New Persuasion

Sweaters that tell us everything

One thing that we as consumers are beginning to appreciate is the concept of transparency.  We like to feel as if we can find out as much as possible about the products or services we chose to have in our lives, and we love when companies go out of their way to make this possible.

A great example of this is a Springwise post I found about "full provenance sweaters" from the Netherlands.  A company called Flocks by designer Christien Meindertsma gives out specific details to customers about the animal who provided wool for the products purchased.  Each item is tagged with an animal ID number as well as a certificate and picture.  You can even find out about the weight, breed, and birthplace of the sheep that made your sweater possible. 

Our priorities are changing and we are willing to pay a little bit more if we feel more in control of what we buy.  Technology is making it easier for us to feel connected and for us to understand the details that make products unique.  It will be interesting to see if this trend continues to maintain similar levels of popularity in the years to come.  While price seems to play the largest role in overall product selection, transparency often is a little detail that can make a big difference.

Angie's List

Our colleague Sandy Moore writes about her experience with a service that's basically local, word-of-mouth (via the Internet), and all about crowdsourcing.  The key to Angie's List is the trust Sandy has in other consumers like herself   --Nellie Lide

I’m pretty good at juggling – a fulltime job, two kids, husband with long hours, new puppy (who is sick and needs antibiotics twice a day which no one can get him to swallow but me), plus the weekly soccer practice-ballet lesson-Girl Scout meeting-playdate scheduling and overall “stuff” coordination required as a 21st century working parent.  I do the meal planning – my husband does the grocery shopping.  I do the babysitter scheduling and payment – he is the IT person.  I mow and garden – he goes to Home Depot.  We both try to get the car into the shop every once in awhile.

What baffles us is basic home maintenance.  Oh, I can change an air filter or two, lower the temperature on the hot water tank, or even stop the toilet from running, but electrical projects overwhelm me, as do any tasks that require sanding, sealing, or standing on tall ladders.  Luckily, there is a terrific website called Angie’s List that ranks service companies based on geographic region.  Say you live in Silver Spring, Maryland and you have termites.  Just type in “Pest Control / Exterminating” and your address and 10 bug-elimination companies pop up, complete with contact information, grades from A to F and local reviews.

I think of Angie’s List as an online Consumer Reports customized to my neighborhood.  In the past six months, I’ve hired an electrician, roofer, handyman, exterminator, fence-builder and pet-walking service.  I’ve taken my car to a recommended mechanic and my dog to a recommended vet.  I always mention that I found them through Angie’s List; some respond positively, some are surprised to find out they are listed and some do not know what Angie’s List is.

Here is what it is – a privately held for-profit company founded by an Indianapolis entrepreneur named Angela Hicks.  She started her first chapter in Columbus, Ohio, in 1995.  According to the website, more than 20,000 people use the service, members submit 5,000 reports a month, and overall there are more than half a million members in 124 cities.  You can join for $6.95 a month or $53 dollars a year, plus a $10 sign-up fee.  It has only been available in Washington since January of 2006.  A Washington Post July 2006 article described it as:

“...a very large community bulletin board where neighbors exchange references and anecdotes about carpenters, roofers, landscapers and appliance stores.” Companies do not pay to be on the list but can run ads in a hard-copy magazine sent by snail mail. 

Over the years, I have used the non-profit Washington Consumers’ Checkbook which rates local services, but there are differences.  The hard copy comes out twice a year and while the website is available all the time, it is only updated every six months.  Services fall into six categories:  Cars & trucks, Your Home, Health Care (including doctors and hospitals, not available on Angie’s List), Getting Things Fixed, Personal Services and Other (banks, hardware stores, etc.)  Overall, Checkbook has fewer categories of services but significantly more reports on each.  The auto body section alone contains 150 different outlets with ten ratings each.  It is also cheaper at $34 for a two-year subscription.

Angie’s List has saved me more than once.  The week before Thanksgiving, my washer and dryer died.  I bought a new set but apparently the power required was greater than my circuit box was willing to provide.  I had two weeks of laundry piled up, a traveling husband and a houseful of guests arriving in days.  I found a local electrician who replaced my system the next day, wrapping up at 8:00 pm.  He was great but a bit expensive, which I reported in my online evaluation.  Obviously Internet savvy, he gave me a hard time at the next electrical emergency:  “I can’t believe you said I was expensive!”  Reviews clearly are not anonymous.

If you have a problem, there is a dispute resolution service.  That has not happened to me yet but is a reassuring thought.  You can also give a membership as a gift.  My mother-in-law asked me to look up local contractors so often that I bought her a membership for Christmas.  How else can you track down someone who will rebuild your brick fireplace?

