ShareThisMy last post highlighted the power of social media as a great tool for evangelist marketing. However it is a double edged sword, because just as these tools allow people to spread the word on how great a service is, equally they can engage in Reverse Evangelist Marketing REM (I just made this word up, because amazingly I could find no word that represents exactly what I mean. I didn't want to use terms such as "damaging brand name" because this could be done maliciously, whereas by Reverse Evangelist Marketing REM I mean someone who has genuinely had a bad experience with a company and is informing others for their benefit rather than any personal gain. If I am missing a very obvious word that could be used here please tell me!).
I will now describe 3 occurrences in last few weeks where I've noticed that people engaged in REM. But the important aspect is that in the first two cases, the company concerned were paying attention to the social media tool used and attempted to resolve the issue asap so as to limit damage to the brand. In the third case the company only became aware of the situation and attempted to rectify it when it had made the news. Furthermore their attempts to solve the problem were then seen as disingenuous as it was obvious they were only doing so because they had received such bad press.
1. Cubic Telecom
A customer used twitter to express his disappointment at his new maxroam sim card arriving in the post damaged and included picture of the package. This would appear to indicate that it was the courier services fault. But regardless within minutes Cubic telecoms CEO @patphelan had directly contacted the customer through twitter and offered a replacement at no charge. This REM incident soon resulted in converting this customer to an evangelist, and sure enough once product arrived, he conveyed his happiness at the amazing customer service of Cubic telecom on twitter.
2. Celebrity Blogger
TV personality @stephenfry recently tweeted (used twitter) about his dissatisfaction about a companies customer service. A while later he tweeted again saying he'd received a personal phonecall to resolve the issue. he then tweeted that he felt like a bully, because he had that much power, that he was getting special attention other customers don't get.
3. United Airlines
A musician (Dave Carrol) travels with United, they break his guitar, refuse to offer any compensation for months. He is so frustrated with their attitude that he makes a song called "United Breaks Guitars" (is catchy and funny), which currently has almost 4 million views on youtube and has been in many news stories. Once the story breaks United offer compensation. The singer declines seeing as they are only offering now that the story has made them look bad after months of ignoring him. This naturally has led to terrible press for United Airlines.
These events happening close together got me thinking, and I decided that due to the power of social media and in particular celebrity bloggers, every company should have a Big Brother style department where they can easily track everything that is being said about them on the web (both good and bad). I then had an experience that many people are probably used to, you come up with a great idea, look around, and it already exists! in my case I envisaged a dashboard which would track youtube/twitter/blogosphere and all comments mentioning my company would appear. Unfortunately for me the marketing company Crispin Porter + Bogusky had already created pretty much the same thing, except looking even better than I'd imagined. They currently have this cool dashboard as their homepage, and have also created similar versions for some of their biggest clients; Burger King, Domino's, Microsoft.
*What the web is saying about Microsoft in one dashboard (click to enlarge)
Having seen that the technology to literally track your brand image online is available, I think it is imperative now for all companies to set up a big brother department where they can effectively track what is being said about them. Companies spend so much money on establishing a brand that it would seem crazy that up till now, they had little or no way to get a universal view of what people really think about their company (focus groups don't give exact honest picture). I am not sure though if the Crispin Porter website is the way to go. For example the Microsoft dashboard has a lot of negative comments and parodies of their commercials. Personally I think these dashboards should be kept in house to quietly track what customers think, as oppose to having it as your homepage. By tracking REM and solving the issues you can ensure that your company is much less likely to receive bad press because you are placating the customer before their complaint becomes widespread. If United Airlines had been tracking social media they would of been able to at least try to reach an agreement with Dave long before he was national news.
The Big Brother Department!
