Astonish Your Customer(s)

Worst practices

It is common to identify, distil and attempt to learn from "best practices". That's okay to a point.

Have you ever conducted a session to identify "worst practices"? It might be easier to identify, gain consensus and eliminate things that everyone hates and that lend the least value to the customer - a quick step to improved productivity.

When EURO RSCG was my agency they had a great way of communicating with the brand at the annual performance review. EURO reviewed the brand team's performance by segmenting their comments into three buckets - 1) Keep doing, 2) Stop doing, 3) Start doing. Stop doing = "worst practices".

 O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

Perfect or Invent

I am not a competitive swimmer nor a musician. It struck me that there is no one introducing completely new swim strokes or musical instruments. I know, there have been changes in techniques, training methods and so on but no one is trying to introduce a no-kick stroke or the combined clarinet-flute. Why is that?

Did someone, or everyone (whoever they may be), decided that there is already enough strokes and instruments - no more is needed or wanted? Seems that way.

So, the whole swimming and musical world simply focuses on perfecting what is already there. Incremental improvement in the training, practicing and live performance methods is the way to win and become great. Swimmers and musicians are constantly taking something that is "old" and making it new again, and by so doing they thrill their audience.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

  

Burger King

Advertising Age just wrote an article here profiling Burger King and their Agency Crispin Porter. Every marketer should read it. To me, it is a testament to wrong priorities and lame excuses. 

BK has been losing share to McD's for some time, for a number of reasons. BK felt that they had to re-energize the brand with advertising, so they hired the star agency to develop creative that would receive big spending support. Subservient Chicken and the life-like BK Character were part of the creative. BK still lost share.

The article is filled with praise from BK for the great work that Crispin developed and it's value to the business. There is also a bunch of rationalizing by the CMO of BK as to why BK continues to lose share. 

Shouldn't BK's effort to re-energize the brand begin with the product (well-trained staff, clean stores, clean bathrooms, efficient operations, tasty food, valuable promotions, etc.)? Shouldn't BK make something about the in-restaurant experience remarkable, first? Until you get what is most important to the customer right - really right - you can't create a sustainable win and retake share.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

It's the mantra - stupid!

Most have heard the mantra used by James Carville when he was leading Bill Clinton's first Presidential campiagn ... "It's the economy, stupid!". 

Until I read Made To Stick  by the Heath brothers, I thought that the saying was a jab at the first President Bush.

Actually, it was a mantra for the Clinton campaign staff designed to keep the team laser focused on the issue that was most central to Clinton's success.

What's your mantra for your brand team? Maybe it needs to be ... "It's the product, stupid!"  

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

BYOB - a deal?

I recently ate dinner with my wife at a local BYOB restaurant. It was nice, the atmosphere was good, the food was above average but not great - we had a nice time. It stuck me that the cost of the food was a bit too high.  

I've noticed that people tend to rave about BYOB restaurants largely due to the avoidance of the charges for high priced liquor. They seem to overlook the increased charge for the food or the amount of money they pay for the liquor they bring along. So, is it really a deal? You bet, because that is the story that people are telling themselves and the story is all that matters. What story are people telling themselves about your product?  

 O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

A new audience

I don't go to many live professional sports events - so far this year I've made two Phillies games but at one point in my life I went fairly often.

When did the 20-something woman become super-fans? Scads of young women are there in team gear, totally into the game, routing their teams home. I am all for it but I am wondering why it happened, when it happened and who these new fans replaced. They must have replaced somebody - after all, baseball stadiums have been getting smaller and footbal stadiums have about the same number of seats as 20 years ago.

Maybe Title IX had more positive implications than ever intended - maybe it not only gave women a chance to play but also turned them into active fans. My brother postulates that the game is the new date night or the new mall (place to hang out). I don't buy that for one simple reason - it's so  expensive to go to the game.

The teams should study this change, if they haven't. It certainly proves that you can expand and change your audience.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

Love that dentist

In Newtown, PA there is a dentist that has shattered every real or imagined negative aspect of a visit to the dentist. The practice is owned and led by Dr. Chris Landis and her practice is called Newtown Denistry for Kids . Boy, is it for kids. My kids can't wait to go and they bum-out when one of their siblings is going and they are not.

Chris is 1,000 watts of positive energy. Her waiting room has every electronic gadget and game that a kid could want, and a tree house to climb. The paint color on the walls, the huge stuffed animals and the murals are so colorful, creative and uplifting that you can feel your spirit filling as you walk through the place. Chris seemingly has every cutting edge tool available to denistry and she uses them to educate the parent and the child - not in a finger-wagging way but more like the best teacher you ever had in your life kinda way. About two or three times during the appointment the kids get to pick out small, fun toys and trinkets that they get to take home - along with a toothbrush and toothpaste. 

Chris treated me like her family - she even brought in a family photo album to the examination room to show me how much I looked like her older brother. Has any other dentist ever done that with you - me neither. 

As gushing as my description is - I am not doing her or her staff justice.

Chris is 40 years old, has 7 kids under the age of 11, wishes she could have more and she takes her super-loyal, professional and warm staff on a cruise every year.

Chris looked at her industry from the customers perspective and decided to swim upstream, or maybe it's downstream.   

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

   

Can you learn from a Fox

Fox News Channel - love it or hate it - is a great case study for all marketers.

Roger Ailes decided that there was an audience of people who felt disrespected and neglected by the mainstream media - that was the worldview of this audience. He decided to cater to them and give them respect. Another way of looking at his skill as a marketer is that he looked at the growth of conservative talk radio and decided to cater to that audience in a different way by serving that audience via TV.

He picked the "largest" audience he could dominate and, fortunately for Fox, the audience has liked what they have been given and it was, indeed, a very large audience. Ka-ching! 

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

(TY: Seth Godin)

Lessons available to be learned

A Johnson & Johnson senior brand manager was presenting his brand's annual plan to the executive group. Early in the presentation a slide popped up with the heading "Lessons Learned". After he covered the "Lessons Learned", the VP of Operations asked him to stop.

This VP had been with J&J for about 30 years and he was one of those great folks who had no hidden agenda - he said what he meant and he meant what he said. Gene made this pronouncement: "I have sat through countless presentations by this brand and every year the brand presents the same list of supposed lessons learned. It would appear that we are not applying any of these learnings, so wouldn't it make more sense for the title of the slide to read, "Lessons Available To Be Learned."

When your VP of Marketing moves brand managers from brand to brand too frequently, the business suffers. One of the byproducts of frequent movement is not the cross-pollination of best practices but rather, repetition of beginner's mistakes, because people don't get the time to intimately know the customer, marketplace, competition and what works and doesn't work.    

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

Just one customer

Why not create a product to serve just one customer (e.g. retailer, distributor)?

A friend of mine started a skin care business from scratch and designed three different product lines to specifically serve Walmart and the Walmart shopper.

His strategy: I have limited resources - money, time, manpower. I need to concentrate. I know and understand Walmart very well. If my products are a success at Walmart, it will provide me a nice living. 

As for other retailers like Target, Walgreens and the rest, he was philosophical. I am happy to have my products in those stores but Walmart is my focus. If they want to pick up my line, I will gladly sell them but they will have to purchase the version created for Walmart.

It only took him about 4 years or so to become an overnight success with this strategy but keeping it simple coupled with persistence and execution has provided him a nice living.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.