My membership lasts another six months.  I don’t know if I’ll renew –
It depends on what services I’ll need at that time.  I thought I’d rely on it for home maintenance, but with categories like insurance agencies, mulch and topsoil and piano tuning, the categories – and the home/life improvement projects – are endless.

The Citizen-Journalists of Blacksburg

Dale Peskin of ifocus describes of "a generation of wired witnesses." 

Watching events unfold, the shift in the power of media was perceptible. Traditional broadcasters and publishers competently covered the tragic events in Blacksburg. But the story belongs to Virginia Tech students. They were at once reporters, witnesses and subjects of the deadliest shooting in U.S. history. It was like watching a new kind of reality show where the stars used their devices, their social networks, and their wits to survive and to cope.

Virginia Tech’s students shined even as it they were portrayed as victims. One articulate student-witness set the record straight while being interviewed by a testy CNN reporter. “Don’t you get it?” he asked the reporter. “Its our story, not yours.”

The People's Court?

Professional cyclist Floyd Landis has taken an unusual step in defending himself against doping charges that stem from last year’s Tour de France. Yes, he has a team of legal and medical experts working on his behalf, but Landis has also taken his defense to the people. And the people are responding—by the hundreds. 

It’s being called a Wiki Defense.  Like the name implies, it offers a way for anyone to weigh in. Landis has posted all available documents related to the case and has allowed public access to them and public comment on them. 

And there has been a lot of public comment—hundreds of blog posts, comments and forum discussions all over the web.  Though they haven’t released specifics, Landis’ defenders claim they have received some useful insights from the public comments.

We’ve already seen the power that bloggers can bring to bear against major companies—think CBS’ Rathergate or Reuters’ doctored photo of burning buildings in Beirut. 

Will the Wiki defense bring a similar level of power to individual readers of blogs?  What does it mean when one random reader has the potential to offer the insight that breaks a case wide open? 

Only time will tell on that front, but a win for Floyd Landis sure would validate the Wiki defense.  And it makes me wonder if we will see Wiki defenses by criminal defendants someday.  Talk about a true people’s court....

Healthy & Local Baby Food in Seattle

Here at UnderCurrents we track eight markets we consider to be bellwethers of American society:  San Francisco, CA;  Denver, CO;  Las Vegas, NV; Seattle, WA; Birmingham, AL;  Los Angeles, CA;  Miami, FL and Houston, TX.

Here's the latest from Rich Rydecki on Seattle:

In the past two years two new baby food companies have emerged to provide local residents access to fresh infant and toddler food.  Both Sprouts Baby Food and Full Tank Foods have launched, and subsequently expanded, food 'menus' that have been met with a positive public response.  While a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article from August '06 noted that the organic baby food trend is not new (sales of organic baby food grew 51% from 2001-2005), the rise in home-grown, local companies that produce this food is notable. 

Both Sprouts and Full Tank worked with a team of Registered Nurses, trained Chefs, nutritionists, and pediatricians to create healthy meals that are viable options to jarred baby food that sometimes sits on a supermarket shelf for up to two years.  While Sprouts offers a choice of meal plans that are delivered to customers' homes, Full Tank products are only available at local grocery chains, including Wholefoods.  Full Tank also caters to parents with busy schedules who want to feed their children healthy meals as they incorporate vegetables into kid-friendly dishes such as mac and cheese. 

This growing trend represents a new breed of parents who want/need to juggle their parenting duties with careers without resorting to feeding their children 'fast' or processed food.  Both Sprouts and Full Tank package their products so that they can be consumed away from the home with little inconvenience.  These parents, while they may not have the time to make their own baby and toddler food, still want to be in control of the amount and type of chemicals that their children are exposed to.  That these products can be delivered to the home and are available at local markets demonstrates the changing expectations of a consumer who is no longer blindly allegiant to mainstream brands such as Gerber. 

2007 Trends - Part 4

The McKinsey Quarterly reports on "Global Trends in Energy," looking ahead to 2015 and beyond - I've cut it down significantly, so for a lot more go to the original (requires registration to read):

Shifting centers of economic activity  The world is undergoing a massive realignment of economic activity, whose outlines are clearly visible in the changes occurring in the energy and materials sectors. Growth in demand for energy and basic materials (such as steel and copper) is moving from developed countries to developing ones, predominantly in Asia. Demand for oil in China and India, for example, will nearly double from 2003 to 2020, to 15.4 million barrels a day. Asia’s oil consumption will approach that of the United States—the world’s largest consumer—by the end of that period...

