Monthly Archives: January 2006

Blogging? Maybe we meant ‘logging’?

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For personal reasons, my blogging has been fairly light lately. So, I’d like to throw in an occasional non-Friday post.

Antony Van Couvering at Names@Work points out the inconsistent messages given between AT&T’s billboard and their website.

Do you still wonder why people don’t put much stock in what you say in YOUR advertising?

Sadly, two-faced advertisers like AT&T make it more difficult for the true-faced advertisers of the world. This is why you need to do what you can to increase the touch points you have with your customers (current and potential).

Feel free to email me if you want some help coming up with ideas for increasing “touch points”. I’ll answer as many as I can with no charge and no strings attached.

Hat tip to Think Jose.

Convert or Awaken?

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Are you spending all of your time trying to convert people to your product, service, church, organization, or political party?

Get ready for the long, hard road ahead.

I’m not saying that it won’t work, I’m not even saying it won’t be worth it. It is just a very difficult, yet strangely widely accepted, road to take.

“Turn or burn!” the man yells from the street corner. What is he selling? Salvation or fear (or fire protection for that matter)? I don’t know about you, but I’ve yet to see anyone ‘turn’, no matter how loud he yells.
His goal is conversion.

Is that your goal? ‘Converting’ your prospects into customers? What does that tell you?

People have to change in order to become your customer.

They have to change in order to come to your church. They have to change in order to buy your product. They have to change in order to be in your club.

It takes a lot to convince someone that they should change. Even more to convince them that you’re the one that can change them.

But what if you could awaken them to a need that is already there? What if you could awaken them to their need that you meet? What if you could show them that they’re really already searching for what you have?

The trick isn’t in convincing them of their need, it is in finding the people who truly are searching for what you have, who have a need you meet.

Because of the difficulty and cost in finding these people, we had to convince people to buy our products. Now, thanks to the internet, permission marketing, and ever-advancing search capabilities, we merely need to awaken people to the need they already have and which we meet. In fact, it makes it much easier to find the ones who are already awake.

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Bonus Thought
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A more effective strategy is to position your product as an agent of change, not to expect your customer to be one.

Jennifer Rice in Tulsa

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Jennifer Rice

For those of you in the Tulsa area, Jennifer Rice will be speaking Wednesday, January 25th for the Business Marketing Association. There are details on the BMA website.

Her presentation is Brand Humanity: How Social Technologies are Changing the Way We Do Business.

If you are wondering how blogs, wikis, and RSS change how we do business, this is for you.

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Update
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Jennifer did a great job in her presentation to the BMA here in Tulsa.  I’ll try to post a summary of what transpired soon.

Now’s a Bad Time (Since I’m an Evening Person)

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If you haven’t read The Idea Sandbox, then you’re missing out on some creative insights, clever ideas, and just plain fun. The blogger Paul Williams, formerly a contributor to the Brand Autopsy blog, invites you to come play in the sanbox for a bit and see what you walk away with (other than sand in your shoe).

In a recent post, Paul shares the best times to be creative based on the January 16th issue of Time Magazine. For an evening person like me, apparently 12:30 – 2:30 PM is a bad time to concentrate. That explains a lot.

Breeding Stallers

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Everybody stalls.

…but not everyone knows why.

I helped a VP of sales set up a program for listing available territories and each territory’s potential customers. The idea was that if they saw the untapped potential (of which the sales manager and CEO were vividly aware), the salespeople would be more motivated to pursue these opportunities.

One out of six salespeople did so. Why not the other five?

As the VP and I discussed it, he gave his opinion: accountability.

These salespeople knew that if they accepted the challenge of pursuing these specific, and obviously tracked, markets then they would be held accountable for the results. More than likely they didn’t want to be held accountable for results of a program someone else created and in which someone else determined the definition of success.

The problem is two-fold.

Not only are individuals afraid of accountability, but companies are afraid to hold them accountable. You may argue with me on this point, but most companies not only fail to hold their employees accountable, they fail to give them the ability to be accountable. You can’t be held accountable for something over which you have no power. And most companies are afraid to give up any power to individuals… other than to executives.

So most businesses end up complaining that their employees are unmotivated, they’re not engaged, or they’re not team players. We condition employees into this behavior and then complain about what we’re breeding.

