Mea Culpa Marketing: Does It Work?

Is “Going Viral” Worth It if It Kills the Host?

As consumers, we’re increasingly being assaulted with marketing campaigns that irritate us, shock us and enrage us. The new formula goes something like this:

• Marketer creates and airs a television campaign that blatantly insults or stereotypes a segment of the population, depicts anti-social behavior, or is just in plain bad taste. (Yes, the latter is still possible to achieve if one works hard enough, even with today’s low bar.)

• Consumers recoil in horror. They flock to social media, posting thousands of messages about the campaign.

• Marketer pretends to be stunned by the market response, and suggests that it never dreamed its campaign would offend so many people.

• Marketer issues apology. It enlists the Professionally Offended – for example, advocacy groups or academic experts– to assist in its rehabilitation. It makes some sort of charitable donation to the offended group(s). Mainstream and social media duly report on the mea culpa, creating another wave of free news coverage for the marketer.

Recent high-profile examples of mea culpa marketing include:

Groupon: This marketer used the plight of the Tibetan people as the introduction for discounted coupons for Himalayan restaurants, chirped with a smug face by actor Timothy Hutton.

HomeAway: This marketer apparently thought it hilarious to launch an infant (played by a doll and labeled “test baby”) into a wall or through it. And even more hilarious to give people a Web-site game where they could place someone’s face on a baby before launching it.

Kraft: This marketer used a scolding, black-clad Greek grandmother to sell Greek yogurt to young women, raising hackles in the Greek-American community.

Mea culpa marketing campaigns tend to proliferate at Super Bowl time. Businesses that have invested millions in TV production and time – including startups – clearly want to get the most out of their investments. Super Bowl advertising has become a mini-industry, attracting lots of press coverage by the mainstream media and consumer engagement on social media. It’s apparently no longer good enough to aim to be the best commercial. Or even the worst commercial, securing your brand’s place in infamy. Marketers today have to really think creatively about how to break through the clutter.

As a consumer, I resent being so blatantly manipulated by marketers. And I respond accordingly, by shunning the marketer and not buying its products.*

As a marketer, I am curiously waiting to see the net effect of these campaigns. The cynic in me believes that many of these offensive campaigns were completely intentional. How could a professional marketer think that launching a baby (albeit fake) into a wall would possibly be perceived as okay by most people? Or that it is funny to exploit the plight of politically oppressed people to sell restaurant meals to overfed Americans?

As a marketer in the pre-Internet days, I was involved in my share of bad-news marketing situations. Our policy was to act quickly and decisively to acknowledge the situation, take corrective action, and then communicate the action thoroughly and clearly. The goal was to prevent press coverage of the story from extending beyond one or two days maximum.

Clearly times have changed, mostly because of the Internet. Groupon appeared to stumble around for days in responding to its situation, extending the story for nearly a week after the Super Bowl broadcast.

Time will tell whether these mea culpa marketing campaigns were profitable for the marketers.

In the meantime, here are some observations.

There is no such thing as an inside joke any more: The Internet brings anyone and everyone to your campaigns, not just the people you are targeting. This means people of different cultures who speak different languages and so on. Someone will be confused, or offended, or both. Your inside joke may be their first – and only – exposure to your brand.

The Offended is big business: There are private advocacy groups that represent segments of the population (for example, Greek-Americans) or problems (child abuse, brain injuries, political oppression in Tibet). There are also published authors, academics, government organizations and NGOs. All can be counted on to respond to a mea culpa campaign, because their missions, businesses and livelihoods depend on it. Further, today social media gives virtually anyone who is offended a platform for expressing himself – and a ready platform for such forms of expression as organizing a worldwide boycott of your product, inciting the vandalizing of your premises, or harassing your executives.

Most consumers have short memories: Particularly given information overload, consumers over time may remember your brand or company name, but not why they remember it. And, once they have vented their initial outrage online, many consumers will move on to the next thing and may continue to buy your product. The lure of discounts for restaurant meals may win out over moral outrage – particularly for people feeding families in today’s economy. Or not.

The Internet has a long memory: Conversely, a quick search on Google or Bing will instantly remind a curious consumer why they heard of you. Far into the future.

So, before considering a mea culpa marketing strategy, ask yourself: “Do I feel lucky?” All the market research in the world may not help.

According to Nielsen, Groupon’s Super Bowl ads boosted traffic to the company ‘s Web site by only 3%. By comparison, HomeAway’s post-Super Bowl traffic was up 27%.

* Obviously, I am contributing to the wave of press coverage of bad behavior.

Three Ways to Wreck a Marketing Interview

Tips for Fixing Common Mistakes in Marketing Interviews

As a business writer and marketing consultant, I conduct a lot of interviews, many of them by telephone. I interview my clients’ customers, partners, external consultants and internal experts to obtain information, insights and “color commentary.” I have conducted more than a thousand interviews over the course of my career.

Sometimes I am asked to participate in interviews conducted by other people. From these interviews, I have observed common interviewer behaviors that undermine the interview process.

Here are the three most common mistakes, with tips for preventing them. (For purposes of this article, I refer to the interviewee as “the speaker.”)

Deviating from the Questions: Experienced interviewers almost always send a list of questions to the speaker in advance. If the speaker has the questions in advance, he can prepare better. (Even experienced speakers appreciate this opportunity.) At a minimum, the speaker knows the goal of the interview, what to expect and roughly how long the interview will last.