Over the next decade, resources (gas, minerals, steel, and pulp and paper, among others) will generally be developed and produced farther away from the points of consumption than ever before; Brazilian fiber, for instance, will be converted into paper products in China...

To be sure, the rising levels of global connectivity required to meet the world’s energy needs in the coming years will have positive economic effects, such as greater market liquidity and more globally priced commodities. At the same time, longer and more complex supply chains, combined with the mounting possibility that geopolitical events could curtail supply, will make prices more volatile.

Rising demand, rising environmental concerns  As economic growth accelerates, particularly in developing economies, the world is consuming natural resources at an unprecedented rate. In China, for example, oil consumption nearly doubled from 1995 to 2004, and demand for aluminum, nickel, and steel more than tripled. Likewise, China, India, the Middle East, and Russia are struggling to build power generation capacity and grids fast enough to meet growth in demand...

What’s more, local resource owners (such as those in the Middle East and Russia) with cheaply extracted reserves are increasingly exerting control to seek a greater share of the profits. The security of energy supplies is a matter of growing concern—particularly in countries and regions (such as China, Europe, and the United States) that consume more energy than they produce...

Meanwhile, the environment is becoming more important to business. Growing pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (especially carbon dioxide) may have a far-reaching impact, starting with Europe but extending globally as well... One effect is a redoubled interest in renewable sources of energy, such as wind and solar power. Indeed, renewables have become a substantial business, accounting for 30 percent of power generation investments globally in 2005, for example. By 2020, renewables could provide more than 10 percent of all electricity generated, and technologies such as wind, solar, and biomass could be economical even without subsidies.

A changing consumer landscape  Economic growth in the developing world will usher nearly a billion new consumers into the global market-place over the next decade, as household incomes reach the level (around $5,000) associated with discretionary spending. Although these consumers will have less spending power than do their counterparts in the developed world, they will have similar demands as well as access to global brands. Many industries therefore face polarized markets where premium and no-frills offerings are squeezing middle-of-the-road ones.

The battlefield for talent  In the coming decade, a global strategy for talent will be as important to many companies as a global strategy for sourcing or manufacturing is today. Two themes stand out. First, the growth of knowledge-intensive industries underscores the importance and scarcity of well-trained employees. Second, the integration of global labor markets is opening up vast new sources of talent. Indeed, more than twice as many university-educated young professionals—33 million—are available in developing countries as in developed ones.

Emerging industry structures  In response to changing market regulation and the advent of new technologies, new industry structures are emerging in the energy and materials sectors. At the upstream end—for instance, the extraction of materials and oil exploration and production—large economies of scale predominate; in iron ore, for instance, the top three players control around 70 percent of globally traded volumes. The picture is similar in coal and other minerals; in oil, international companies have consolidated to a significant extent during the past few years...

Meanwhile, small niche companies across the value chains of the energy and materials sectors are setting the pace of global innovation by developing key technologies in petroleum, biotechnology, and clean fuel generation such as biomass and coal-to-liquids technologies. As these technologies mature, giant companies will be tempted to acquire or ally with such innovators in portfolio arrangements; for instance, Iogen, a biotechnology company, is cooperating with Royal Dutch/Shell and Volkswagen to study the economic feasibility of producing cellulose ethanol on an industrial scale.

Business in the Spotlight  During the next decade, businesses everywhere will face increased societal scrutiny as they expand their size and reach and as the economy’s demands on the environment intensify. Energy and materials players are squarely in the spotlight on these issues. These companies are magnets for controversy because of their size, the sometimes corrupt governments in the often unstable regions where they operate, and, in the case of natural monopolies (such as electricity production), their high profiles in local markets. Likewise, the fact that major oil and electric power companies are enjoying record profits at a time of high prices does not endear them to consumers.

Moreover, the activities of energy and materials companies necessarily have a big impact, both direct and indirect, on the environment—for example, when they lay pipelines through nature reserves in Alaska or affect the climate through greenhouse gas emissions. Such companies also face the constant risk of mishaps that can have major environmental consequences.

In the years to come, regulators will increasingly intervene in and monitor the operations of companies in the energy and materials sectors...In response, energy and materials players must continue to improve their health, safety, and environmental performance, a challenge given the dispersed and technically demanding nature of their operations. It will no longer be enough to deploy skillful public relations and to have robust internal control over these issues. Companies in the energy and materials sectors will need to take the lead in engaging with governments, local communities, and nongovernmental organizations to develop new codes of conduct. Companies that do so effectively can transform themselves from victims—or worse, villains—into role models.

