Run Forrest, Run
The late Randy Pausch wrote of an experience he had as a child at Walt Disney World in Orlando he referred to as the $100,000 salt and pepper shaker.
He and his sister had purchased the salt and pepper shaker at a gift shop and were planning on giving it to their parents as a “thank you” for taking them to Disney. Randy accidentaly broke the gift but returned to the gift shop, told the employee who had sold them the set what had happened. The employee gave him a replacement at no charge, took responsibility for the accident and rescued victory from the jaws of defeat for Randy and his sister.
The $100,000 relates to the amount of money that Randy Pausch estimated his family spent at Disney over the years following the incident. He writes that the appreciation his family felt towards Disney engendered by “this one customer service incident” caused them to return time and time again.
Pausch mentions that years later as an Imagineering consultant at Disney he would tell the salt and pepper story to senior executives and ask them if, in their current culture, they could visualize an employee being “kind enough” to replace the shaker; he reports, “probably not.”
David Armano wrote about this incident in July as he was thinking about “Micro-Interactions”. I have borrowed his quote (with attribution) from this presentation, “Your brand is the sum of its interactions,” in my own client presentations to highlight the importance for brands of web2.0/social media.
I also apply it to the “old fashioned” off-line micro-interactions…the importance that customer service, tech support, retail all align with your branding and advertising efforts or like Sprint, HP, and many others large and small, the return on spending will be diluted, if not drowned by negative word of mouth.
And the value of word of mouth is the topspin that I want to add to the salt and pepper shaker story. In addition to the $100,000 spent directly by the Pausch family because one Disney cast member choose to fulfill “dreams come true” there is the value of organic word of mouth.
THAT story, repeated over and again by the Pausch family. Perhaps an imaginary conversation between friends, yes, we are going to Disney again because….which makes the listener say “Awwww” and then call their travel agent.
OK, small scale? Grown up Randy Pausch, beloved professor at Carnegie Mellon one day; beloved professor to all of us the next. And the next…..becomes a collective “awwwww we’re going to Walt Disney World”? (The latter, an example of organic turned into ad campaign)
Well, I don’t really know if this chapter in The Last Lecture had any impact on Disney bookings any more than I know if Randy’s question “Are you a Tigger or an Eeyore?” produced an increase in sales of Pooh gear. But I do know that Randy Pausch’s message(s) can be considered viral in a way that could not be created because viral just cannot be created by definition.
Just looking at the Disney salt and pepper shaker example, we have organic word of mouth of the best kind , the credible kind. As Jackie Huba notes in response to the offline/online word of mouth is better argument,”When it comes to word of mouth, the medium is not necessarily the message. The person is.” Even better if the credible person is relaying a genuinely touching story from childhood.
But in a sense organic word of mouth sounds so quaint, so 2006. Have great products, give exceptional service, do good things for your customers and they will recommend you, your brand, your company or your service. Blog it, Tweet it or get others to do so, even better.
In 2008, now that business partcipation in social media is marketing and everyone is blogging and twittering we ponder the meaning. Peter Kim gives it a one two punch: Does Social Media Matter? and then asks, Is is scaleable?
Well, I think the answer is that there is no replacement for exceptional products, services and brands and social media just like its predecessor, advertising can only do so much to influence purchase decisions. I may be Facebook friends with the CEO of Acme, inc and follow her on Twitter but if the Acmes fall apart sooner than promised, all bets are off.
Now, why the post title, Run Forrest, Run? Well Forrest is my son’s name and as I have written before he had the misfortune to be given that name around the same time that the movie Forrest Gump was released. Not only was I asked way too many times if he had been named after the character but in addition to also being asked that question, he has also been told his whole life to “run Forrest run” or “swim Forrest swim” or whatever sport he was participating in at the time.
Recently, he was at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. at Universal Studios in Orlando. They were selling t-shirts that said ‘Run Forrest Run.” He asked if they gave discounts on the shirts to people named Forrest. If you knew Forrest, you would know that this is completely out of character for him to do so when he told me the story, I was pretty surprised just by his question.
The employee he asked immediately said, “No, we don’t do that.”
Another employee nearby asked him if his name was really Forrest and said that he had never met anyone named Forrest before. He then asked to see Forrest’s driver’s license. Upon ascertaining that his name was indeed “Forrest” he returned his drivers liscense and said, “Wow!”
Now the t-shirt was $22.00. ONLY $22.00 for positive word of mouth but a lot for just a t-shirt.
Forrest paid the $22.00 and came home and only told me the story. He wears the t-shirt a lot and it gets a lot of attention among his friends. The only “story” is that he is Forrest and has a t-shirt with his name on it.
Imagine though if they had given him a discount. Imagine if they had given him the t-shirt just because his name was “Forrest.” He might go back to Bubba Gump’s to eat again….and again. He might be repeating a story every time he wore the t-shirt about the really cool folks at Universal Studios. He might have uploaded a picture on Facebook.
He might be still telling the story about Universal Studios after the t-shirt and Bubba Gump were long gone. Maybe to a group of friends, maybe in a lecture hall.
“Your brand is the sum of its interactions.”
American Airlines: Listen!
Earlier this week fellow St. Louisian Bob McCarty who writes the blog Bob McCarty Writes sent me a link for some photos he had taken at Lambert St Louis Airport of the American Airlines pilots who were apparently picketing for their cause, customer service. Bob also posted about this.
Bob asked in his post whether protests like this do more harm than good. Finger pointing in the middle of a crisis often does more harm than good.
As everyone knows, this has just been a really bad week for the airlines business in general; especially American.
But that customer service sticky wicket.…
As American Airlines canceled flights last week, Hitwise noted a 74% increase in visits to social networks and forums. Customer service was most likely a hot topic.