The Power of Evangelist Marketing (Zappos.com)
Zaz Lamarr is a Zappos evangelist. On her personal blog Writing, Cooking, Life Zaz describes her experience shopping with Zappos “One bright, extraordinary note in all of the sad stuff of the last few weeks - in May we had ordered several pairs of shoes from Zappos for my mom. She’d lost a lot of weight, and her old shoes were all too big. She had a whole new wardrobe of clothes in pretty colors, that fit, so I wanted her to have some pretty shoes that fit, too, when I took her up to Oregon to stay where her sister is. Out of seven pairs, only two fit. Not bad considering she’d never been this thin, so I was winging it, and the return shipping is free. The rest were here waiting to be returned. Because of various circumstances - lost label, my mom being hospitalized and me being away, the shoes were never sent back. There’s a time limit on the return of 15 days. Remember this. When you do a return to them, they pay the shipping, but you have to get the shoes to UPS yourself. Remember this, also. When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy. Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is. So… IF YOU BUY SHOES ONLINE, GET THEM FROM ZAPPOS. With hearts like theirs, you know they’re good to do business with.” Quite simply they have the best customer service of any company. Tony Hsieh on customer service “Customer service is an investment, not an expense. The goal is to create lifelong relationships with customers, Hsieh said. That’s why Zappos doesn’t measure call times; it’s also why the merchant will even refer customers to a competitor when it’s out of an item. Sounds risky, “but when they need another pair of shoes, they’ll go to Zappos,” “You need to actively manage your company culture. Hire people based on how they will fit into the culture, Hsieh said. Zappos is all about customer service, so employees need to understand that and be willing to do what it takes to provide excellent service. “If you get the culture right, a lot of the other stuff will take care of itself,” he said.” And when Zappos do actually advertise, they do it awesomely!!
I have written before about evangelist marketing, see here. At the time I was extolling the virtues of Evernote and Skitch. In that post I mentioned a man synonymous with the concept @guykawasaki. I recently saw an article in businessweek, where both @guykawasaki and @tferris (author of 4 hour workweek, a must read book) were advocating the use of Evernote. I imagine their evangelist marketing resulted in a bigger spike in Evernote users than mine did! Still felt good to be ahead of two people I greatly admire in the technology adoption lifecycle. I believe that evangelist marketing is becomming more and more importnat for companies. The reason for this is the advancements in social media, in particular twitter and blogs have lead to the development of celebrity bloggers and tweeters. Individuals with many followers and readers can reach a large audience almost immediately. So far example I really do think that @guykawasaki and @tferris have had an impact on Evernotes usage. Evangelists can now spread the word quickly to thousands of people.
Security box for shoes at airport!
I'm on PitchTV!
*Firstly I would just like to say that the internet rocks!
Hi Tony,
I am always looking for inspirational quotes to keep me motivated and find that often I come across them in strange places. In particular I find rap music a good source, this may be because generally these individuals have come from very poor backgrounds and so have had to work extremely hard to get where they are today. Below are two lyrics I particularly like from Kanye West.
“But They Gonna Have To take my life before they take my drive
Cause when i was barely livin thats what kept me alive”“Made a mill myself
And im still myself
And i`ma look in the mirror if i need some help”I was wondering what are your favorite inspirational quotes and whether you are ever motivated by a song you hear??
thanks
He responded by saying that one of his favorite quotes was Gandhi's famous line "Be the change you want to see in the world", except he related it to business, saying that any time he saw something that could be done better, then he wanted to be the one to change it and do it better.
Here is the latest episode of PitchTV (Tony answers Q near end of video)
*I asked a question to a CEO of a billion dollar company and someone I greatly admire. Simply not possible without the internet
3 Traits of Successful People
This is the long time coming second part of Brody Sweeneys speech. First part can be found here. In this part he discussed the elements that lead to success. In his mind there is only one thing that matters; it's not the processes your business use or the strategy or the plans. All those things are important, but the most vital element of a successful business is the person running it. He has come to this conclusion by looking at his own business. He has been intrigued why some O'Briens do well and some do poorly, and has come to the conclusion that the person in charge is the vital component because often a franchise that has failed in a certain location was then taken up by someone else and they managed to turn it into a profitable franchise and vice versa. Through his business life Brody has noticed 3 traits that all successful people share.