If you send the questions, stick to them – particularly at the beginning of the interview. If you begin with a different question than the speaker expects, you will likely rattle him and get the interview off to a rocky start (from which it may not recover). An experienced speaker – one who participates in many interviews – may be able to roll with the punches; however, other speakers may become distracted or even terrified by a starter question from left field.

Tip: Follow the questions provided in advance. To ask questions not on the list, look for natural opportunities to work them in – later in the interview. Interviewers call this technique “branching.” It works.

Interrupting the Speaker: In the interest of moving the interview along, inexperienced interviewers may interrupt the speaker – usually cutting in at the end of the sentence. Resist this! It’s the number-one interview killer. When you interrupt the speaker, you interrupt his train of thought, which slows down the interview and hurts content quality. Worse, speakers often deliver the best content at the end of sentences – which you will “clip off” if you interrupt. Poof – gone forever.

Tips: Train yourself not to interrupt. (It took me years to train myself.) Practice on your colleagues and friends. Also, record your practice interviews so that you are aware of your interruption habits (and other not-so-good habits.)

Try this instead of interrupting: When a speaker arrives at the end of a sentence, silently count to three before asking your next question. In fact, before moving to the next question, I often will ask: “Anything else about [insert topic of the question here]?” Often, the speaker will have an additional thought that (a) succinctly sums up his answer (sound bite!) or (b) gives you the headline for your marketing document.

Special Bonus Tip: The habit of interrupting usually develops because inexperienced interviewers pack too many questions into the allotted time for the interview. I typically allow one question for every four to five minutes. If you finish your questions early, you will get points from the speaker – or you can ask another wrap-up question. (Wrap-up questions often yield the best content of all, because at this point your speaker is completely warmed up and relaxed.)

Meandering: In the courtroom, lawyers never ask a question to which they don’t know the answer. In a marketing interview, experienced interviewers never ask a question that doesn’t contribute to the purpose of the interview. Experienced interviewers go into interviews with an end-result in mind. For example: you want the speaker to validate (or invalidate) an idea, or to provide three ways that your product helped his business.

Don’t attempt to turn an interview (a structured Q&A) into a free-form brainstorming session crammed with many different topics. It never works. You will confuse and usually irritate your speaker, and you will generally not get useful content. If you want to conduct a brainstorming session, define it that way and state your purpose in advance.

Tip: Clearly understand and state the purpose of the interview in advance; include details on how you plan to use the information, the content approval process, and the timeline for your project. An interview is a process – not a transaction – and providing context will help the speaker through the process. If you insist on asking a “while-I-have-you-here” question during the interview, allow time for it at the end.

A great interview is like a river. It gently flows, providing new insights and delights as it turns around the bends. Occasionally, it reveals rapids or a rock. However, if you picture the interview as a river, you will keep the canoe upright and navigate around obstructions – or turn them into productive, instead of destructive, moments.

For more tips on conducting successful interviews, see “The Customer Interview and How to Ace It" and "The Customer Interview and How to Ace It - Part II."

Happy interviewing.

Do Your Customers See Dead People?

The Importance of Looking at Your Business with the Customer’s Eye

When your customers interact with your business, do they deal with real people? Or mindless automation? And how do you know?

Automation and the human touch clearly aren’t mutually exclusive in customer interaction. Businesses like Zappos.com have proven this. And many smaller businesses are proving it through the use of social media. Properly used, social media mixes live people with automation to help find customers and make fans.

But a lot of businesses get customer interaction wrong: dead wrong. They make easily avoidable mistakes – in spite of the millions that companies invest in automation and in software for monitoring the customer experience.

Often, it’s the little things. Consider the story of the national debt collection agency that robo-signed a dead employee’s name to thousands of affidavits in debt-collection lawsuits.

Beyond landing the company in the public eye and under regulators’ scrutiny, what sort of message does this practice send about the company? If they make this kind of mistake with legal paperwork, what else might be wrong at the company?

We’ve learned that the financial industry is a bit of a protected species, so perhaps it doesn’t have to play by the same rules as the rest of the business world. However, other companies – including large, publicly held companies in other industries – often suffer from the same disease.

In his book Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now, David Meerman Scott recounts his experiment with contacting the Fortune 100. A prominent blogger and contributing editor to publications, David contacted, via email, the media relations people at each company, with an inquiry for an article he was writing; he included his journalism credentials. He heard back from 28 of the 100. The relative response times for the companies ranged from snappy (10 minutes) to never, and a number involved inane and completely irrelevant robo-responses. (His experience in finding whom to contact is a story in itself.)

Why was this so hard? David was a customer: a journalist writing about a public company. All of these companies make a pretense of being reachable. They all have Web sites – often lavish Web sites. Many have automated forms and links on their Web sites. But the system breaks down there for many. So much for the real-time economy.

More recently, I was thwarted in reaching a firm in the information publishing business. I tried every avenue (except the US Postal Service). I navigated a confusing phonemail tree and left a detailed message in their general mailbox. I clicked on their Press Inquiry link on their Web site – and had three emails bounce back (I tried from both my email client and Webmail). I finally identified the human being who might be able to help me. But my personal email to that person was never returned, nor did I receive a response from the handy contact form that they provided on the contact’s bio on their Web site.

