Tales of a Spinner

I am appalled! I just read over the results from an MSN Survey on the "2009 worst customer service" (survey here: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SmartSpending/ConsumerActionGuide/the-customer-service-hall-of-shame-2009.aspx ) and it seems that just when companies should be doing everything they can to keep customers happy and ensure their own survival with great public relations, some companies are dropping the ball and depending on the public to be too shell shocked and controlled to care.

I know from experience that it is not always possible to be available to my clients 24/7. Sometimes in business, you have unhappy customers. It is how you respond to that situation that wil make or break your business.

Truly I do know... I just found out that I wasn't available for a dear client when she needed me... However, I definitely am not going to be an idiot and treat HER badly because I screwed up on this! I own that I screwed up and I will do what I can to make up for it, if there is anything I can do to make amends.

This should be the mindset of all people in business. I don't care if you provide a service or a product. You have clients/customers that are depending on you to have some common sense and personal ethics in how you do business.

Have you ever been in a restaurant and been served cold food, or had the server mess up your order? What did you feel when it happened to you? What did you do? How did you want the server to react to your complaint? The management?

Now think about what happened after you left that restaurant. What did you say to your friends, your family or even your own employees about your experience?

Let's look at YOUR company now. Let's say that your employee screwed up one of your customer's orders. Do you realize that how you handle that complaint is going to be discussed with your customer's friends, family and employees, as well?

Don't assume that just because you own a large company that you can get away with not supplying good customer service. Small or large, whatever you do will reflect on your company and the way that people view your company.

Here's some food for thought: It seems that half of the consumers for cable and satellite broadcast providers are seriously considering "cutting the cable". With the Internet and mobile market, Digital feeds available without cable service and so many shows becoming available for rental, it is getting easier by the week to get the programming you want, without the hassle of the cable and dish providers. I'd love to do it myself, and once CBS gets their programming available on line, I certainly will.

You see the cable and dish providers are whining that it's because of the cost of their services and "how hard it is to run a company like this" and that they "do their best, but it's a 24/7 job and we are only human..." Most are taking the stance that once the economy recovers they will be better able to provide good service and at that time they will still have tons of customers.

Now, look at that link above again. . . .

Do you really think that so many people are working on cutting their cable and dish feeds simply because of the cost? It seems to me that it might have a lot to do with the customers being disgusted with poor service and poor customer support when it is concerning the poor service.

De'Nile is not just a river in Egypt! People have been complaining about poor service, both in the quality of the product the cable and dish networks provide, and on the horrible customer service they offer, for years. It isn't just the price. It's everything that comes along with these companies and they way they do business. Now that there are alternative ways to get similar service, people are very interested in using those services and not being chained to these disfunctional providers any more.

Don't make the same mistakes that so many companies are making.... If you own a business, or are thinking of opening a business, please remember that what people think about you and your business is what will ultimately decide whether you win or fail in your business. One dissatisfied customer may only cost you 1% of your customer traffic, after they tell everyone they know how awful your business is. However, two dissatisfied customers could lead to a drop of 10%, and the more complaints you have against your business, the more business you will lose.



 

At some point during the industrial revolution, there came into practice a concept called "Marketing". This was a means to propel consumers to purchase a companies products and service.

Did you know that before the concept if marketing was embraced, the name of the game in attracting consumers and clients was Publicity?

Think about this:

Before there was a written word, there was word of mouth. People came to a shaman/farmer/healer/doctor/blacksmith because they had heard good things about him from people that they already trust. Most likely, they already knew him anyway, so it wasn't very hard to make your own judgment as to how well he might do the job you need done, or if his products were any good.

Fast forward to the 19th and 20th Centuries and you find that Publicity started to lose out to Marketing. There were a whole lot more people, spread out across more space and people didn't always know each other on a day to day basis any more. Add in the fact that competition was growing and more products and services were being added for consumers to choose from every day.

But what is marketing? Well, most ad guys and others in the "marketing" game will tell you that it's cute tag lines and pretty pictures and they use a lot of terms like "branding", "product placement", "consumer recognition" and many other terms.

Let's explode the myths!

• Branding is simply making people associate your company identity with a product or service. This is usually accomplished by creating a logo or motto.
• Consumer recognition = how many people know your company and what it does. This is accomplished by "branding" if you are speaking in marketing terms.
• Product placement means getting your product before a lot of eyes. This can include everything from paying a supermarket to put your soft drink in the middle of the shelf, to getting your product inserted into a movie or TV show, or onto the body of a "celebrity." It also means that you want your ads (marketing people are big on ADS) in the right publications or venues.

• Ads are simply a polished representation of your product or service. This is usually accomplished by someone with Madison Avenue leanings, that will tell you that pretty pictures and a few well chosen words will make consumers rush to spend money with your business. It also means that they just tallied up around $10,000 a month in revenue for themselves.

All of these terms tend to mean the same thing for a business:

This will cost a lot of money.
This will take a lot of time.
I hope that all of this effort and expense will actually make me money at some point.