I think the Business in the Spotlight trend is not just for energy companies - every company in every industry will be looked at, prodded, probed and examined.  There are no secrets anymore - you have to act as if there's a camera on you at all times.

Wal-Mart, Edelman and Public Relations

Just when I thought Wal-Mart was a-changing - they go and do something like this -  paying two journalists to blog about their RV trip across America and failing to mention it on the blog.   

For those of you late to the story (as I am) - here's a quick review:

• Jim and Laura started a blog - Wal-Marting Across America a couple of weeks ago. The blog chronicled their trip in an RV - highlighting the fact that they parked for free every night in a Wal-Mart parking lot (Wal-Mart lets all RVers do this).  Jim and Laura wrote a lot of good stuff about Wal-Mart. 
• Anti-Wal-Mart people were suspicious. "Dear Jim and Laura:  Please prove to me that you exist. I realize that’s a rude way to start out an e-mail, but you see I notice your blog Wal-Marting Across America is sponsored by Working Families for Wal-Mart (which is where I found the link to it). Working Families for Wal-Mart is, I hope you know, sponsored by Wal-Mart and run by the Edelman public relations firm out of Washington, D.C. So I hope you understand why I’m cynical. Your trip is being made possible by the company you are describing. This may explain why your blog, like every other Edelman blog, is not enabled to accept comments."

You can see where this is going.

• Turns out that Wal-Mart (through their advocacy group) had covered travel, gas and RV costs for Jim and Laura.  Laura is Laura St. Claire, a freelance writer. Her companion is Jim Thresher, a photo-journalist at The Washington Post.  Thresher will now pay back his part of the expenses - about $2,200.   

And what role did the social media advocates at PR firm Edelman play in all this?  It's not quite clear - but they were involved and their silence has the PR blogging world up in arms.

John Wagner at On Message from Wagner Communications said this:

If there's a lesson we can learn from Wal-Mart's attempts to burnish its image, it should be this: You can't run a corporate communications effort like you would a political campaign...True corporate communicators have a different mindset, one that by its nature avoids underhanded tactics because of the potential for negative backlash.

The other lesson here is about high-profile PR firms who publicly advocate for transparency and engagement. At some point, you're going to be caught in a balancing act between a story you should be commenting on and a big-money client who doesn't want you to say a word.

Now it's my turn - I have a lot of conflicting thoughts here:

• I do wonder if Edelman was strong-armed into doing the blog this way.  Wal-Mart is a big client, and it must be hard to say no. 
• Edelman still should have said no.  They have primo members of the blog world over there and they know what blogging is.  Besides the fact that in public relations your are in the reputation business and you should care about your own reputation first.  It seems arrogant that a firm that says they believe in the authenticity and transparency of blogs turns around, gets involved in a shady blog and doesn't come clean. (Todd Defren at PR Squared notes this is Edelman's third strike in this area.)
• We here at The McGinn Group have helped client companies with their blogs, and though I usually sign the posts I write for clients,  I have written first drafts of blog posts for other people.  Granted, they rewrite the posts and agree to author them,  but I do wonder about this "authenticity."  I feel like we do it in the name of education, let the company learn about what a blog is, what it can do, and hold their hand through it.  I just don't know - it seems like early blog days still. 
• If you read Laura St. Claire's last post on the Walmarting Across America blog, she comes across as very sincere and likable.  I feel sorry for her and can't help but think that if she had made this her first post - the blog would have been just as effective.  Transparency begets trust.  I also think if she had tried to make this her first post, Wal-Mart would have had a heart attack. 
• I hate how everyone (including myself) is almost happy to attack Edelman.  There's a thrill that comes with exposing a hypocrite.  I keep hearing this little voice say "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."  From the little I've seen of public relations, there's a lot of compromising that goes on.   And I haven't met anyone (online or in real life) I'd nominate for sainthood yet.
  
• In the end, I agree with John Wagner - that 99% of Wal-Mart's shoppers could care less about these issues and they'll keep right on shopping there. I myself have never been a Wal-Mart shopper for many reasons.  (Didn't I see something about them locking workers inside?)  And though I wrote a positive post about Wal-Mart a couple of days ago, I'm probably still not going to shop there. 

Anyway, that's my take.