My recommendation: Marketers or business owners should regularly test their customers’ experience with the business. Personally. Beyond any automated testing you may do. Or secret shoppers you may employ. What’s it like to buy from your company? Return a product? Get a question answered? What does it feel like?

True, as a marketer or business owner, you can never be 100% objective about your own business. But just spending an hour in the customers’ shoes might be a revelation.

When I was working for an advertising agency many years ago, a retail client hired us to walk through a few of their locations “with the customer’s eye.” Yes, the results were subjective – and perhaps even biased, you may say – but they were very human. And the results added a dimension to the retailer's traditional research.

The good news is that small changes can often make a big difference.

Here are three obvious places to start:

Your Web Site: Test the email addresses, contact forms and links. Do they work? How quickly do you get a response? Is the response relevant? Coherent? Indecipherable? Lawyer-ese for “go away?”

Your Phone System: Make sure that your phonemail is easily navigable. Have a process and schedule for checking the general mailbox and routing or responding to the inquiries.

It’s also helpful if the automated voice on the system matches your brand. It’s disconcerting to a call a bank or brokerage firm and hear what appears to be a five-year-old girl answering. Pick the person on your staff who most represents your brand – a successful broker or financial adviser, in this case – and have that person make the recording. Or outsource this task to a firm that specializes in this type of thing.

Your Social Media Program: Have a protocol for responding to questions to your company on social media. Promptly. Most large companies – particularly those that consciously use social media for customer service (such as Comcast) – have this down pat, often using teams of people with real names and faces. For better or worse, these companies are setting the bar for all companies. Respond to queries promptly, and in the tone of your brand.

Remember that these forms of electronic media are proxies for your brand. They should reflect the personality of your brand, even though they are automation not actual people.

Or, you can continue to let your customers see dead people – and suffer the consequences.

Navigating a Corporate Crisis: Would You Sail or Fail?

Why Every Business Needs A Crisis Management and Crisis Communications Plan

As part of its year-end analysis of 2010, The Wall Street Journal published a post-mortem on the top corporate crises of the year – from BP’s Gulf oil spill to Toyota’s safety recall. With the help of crisis-communications and crisis-management experts, the article briefly examines each crisis, how effectively the company responded, and what the company might have done differently to achieve a better outcome.

While I disagree with some of the statements in the article,* it contains some useful lessons and ideas for every business.

The main lesson: Every company – even smaller businesses – should have a crisis communications plan in place. Smaller companies may not be in the public eye or under government scrutiny as much as larger, publicly held companies. However, smaller companies may be less able than larger companies to absorb the business damage from crises such as a product problem or a fire.

Professional PR or reputation management consultants can often be extremely helpful in such a crisis, but they can be pricey. If you are a smaller business on a tight budget, you can create your own crisis communications plan. It’s mostly common sense.

Here are a few tips:

First, define the most likely crises. What are the most likely crises that could happen in your business? What are the likely elements of the crisis (for example, interest by your local media)? Describe the scenario in detail. You can’t anticipate every possible scenario, obviously, but at least you will have some crisis thinking in place.

Next, outline a brief plan of action for each scenario. For example, in the event of a serious customer complaint that “goes viral” on social media, what is your policy for dealing with customer complaints? Do you refund or replace, without question? Or require a return? Does the policy need to be revisited? Then, define how you will communicate your actions and to which audiences. What’s the most efficient way to reach each audience?

Create a phone or email “tree” of the people in the company who need to be notified or involved in resolving the crisis. Keep it detailed but short and updated. In some cases, you may want to include your legal counsel on the tree.

Identify key members of the media and other important channels for reaching your audience, such as local business leaders or industry analysts. Make sure you have current contact information for each person.

Identify who will be your media spokesperson, and make sure that that person is readily available to the media via cellphone and email.

Write everything down, and share your plan with managers and executives. Make sure that everyone understands the process – and who to contact if they have questions.

Don’t forget employees. Make sure that line employees – often the first people to become aware of a crisis – know the process. Typically, you do not want non-authorized employees speaking to the media on behalf of the company. So, tell employees simply and exactly what they should do. Don’t leave them guessing in the heat of the moment about what to do or who to contact.

Always do a post-mortem. After any crisis, analyze how well your process worked. Update your process as necessary, in writing. Don’t forget to close the loop by briefing employees on how you handled the crisis and answering any questions they may have. Employees also may have ideas for improvement.

Don’t forget social media. Social media can accelerate some crises, by broadcasting the event and enabling lots of public discussion. On the plus side, social media – a company blog, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter – can help assuage crises by giving you a real-time, unfiltered way to convey information and engage in a direct dialog with your audiences.

If you are already using social media, make sure you include social media in your plans. If you are not using social media, familiarize yourself with it now because it more than likely will play a role in your crisis. Members of the traditional media (magazines, newspapers, local media, and Web press) participate in social media, and may use social media discussion as a source for information or stories.

In a crisis, it’s important to respond to public discussion using the same media. For example, if a customer complaint goes viral on Twitter, you must respond on Twitter (although you may use other media as well). That’s where the audience is. Ignore it at your peril.

David Meerman Scott’s book, Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now, contains some great advice about using real-time media in a crisis (see pages 124-131).

Obviously, it’s impossible to anticipate every possible crisis. However, if you follow the steps above, you will have a template in place to work from. You won’t be starting with a blank piece of paper if a crisis does happen.

