.

– Within the three constants: the sun, gravity and geothermal energy, our atmosphere is a contained bio-system in which whatever exists will return to its original state at some point in the future. Carboniferous trees can reproduce, crystallize, liquify or gasify. As implausible as it appears on the surface, the earth’s bio-system will not fail under any circumstances outside of sun, gravity and geothermal energy. This constancy insulates the human conscience from reacting to changes in the environment influenced by specific human intervention. Whatever we are doing is a pin-prick in the earth’s history. But that doesn’t mean it won’t change.

In a recent consumer poll conducted by a non-profit organization sponsored by IPSOS-Reid in 2006, the greatest number of Canadians cited the Environment as the biggest issue that will face Canadians 20 years from now.

Why are we not seeing this survey response impact politically and in terms of consumer behavior today? Because the environmentalist lobby is not very good at customer-centric marketing. It has become associated with left-spectrum politics. This is strange. How can climate change and ecosystems be valued within a political spectrum when it affects us all?

The answer is because they don’t know how to sell it. In the macro-political view, the majority of consumer-voters really care more about growth than its consequences. This includes even those polled in the survey. Yet the influence we exert on our environment shapes the immediate aspect of our lives, not just the future.

If the politics could sell the environment better we wouldn’t see it pushed behind considerations of growth. But don’t expect politicians to be influenced by anything other than what people are buying – and people are still turning more land into garbage and more garbage into land. If marketers could sell the environment better consumers would make environmental choices because these reflect their own values.

So it is a marketing challenge that speaks to the heart of customer-centric marketing – how to align products and services to those values that enable customers to achieve the growth they desire without consequence to the environment. As long as the majority of marketers are concerned with growth more than its consequences, customers will side with the majority and politicians likewise.

What’s right in my eyes is not wrong

If civilized society has anything to gripe about concerning the psychology of the Next-Generation it is the notion of Entitlement. Everyone feels entitled to whatever they want. Whether it is media attention, petty theft, massive fraud, obscene public demonstrations, more pay for less work, or the calculated elimination of ‘whoever gets in my way’, the overbearing sense of “What’s right in my eyes, is not wrong” is at the core of a society overfed on a diet of Entitlement.

I was musing on the source of this growth of human failing and I arrived at the conclusion that it is We Marketers that have fed the beast. We took a youngling generation and bombarded them, not only with hyped-up aspirations, but also the tempting lure of anything FREE – the unearned reward offered for future gain. Nothing breeds a false sense of entitlement than providing something for nothing to someone that has done nothing to deserve it. It is the classic case of the parent that spoils the child. And, if you consider carefully enough you will see that the lure of so many competing brands has been carved out of the ‘I’ll give it you for FREE’ promotion. To the extent that mortgages went sub-prime, and that Central Banks are actually contemplating PAYING interest to get you to borrow money in order keep the economy liquid. The word FREE has become so common place in marketing that it has become a nickname for WORTHLESS.

So I was quite happy to see that Apple has reported its highest profit report this quarter in contradistinction to the World Economy having gone SPLAT. Nothing Apple sells is for free. The opposite is true. It sells at a premium and makes a healthy profit. Yet I have attended many conventions and read many marketing experts who say the best way to get your product out there is to offer it for FREE.

How to understand the paradox? It is not so simple as to say that a gift cheapens the giver. Or that entitlement cannot be resisted. A free trial will get the product into the customer’s hands. But then you start to lose control. There are two psychologies at work here. Entitlement and Ambition. If you think about it further, you will realize that these are polar opposites. Ambition is to strive for. Entitlement is to stagnate.

Apply a customer-centric marketing scenario:  if the relationship is built on the customer’s Entitlement values, then you won’t find room for growth. Any improvements in service or quality will just feed Customer Entitlement and you will have to keep adding more value to maintain the current relationship, while cutting into your product margin. But, if you focus your marketing on your customer’s values of Ambition then it drives you to innovation, invention and a means to grow the premium value of your product. This is how Apple is distinct from the other PC vendors.