There are lots of thoughtful posts on the Wal-Mart/Edelman story.  I recommend these:

1. Kevin Dugan, Strategic Public Relations:  Will Edelman Walk the Talk?
2. Joseph Jaffe, Jaffe Juice:  Strike 2 for Edelman?
3. Susan Getgood, Marketing Roadmaps:  Wal-Mart and Another Lesson from Science Fiction
4. Constantin Basturea, PR Meets the WWW:  Edelman, Wal-Mart, and WOMMA's Code of Ethics
5. Todd Defren, PR Squared:  Strike Three for Edelman
6. Shel Holtz, A Shel of My Former Self:  Edelman and the One-Sided Conversation
7. John Koetsier, bizhack:  Blogs, Splogs & Flogs: Edelman and the Wal-Mart Fiasco
8. David Burn, AdPulp:  Caught in the PR Crossfire

Brand Characters Aren't What They Used To Be

According to The Hartford Courant, the Jolly Green Giant is old-school. But the Geico Gecko is where it's at:

"Perhaps the most self-aware of the brand characters, the Gecko speaks openly of his celebrity role and plainly acknowledges that his job is to get people to buy Geico insurance. While Mr. Clean would likely balk at identifying himself as a pitchman, the Gecko is happy to."

It's just another example of what I called in this August post the Nudge Nudge Wink Wink Factor. Customers, viewers, audience members - whatever you call them - don't mind an old-fashioned story, or brand character - as long as you tell them that you know they know what you're up to.  (wow-that sounds like Maxwell Smart talking). 

It also turns out there is a company in Oregon, Character, "that specializes in developing and reviving brand characters."  Is that genius or what? They are getting paid to hold character camps - 3 day retreats to develop the "brand character's story."

I can only conclude that at the same time we're getting smarter and more sophisticated about advertising, we're getting goofier and sillier about what we'll accept from advertisers.   

Virtual Customers First

I continue to be fascinated by Second Life and what companies are doing in this virtual world.  The latest news (via Business Innovation Insider) is that Starwood hotels is developing a new hotel concept - called aloft - by building the first hotel inside Second Life:

"Starting in September “aloft island inside of Second Life” will allow people to experience an aloft hotel online in a virtual world a year and a half before they can walk through the doors in 2008. Rather than take an existing hotel and recreate it inside of Second Life (as most brands would do), Starwood is leveraging artist’s renderings, floorplans, and early designs for a hotel that hasn’t been built yet."

And you can track the the development of the hotel at the blog, aloft  in SL: a developer's report. 

I've written before about the increasing blending of fantasy and reality.  And about avatars as customers.   As these virtual worlds grow - and they will - this may become a standard process for many companies - see how the process/product flies in a virtual world, and then move it to the physical world.  I'm still trying to understand it - I know it's important. 

Customer Inclusion at Sci-Fi Channel

Erick Schonfeld at B2DAY reports on a first at the Sci-Fi Channel:

NBC Universal's Sci-Fi Channel posted online the complete pilot of an animated show called The Amazing Screw-On Head.  It's based on a comic book written by Mike Mignola (who also wrote Hell Boy), and features the voices of actors Paul Giamatti and Molly Shannon.  Still, the Sci-Fi execs are on the fence about whether or not to greenlight the whole series.

The pilot will run on TV on July 22, but you can't get feedback from viewers on TV.  So Sci-Fi is using the Web, specifically its recently launched broadband channel Sci-Fi Pulse, to convene a massive online focus group.  The show runs ad-free, but then each viewer is asked to fill out a quick survey asking for age, gender, and whether they liked the show, would watch it again, or recommend it to friends. 

So the web becomes a new, cheap method of pre-screening tv pilots and getting instant feedback from thousands of people.  A Sci-Fi Channel exec told Schonfeld, "...this gives an opportunity for shows that we might not normally even make a pilot out of.  We can test it online, and maybe go a more inexpensive route when developing it.  Maybe we make a six-minute pilot instead of 22-minute one."

A six minute show?  Now you're talking.  That goes along with NBC's plan to run 10 original 2-minute webisodes of The Office this summer. It's a start, but I'm hoping that sooner or later the networks will realize that the world wide web is not an adjunct to television, but a primary platform alongside television.  And the web is not limited to the same constraints (like length) that television has.

Listenomics

John Winsor at Under the Radar finds  Bob Garfield's new blog.  Garfield is writing a book, in full public view, based on his long article in Advertising Age last year:

"Listenomics" (registration required), about how open-source principles are already changing the economy and the society, and how the world of marketing is therefore being turned upside down. It was a sort of manifesto on consumer control...

His first post has an outline of book chapters.  What is exciting here is that a book about open-source is being written using some of the same principles of open source:

The idea is to put it together, chapter by chapter, with ideas, criticism and corrections coming from all of you out in the Bobosphere.

Very similar to what Chris Anderson has done with The Long Tail blog -  but I'm not sure Chris realized when he started that he was creating a quasi-open-source book.  I find this whole thing exciting - and I'm going to be part of the Listenomics action.

