Profitable Marketing

The Power of PR - Starbucks Goes at it Again

I've blogged in the past about how Starbucks has been so adept at using PR instead of advertising to keep its brand front-of-mind for most consumers, and now an much advertised three hour closure tonight represents one more successful attempt at using the news media as an advertising vehicle.

Howard Schultz had announced that the quality of the brews had to improve, and to do so, the "baristas" (Starbucks lingo for the folks that mind the coffee machines) have to go through a three hour training session. What is interesting is that the training session is supposed to take place at the same in each time zone; that is, every Starbucks location will close from 5:30 to 9:00 local time throughout the Nation. Other than generating some media buzz, it doesn't seem like this bizarre schedule has any other practical purpose. And it is also unclear what "improving quality" actually means let alone how it is measured.

The Best Online Manifesto You've Ever Read

Event though I haven't posted for a while, I've just recently had a small "manifesto" published online by Change This. Check out their site and download as many publications as you want; they are free and there is a very wide variety of topics represented.
My "manifesto" is actually more of a set of guidelines for effective problem solving, you can use the guidelines for general problem solving as well as for groups. I hope this is of value for my readers.

Will Google Kill Wikipedia?

Most likely not. Google has set out to deploy knol - it's Wikipedia-killing service, the question is how successful will this service be? Google has rolled out many a service whose success or adoption has been less than stellar (pick your own example) and knol may just be one more.

From a marketing standpoint this is a classic case in which a brand defines a category and Google = search whereas Wikipedia = online encyclopedia. Also, Google is not trying to grow by adjacency (i.e. by rolling out product extensions that are close to its core brand identity of "search") but by leaps into further categories (e.g. productivity software a la MS Office that is not close to "search"). Add to this the fact that Google has lacked Microsoft's persistence in succeeding in categories it choses to win, and we have another product that seems geared more to satisfy Wall Street analysts than to actually dominate a category.

Book Review - I'm on LinkedIn -- Now What???

Ever wonder what to do with LinkedIn - or with other "social network" sites for that matter? Check out Jason Alba's new tome I'm on LinkedIn -- Now What??? and get some pointers.

This review is long overdue. Back in July Jason announced the publication of his book and although he made a galley available for review, I haven't been able to review it until now... my loss - the book starts with the basics of setting up a profile and quickly evolves into covering the more esoteric uses for the platform. I like Jason's examples and the fact that he never belabors his point. Jason has great expertise in Personal Branding and this book goes a long way towards helping readers burnish their brand.

Passion for Brands and The "Wart Remover Test"

John Moore has an interesting generalization about how consumers develop passion for some products, and Bill Gammell has picked up on it. In summary, the posts posit that great products and services will elicit passion in their consumers, and the goal of marketers and managers that want their products to be successful is to find ways to elicit passion in their customers.

This smacks me of hasty generalization and exemplifies the use of the "wart remover test": do you feel passionate about wart remover? do you want to have a relationship with your wart remover brand? do you want dinner time calls and post cards in your mail box driving to buy wart remover? I didn't think so (for your sake I sincerely hope you don't).

Passion is great for some products or categories, but it is not a feeling that sane consumers have about the vast majority of products. Good products (functionally and aesthetically), delivered with good service and at the right price go a long way towards successful sales.

How We Intend to Vote

I remember a few references in Freakonomics about how people report that they are willing to vote for black candidates when in reality they will not. In the same vein, I've found some interesting data in Data360 that sheds some light into out collective prejudices. I've condensed the data into the accompanying plot, and it is interesting to see that our prejudices correlate with "difference from the median": we seem more accepting of a Black, Catholic or Jewish person than of a woman (certainly a black, catholic woman would have no hope of ever being in the race?)

And it is shocking to see that the fitness of a Homosexual or Atheist person is equated with that of an older person, genetic pre-disposition and moral conviction are equated with longevity or mental performance? Interesting.

Facebook and My Space - The Power of PR... Again

Facebook is in the news every day, or at least that is what it seems. Hardly a day passes in which I don't read some bit of news about how it is opening its platform to developers, how it is creating some new model of advertising that leverages the data of its users... as well as how the greatest number of users found this a misuse of their personal information. All in all a search in Google news produced 16,102 references to Facebook.

On the other hand, it seems that My Space is placing news exactly where I can't find them: although a similar search in Google yields 18,366 results, I hardly remember reading a but of news about them.

But the most interesting aspect of this is how powerful and well orchestrated Facebook's PR is when compared to My Space: the former had 19.5 million unique visitors whereas the latter had 58.8 million (as reported in DM News from a Nielsen source)... it seems that the ratio of news references is out of sync with the market and of how users view the two. It will interesting to see if all this news activity translates into Facebook increasing its visit numbers.

No News - Price Matters the Most for Online Customers

Try as we may, Marketing Charts tells us that price is still the most important factor for shoppers, at least for online shoppers. And curiously enough, it is total price - that which includes shipping, handling charges and tax - that customers are looking at. Free shipping a la Amazon is very good, shipping compounded with tax and handling charges a la Eddie Bauer is very bad.