We have known for a long time in marketing that price promotion kills margin and resets the bar of customer expectations to a lower level. But did we ever consider how we have bred a Generation of Entitlement Sociopaths? The sense of entitlement over all material aspects of our society is deeply embedded. It is only the products that are the fruits of customer Ambition that can truly succeed without the ubiquitous FREE offer. Those products are the ones we want to pay more for. It satisfies our Ambition.

So what do you think? Is FREE a death word in marketing. Any takers?

A scary thought, but true.

The 360º about face

You will only understand customer-centric marketing when you have walked the entire circumference of your customer’s perspective and come back to place where your product, service or brand sits. Then apply what you have learned.

I was once told that the furthest two points on a circle are right next to each other, because you have to travel the entire circumference to connect them. Sound silly? Try to draw a circle without connecting two points next to each other. You can’t do it. The paradox that the closest and furthest points of the circumference are adjacent is an interesting metaphor for how to miss or connect with customers.

As marketers we tend to look at the market through the lens of our brand, product or service and accept whatever filters through. We define the product based on its finest qualities and spin these into potential benefits, having first made sure of competitive qualities through price, performance or appeal. It is a product-centric model: the product is at the centre, and its radius is a function of market segment and reach. Customers fill in the area  of the circle. Completely full is nirvana.

In a customer-centric world, your product is just one point on the 360º circumference of a circle that constitutes the entire customer predicament. Your marketing efforts travel inwards on a direct line to the centre. If you reach the centre it means they bought you.

So there is also a paradox between the product-centric model and the customer-centric model: to the marketer the product is a 360º totality but to the customer it is a 1º Maybe.

How can these two disparate models be reconciled?

The challenge for the marketer is to travel the remaining 359º to fully understand the customer predicament and then apply that knowledge. Touch Marketing is the expression I use to envelope customer values, position the product properly and develop a marketing platform that builds a relationship based on shared values. In the 360º view of the customer price may not be important, features may not be important. Convenience and simplicity might be important but you won’t know until you do the 360º About Face, learn how your customer really sees their world and relates to your product within everything they do.

It takes some effort to wrench oneself away from the comfort of one’s own perspective. Nobody wants to have their ‘comfort-tree’ shaken. I am not talking about customer-satisfaction. Too many marketers pat themselves on the back with positive customer survey responses and remain in marketing stasis. I am talking about real-life relevance: how to make your marketing more relevant to customer values so that they embrace not only what you are selling now, but also what you will sell in the future. If you do the 360º About Face, your next products will also support their values.

You have to go as far away from what you know and feel about your business or products to learn what it means to be customer-centric. Then you will have done the 360º About Face and be ready to pick up your product, brand or service and build a meaningful relationship with your customers.

In case you thought I was advocating going this distance with every single customer – that would be impossible and unnecessary. Customers form segments too. The classifications may not fit the precise definitions of your marketing textbook. Or they might. Go and find out. In each case it’s interesting and you’ll learn something to help you grow your business.

Suppressing the digital flatulence

What is a digital flatulence? It is the unexpected, public, disruptive and frequently embarrassing electronic notification that someone (other than the person with whom you are speaking) wants your attention. It could be your mother, or about something of no immediate consequence. Either provides the same distraction.

The range of audio styles for this flatulence is so diverse that, unlike organic gaseous emissions, they are easily traced back to their source. It doesn’t matter how permissive the recipient is (opted-in), the intrusion affects everyone in the vicinity. Therefore the onus of the digital flatulence (no pun intended) falls to the sender, not the receiver.

We are only a few years into the popularity of this media, and there still exists in the minds of many users a certain cachet, that they are so sought after, or that the present moment is never as important as the interruption. This cachet is leverage by carriers, to my mind being the equivalent of encouraging digital farting contests between users. You have to have gone to a British All-Boys School to appreciate the metaphor.

My prediction is that, within a couple more years there will be a societal backlash against media invasion into personal space through excessive emails, texts, pings, alerts, notifications, spam, spit, twitters or any other expletive noise coming from a wireless device in a public space. They will be treated with the same disdain as smoking, urinating or emitting a loud and unbearable body stench into the local atmosphere.