Finally, view every crisis as an opportunity to deepen your engagement with customers. By doing the right thing and communicating it quickly and effectively, you may end up with more customers and an improved reputation.

*Particularly that the oil spill was unexpected (I think it was inevitable)

Don’t Let Me-Marketing Wreck Your Brand

Guinness’ Message in a Bottle Falls Flat

My husband likes to have a beer before dinner. Although he’s a committed Corona man, once in a while he likes to try something different. Recently, he picked up a six-pack of Guinness Draught.

While taking his first sip, he froze. He heard something clinking inside the bottle. Rock? Used syringe?

As it turns out, it was neither. It was not product tampering; the object was put there intentionally by the company.

The object was a “rocket widget delivering you the same great taste of Guinness Draught” (the company’s words). Of course, silly us, we would have realized this had we read this information before opening and drinking the beer. After all, the information was printed on the bottle: sideways, on the side of bottle, in small, all-caps white type reversed out of brown – visible only through a magnifying glass. (The kind of print a company’s lawyers hope you won’t read.) To read the message at this point in his beer-drinking experience, my husband would have had to turn the bottle on its side – spilling its contents. Instead, he dumped the contents in the sink, hoping to be able to see the object.

After being relieved that my husband wasn’t poisoned, we were stunned and then angry. How could the company think that inserting a foreign object in a food product was okay? Moreover, how could Guinness – a brand that has been around since 1759, has a reputation for quality, and stands behind its products so much that its founder’s (trademarked) signature is proudly stamped on each bottle – think it was okay? What were the marketers thinking?

My answer: they weren’t thinking – at least about their customers.

Was the rocket widget part of some big advertising campaign, or some point of purchase promotion, or some new social media viral campaign? My husband may not be in Guinness’ target demographic: perhaps there is some group of consumers that think it’s cool to have pieces of plastic in their food to “fun it up?” Or was there a technical reason for the piece of plastic in the beer bottle? (We later found out that there was.) But if so, why isn’t this more clearly communicated on the bottle instead of buried in small type, in vague marketing copy? Particularly if the company is trying to attract new consumers to the brand, or bring former consumers back to the brand?

I don’t know. I don’t care. I am not intrigued. I am confused. I am angry. This is thoughtless marketing: the marketers thought more about themselves than about the customer experience. The marketer is indulging in “me-marketing,” or marketing to themselves.

And, as far as our family is concerned, the marketer frittered away 250 years of brand image. We will never buy or drink Guinness Draught again.

I don’t pretend to know what was in Guinness’ head when it created the marketing communications campaign for their new technical advance. Or how (or if) they tested the marketing copy before putting it onto the market, although I assume that they must have.

There’s an object (sorry) lesson here for the rest of us marketers: When designing marketing campaigns, it’s essential to put yourself in the customer’s place.

Here are four things to remember:

• Ask yourself what it’s like to be on the receiving end of the marketing experience – really. Better still, ask your friends or a stranger unfamiliar with your product.

• Test test test. If you’re a small business without a big marketing budget, test new marketing concepts on your current customers or on your Facebook and Twitter fans before rolling the concepts out to everyone. Customers and fans are usually flattered to be asked, and most will be sincere in their responses.

• Don’t assume that every customer is reading all your advertising or news releases, or following every opinion on social media, or receiving every marketing message within the nice, neat context of a campaign. Yes, some people want to be “in the know” and will “work” for your product. But many other people just want a beer. So, each marketing message has to stand on its own. This is certainly the case with something as dramatic as changing the actual product configuration.

• Finally, remember that every marketing technique should be consistent with the brand. If it isn’t consistent, you’re sending the wrong message to the market.

Marketing Lessons from the General Store

The Fussy Marketer Gets Four Free Reminders of Marketing Fundamentals – along with Her Morning Coffee

Although I work with clients all over the world, I’ve been fortunate in that I can live anywhere. I choose to live north of Boston, in a small town on the edge of the Western White Mountains.

Practical lessons in great marketing often come from the simplest and most unlikely of places – like my local general store. In their own way, the store’s owners understand marketing fundamentals better than many Fortune 500 companies.

Know Your Customer: The store gets a lot of its business from workers at the local saw mill. When the mill’s business started to pick up, it went back to running two full shifts a day. And that means more workers, who are hungry on a rolling schedule. The store added a small deli and meat counter, where people can buy hot and cold take-out items for their breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as meat and other items to take home. The coffee pot never runs out, and the coffee is fresh all day (unlike many general stores, if you have spent much time in Vermont). To help staff the deli, the store hired away a much-loved cook from another general store.

Business is booming. The store paid attention to changing customer demographics – hungry workers coming back into town, who have money and will pay a premium for choice and convenience. And the store responded quickly.

The lesson: Keep current with your customer. Formal research is great, but so is anecdotal information. Talk to your customers. Ask them what’s happening in their lives. The Internet also offers some great, inexpensive ways to take the pulse of prospects and customers. Look at social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, or business rating sites such as OpenTable and TripAdvisor.

Understand Your Competition: Because they own the only place to shop within a five-mile radius – and the last stop before the 15-mile drive to the Vermont border and the interstate – the store's owners could be tempted to think that they have a monopoly. But they know that they have competition and respond accordingly. Customers always have a choice, and they will take it if motivated strongly enough.