...Was this ever news?

No Banana, No Circus - Real Bad Service From Verizon and Wendy's Deflated Burgers

"No banana, no circus" means just that: unless a company gives me the banana, I will not do my circus trick. Most consumers are exactly like that and so are the executives that run the companies that expect some circus act without giving out bananas.

Wendy's provides an example of how sometimes the banana that we're shown is not the one that we receive. Where's my jetpack has a post on how the burgers that are photographed for ads look so different from the ones we get at stores (check out the pictures here if you don't feel like following the link; the top is the ad picture, the bottom one is how a real baconator looks like), and this is an endemic practice in advertising: ads are "aspirational", they depict and idealized product in an ideal world but we're supposed to pay real money for them. I have no complaints about the fact that ads depict products that are idealized versions of the ones I pay for, my gripe is that the products I buy are often so different from their depiction in ads. That is, I am ok with a gap between depiction and reality as long as it isn't a yawning one. If you show me a shiny, yellow, just-ripe banana, don't deliver a week's old, withered and pock marked one.

The second case reminds me of Kafka and his book The Castle, the Cliff's Notes version of the book is that there is a courier or public servant (please bear the imprecision, I read it decades ago and my memory of details is not all that great) that is supposed to deliver a document to a castle. As it turns out, there are all sorts of bureaucratic requirements and other events that keep preventing him from doing so. Try as he may, all he can do is look at the castle that is perched on a mount overlooking the village without ever actually delivering the document.

Trying to get through to my phone provider (Verizon) is as close as I ever came from feeling trapped in a real life, Kafkaesque scenario.

My first call got me through to a rep that told me that she would provide me with "outstanding service". Not just any service or even efficient service, mind you, but actual "outstanding service", but my enthusiasm died in a few seconds as she told me that she could not solve my problem, transferred me to the right number but made sure that I had that number to call in case the transfer didn't go through... I thought that reliable transfers would be part of outstanding service but that was clearly a misconception I had.

After 20 minutes of outstanding wait, and countless version of muzak interspersed with commercials, I decided to call the number she had given me... it was perennially busy.

I called a series of other numbers with similar results and found out that trying and tricking the IVR to get to a live operator just awakens its evil instincts and gets us transferred to agricultural support or some other less useful department.

No I could not deliver the document to the Castle, I gave up after an hour. Again, the banana was not shiny and I am now considering bringing my circus act to another phone company.

Call it "delivering on the brand promise" or whatever else makes sense to you, but, in summary: be honest! Deliver what you promise and drop the absurd language from your phone queues.

For how much would you sell your vote?

The political candidates have amassed some impressive war chests to try and capture our vote, throughout the campaign they will be spending millions of dollars in consultants, media and advertisement just to have us tick the little box by their name, and from a mere business standpoint I wonder if the money would not be better spent if they were allowed to buy our votes outright. I, for one, might consider selling my political allegiance for a given sum to the most appealing candidate.

Of course this idea strikes at the root of our democratic values, but is an option that has been explored on and off for the past two thousand years, so why not give it another go?

If you do believe that your vote has some value why not convert that value into some hard cash to pay off some credit card debt or year-end property taxes?

And what would Democracy look like under this pure economic scenario? The more desperate citizens might sell their vote cheaply, the greediest would not be able to sell their votes at all, and the richest candidate would be sure to win. Yet, only genuinely wealthy candidates might actually run for office since it might be difficult to gather personal donations when votes are sold to the highest bidder (what is the point of donating when you can receive?) Corporations and special interest groups would wield power in direct proportion to their political donations.

And think about it further:

• To some extent a candidate's image, experience and competence would be a bit blunted by her ability to pay for enough votes to get elected; truly incompetent or otherwise repulsive candidates might get themselves unelected no matter how much money they would be able to gather, and electable ones might have to work harder on their value propositions and differentiators, a better product would ensue
• Do you believe that a single vote actually makes a difference? It does and it does not, there is a fuzzy line beyond which a vote starts to count, it's as if a vote had a variable value that depends on how many other votes are being cast and the total number would depend on the Economy, voter utility and market conditions. After all in a two party system a great proportion of the votes go to cancel each other, and with an increasingly polarized country the margin of difference becomes smaller and smaller... increasing the value of each vote and making it count more.
• Would there be a vote exchange a la carbon credits market in which I can sell my vote now with some restrictions as to how it can be applied? Would a person be able to collect now on future votes?
• The economy might suffer a temporary jolt if the vote-selling period were short, the additional spending might actually prop the GDP in election years! Certainly all the consultants, Agencies and Media as well as the whole Electoral industry would suffer and some folks would lose their jobs but not only could most of them find jobs elsewhere, the campaign money would still enter the economy.
• In a world where reproductive ability, organs and body parts are up for sale, why are we so reluctant to put our political allegiance up for sale?

Would you sell your vote? For how much? Am I serious?... how much are you willing to pay me to find out?