We create our own problems through exploitation of new media opportunities and this is one that will more obvious in people’s lives, as wireless devices become permanently joined to the human hipbone.

As customer-centric marketers we have an opportunity to define policies regarding how to engage with this media, to prevent this backlash. Here are some suggestions:

Device manufacturers:

Work to improve silent modes of notification.

A simple flashing LED has some great advantages in power-saving and reduced public intrusion. The goal of a wireless device should not be to interrupt whatever the user is doing, but to enable them to function proactively from any location at the convenient moment.

Carriers:

Enable features that are common on landlines e.g. Do not disturb/Busy call-back later settings and Automated redial when the line becomes free

So, if I need to call you and you have put your phone on Do Not Disturb, then as soon as you free up your phone my phone will ring, and as I pick up it will redial your number and connect us. That way I know I am catching you at the earliest moment of convenience and I don’t have to keep redialing and leaving multiple voice mails. I remember having this feature on landlines in the UK years ago. Surely the technology must still exist?

Carriers & Marketers: understand your customer’s preferences

Send out your spit, spam, twitters and texts within very defined windows of time to minimize daily intrusions and resentment build-up. Track instant deletes as a strong hint not to resend the same message over and over and over again. Work together as carriers and marketers to bundle packets of messages into specific time windows that are socially more acceptable, e.g. happy hour, the drive in, the drive home etc.

Employers: stop trying to herd cats.

Your staff are easier to reach than ever before, but don’t exploit the situation to create social mayhem.

This subject is more than a nuisance in cinemas and concert halls. It is more than teen’s googoo-gagaa-ing over the latest ‘happening’ thing on the bus or subway. We are headed into a wireless spaghetti world of unwanted noise, where privacy will become a ridiculous notion for lack of social grace in digital human behavior.

This is not a soapbox rant. It is a clarion call to marketers to understand the negative impact of wireless social media on our quality of life and be proactive and build better customer relationships through a smarter solution.

The McCultural Revolution

If there was evidence anywhere in the world that customer-centric marketing is taking the lead in how to maintain a loyal community customer network, it would be McDonald’s creating a feng shui environment for its Hacienda Heights Community in LA (http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/bizarre&id=5983863). Thirty years ago the science of McDonald’s restaurant (word used loosely here) design was how to make chairs, tables and fluorescent ambiance attractive enough to sit in and uncomfortable enough to endure for only 18 minutes, to make way for the next Happy Family.

In the recent World of carb-free mania, McD. tried to modify its value proposition to more healthy eating and failed (and yet the Heavens still blessed Mickey D with the untimely passing of Dr. Atkins). Now the McMarketers are trying to create an environment to appeal to the cultural makeup of a specific community and generate value-add revenue by designing a destination for harmonious relaxation.

In other words, McDonald’s is not reinventing its brand, but it is aligning it to customer-centric values within the community. The burgers are not soy, there is no bok choy. It’s straight up McDonald’s fodder for those eclectics in the Asian market that crave some down-home US greasy grill. That 1º of community interest in a Big Mac is now embraced in a 360º cultural environment (see blog entry: 360º About Face, Sept 11, 2007) The idea of turning fast-food into a slow-experience does seem ironic, but the simple truth is, where else can McDonald’s go? American culture is changing (the Democratic nomination race is the most simplistic evidence of this flux), and without tracking and meeting customer-centric values throughout this change McDonald’s will go the way of the McDodo.

Again, the interesting point is not reinventing the brand, product or service, but the alignment of these to customer-centric values (download white paper on How to Make the Customer the Centre of Your Universe, book review blog entry Nov 29, 2007). That’s an awful lot of interior decorating for the McArchitect. McDonalds has made a big PR hit over the plan, and America is watching. The reality is they have achieved a 20% increase in revenue, through a cosmetic facelift only. No chopsticks in this diner.

Despite my condemnation their nutritional contribution to the planet, I have to tip a hat to their customer-centric marketing strategy. Come on all you other guys out there. If McDonalds flips the switch, can the rest of the world be far behind?

For a methodology to develop a customer-centric marketing strategy, you know whom to call….