For example, the closest competitor is the general store in the next town, which is larger and carries more items. But my local store is now getting many people who drive the 10-mile roundtrip to shop or even to get morning coffee.

How? The rival store has poor customer service. In particular, there is one clerk, a GenXer who apparently sees his job as a personal platform for his stand-up comedy skills. He thinks it’s funny to ask - loudly - a burly 55-year-old logger “Do you really need those potato chips with all that beer?” This store’s obliviousness to its poor customer service handed our local store a big marketing opportunity. Our local store staffs with middle-aged women, who are polite, efficient and respectful. They are often contemporaries of the loggers’ wives, and they know the latest news about the school, the local weather and so on.

Our local store also competes against a supermarket and a big-box store 12 miles away. To get some of that business, it has expanded to carry more items, including meat and some fresh produce. It also carries items such as farm-fresh eggs and hydroponic tomatoes from my neighbors – things you can’t get at the supermarket and big-box store.

The lesson: Give your customers fewer reasons to go elsewhere. Shop your competitors, stay on top of their strategies, and exploit their weaknesses. Small, thoughtful changes can often communicate volumes to customers.

Make it Easy to do Business with You: Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet: nothing keeps my local general store from opening. The owners understand that the store is an important part of its regular customers’ daily lives. I have often seen the owner herself out on her own tractor clearing snow in the parking lot, if no one else is available. She knows that the parking lot is the front door for the store, and that a messily cleared lot will turn people away. Moreover, it will damage the store’s reputation for reliability.

By comparison, I often see web sites that have the equivalent of an un-cleared parking lot: obtuse language or awkward pieces of navigation. This tells me that the marketing people don’t respect their customers’ time. The marketers may have delegated the design to a web site designer who doesn’t understand the marketing goals. Or to a webmaster who lacks an “owner’s” mentality and views the web site as his own personal artistic playground. But that’s no excuse.

The lesson: Stay on top of your customer experience. “Shop” your own store or your web site personally to see what customers are experiencing – and do it frequently. Don’t rely solely on mystery shoppers or your marketing automation software. Get out there yourself once in a while.

Deliver Value Beyond Your Product or Service: Make your business a destination for people, not just a place to buy things. My local general store innately understands this, even though it has no marketing program or budget per se.

The store has a comfortable bench on the front porch, where people can sit as long as they want (as long as they don’t drink or swear). There are picnic tables for use in sunny weather. There is a clean public restroom (don’t laugh – many general stores don’t have public restrooms or have filthy public restrooms). There’s a nook inside the front door where the kids can stay warm in the winter while waiting for the school bus, or where people can congregate to sip their coffees.

There’s a bulletin board where people can post ads, business cards, or services. There’s a Halloween tradition where kids in costume come by and have their pictures taken for a photo gallery. And, if you’re looking for a good deal on firewood or a contractor to work on your house, the parking lot is the best place to inquire.

These are a lot of small things, but they add up to a big message that says: “Spend more time here.” More time translates into more money spent in the store.

The lesson: Look for creative ways to weave your business location into people’s daily lives. Make your business indispensable to your customers. Do things that encourage them to make it a destination site for their own purposes.

These four lessons are basic, but important for large and small businesses alike. Small, inexpensive changes and ideas can often pay big dividends. The most important investment is your thoughtfulness.

When No-Boundaries Marketing is a Bad Thing

The Internet has redefined customer relationships, but not always in a good way.

The Internet has broken down many of the barriers between businesses and their customers.

Because of the Internet, it’s much easier to find, reach, and target the people most likely to buy your product – even if you don’t have a huge marketing budget. Because of the Internet, businesses can think creatively about expanding the boundaries of their businesses – opening them up to make them more accessible to customers.

However, as the technical boundaries between businesses and their customers have changed, so have the behavioral boundaries – and not always in a good way.

Perhaps emboldened with more-direct, conversational access to customers, some businesses seem to have forgotten who they are talking to. The result is marketing behavior that throws up new walls between the business and its customers.

Here are three examples:

The Buddy: The Buddy Marketer talks to prospects and customers as if they were his friends from the office or the bar. He calls you by your first name on the first call or contact. He sprinkles his marketing copy with intrusive, self-absorbed patter. He assumes a level of familiarity and informality that he hasn’t earned. He often only has one name, usually something like “Chad” or “Justin” or “Nicki.” The Buddy appears more concerned with being “cool” than solving your problem and earning your trust. I don’t know about you, but even if the product offer is exceptional, I’m hesitant to buy from this marketer because of his cavalier attitude. I figure, if he’s this bad and un-businesslike before he gets my money, he’ll devolve into a total slob after he gets my money.

The Buddy Marketer isn’t strictly an online phenomenon, nor is he damaging only in business-to-business marketing.

Here’s a real-life business-to-consumer marketing example. A financial advisor at a multi-billion-dollar investment firm – someone covering for my regular advisor – called to apprise me that a corporate bond had matured. “Good thing that p___ of s____ matured, eh?” he chortled. Did he forget that his company sold me the p___ of s____ in the first place? But in his attempt to appear cool and to Buddy me, he irrevocably damaged his company’s reputation. (And yes, I moved my investment account.)