When the Press (and New Media folk) are your Customers

To follow yesterday's post on visuals - I want to mention that Todd Defren at PR Squared -and his company Shift Communications - have put together a "Social Media Press Release Template."   They also put together an actual press release based on this template.  It's awesome.  So New Persuasion.

Here's why I like it:

1.  Easy
2.  Visual. 
3.  Transparent
4.  Clear
5.  Layered - can get more info if you want it.
6.  One stop shop - get info fast

This list resembles the one I put together for what customers want and pay attention to.  Todd is right on the money.  Bloggers love a one-stop shop, but beyond new media, I think this works for traditional journalists too.  Todd also answers the questions from the corporate legal department using Pfizer's launch of a new drug as an example:

What if you are a blogger or even a traditional reporter, and you want to use a photo of the new pill for your post or article? I couldn't find one, not even on the official Chantix site.  OK, no biggie, let's use the Chantix logo.  Whoops: can't get a workable Chantix logo off the Pfizer site, nor the Chantix site.  Hmm.  How about the official Pfizer logo, then?

Photo: A free corporate logo to accompany this story is available immediately via Wieck Photo Database to any media with telephoto receiver or electronic darkroom, PC or Macintosh, that can accept overhead transmissions.  To retrieve a logo, please call 972-392-0888.

Sheesh!  Way too much trouble, especially for a typical blogger.

And Todd doesn't stop there - he's put together a del.icio.us site to track anyone who uses the template.   

It's one small step for the morphing world of PR, and one giant leap the customer Journalist.

Advertising, the Customer, and Relevance

More fuel for my 'advertising will never be the same' fire.  Rob Hof's The Tech Beat blog at BusinessWeek online, quotes Michael Wiley, the New Media guy at General Motors:

"The existing advertising paradigm sucks.  It's woefully inefficient. We give consumers virtually no information."

(Disclosure - General Motors is a client of the company I work for - The McGinn Group, and I know and sometimes work with Michael Wiley).

Hof also mentions Stan Joosten, Procter & Gamble's innovation manager for holistic customer communication.  Joosten says:

"People want to talk about things they care about and you give them a platform to do that."

Both of these men recognize that it's about the customer.  It's about the customer, their wants, their needs, their hopes.  It's not about the company and if it's about the product it's where the product fits into the customer's life.  And it's about the customer who is increasingly moving online to find information and to find other like minded people

As Jeff Jarvis said, "The greatest challenge for advertising today is relevance."
People go online to search for information.  And if like Wiley says, advertising doesn't give them that information, they'll find it somewhere else.  Companies have a chance here to provide good, solid, open information and reach customers when they want to be reached. 

John Sviokla put it best:

"...The question senior managers need to ask themselves is, in this new world, in which information flows freely, and all customers can actively search for my product or service, and compare competitors and substitutes: Are we first in line?  Are we in all the places we should be where people are searching for products and services?  Do we have a presence in these new marketplaces and marketspaces? Or are we still lashed to offering our marketing and persuasive efforts to customers when they come to our distribution, store, or place of advertising?...Most senior executives don't even know how the Google page rank algorithm works, yet it is the most important thing to happen to advertising since television."

Change is hard isn't it?

The Customer's Intent

Just read Doc Searls' writings on The Intention Economy:

The Intention Economy grows around buyers, not sellers. It leverages the simple fact that buyers are the first source of money, and that they come ready-made. You don't need advertising to make them... In The Intention Economy, the buyer notifies the market of the intent to buy, and sellers compete for the buyer's purchase. Simple as that...

Sort of a Lending Tree (where a loan buyer can Compare and act on up to 4 customized offers instantly!) for every product and service.  I do think this is the way we are heading.  As the buyer, I should have the power, since I have the money.  And with the Internet, I do have more power, but everyone's still coming at me uninvited.  Basically under Doc's system, it's invitation only.  I think on bigger ticket items - houses, mortgages, cars, appliances - this could really work.  Although I suspect we might still need a filter like Lending Tree to certify these are legitimate offers.  And I certainly don't want to hear from tons of marketers competing to sell me toilet paper.  (I use Scots and will always use Scots). 

Shel Israel over at Naked Conversations is experimenting with the intention economy, asking for offers on a washer/dryer.  He's gotten quite a few comments and advice, but no real offers from sellers.  I think in order for this to work, you have to have a slightly more formal system. 

But I like the idea that I'm at the center of this economy, and not the seller.  And I know the advertising industry is changing from a blastcast model to a conversational model.  My only problem is that I'm also someone that wants to be left alone, so it's hard to reconcile this desire to be the center of seller's attention and the desire to be left alone. 