Believe it or not, the "new" marketing is based on the first marketing strategy that I mentioned above - word of mouth. It is based in working on generating Publicity. We already covered the core of publicity. You get people that know other people to speak well of your product. One person leads another to your business.

Now we get into the most overused and largely mis-understood aspect of New Marketing: Viral Marketing. (gasp!)

What is Viral Marketing? It's using the average person on the street to spread the (hopefully) good word about your business to other people that they know.

Sound familiar?

Viral marketing is also based in Publicity. You put things out there about your business in such a way that people outside of yourself do your selling for you.

But there's a catch to Viral Marketing... Most people that use the term are completely unaware of what it is supposed to be, or incapable of doing it correctly.

Viral marketing is intended to be stealthy, almost acting on the subconscious level, and accomplished without the recipient of the message realizing that they are being sold on anything.

The most detailed and accurate description of what Viral truly is, was documented in the novel Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson. One of his characters is hired by a mega-corp to go out to bars and parties and strike up a conversation with a stranger. Any conversation will do. She flirts, she talks, she gets to know the person. And somewhere in the conversation, she brings up a product or idea. Just for a second. Not a sales pitch at all. Typical tactic would be something like,

Viral Girl, "So you go to Dartmouth? I wanted to go to Dartmouth, but I thought the School of Art and Design was more suited to my interests."

Mark, "So you're an artist? Maybe I can see your work sometime."

VG, "Well, I haven't had a showing yet, but maybe you could come to my workshop sometime."

M, "Where's your workshop?"

VG, "I'm down by the lake in Southbury. I love it there. It always makes me think that I'm living in a Mountain Spring scent Glade Candle."

Much laughter ensues, more drinks, more talk. No more mentions of Glade candles, in any scent. She leaves. He takes the idea of Mountain Spring scented Glade Candle home with him. (and he tells two friends, who tell two friends.... you get the idea!)

Unfortunately, if you're dealing with an old school marketing guy, this idea would play something like this....

Viral Girl, "So you go to Dartmouth? I wanted to go to Dartmouth, but I thought the School of Art and Design was more suited to my interests. I want to design the artwork for Glade's new line of candles. Do you like Glade Candles? I love Glad Candles."

Mark, "So... uhm... you love Glade Candles. Did you say you're an artist? Maybe I can see your work sometime."

VG, "Well, maybe if you would be interested in buying some Glade Candles, you could come and see my workshop. I love Glade Candles. You should buy some Glade Candles."

M, "So if I buy some Glade Candles I can see your workshop?"

VG, "Did you know that Glade Candles come in 20 different scents, including Mountain Spring and Pina Colada. I love Glade Candles?"

M, "Yeah - you said that. So are you working for Glade or something?"

VG, "No. I just love Glade Candles. Here's a coupon for Glade Candles. Go buy some now."

M, "You know, I think I'm late for an appointment with my dentist. You enjoy those candles."

(Mark hurries away shaking his head and thinking that he must have a sign on his back saying that he's gullible and trying to forget about this experience as quickly as possible.)

Sure, with part two, you will still get him telling the story to friends... but what connotation will give to the story?

In version 1, his most likely recounting to his friends will be that he met an artist chick, she was cute, he'd like to see her work sometime, so he can see her again. "...And she said something so funny - her workshop smells like a Glade Candle."

In version 2, the most likely re-telling will be, "I had to leave the bar early, because this chick started trying to sell me Glade Candles. She was a nut job."

Which story do you think will stick with his friends and make them think that maybe Glade candles are the way to get a cute chick to pay attention to him?

If you answered version 2, please leave this blog page now. LOL I can't help you!

But if you see the difference between the two and are thinking that maybe it's a good thing to have people talking about your product in a way that creates a postive and subconscious reaction in others and makes them aware of your product in a safe and "non-sell" way, then keep coming back for more postings.

There are a simple set of rules to viral marketing, and here are three of them:

1. Package the idea you are trying to convey into something completely friendly and desirable. It can be a video, a press release, a news story, a website or even an ad, if it's done correctly.
   
2. Personalize the idea. Have a person who is telling a story unrelated to your business, slip in the idea of your business/product. Or at least create a feeling in the person that is intended to get your message. (here's a great example that recently debuted on YouTube: Verizon Dance)
   
3. If you mention your product/service at all, don't make a big deal of it. Let the good feeling or intriguing idea that is unrelated to your business take hold before inserting your logo or sales message. In the "Verizon Dance" campaign linked above - you only see what the service is in the last five seconds of the ad as it was shown on TV, and no where in the viral version you find on YouTube.

The question that most business people ask at this point is "Does Viral Marketing Work?" The answer is undeniably YES - it does. If it didn't, why did the Garfield window hangers take off, why do most companies now have ds that don't mention the product until the last five seconds and why does Disney put the mouse ears symbol on everything they can get their hands on?