Ponder This: Q&Q

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We love quick answers.

We’re problem solvers, right?

Especially experts. That’s why most speakers give a Q&A (question and answer session) at the end of their presentations.

There’s not anything truly wrong with this. Except not everything has a quick answer.

In fact, maybe a quick answer isn’t a quick answer. Maybe it’s just the easy answer.

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I went to college to be an illustrator. During some class project work, my illustration instructor came by my table and looked over my work. I was in the middle of working on a fine draft of my illustration idea.

“Where are your other ideas?” She asked.

I blankly replied, “This is my only one.”

“You never go with the first idea.” She remarked, “You always dig deeper and find more solutions. Even if the first idea turns out to be your best, you might learn something from your other ideas that you bring back to the original.”

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The problem with Q&A is that it implies a simple pattern:
Question 1 –> Answer 1
Question 2 –> Answer 2
Question 3 –> Answer 3
And so on… and so on… etc.

Instead, what if we adopted a pattern of Q&Q:
Question –leads to deeper thought–> Question –leads to deeper thought–> Question –leads to deeper thought–> Question –>

It’s hard for us to accept this because we feel as if every question deserves a very clear, concise, black & white answer. But when we think this way, we try to find that answer quickly… and when we do find it, then it has to be the one and only answer. It closes our minds from other options. It locks us into our first idea and we never dig deeper for more solutions.

This is one of the reasons why change is so hard.

That Which We Call a Rose

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The Gap by any other name…

Could this be the same retailer that dominated the ’90s with its basic, casual attire? Well, yeah. It was just a little too easy for competitors like Target and Costco to replicate (and discount) button-down shirts and blue jeans. The Gap’s first response was to try to jazz up its designs, but apparently only managed “to bore a lot of customers.” So, now the Gap is turning its attentions to its stores, and perhaps taking its cues from Starbucks.

This is an excerpt from Reveries Magazine’s article The Gap as Starbucks.

Apparently the Gap is making efforts to improve the customer experience at their stores. The efforts consist of staining their wood floors a darker and richer color, using softer spot lights instead of harsh fluorescents, colorful murals on walls, and a greater emphasis on employee training (how novel).

The effort is to be commended, but is the strategy to be encouraged?

its influences were collected via a photojournal created by Christopher Hufnagel, the Gap’s “vp of brand store experience” and a team of 20, who traveled the world “to go see what everyone else was doing and really experience a lot of different customer experiences — and not just retail.

That’s great, but what I would like to know is what it has to do with the Gap. Lately, I’ve been reading Douglas Rushkoff’s book Get Back in the Box. I hate referencing the book right now because I’m only about 3 chapters into it, but it has already given me plenty to ponder. A term I’ve read repeatedly in the book is “core competency.” Rushkoff continually drums home the point that too many companies have been caught up in the latest marketing fads and business crazes that they simply lose their identity and forget their core competency.

So, what is the Gap’s core competency?

From Gap’s own website:

Gap is about fresh, casual American style.

Since 1969, Gap has provided customers with clothing and accessories that enhance personal style while providing great value and service. With a focus on assortments for going to work, going out and the weekend, Gap offers a range of options from fashion apparel and accessories, to wardrobe staples such as denim, khakis and T-shirts for men and women. What began as one brand has grown to include Gap, GapKids, babyGap and GapBody.

By providing great style, value and service, Gap has become one of the world’s most recognized brands.

Fresh, casual American style. But, as you can see from this Business Week article covering the Gap’s spinoff brand, Forth and Towne, there’s a problem with that.

“You can get great-designed clothes at Target if you want,” says Gary Muto, president of the company’s new brand, called Forth & Towne.

And back to the Reveries’ article, this is the really scary quote for me concerning the Gap’s rebranding efforts:

… analyst Lauren Cooks Levitan suggests it can’t hurt: “A good store environment can’t overwhelm a weak product, but it can enhance decent product,”

Is that what the Gap is about? A “decent” product? I sure hope not, for their sake.

I don’t have all the answers. Honestly, I don’t know the Gap’s core competency. I don’t shop there. Maybe there are readers out there who can help out. What is the Gap’s core competency? A “Starbucks” customer experience? Fresh, casual American style?

Maybe they need to know it themselves.