1. Personal Responsibility
2. Do Whatever It Takes
3. Have a Plan
Personal Responsibility
Brody has had many entrepreneurs take out franchises, some succeed and some don't. Brody noticed that all succesful people took personal responsibility for their business. For example if an employee had a problem, they addressed it as oppose to saying thats the employees problem and not mine. O'Briens often receive complaints from franchisees who are doing poorly saying that they have too many/few seats, pricing is too expensive/cheap or that their not backed up by sufficient marketing. O'Briens now have a system whereby prospective franchisees must work making sandwiches in an existing store before they open their own. This process makes it apparent who will be a success and who won't. The people who view this work as below them and don't treat it seriously almost always either end up failing or not getting the franchise.
Brody stated that if you run a business it is your responsibility to do something about it. "Only person who'll sort out my problems is me".
Do Whatever It Takes
This one I found very interesting and definitely something I've noticed in successful people I've met. They are realistically willing to do whatever it takes to make their business profitable. An example is a quote from the movie Boiler Room
"So now you know what's possible, let me tell you what's required. You are required to work your fucking ass off at this firm. We want winners here, not pikers. A piker walks at the bell. A piker asks how much vacation time you get in the first year. Vacation time? People come to work at this firm for one reason: to become filthy rich; that's it. We're not here to make friends; we're not saving the fucking manatees here, guys. You want vacation time, go teach third grade at a public school."
In the scene Ben Affleck is talking to a group of new stock brokers. If they want to really work for the firm, then they will have to do whatever it takes. It is the same with running your own business.
He also made another interesting point on this, saying that in the case of entrepreneurs, why take all the risk of setting up a company if your not prepared to do whatever it takes to make it a success? An anecdote he gave about this was in relation to marketing. When he first started O'Briens, he had very little money for a marketing campaign, so he used to drive out to motorways and put the O'Briens banner on overhead bridges. As he had no permission to do this they would eventually be taken down by the authorities. However they kept doing it and eventually realised that if they put the banners up on Friday nights and took them down on Sunday nights they would get a full 2 days advertising for free because the council weren't as active at the weekends.
O'Briens recently started doing home catering services for funerals/birthdays/communion etc. Now O'Briens have a general marketing campaign for this to gain awareness. But Brody informed each franchisee that the surest way to get orders and to get the word out was to go out looking for sales. He said it would take work and the stats showed you would need to knock on 20 doors just to get 3 appointments (show a sample of food and give price). And of those 3 appointments one might order. The home catering service though allowed O'Briens to create a new revenue stream at a time when traditional methods were falling. The response was interesting, the overall idea has been a success with a good take up of the service on their website. However many franchisees came back to Brody and said that their not getting any orders and that the marketing campaign wasn't good enough. Invariably in most cases where there were no sales it transpired that the managers had not gone out trying to sell the service. In locations where managers had taken it upon themselves to promote the service there had been a brisk uptake.
Have a Plan
Finally Brody stated that all successful people have a plan, and while it might change many times, having one is still crucial. When he started his business his plan was to have 1,000 O'Briens worldwide. 21 years later he has 300, and while he is still far off it, he still is aiming for it and is clear about what he wants to do. He stated that a business plan should not be just for a loan but should be a constant roadmap to help to get you to your end goal.
The example he gave to summarise these points was 3 time Golf Major Winner Padraig Harrington. After a bad round Harrington generally takes personal responsibility for his failings and doesn't blame the course or the conditions.
He is willing to do whatever it takes: In January he gets up every morning at 4AM and goes to the putting green....why?.....to ensure that no matter how tired he is that is still able to concentrate on his putting. This so that late in the season, when he has been playing golf non stop for 9 months, he will still be able to focus and putt well despite his tiredness.
And finally he has plans. A diet plan, fitness plan, training plan, tournaments plan, endorsement plan etc.
Me with Brody and my glasses!
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