Jun/102
The Facebook Model
No, this is not yet another blog post on Facebook’s recent issues with privacy settings. (I could never top the work of the New York Times, anyway.) This is instead a post on what got Facebook into the privacy predicament in the first place–its software release model.
- Competitive Advantage: The downside of a start-up is that, unlike Microsoft or Oracle, you cannot issue a press release claiming that the company will have a new product eight months from now. Large companies use this tactic to claim a space (see Orcale’s Cloud Office announcement here, for example) months in advance of having a release. They get the press to run with it, and suddenly every question becomes, “How are you going to compete when Oracle enters this space?” Start-ups do not have this luxury–they have to be agile, responsive, and represent what they claim. The most important aspect of any start-up announcement is that the product must be available now. It must also be released before the competition can match it. This is then followed by promoting the heck out of it, and having high-quality follow-through to encourage existing- and new-user adoption.
- It Will Never Be Perfect: No software is (and if it is, you’re not trying hard enough). Start-ups are strapped for cash and resources, and hence strapped for time. Get the product as good as you possibly can in the allotted time, and refine as you go along. Bringing your customers in on the — let’s call it what is is — QA process, can actually be beneficial. Customers can find bugs, issues, and also have access to provide ideas for new features to potentially be included in upcoming releases. In this way, you’re empowering customers to help guide your product; you’d be surprised how much they appreciate and respond to such initiatives.
- There Is Not Better Way To Beta: Internal employees know your product very well; customers, not quite so well, typically. So give them a shot. Often you’ll handpick customers with whom you have a great relationship, and provide them with access to the beta in advance of a release into production. Sometimes, you will encounter an issue like the one Facebook ran into with privacy (and notice in the image below the invite they have going on –perhaps they are hand-picking from now on?), other times clients will eagerly adopt the updated product, provide excellent feedback, and refer friends.
Mar/102
Driving Traffic During Product Launches
What can a good product launch do for your website traffic?
Yeah….that’s about right.
Feb/100
Copy Fail
I know it’s been a while, and there are some good postings coming up, but for today, a micropost. I was just in my gmail account a moment ago and noticed this ad at the top. As a telecommunications company in an industry that’s very familiar with bankruptcies, and also as a provider of critical business communications infrastructure, would you want to advertise something with 11 chapters?
Dec/091
United Airlines and Employee Empowerment
A great amount of ink (of a digital variety?) has been spilled over United Airlines, so I won’t go into the negative experiences we’ve all no doubt encountered at one time or another. (I’ll just link to them.) But two items recently caused me to think about United’s corporate set up: 1) My recent flight on United from Boston to Dulles, and 2) An event my parents read about that we discussed over the Thanksgiving holiday.
My experience on a recent flight from Logan to Dulles began with United flight attendants instructing me to move my bag from one overhead compartment to another. No biggie, but I was surprised at their comments while I was moving the bag. The one that particularly stuck out was, “We’d help you, but if we get hurt United doesn’t help us.” Now, I know flight attendants are there primarily for safety, with all other duties falling in line behind. But wow, United, way to instruct employees on customer interaction and satisfaction. Luckily, assistance is not required with my carry-on, but I’d hope they’d help out those that do require aid and not worry about if United will back them should something go wrong. Now, I’m not at all envious of the position in which both the airlines and their employees have been placed over the last few years, and you can make a number of fair arguments as to why this has happened. But, from my years of business experience, I can tell you in my sleep that attitudes and interactions at the top get filtered down to the bottom (“corporate culture”). This means that the way the United executives interact with each other and with senior management gets passed on to how senior management interacts with middle management, and so on down the line. In a very customer facing company like United Airlines, this also means front-line employees will treat customers the way they are treated by their direct management. We’ll get to this more in just a minute.
The second item of note that brought me down this path was this story. Go ahead and read the article if so desired, but here’s a key quote:
Clearly, an employee cannot evade difficult situations by uttering, “That’s not my job.” Job descriptions become irrelevant when guest satisfaction is at risk.
Job descriptions become irrelevant when guest satisfaction is at risk. A company exists because of its customers. Satisfied customers are also a company’s best marketers. Satisfied employees create satisfied customers. And satisfied employees come from a management team that is not scared to empower them to make the necessary decisions to satisfy customers, regardless of their role, and knowing that the company will back them up. In short, customers like dealing with friendly employees, and friendly employees stem from a positive environment that does not micromanage them, but rather empowers them. With this implemented, front-line workers do not worry about whether they have to take a break within a confined time, and will be much more willing to help a customer. Flight attendants will not be grumpy, as they know that, beyond safety, people judge an airline based on their interactions with front-line workers; so empowered flight attendants can readily assist as needed and know they company will approve their decision, not question it. I know United is a behemoth of an organization, but this whole process starts with small, easy-to-make, cost-free cultural changes. These changes will run rampant through the organization when employees realize the company is set on them, and work their way quickly down to front-line employees. And customers will have a better experience, recommend the company more, be more understanding of changes, and enjoy flying again (well, save for the TSA) if United empowers its employees.
Jul/091
Marketers and Their Agencies – So Happy Together?