And then there’s today’s universal greeting for restaurant patrons: “How are you guys doing today?” For many consumers, a big part of the experience of dining out is being served and being catered to, by someone who knows how to do it – certainly not a Buddy.

The Autocrat: The Autocrat is presumptive. He tells you what to do, with stern words usually punctuated by today’s most-overused punctuation mark, the exclamation point. “Call me at your earliest convenience!” “Get back to me as soon as you get this email!” His emails, phone calls and direct-response letters smack of self-absorption (me, me, me) and disrespect for my time. Why would I ever give this person any of my business? [Added 3/2/2010] Case in point: I received a voicemail today marked "urgent." It was from my Staples "account manager," who was "just checking in."

And then there’s the top technology publisher whose high-powered and deep-lunged telemarketers sign you up for tomorrow’s webinar before you can get a word in edgewise. I am sure that this technique helps them “stuff” the seminar with prospects for the advertisers, but how effective can this be if many prospects have no interest and don’t show up? I made the mistake of giving them my email address – now they are controlling my time. Not good.

The Goofball: The Goofball tries to amuse and defuse by acting like a child. “Oops!” in the header of an email, or as an explanation for a 404 error on a web-site page, isn’t cute – it’s annoying. It undermines my confidence in your company or your brand. Incompetence and errors in business aren’t laughing matters to most customers. A simple “we’re sorry” is more reassuring.

At the root of all three of these problems is lack of empathy for the customer – and a lack of appreciation for what makes a good customer relationship: honesty, integrity and trust.

Great marketers keep the customer in their minds during every interaction and transaction. They define how they want to treat customers, and weave it into the marketing of their products – from advertising and social media, to how employees behave on the phone or in the store.

Creating detailed buyer personas – or even tacking a photo of your best customer to your computer monitor – can be powerful, evocative reminders.

The Internet makes it easier and more inexpensive than ever to understand the changing marketing boundaries that customers appreciate. Customer satisfaction surveys, informal temperature-taking on social media, or just plain talking to customers are all within your reach. Use them.

Is Marketing Gobbledygook Destroying Your Brand?

How Hafner Vineyard avoids the trap and builds a brand that pops.

I spend a lot of time in this blog talking about the use of Internet technologies to build brand image and sell products, particularly for smaller businesses. David Meerman Scott recently wrote a blog article about technology marketers’ use of stock photos of people – you know, those indistinguishable photos of too-beautiful-to-be-true people.

For me, the article raised an important question: is marketing gobbledygook destroying your brand?

Do you find yourself copying words, pictures and graphics that make you look and sound like your competitors? If so, it dilutes the distinctiveness of your brand. In today’s cut-and-paste society, technology makes it all too easy for marketers to fall into the marketing gobbledygook trap – and many do.

Not Hafner Vineyard.

Hafner Vineyard is a small, family-run vineyard in the Alexander Valley in Sonoma County. It makes wonderful Chardonnays and Cabernets. You can get their wines if you dine in dozens of restaurants in California, or by ordering it from the vineyard. That’s it.

I was introduced to Hafner a few years ago, when I received a direct-mail piece from the company. I am a wine-lover, so I assume that they bought my name from one of the many wine and travel publications that I subscribe to.

Regardless, the direct-mail piece was so beautifully designed, written and produced that it immediately drew me into the winery. It appealed to me as a wine-drinker who is always looking for new wines and wine-drinking experiences. I bought. And I bought. And I bought for clients at Christmas. The products are wonderful, and I have become a raving fan. As have my clients, who all asked: “where did you find this wine?” (It found me and made me love it, like all great marketing.)

Hafner recently published a new web site, and their brand just pops off the page. Like that first direct-mail piece, the web site makes me feel like I am at the winery. It brings me into how they make the wine, who makes the wine (no stock photos or self-consciously hip bios here), and how to buy the wine.

Hafner is notable because of how it uses technology. And sometimes less is more.

When I placed my first order, I received a personal confirmation phone call from the head of marketing, Scott Hafner. I always know when my standing order will arrive because I receive a postcard (how low-tech but reassuring – a person sent this!) When I placed my Christmas-gift order, I received a confirming call from one of Scott’s colleagues to review the information.

Shipments usually include a little gift – some hand-drawn postcards of the winery, or some permanent corks for resealing wine. When you buy something from Hafner, you can always speak with a person if you want. (And, when I posted a comment about Hafner wines on a New York Times article, Scott recognized my name and called me again.) I have an open invitation to visit, as I am reminded on occasional postcards. I am, for sure, not their biggest customer, but they always make me feel as if I were their most important customer.

Granted, some of these processes may not be scalable for a larger business. But it’s the thought that counts. Hafner’s marketing works because it is 100% empathetic: Scott and his family put themselves in the customer’s shoes, and use marketing – high-tech and low-tech – to create a 100% marketing experience. Larger businesses can achieve this by using technology creatively: just think about Zappos - another favorite of mine.

The trick is to let your brand values rule, not the technology or “popular” marketing practices.

Why “Social” is the Most Important Part of Social Media Marketing

Why It's Vital to Put Your Best People Forward

I am getting a lot of calls from businesses today about social media marketing. The gist of these conversations is usually: “I need to get some of that social media.” And many of these conversations conclude with “But I don’t have the people to put into it.”

My advice: then you should forget it.

That may sound a bit unilateral, but for the most part it’s sound advice. Because the “social” part of “social media marketing” – people – is the most important part.