Your Customer is Talking - Do You Care?

I stumbled upon this a few days ago while perusing Josh Spear’s blog, which I love. Average guy Tom Locke started out with a $39 roll of stamps and set out to write 100 letters to 100 different companies, asking for free stuff. He started with addresses collected off products around his house. In the end, 35 companies responded with freebies valued at $272.93. His "$39 Experiment" is worth the read and offers interesting insights. Check out a few of Tom’s conclusions:

• A surprising number of companies (mostly big companies) have no mention of their company address anywhere — not on their products, not on their websites, nowhere... I guess big companies don't use snail mail these days.
• Of the products which did have company addresses on them, most were either products from small companies — or pet products. Almost every bag of dog treats that I looked at had a company address on it, whereas not one human snack product that I looked at did... I guess they're not afraid of dogs writing in and complaining to them.

Why would a company make themselves inaccessible to their consumers? Even though most of us, companies included, have switched over the wonderful world of e-mail, I would hope snail mail and phone calls remain a contact option. Let’s face it, we all have our doubts that a question sent off to info@companyname.com will actually be responded to. We at NP encountered this problem a few weeks ago while trying to obtain permission to use several company logos. Indeed, finding an address or contact number on many company website’s is nearly impossible. We had better luck using Yellow Pages.

Not being able to contact a company makes me feel like they're hiding something. Why else would they make me, a consumer who spent my hard-earned money buying their product, jump through hoops to reach them? I love Church of the Consumer’s suggestions for companies looking to maintain good customers relationships:

1. Have a customer communication system - Allow customers to update their contact information easily on your website. Send a regular email newsletter to your customer list, no less than once a month.
2. Acknowledge customer correspondence - Send handwritten notes to customers thanking them for their letter. No one wins points for form letters with <name inserted here>.
3. Reward constructive criticism - Encourage customers to provide constructive feedback. Make your contact information (phone number, email address, etc.) easy to find on your website. Send customers a small gift for taking the time to send their suggestions.

I love Tom’s $39 experiment. As I glance through his results table, I am impressed not only with the companies who sent freebies, but also with those who at least replied. Even if it’s not their policy to give complimentary products to enthusiasts who take the time to write (yes, that seems stupid to me too), at least they acknowledged Tom’s effort. That’s what we expect from companies – to be seen as valuable. As Nellie said Tuesday, we want to participate. Let us.      

Partnering with Customer Evangelists

Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba of The Church of the Customer Blog have written a great article for Corporate Event Magazine called:  Customer Evangelists: Spreading the Word.  Their best piece of advice is:

...first you must free yourself and your employees from an overwhelming focus on selling. Instead, establish activities that allow customers to become your salespeople via strong word of mouth...

If I love a product and you ask me to help sell it, I'm going to balk - but if I love your product and you ask me to just talk about how much I love it - and don't mention sales or selling - then I would think about participating in your event.

McConnell and Huba go on to list ten ways you can partner with your customer evangelists at an event.  If you believe in Word of Mouth - you need to read this.

Nokia's Blog for Bloggers - Advertising's Future

Sometimes you get tired of reading about everything that companies get wrong - so it's great when you come across a company that tries to get it right.  Shel Holtz over at A Shel of My Former Self writes that big companies (i.e. the Walmart/Edelman controversy) do have the right to engage in blogosphere conversations by presenting their viewpoint to sympathetic bloggers.  I agree with him, but what caught my eye in his post was his mention of the Nokia Nseries N90 Blogger Relations Blog Site which Holtz says...

...establishes complete transparency because it’s a publicly accessible blog that lists all the material available to those bloggers who agreed to participate in the product launch’s blogger relations effort. 

Nokia's effort here for this video phone is remarkable - an example of a company 's well thought-out approach to bloggers.  Paul Gillin's blog - Social Media and the Open Enterprise (1/2/06) said:   

Nokia took an innovative approach toward engaging bloggers in this program. Some 50 influential bloggers were selected to get N90 phones and review packages and 22 have posted reviews so far, which is a remarkable percentage only five weeks into the program.

Guy Howard at Hill&Knowlton's Netcoms recognized how Nokia went beyond just including bloggers in their marketing efforts:

The key innovation was giving them a blogging space packed with member-only resources which would help to amplify the reach of their blogs and facilitate the development of comment and citation networks both between them and with the wider blogging community. As well as getting access to new gear, the bloggers are clearly benefiting from the information and interaction fostered by the blogger relations blog. (Not to mention the increased traffic.)

