Category Archives: Word of Mouth

What’s Your Story(line)

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Great article by Guy Kawasaki explaining Lois Kelley’s Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing.

I would probably add one more story line… Leaving Ruin. These are stories of the pheonix rising from the ashes. How a person, group or organization survived certain peril. How they turned the ship around when all seemed lost. This story can be similar to David vs. Goliath, but it doesn’t have to be the little guy. It could be how IBM reinvented itself or the story of a successful man who lost everything to alcoholism… only to rediscover what is truly important in life and fights to get it back.

Read the article. Let me know what you think. Which story is yours? And as Guy asks, which story SHOULD be yours?

SnapThoughts (6/29/07)

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As a fun little riff, I thought I’d share with you a variety of snapshots from my cell phone and a few thoughts on each:

Whisper Phone

This is called a Whisper Phone. Our daughter’s elementary school teacher showed it to us at a parent/teacher conference. Children use the whisper phone so they can hear themselves read out loud, but not disturb the other students. Our innovative teacher had created hers out of PVC materials and spend less than a dollar on each phone. The manufactured versions retail for about $8.

Homemade Tuna Salad?

Interesting how homemade is a style instead of a process now. Trust me, Ryan did not make this at his home. If it were homemade, you think it would come with a mass-produced sign containing a registration mark?

Boise Football

OK, who was the genius who decided to use Boise State quartertback Jared Zabransky to promote NCAA 08 in Oklahoma Wal-Marts?

I understand he’s on the cover of the game, but don’t they realize Boise State upset OU last year in the Fiesta Bowl (it was an amazing game, by the way)? I would think the promotional materials, if not the game cover itself, would be made as appealing as possible to each region it’s shipped. A Big XII player would have been much more appropriate. But being an Oklahoma State fan, I find this rather humorous.

White Fluffy Cat
I’m sorry, but I have a hard time sympathizing (literally) with someone who doesn’t put the name of their pet on their sign.

Apple Store - Woodland Hills

Tulsa is finally getting an Apple Store! This one is within just a few miles of my home. It won’t be done in time for the iPhone debut today. Below are the construction photos I took through a hole in the facade (geek alert).

Apple Store - Woodland Hills Mall

Apple Store - Woodland Hills Mall

Looks like we’ll be waiting a bit longer for our Apple Store to be fully operational.

Buy One Get One?
Why have this sign at all if the exclusions are so broad? Why not put stickers on the Quarts that do come with a free pint? Of course this same frozen custard shop locked the doors behind us at 9:45 when their sign stated they close at 10:00. They had a bucket of mop water on the customer side of the counter (YUM!). They turned the outdoor lights out as we were enjoying our deserts al fresco. Guess they were in a hurry. Too bad we inconvenienced them with our business.

Flat Tire

This picture isn’t very good, but you can probably tell it’s a flat tire. Nothing surprising, until you see what this tire is attached to.

Tire Rack

It’s the tire rack at our local tire and lube center. The irony was too good to pass up.

Hope you enjoyed today’s SnapThoughts.

Wanna Be Lucas?

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If you ever wanted to create your own Star Wars movie, now’s your chance… kinda.

In celebration of their 30th Anniversary, Star Wars has unveiled mashup.starwars.com.  It contains about 250 clips and an online editor, allowing fans to mix and match clips together… creating various scenarios.
It’s not perfect, so you have to use your imagination quite a bit – even in simply watching the clips.  But, isn’t that the point?

(Hat Tip to WeirdGuy)

Hollerin’

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Overlooked Marketing Edge

Here are a few tidbits from my presentation yesterday. I spent most of my blog time (and more) preparing to speak at Entrepreneur’s Day, so this might be my only post this week.

The Marketing Proverb

The Well

If this is a marketing proverb, what is the moral?

holler1.jpg

or, some ad agencies prefer to

Send in the Clowns

…simply entertain.

Do you ask this question?

How did you hear about us?

TV

Radio

Newspaper

Direct Mail

Billboard

Other

Hey car dealers… want to see some results?