Ok, there are some exceptions. For example, we’ve seen Dell sell millions of dollars of its products over Twitter, by simply posting what’s on sale. Food trucks are boosting their sales by using Twitter to advertise their locations, and retailers are using Twitter to clear out excess inventory. Arguably, the amount of “sosh” (social interactions and content) that goes into these sales-oriented programs is minimal: the value to the customer lies in the price, the timeliness, and the location. (Although I would also argue that if companies are just pushing out products and not taking advantage of the ability to have a two-way conversation with the people they sell to, they are missing an important business opportunity.)

But for most programs the true value will be in the “sosh.” And “sosh” equals people. Their expertise and their knowledge. Their personalities. Their familiarity with your products and your customers’ problems, and their pride in helping solve those problems. Their enthusiasm and their ability to converse on behalf of the business.

These factors are what will make you a valuable resource to customers and prospects, and someone they want to do business with.

Some of the businesses who call me want to outsource their social media – in other words, check it off their marcom to-do lists.

But if this describes you, ask yourself: are you really ready to delegate your newfound, highly interactive and content-rich conversation with your customers to someone outside your company? As my colleague Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR says of “outsourcing” your social media strategy: “Do you want to create opinion leaders who aren’t internal subject matter experts? That's like shipping weapons to the Mujahideen. Yes, they may use them to fight the Russians now, but they can also use them to fight us later.”

If you’re really struggling with manpower, look for creative ways to staff your program. For example:

There may be people inside your product organization (beyond the official product managers) who are already blogging or engaging in social media. Can you draft and train them?

Could you create an employee blog, but empower your Corporate Communications team to review content from hundreds of employees before it is posted – as Southwest Airlines did successfully with Nuts About Southwest?

Could you empower current students to answer questions from prospective students like the Wharton School has done in the Student2Student forum on the MBA Admission Blog?

For some other examples of creative staffing of social media programs, see my previous posts: “Bringing Brand Image to Life through Social Media Marketing" and “Does Social Media Work for B2B Companies?”

Social media marketing can be an invaluable strategy for most businesses. But it requires a social commitment, and that means people. It requires time to create compelling content and create a living, three-dimensional brand. Taking a checklist approach to this challenge is a sure path to lackluster results or even failure.

Beyond Marketing – How Social Media Can Improve Daily Business Operations

An Interview with Tanya Fox of Naples Tomato

Companies are flocking to social media for marketing purposes. However, beyond acquiring and keeping customers, social media can improve daily business operations – as Naples Tomato, a nationally recognized restaurant in Naples, Florida, is finding out.

The Fussy Marketer recently interviewed Tanya Fox (photo), who manages the social media program for Naples Tomato, to learn how. (Disclosure: Naples Tomato is a client.) Tanya’s experience and tips are valuable even if you’re not in the restaurant business.

Q. Tanya, what is Naples Tomato?

A. Naples Tomato is a restaurant in Naples, Florida, that specializes in something we call Vine Dining. Vine Dining is a uniquely American way to experience the Mediterranean lifestyle, where every meal is a celebration of life. We provide a flexible dining experience so you can match inventive food and wines to your mood, the moment and your budget. We are located in North Naples, Florida, and we serve 100,000 guests a year.

Q. Describe Naples Tomato’s social media program.

A. We have an active Twitter feed with nearly 3,500 followers, and we do between three and seven tweets a day. We tweet about daily specials and menu items, and about local events and attractions that our guests might enjoy. We also look for people who are coming to Naples and invite them to our restaurant. We offer a special treat to guests who mention Twitter.

We also have a Facebook fan page with about 130 fans – and growing. We also use OpenTable, a commercial Web 2.0 online reservations system with customer feedback and reviews, which is very important to our operations. And we track restaurant consumer ratings sites and respond to comments. These sites include Yelp, TripAdvisor, Zagat, and Chowhound. We started our social media program in March 2009.

Q. How have social media helped Naples Tomato’s business?

A. It’s been an inexpensive way to reach foodies and wine lovers internationally. We’ve acquired many dozens of new guests who found us online, mostly through Twitter and OpenTable. We’re also building a fan base of people who have joined our Facebook page and who regularly re-tweet us on Twitter. This is all great, but the biggest value has been in improving our operations.

Q. How so?

A. We now get immediate feedback, good and bad. It’s like having 200 mystery shoppers watching us every day. It keeps us all on notice to do a great job. The staff know a good experience or a bad experience can be all over the Internet instantly.

We've improved our customer service because we can take immediate action. We have let staff go based on social media feedback. We also give rewards to staff who have been recognized by guests on social media.

Social media also provides a more accurate picture of guest satisfaction. Guests now have an easy way to be vocal, both positive and negative. In the past, we only heard when people weren’t happy. Today, we have an ongoing online conversation with our guests, so we know what they are thinking – good and bad— and we can respond. It’s been tremendous in helping us build good will.

To maintain and continually improve our service, we recently established a new quality-control program: we formally investigate and respond within 24 hours to any guest who gives us less than a 4-star review on OpenTable. Every week, we also reward the top server and servers mentioned by our guests on OpenTable. [November 23, 2009 update]

So, you can see that we take social media very seriously.

