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.”
Forrester Marketing Forum 2008: Engagement and I
Brian Haven is talking about engagement… he says there are four ways to measure engagement, the Four I’s:
Interaction, Involvement, Intimacy, and Influence. But how do I know this? I am in St. Louis.
Unfortunately a family issue prevented me from attending the Forrester Marketing Forum today but right at this very minute Jeremiah Owyang is live streaming Brian Haven’s keynote at Upstream.tv.
Actually that is slightly innacurate, at this very minute he is live streaming Peter Kim’s Q&A of Haven’s keynote. Also, there is a chat room open on Meebo and Peter and Charlene Li are Twittering.
On Meebo, Jeremy Pepper says that the streaming has been great but he doesn’t type fast enough for Twitter and his blog. That is the challenge….all this social media brings everything to our doors; then we have to choose which open door to go through. It’s awesome!
Thanks Jeremiah and Forrester! Need to click publish or I will get behind.
Additionl Info: The Forrester Marketing Blog (re-design looks great BTW) has an embedded Meebo chat and Peter Kim has a post about how to keep up with the conference via Twitter, blogs, and Flickr.
Forrester Marketing Forum 2008
In the world of marketing, there are only a few things that I believe are predictable with absolute certainty and one of them is that a Forrester Marketing Forum (or Consumer Forum) will exceed my expectations; and with each conference I attend my expectations increase.
Okay, so the evidence for my unabashed enthusiasm?
My collection of Forrester spiral notebooks: Forrester typically includes a spiral notebook for note taking with their conference package. When I leave, the notebook is usually full; filled with notes taken during the presentations and sessions as well as thoughts that I add during and after. In other words, a Forrester conference really stimulates thought and ideas and the spiral notebook becomes an ongoing useful archive for future reference. The conferences that keep on giving.
What else do I know for sure? The Forrester speakers include an outstanding lineup including Peter Kim, Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff, and Brian Haven. The non-Forrester speakers, panelists and moderators always include people and companies that I would include if I were making a wish list. This has included Henry Jenkins, David Armano, Ze Frank, Nicholas Negroponte, Andy Sernovitz, Karl Long, Sylvia Reynolds, Fed Ex, Dell, P&G, and many others.
The conference next week includes: Casey Jones, VP Global Marketing from Dell, Nancy MacIntyre, EVP Product, Innovation and Marketing at LeapFrog, Cathy Halligan CMO Wal-Mart, Emmanuel Brown, Director of Digital and Content at Nike’s Jordan Brand, Gary Skidmore from Harte-Hanks and Patrick W Jordan author of How to Make Brilliant Stuff that People Love.
Also, IT’S {A}Live, In a sense, going to a Forrester Conference is a life imitating art imitating life experience or in other words, when we talk and write about participatory media to our clients who sometimes seem not to “get it”, this is where it all comes together. So while we are listening to Charlene Li and/or Josh Bernoff talk about a Groundswell, we are right in the center participating in that transformed world of live blogging, twittering, photos, videos….just check out the Co-Brandit videos or the Critical Mass Beta Cam from past Forrester events.
And speaking of Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff and Groundswell you can now buy their book and they have an awesome site
and a really cool tool to profile your own customer’s social computing profile and then use to chart a social technology strategy.
Jeremiah Owyang posted that all conference attendees will be getting a copy of this awesome book. I will be posting a review shortly….so far it’s great!
So, I am looking forward to the Forum and joining Jeremiah in the “bloggers bullpen”. I am also hoping to catch up with Peter Kim! More to follow next week.
4×4 Meme
Peter Kim tagged me a few weeks ago in the 4×4 meme and I am hoping that the expression “better late than never” can be invoked….if so, I will spare you the pain of listening to my excuses. Here goes….
4 Places I Have Been
- The Ahwanee, Yosemite National Park
- Simon & Garfunkel, The Concert in Central Park, NYC 1981
- Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial
- Pink’s Hot Dogs, LA
4 Jobs I Have Had
- Caseworker, City of St. Louis Department of Social Service (Between college and grad school).
- Pappagallo, ( sales person during college).
- Camp Counselor, St. Louis County Parks & Recreation (summer job during high school)
- Full time mother (1990-1994)
4 Favorite Foods
- Popcorn (especially with Snow Caps)
- Sushi
- Switzer’s Red Licorice
- Ted Drewes Frozen Custard
4 TV Shows My Son DVRs (Don’t tell but I have no idea how to use it and yet)
- The Office
- Seinfeld
- House
- Robert De Niro movies (Dunno, he just loves his movies)
Wow, am i boring or what?