TV Doesn't Influence Car Purchases

Cars

When you see 71% of car purchasing decisions are influenced by word of mouth…

Tiger

You’re right, but you can…

Steak

Tipping Point

How do you influence word of mouth?

Trendsetter

I’m not talking fashion trendsetters (unless you’re an apparel company). If you’re a technology company, these are the geeks. They’re the raving fans of your industry.
Baton

Do you make it easy for people to hand off your message to others?  More on this here.
Bad Baton

The coupon above might get one person to show up, but it doesn’t encourage them to hand off the baton.

A Better Baton: Drink Coupon

This coupon creates social currency. “You’ll like me more because I got us all free drinks.”

Create Community

Online (blogs/message boards) or offline (customer advisory boards/customer events).

Keep Your WordGodin on Keeping Your WordTypes of WOMBooks on WOM

So, maybe we add two lines to our marketing proverb:

Well 2

And the moral of our NEW proverb is…

Holler 2

Follwoing Direcitons

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I was talking with a friend yesterday and he mentioned how his real estate tours website uses technology not recommended by the experts. He should be using video-streaming servers and paying thousands of dollars a month in hosting. They told him his technology wouldn’t work… but it does.

I used to be the marketing director of a telecom company. We used Linksys routers in a unique way. The experts told us the routers wouldn’t work that way… but they did. After the fact, even the manufacturer said it shouldn’t work. They weren’t made to work that way. Remember, this is after we proved it indeed worked in SEVERAL situations.

Our agency is working with a particular TV producer a lot lately. He was told the lenses he wanted wouldn’t work with his current cameras. He “needed” to buy outrageously expensive cameras to get his desired effect. He couldn’t just retrofit his camera to work with these lenses… but he did – and it worked. Now he has a unique style that is winning him business left and right.

Bonus – Directions for Becoming Invisible:

Step 1 – Blindly obey the experts (“blindly” being the key word)
Step 2 – Follow the directions

Step 3 – Congratulate yourself, because no one else will. They can’t see you.

The Baton

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Staples

I just got this email from Staples today.  My wife and I are trying to organize our home office, so I thought I would forward it to her.  There’s no “forward to a friend” button.  I could forward the email myself, but these HTML emails never look right when I send them.

There was link to a web page version of the email, so I clicked it.  I figured I would send her a link to the web page.  Here’s the URL:

http://e.staples-deals.com/content.asp?wci=version&wnd=0&status_id=4611513700_73148130

Long URLs like this always seem to break when you send them.  No dice.

Viral marketing is a relay race.  The most important part of the race is the hand off.  Using batons that are hard to hand to the next person isn’t smart.

Polarizing Cupcakes

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Hate Bush, get cupcake

I was recently reading about the new Apple Mac Pro computers on digg. What’s most interesting is the reaction Apple gets from any announcement. Apple fans usually love it. Apple haters hate it (go figure). Reading their comments on digg is not for the faint of heart.

Why does Apple alienate these people? All they have to do is make their operating system run on PCs, make their music software play nice with MP3 players other than the iPod and stop those condescending ads. Then what? Then they’ll win everyone over?

Nope.

Then they’ll be just like everyone else. Conformed.

Apple still follows the philosophy of their early evangelist, Guy Kawasaki. Kawasaki encourages companies to polarize people. When I first saw that in one of Guy’s presentations, I wasn’t sure I agreed. Now, I couldn’t agree more.

Not many companies would advertise free cupcakes for professed Bush haters. Most anyone with “good business sense” would have at least added a second sign:
“Tell us you hate HILLARY and get a free COOKIE!”

But that destroys any semblance of a story. It tells people nothing about our company, except that we ride the fence.

And we fail to realize the fence we’re riding is made of barbed wire.

Update

After an offline conversation with a buddy, Jason, it became clear that I should clarify one thing.  Whatever polarizes people concerning your business needs to be authentic.  By doing so, detractors actually help galvanize your supporters.