As you can see, there are many ways to "virally" market your product or service. The most subversive was outlined in the sample conversations above, but thatisn't the end to how viral marketing works, and the campaigns you can create with it.
For more on viral marketing and more ideas on how to do it right, visit Going Viral here in Ingenio.

Now go out and listen to the people on the street and see if you catch something Viral? ;)

By the time I was in High School, I was bitten by the journalism bug. The school paper, working on getting an apprenticeship or at least an internship with a local paper.

Interestingly, I didn't get any of the above, but my Grandmother was tapped to write a column for a local paper (which i don't remember the name of at the moment.)

That was okay. By then I was working on learning publicity and marketing from a guy that seemed to grab all of the local bands and had started working for pay on a part time basis for him. I learned a lot, and barely escaped a whole lotta trouble to boot.

See, one thing that always has to be considered when you are dealing with a manager/promoter/marketing expert/producer, like D.R., is how much of your stuff is being sold away from you without you even knowing about it! That was the situation with this guy.

I thank D.R. for the training in everything from how to groom a band to how to make a shoestring budget stretch as far as it can without breaking. At the same time, I thank myself for not believing that ethics are contraindicative of success. I'll take my ethics and still have success, thank you.

It wasn't long before the time came for me to branch out on my own anyway. The bands wanted me to continue with them, even if they had gotten their fill of sales being diverted off the books and into D.R.'s pocket. First it was promotional stuff, (man, do you remember rub on type? OY!) and general mailing list campaigns. Then it went to working with the LA music reporters and getting coverage of the bands. 1980 through 1985 was a very active time for the LA music scene and I spent a lot of time in the middle of it....

There are too many good and bad memories from my time in the clubs. Suffice it to say, one band would beget another band that would morph into a third and on and on and I pretty much flowed into each new evolution. You have to have someone portray Goddess of the PR Machine right?

Cutting your teeth in the nitty gritty world of physically walking the streets of Hollywood, Orange County, South Bay and the San Fernando Valley putting out promo and learning the value of stealth marketing set me up for what i do now, taking a budget that most corporatiosn would scoff at and turning it into a bonafied promotional campign. You want an ad in LA Weekly or BAM magazine and don't have the cash? If you're really good, you will slip a flier into the magazines on the rack and get a free ad in the magazine of your choice!

Well, that's enough reminiscing for the moment, I'm off to work on a modern day client who needs advice to fix a mess they got themselves into.

Not many 14 year olds are tagged to become publicists. In my case, it was a pretty simple equation, as my Dad was in a dance band and they had started to loose gigs.

Now there were a lot of reasons for that happenstance. Among them, the taste in live music was changing from swing and dance music to more rock oriented entertainment, and then you had the personal Idiosyncrasies of the men involved in the band.

The 70's were a strange time, when people were loosening up in some ways and tightening up in others. We'd come through (in no particular order) the gas shortage, the Vietnam war, assassinations of a president and a presidential hopeful, and an attempt on yet another president. The technological age had taken hold, with the Concord, Apple and the Cray Research SuperComputer making their presence known. And unrest is showing all over the world, with the Raid on Entebbe, Soweto Riots in South Africa and the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention enacted.

Drugs had become common place, and the BelAires were not immune. Some did, some didn't, and those who didn't had their own addictions. All of it making it more diffcult for a nine piece dance band to look like a value option for places that usually hired them; Elk's Lodges, Masonic Temples and private celebrations. Don't get me wrong, these guys always showed up and gave a good show, but it just wasn't always in that high of a demand any more.

What to do about this situation? Well, since none of the guys wanted to take the time to do anything, and there happened to be this fourteen year old kid available that wrote like the Dickens, why not try something new?

First, it was helping them re-do their business cards. The black on red had to go. It was switched to Gold on Black, and so was their entire stage ensemble. Next was updating their suit jacket stage outfits, to something more stylish. Losing the thin ties and updating the colors to a great green. Then the campaign for new photos made sense, and they used the prop of a racing green classic MG to pose with.

In the mean time, as they were all getting into the change, and seeing that maybe this sideline could become a little more professional, I was writing up pseudo press releases (what did I know of format? I was 14!) and marketing type stuff to get the word out about this cool retro band that worked reasonably and would play your wedding or club event, and didn't need a ton of roadies to simply set up, even though they had an entire stage set.

A few well placed calls to local papers (and that may have worked because they'd never had a fourteen year old girl in braces approach them as an actual publicist) and the word started getting around again. Gigs started to increase. Heck, they even went in studio and cut an album. (I think there are probably about 50 copies left in my Mom's garage...) but with all of that came the knowledge that I had a knack. It wasn't easy convincing guys twice my age that I knew what the hell I was doing. But when they start to see money coming in and new gigs booked every month, they had to give some acknowledgement where it was due.

This start at publicity would lead to me working with local bands as I entered the final years of high school, and then into the LA music scene, radio and finally to where I am today. But those are stories for the future. Right now, I have a Midnite Sally animation to voice for our clients at MVideos. :)