Q. Which tools do you find most valuable?

A. Twitter and Facebook are great for instant feedback, and for reaching out to current fans and for finding new fans. People are very engaged and very responsive. People blog about us and re-tweet us. Many bloggers and members of the press are on Twitter and Facebook, so we can develop relationships with them here.

OpenTable provides a lot of data about our guests. Things like what they ate, who their server was, when they like to come in, and how many times they have come in. We now know our guests much better, so we can take a very personal approach to customer service, even with the large number of guests we have. We serve 100,000 guests a year, and one-third reserve through OpenTable.

For example, we might send a free dessert platter over to a repeat guest, or have the owner stop by the table to wish that person a happy anniversary. I’ve even picked up information on Twitter, and phoned in to the restaurant from home on a weekend to make special things happen.

Q. Any advice for restaurants considering social media?

A. My number-one tip is to be honest and open – when things are good and bad. Don’t post fake reviews. Do share good news. Do admit when you’ve made a mistake. Do talk with people, not at people. Do be a resource to people, don’t just push your products and services. For example, we promote Naples and Naples attractions on Twitter and Facebook. We follow lots of people on Twitter and participate as fans on other Facebook pages.

It’s also important to proceed with confidence if your operations are good, but with caution if they aren’t. Our guest satisfaction rates are around 98% and our operations are strong. If your satisfaction rates or your operations aren’t good, your warts will show on social media.

Also, have a strategy for how you will handle negative feedback. We’re not perfect. At Naples Tomato, we want to hear if people have a negative experience. This helps us be better. On Twitter, we encourage people to DM [direct message] us if they have a bad experience, and let us respond personally. However, if they feel strongly about their experience, it’s their right to post to the Twitter community. You have to be ready for this – you can’t be wimpy. Our main goal is always to delight the guest and respond quickly when things aren’t right. Social media is really helping.

Finally, have fun. Social media is a great way to connect with more guests and prospective guests, and get to know them personally to serve them better. We’ve met some great people, from all over the world.

Q. Where can we find Naples Tomato on Twitter and Facebook?

A. On Twitter, we’re @naplestomato and on Facebook we’re at http://www.facebook.com/naplestomato.

October 14, 2009 Update: Naples Tomato today announced that it will offer franchises. More than 300,000 guests have dined at the flagship restaurant since it opened in 2005. According to Tanya Fox, social media marketing will play a prominent role in the new franchise business.

Bringing Brand Image to Life through Social Media Marketing

The venerable Washington Post became the story itself last week. The occasion: a series of “salons” to be held at publisher Katharine Weymouth’s home that would bring together Beltway insiders and Post reporters with sponsors who paid anywhere from $25K to $250K for the privilege. The story, of course, went all over the Internet, and it’s not surprising why. The Post – with its long-standing reputation for high-integrity reporting in a town not known for integrity – appeared to be selling access to its reporters. The Post acted quickly: it cancelled the salon series, and a spokesperson blamed “overzealous marketing” by the parent company’s conference group. (New York Times reporter David Carr wrote an excellent post-mortem on this story.)

But that phrase “overzealous marketing” caught my eye. If the marketers couldn’t anticipate that the salon idea might damage The Post’s reputation, who was minding the brand image?

Today, everyone must mind the brand. Much of a company’s marketing takes place – either by design or by default – on the Internet and in social media: Twitter, Facebook, blogs, consumer rating sites. This means that “minding the brand image” must be the responsibility of everyone in the company: not just the Chief Marketing Officer who creates the brand messages, but the employees who deliver the brand messages with every customer interaction, online and offline. We’re in the era of behavioral branding: we must live the brand 24x7.

Social media marketing campaigns can not only build the business, but also strengthen the brand image. Effectively planned and executed with the brand image in mind, campaigns can bring the brand to life and engage a broader spectrum of customers. And this doesn’t have to be expensive.

Here is one example. My company created a simple, “starter” social media program for a small business (it sells food & wine to consumers). Our Phase-One program consists of a Twitter account and a Facebook fan page. In the three months since we started the program, it has been very successful. It has brought in new customers, generated new revenue, and created more than a dozen ardent new fans who blog and Tweet about the business on a regular basis. Free marketing help – what could be better?

To run the program, we selected a young employee – a digital native who is very familiar with the business and its products. She is also enthusiastic, and she aspires to run her own business some day. She has fairly wide discretion in what she posts – such as making special offers, handling customer situations, or running small contests. Our brand messages – 5 simple attributes that could fit on an index card – are her guidelines. The business owner just asks that anything she posts support one or more of the brand messages.

By using this tactic, we’ve created an authentic, organic presence in social media that accurately reflects the brand image. The business owner periodically participates, but otherwise our young ambassador keeps the conversations going. Sure, once in a while we have a misfire or glitch, but overall, the online brand image tracks the business neatly.

If you want to try this tactic yourself, here’s my advice:

Keep your brand messages simple and memorable – use 3 to 5 messages, and use words (“flexibility”) or short phrases (“award-winning wines”) instead of the long sentences you might typically use in a marketing plan

Ask your online ambassadors to sanity-check their posts or comments against the brand messages before they post (this will become second nature after a while)

Don’t hover! Let your ambassadors “own” what they do and take pride in it.

This one powerful tactic can help you create a program that’s not only effective but also cost-effective.

We will be expanding the social media marketing program for this business in the coming months. I will be writing more about the campaign in the future.