As Internet Marketing Blog by NonanNight notes on April 16th , there were 134,000 results for “American Airlines sucks” on Google. Perhaps a data point for customer service.
Bruce Temkin at Forrester gives American a D+ for customer service as it related directly to their website. For his grades, he refers to his four componenets of good customer service, ACES:
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Accountability (take responsibility for fixing the problem)
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Communication (clearly communicate the process and set expectations)
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Empathy (acknowledge the impact that the situation has on the customer)
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Solution (at the end of the day, make sure to solve the problem)
American launched their own blog and assured the public on April 13th that AA Service Had Returned to Normal. If I were giving grades for blogs, this one would get an “F”. As passenger dissatisfaction continues to be expressed, they quickly moved on from “normal” to another topic, airline consolidation and then nothing on their blog since April 15th.
American Airlines and those folks on their own blogs and social networks may have a different definition of “normal.” Read what Janis Petit, Julie McManus, and Terry Maxon among others have to say.
So, calling all airlines including American, pilots, employees and management: this is made up of lots of messes; listen to what is being said.
Finally, I really do have a question for the picketing pilots: Have you all ever heard of Eastern Airlines?
Thanks for the link to your photos, Bob.
Amazon MP3 Store, ITunes and Strategy
Wendy Davis writes today, “Around 90% of the people who purchase MP3s from Amazon have never used iTunes, according to the NPD report, as per Ars Technica. Additionally, the stores are attracting different customers, with men accounting for 64% of Amazon buyers, but just 44% of iTunes buyers.”
She notes that the good news for Amazon, MySpace and other existing or new digital music stores because the market has plenty of room to grow. True. She also mentions the DRM-Free debate which is a whole other but related subject.
What I found noteworthy about the NPD finding that the digital music market is bigger than the current ITunes demographic is the lesson about strategy, targets, and technology. Not that Amazon needs a lesson in where to fish or strategy; just that it seems to illustrate the importance of having a strategy, defining a target and introducing technology that is appropriate for your target and your strategy.
Although the NPD data on the subject was not available first hand and the data reported by ArsTechnica didn’t really say what percentage of Amazon MP3 users were Amazon customers, I think that it can be implied that they most likely were a significant percentage. Amazon has been built on consistent customer focused strategies.
A recent Fortune article quoted Jeff Bezo as saying, “Customers want three things: the best selection, the lowest prices, and the cheapest and most-convenient delivery. ” OK, you start with book, lots of books at low{er} prices, ship quickly (quick, even with free option), great experience design and service which brings a satisfied loyal customer base. Expand from there.
The Amazon MP3 Store is an alternative version of the “fish where the fish are” strategy; Amazon fishes in their own customer pond ( CDs, book buyers) but stocks it with different kinds of fish.
As quoted on Ars Technica, NPD analyst Russ Crupnick said, “Based on US CD sales, Amazon is among the largest sellers of physical music and boasts a substantial and loyal buyer base—many of whom may not be in the iTunes market sweet spot.”
“90% of those purchasing MP3s from Amazon have never purchased from ITunes” sounds like a positive outlook to me. Extremely positive. Conventional wisdom might have said that Amazon would be competing directly with ITunes because that’s where the pay for tunes crowd is.
But maybe Amazon focused on their own customer and applied their “three things”model and their strategy went something like, leverage Amazon Brand equity and offer DRM-Free music downloads to current customers who
visit Amazon.com because of positive past experiences or new customers who heard about Amazon mp3 through positive word of mouth.
As Bezo said in a Business Week Interview in 2004, “We work hard at being very customer-obsessed and expressing that through innovation…we see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts.” Amazon is able to expand the market for digital music downloads because people trust Amazon and want to do business with them.
And let’s not forget the strength of the Amazon recommendation system, “recommended because you purchased X”, “people who bought X also bought Y”, “You may also like”….this is behavioral targeting personified. Of course they also have peer reviews, ListMania, author blogs and product picture uploads. And if you are an Amazon customer you have an Amazon profile page. The elaborateness of it and the privacy settings
are up to you. But Amazon is a social place; by design. Which brings me to the strategy, targets and technology lesson I mentioned earlier.
Marketers seem to know that they are supposed to have a copy strategy to create advertising and objectives and strategies to build a marketing plan. Yet, it frequently seems that when it comes to social media, the strategy rules are not applied; not necessary. Wrong! Scott Donaton at AdAge courtesy of Ted Defren’s blog called it the GMOOT (Get Me One Of Those)Syndrome…a desire to do something in new media, strategy not required.
And I have met too many marketers; some of them are clients (I am reasonably safe in saying this because although they want a blog, they don’t want to actually read one even though I tell then people are talking about them on line) who take the GMOOT path to social media….aka Ready, Fire, Aim.
Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff write about their P.O.S.T method for building a social strategy on their blog and in more detail in their book, Groundswell; POST stands for people, objective, strategy and technology. It’s “Ready, Aim, Fire 2.0″.
With the POST method you begin building with People; by determining where your target customer is on the social adoption curve or the social technographics ladder. In other words, in which pond should you fish.
O means you need to have objectives such as you want your customers who are already in the Amazon pond and who are interested in music, have an MP3 player or who are currently buying one, and therefore tech savvy enough to download music at the Amazon MP3 store even though they are not necessarily downoading at ITunes. The Strategy will be about enhancing the relationship with your customer; in Amazon’s case by offering a huge selection of MP3 downloads with Technology that is easy, quick, less expensive than ITunes and DRM-free.
I think their strategy completely explains why Amazon will grow the digital download market. They have the pond. The fish are ready to bite and the bait is of the highesy quality for the lowest price; and no DRM. And 90% is about as big as you can hope for. So aim. And read Groundswell.
You can buy it at Amazon….and review it, tag it and get other recommendations based upon its purchase.
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