And Oliver Starr, at The Mobile Technology Weblog spoke up for the belief in product that Nokia shows with their outreach:

First of all, when sending something like these phones to hard core geeks, you'd better be awfully confident that your product is exceptional... not a one of us would sully our reputation by giving an undeserved glowing review; if there are things about these devices that we don't dig, you can count on reading about it....

Andy Abramson, the blogger and Marketing/PR guy who runs this program for Nokia, told Gillin that he's learned some lessons from this campaign:

1. Choose bloggers carefully - Nokia had hundreds of bloggers to choose from but narrowed the field down to 50 by researching those who were the most prolific writers and who had the largest number of links from the community. Calling this "more art than science," Abramson said the key is finding people who are passionate, prolific and popular with their peers.
2. Don't insult their intelligence - Bloggers know their stuff, so treating them like newbies will blow up in your face. In fact, bloggers generally understand technology better than their counterparts at trade publications, so don't insult them by talking down to them or following up frequently with empty questions. Give them the equipment and the fact sheets and let them go to work.
3. Be transparent - Nokia committed early on to publishing a summary of and a link every blog entry about the N90, whether it was good or bad. The company stuck to its promise. The blogger section of its site indexes every blogger entry, regardless of tone.
4. Be responsive - This is a near-real-time medium and bloggers expect to get quick answers to their questions. Your staff needs to be available nearly 24X7 to handle inquiries. You can't put people off for a day or two. They won't tolerate it.

This is the future for advertising and marketing and public relations.  These fields are merging.   The product is reviewed by influencers in small communities, the company gets points for not hiding anything negative, and the consumer feels that these peer reviews are more trustworthy than any one-way marketing effort.  As Oliver Starr wrote, Nokia deserves "...endless praise (not only for having the wisdom to choose a phone phanatic like me) but for creating a promotional modality that is certain to do far more for the Nokia brand and the recognition and sale of these extraordinary phones than sending thousands of them to the popular press."

Malcolm Gladwell's Blog

Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point, is blogging:

In the past year I have often been asked why I don’t have a blog. My answer was always that I write so much, already, that I don’t have time to write anything else. But, as should be obvious, I’ve now changed my mind. I have come (belatedly) to the conclusion that a blog can be a very valuable supplement to my books and the writing I do for the New Yorker. What I think I’d like to do is to use this forum to elaborate and comment on and correct and amend things that I have already written....There are also times when I think I’ve made mistakes, or oversights, and I’d like to use this space to explain myself and set things right.

What Gladwell doesn't realize (or maybe he does cause he's so damn smart) is that he has a better chance of being read by regular folk like me who have never read his books or his articles and only look at The New Yorker in the doctor's office and that's to see all the cartoons. 

What really struck me about his blog was how willing he is to admit mistakes and say he's changed his mind.  He's open, transparent, using new media and he wants to share with his readers.  I love him already. 

My Location is in the Public Domain

There are some innovations that straddle the line between unbelievable and… well, creepy. On my list right now:

Item #1: Google Earth. When it launched last year, I’ll admit I was one of the people who downloaded it immediately and spent the entire afternoon plugging in every address I could think of, fascinated by the fact that I could have a 3D image of anywhere in the world at a moments notice. (If you haven’t already checked it out, try it) There’s several blogs (here and here) dedicated to the latest and greatest on Google Earth, offering a constant stream of news and updates.  

 

 

 

However, an article highlighting international security concerns makes me think, in our increasingly transparent society, how much information is too much?

 

 

According to Vipin Gupta, a security analyst at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, “When you have multiple eyes in the sky, what you’re doing is creating a transparent globe where anyone can get basic information about anyone else. Times are changing, and the best thing to do is adapt to the advances in technology.

Interesting, but transparency in absolutely everything? I don't know that I should be able to locate every government building and military base in Uzbekistan- and the idea that I have access to such info doesn't leave me feel enlightened in New Persuasion thought... it scares me.   

Item #2: Cell phone advertising, specifically “I know where you are so I’m going to adjust your ad accordingly” cell phone advertising. A recent NY Times article (reg. required) touched on this up and coming technology. IamPowered says this about it :

Marketers said they were particularly excited about the prospect of eventually using cell phones, many of which are equipped with global positioning systems, to send ads to consumers based on their location. With that information, marketers could, in theory, send pitches from retailers to cell phone users who might be in the vicinity of a store.

Wow. While there are some benefits (AdPunch give you 12) it's hard to look past the ad overkill. I see your billboard. I hear your commercial. I minimize your pop-up. Instead of finding a way to stalk me using new technologies, make a product or service that is worth finding. Don't worry, if it's valuable to me, I'll find you.