Ok, I am tagging Cam Beck, Craig Lefebrve, Tish Grier ,and Beth Kanter
The Future of Media: Like Fred Wilson Said
Fred Wilson shared some observations on his blog today about his teenage kids and the future of media in light of a Goldman Sachs research report.
Other than the fact that his children read books outside of school and mine don’t, his observations are in line with my own. Yes, a small sample size, but nonetheless, the consistency between the media behavior of his kids and my kids is pretty amazing. Besides books,
.TV on DVD
. Games
. Internet
. IPod not radio in the car; music is online.
. Magazines not newspapers
The almost single minded devotion to gaming is old news at my house, especially with my 15 year old. I have no doubt that if the ship was going down he would not count his PS3 as excess baggage to be thrown overboard but would consider it life sustaining.
What is relatively new and something I find kind of surprising here is the purchasing of TV shows on DVD (Fred’s #1) . If we count time in requested Christmas presents (well, it is that time of year), it seems to me that it was two Christmases ago that my now 17 year old son was interested in Jerry Seinfeld DVDs.
I found his fondness for Seinfeld curious but did not regard it as a media trend. Just something we could enjoy watching together. However, over the next 18 months I did begin to observe a trend….boxed sets of TV shows not only being purchased but being borrowed and loaned out to classmates. Last year, Steve Gillmor pronounced that TV was dead.
Is it? Or just being consumed differently? Darren Herman notes that content consumption has become device agnostic. He writes, “Television is evolving into people’s lifestyles contrary to when people had to create their lifestyle around television.” TV content is not dead.
Fred is writing from an investment perspective and because I have 2 teenage sons, I can’t afford an investment perspective; but from my advertising/media perspective which is what supports their consumption diet, last years media consumption diet meme initiated by Jeremiah seemed to confirm the death of TV, at least amongst the early adopters.
Chris Saad confessed to being a TV junkie but said he didn’t inhale in the traditional manner.
Peter Kim noted that the early adopters were engaging mostly with media without advertising, “an inverse relationship to the amount of advertising money being spent therein. In other words, they’re spending the most time where the least amount of advertising dollars are focused….
Of course this is bad news for advertisers and no doubt this relationship is a future trend.
This year as TV moves to the web and “web video” replaces “plastics” as synonymous for the future, there may be something in those teenage TV shows on DVD purchases. We finally have DVR and it looks like what is being recorded is about 1/3 sports, 1/3 movies and 1/3 TV. But when they want it bad and it bigger chunks, they have boxed sets for The Office, Seinfeld, Arrested Development, SNL and I am not sure what else.
Yes, they know its available online, but they prefer the comfort of the sofa, that big screen and maybe even a respite from online.
Maybe, a year later, we should update the media consumption diet meme .
Forrester Consumer Forum, The Transformation Was Live
This year’s Forrester Consumer Forum personified at least part of the conference theme, Transformed by Social Technologies. Indeed the transformation was everywhere.
I say this based upon both the Forrester analysts, invited speakers and panelists who provided enough rock solid data, how-to’s, best practices, advice and experience to forever kill that sacred cow….
but also because of the Creators who not only live blogged, but Twittered, streamed, and drove the Groundswell into living rooms and offices around the Globe. This is the future in real time, this is permanent Beta.
Think that the Critical Mass Beta Cam was cool enough where it was?
It was, until David Armano pushed the innovation curve a little further and took it live live. Mo’ live?
photo Deb Schultz
What’s live live?
As Henry Jenkins noted, “in a world of media convergence, every story gets told’….and in a culture of participation, not everyone is at the top of the ladder. 
At this conference though, the creators never stopped…..
If you are a marketer and understand that the world has been transformed by social technologies and are not participating, start your climb up the ladder….you can’t win, if you don’t climb.
More posts forthcoming….
The Nikon D80 Blogger Program and My Canon EOS 30D
Photo taken with Canon EOS 30D
Picture This, I have had a long term relationship with Nikon. It seems now that it was one-sided. An elaborate invitation for a Nikon D80 did not arrive in my mailbox last April. I was not on the Nikon D80 Blogger Outreach dance card.
A Nikon D80 is a very nice camera….and I really needed a new camera.