Since moving back in house as a start-up marketer from a position at a marketing agency, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the marketer/agency relationship. The majority of my background resides in using inbound marketing as an effective tool to generate sales and grow start-up companies. While it is nature of the beast at start-up companies that much of the marketing is in house, I’ve worked with a handful of different agencies, and also gained unique perspective from my time at an agency. So I’ve seen both sides. And between smaller companies and the associated smaller marketing agencies, there often exists a weird dichotomy. Perhaps it exists because these relationships are not the type that you would find with larger organizations and larger agencies, wherein retainers or, “we’ll bill you by the hour, and by hour I mean every time I pick up the phone” are commonplace. Such relationships allow the agency to generate enough revenue where they’re comfortable with a limited amount of clients, so each client gets personal attention, forward-thinking agency teams, etc. The opposite type of relationship is what you’ll often find with smaller companies and smaller agencies. In this type of relationship, the client wants as much as they can get from the agency at the lowest possible price. This will inevitably lead to agency frustration, as they will expect due compensation for the work they complete. I’d be interested to hear thoughts from either side of the aisle on this, but in the meantime, here’s my rough cut at how we can mend this divide.
Marketing Agencies:
- Add value to our relationship: Hey, you can carry out a task I asked you to do? Nice. You can do it right the first time? Great. Want to make it so that I don’t shop around jobs and rely solely on you? Add value. Look out for me. Make me aware of new trends that would benefit my company. There are a lot of design agencies that will take my company’s money and give me collateral, logos, and “branding” in return. But more than most, small company marketers have to show a return on every dollar they’re given. Start-up marketing tends to be even stricter, as not only do I have to show a return for every dollar, but our revenue growth goals are very steep. Every dollar matters, and should be invested with this in mind.
- The past is the past: As far as you’re concerned, it doesn’t matter much to me what happened before I joined the company. I’ve been briefed on the company’s background, tactics, and strategies before I was hired, and there’s a reason I was brought on. With the average tenure of a CMO at an all-time low of 18 months, I understand why agencies worry about managing through the transfer. The best thing you, as an agency, can do? Hear me out, then add value to our relationship. No doubt as the new hire I’ll have some ideas. I’m all for a good back-and-forth, and a good intellectual challenge is always welcome, but if your response is, “Well that’s the way it was before,” or even worse, you want to fill me in on the old world, sorry, you’re wasting our collective time.
Marketers:
- Keep your expectations in check: Yep–you’re doing your job when you’re getting as much out of your agency as possible while containing costs. But be careful here. By cheaping out on your agency, do you think you’re going to get their best work? Think they’re going to look out for you or even be proactive, presenting you with new and different options without you having to ask? Probably not. Be realistic and fair, and your agency will do the same.
- Turn it around: Agencies love nothing more than responsive, engaged clients. It is understood that sometimes running the business or working something through internal procedures gets in the way or may take more time than expected, but try to be as responsive as possible and provide quality feedback to your agency. If something is going to be delayed, at the very leads give them a heads-up and keep them abreast of any changes.
Both:
- Collaborate: This is where the best ideas come from. I, as the in-house person, know my industry and my product. You, as the agency, are likely more aware of different ways I can successfully market it. Let’s collaborate on this and see what happens. This is the best possible working relationship, and both side should strive to make this happen.
What are your thoughts on this? Leave ‘em in the comments.
Jun/092
What’s up with Microsoft’s ads?
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and decided it’s finally time to say something about it–What’s up with the on-going Microsoft commercials? Not sure what I’m taking about? Take a look:
Microsoft’s a company that has made many strange marketing decisions in the past, but were always able to fall back on their “we own the business world” laurels. It’s kind of like Bell Atlantic marketing back in the 80′s–you really can’t go wrong when you own the world. But now things are changing for Microsoft. As opposed to being PC-based, the world is shifting to a cloud view. Google has their apps and docs, Linux has taken a significant share of the server market, open source is in vogue, businesses trying to cut costs wonder why they’re paying Microsoft so many damn fees, and Apple continues to dominate from an advertising front.
So what does Microsoft do in response to this? They phone interview C-level execs and throw together a clip-art-like commercial that depicts what is heard in the interview. Huh? I’m sure there’s another message they’re trying to push here, but that is lost in trying to comprehend what’s going on. Take the above embedded example. The CEO of Quiksilver is being interviewed, and doesn’t sound the least bit interested in doing this commercial. Note the long “Ummmmm”, which is playfully depicted turning into waves, followed by the huge out-breath. Think this guy’s psyched about doing this commercial? If you listen closely, you can hear some poor Quiksilver media rep in the background pleading with the CEO to do this interview. But this isn’t Quiksilver’s fault, despite the hackneyed business speak (“Stay ahead of the wolf pack”? Really? Ohh…that sounds so much more edgy than just staying ahead of the pack). Microsoft created the vortex of awful by approving these commercials, and its ad agency Crispin has not done right by the brand in years (remember the Seinfeld ads?).
Now, credit where it’s due, I appreciate the approach these ads take. Use cases of how your product helps existing clients go a long way in convincing potential clients to buy in. Problem is, these commercials fall short on use case implementation. The Quiksilver CEO talks generically about economic conditions and how they’re coping, and then says “technology” helps them. Hey, that’s great. Is he speaking about Microsoft’s technology? Did Quiksilver recently discover punch cards? Does the CEO use an iPhone to stay in constant communication? What is “technology”?
The Coke exec ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFrVtOG7JYY) is just as maddening. “Hey, Coke’s a big company. Being so big must give you some sort of advantage, no?” And, “So let me get this straight, you use data to make decisions? WOW!” None of this interview ties into Microsoft at all until they throw a banner across the screen at the end, and again, it’s generic–”Does your enterprise software turn data into insight?” Umm…isn’t that the point of having data? To analyze it and make decisions? Doesn’t all software involved with data do that?
All around, I’m dismayed at how weak these ads are. It’s clearly an attempt by Crispin and Microsoft to help the brand “look cool” like Apple. But in going after a business audience, they would both be better served by focusing on the core benefits Microsoft offers. And if they want to involve clients, awesome. But make sure the clients directly communicate the value involved in working with Microsoft products.