So as I read some of my favorite bloggers write about their loaners, well I kind of wondered, what if…But like Peter Kim, cool has not chased me for anything more than expensive than a book.
But, it did make me start thinking…Now, CK did a great job articulating all of those blogger relations/blogger outreach and just blogger issues; credibility, transparency, incentives, even community building. And lots of smart, credible, community builders wrote thoughtful comments on her post.
It was just that I was thinking about my relationship with the Nikon Brand.
My very first SLR camera purchased shortly after college graduation was a Nikormat.My recollection is that I saved for quite some time to accumulate enough cash to make that camera my own.
As the years passed, I accumulated quite a collection of Nikons; even the lenses from the Nikormat found a home on my last film camera, the Nikon ProneaS. My first digital camera was a very large CoolPix990. The remnants of my Nikon graveyard is memorialized above.
I had been using a Nikon 7600 basic point and shoot when I began my pursuit of something more. As a matter of fact, I don’t think that from the time that I bought the Nikormat, that I had purchased a camera that wasn’t a Nikon. It seems to me that the D80 Blogger Outreach program changed my beliefs about Nikon.
Now, I am fairly brand loyal….I don’t get why anyone but Heinz or Hellman’s even bothers to make catsup or mayonnaise respectively; and no Pepsi is not an acceptable substitute for Coke. (Full disclosure, Heinz has been a client) But then again, after three Volvo’s, the last one was so awful I would not make any brand based assumptions in considering a future purchase.
And for me, Nikon meant camera. I started with the brand and then decided which one. Before the D80 Blogger Program that is.
I thought the Nikon Flickr program was inspired….sending D80’s to Flickr users and letting them experience the camera by creating content to upload on Flickr, that became brand advertising. The program was a kind of community mash-up that linked Flickr, photographers and the Nikon D80, engaging to all.
The D80 Blogger program was not built on exactly the same principles…and I am talking about the principles of designing the context for users to experience a brand, create content and let the content and the users market the brand, not anyone’s personal principles.
Joseph Jaffe, a D80 participant, seems to have something else altogether going on with his podcast for iPhones and more, and certainly is generating lots of opinions as John Moore points out.
All that aside, what theD80 program and the discussion that followed did for me was to point out that despite my years of Nikon brand loyalty that there were bloggers who perhaps had never spent a single cent on a Nikon product, who maybe didn’t even take many pictures or ever blog about anything photo related who were going to get a really awesome and expensive camera for f-r-e-e.
The Sprint Ambassador program evoked similar thoughts….Lots of bloggers I knew had free Sprint phones and free calls. I was a paying customer.
I had been a Sprint customer for years but for the past several had issues ranging from product quality to service quality, to billing and customer service. I not only couldn’t get my problems solved, when asked at the end of one of the many marathon customer service sessions if there was anything else they could do to for me and I mentioned that I could use a new phone, the rep said that they just weren’t able to do that anymore for customers. Guess all the phones were going to all those Ambassadors.
So, as I went into serious search for new camera mode, instead of evaluating Nikon cameras only, I looked at other Brands. I found my way to Canon and eventually to the 30D, purchased in July. I love it. I am still in learning mode and it will be a while before I can commit to Canon brand loyalty. That takes time and positive experience.
Aside, I read yesterday that the new Canon 40D is due out next month. Did I move too soon?
Toby Bloomberg’s Diva Marketing Talks: Tonight Blog Analytics
Toby Bloomberg’s live internet radio show at BlogTalk Radio will be discussing blog analytics with Peter Kim, Forrester Research and myself.
As Toby writes, “Tonight Diva Marketing Talks focuses on social space analytics. We’re calling this one Blog Analytics A Step Towards Credibility?? Social media is fast taking its place at the grown-up marketing strategy table. With the respect, as a credible strategy, comes things like keeping elbows off the table and Accountability and the “M Word” - Measurement.”
Toby has had some fantastic shows, first with Jeneane Sessum and Wayne Hulbert on Social Media Ethics and next with CB Whittemore and Paul Chaney on B2B Social Media. If you missed the live shows, you can still listen up here. I am sure Toby has some exciting things planned for the future, so you might want to subscribe to the feed.
I am looking forward to chatting with Peter and Toby…here are the specifics if you want to join in the conversation.
Time: 6:30 - 7PM Eastern Time
Call-in Guest Number: 718.508.9924
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