In our day-to-day marketing lives, when we’re all down in the weeds, dealing with regulations or crisis or product launches or whatever today may bring, it’s easy to forget the basics. But once you step back, it helps everything come into focus. In this case, the thing that I’m talking about is the way you see your brand (or your client’s brand for us agency folks) and the way your customer sees your brand. When those two things align, everyone wins. When they don’t, well, we live in a world littered with those very companies trying to solve that problem by yelling louder and outspending the next guy.
To be more specific, any word of mouth program – short-term or long-term – that I’ve had the opportunity to work on that was a success all started with one thing in common: they saw the brand, the product or the service as an enabler for their customers. A conduit, if you will, between a customer and what that customer is passionate about. Mind you, passion comes in many shapes and sizes. Sure, it can be about exploring the world or sailing the open seas. But passion can also come in the form of helping others. Putting good food on the table for your family. Creating and capturing memories. Exercising. Or yes, even cleaning the garage. You’d be amazing what people get excited about. It’s not just the sexy things.
When we reframe the conversation, we force ourselves to view the selling process differently. We no longer are begging the customer to buy and focusing all of the attention on us, but instead we are focusing the attention on them and what they love. Simple in theory, but to stay true to that concept in execution isn’t always easy.
So as you build that next campaign, think about how you can connect people to what they love most in the world. How can your brand be that thing that helps them love what they love even more? Because when you do, word of mouth ensues. And it doesn’t get any better than that.
Brands talking about loyalty has been happening for decades. And it’s a frequently visited topic for articles, blog posts, conference sessions and the like these days. We’ve got loyalty programs. Loyalty membership. Loyalty cards. The list goes on and on. And when you think about, there really haven’t been very many revelations or advancements when it comes to how brands think about loyalty.
Let me take a quick moment to remind you, as I wrote three years ago, that frequency doesn’t necessarily equal loyalty. Take that gas station on the way to work. You go there frequently because it’s convenient and on your route – but are you loyal to that gas station? I doubt it.
But I digress.
By the current state of thinking, brands are asking you to be loyal to them. They are asking you to join their program or carry their card. They, in essence, are asking you to buy more and buy more often. Sure, you can earn points or miles or free meals, etc., but in a lot of instances, it’s a game.
But what if we changed how we think about loyalty? What if we turned the tables? What if a brand had to join your loyalty program? So instead of pledging your loyalty to them, they pledged their loyalty to you? So American Airlines could join Spike’s loyalty program. Or Starwood. You get the idea.
So often we ask customers to put skin in the game and do things for us. Maybe it’s time brands did as well?
Gather ’round, kids because I want to share a case study with you that I just can’t seem to get out of my head. It’s about a year old now, but the lessons you can learn from this one will stick with you for a long, long time. It’s got everything: an unsexy product. An audience in middle America. Oh, and word of mouth marketing at its finest.
You can read the full, award-winning case study here, but let me give you a recap.
Challenge: Milk sales in Ohio were slumping (just like the rest of the country). If fact, consumption had dropped over 50% since the 70s.
The Legwork: Fizz dug into the ethnographic research and found that 65% of Ohioans live in cities under 50,000 people and 22% live in towns under 10,000. In other words, just like we learned with the teen anti-smoking movement in South Carolina, if you want to reach the majority of people in a rural state, you have to take the message to them.
The next big thing they discovered is that there is a solid case to be made for chocolate milk as a sports recovery drink. Seriously, look it up. “Researchers and nutritionists at Indiana found that chocolate milk, the drink of little kids, was the perfect beverage to drink after strenuous activity. It was, in reality, a better for you, high tech sports drink.”
But the big A-HA moment came when Fizz was identifying their influencers for this campaign. Did they go to food bloggers? No. Health and wellness bloggers? Sports bloggers with big Twitter followings? Nope. In fact, they didn’t use online influencers at all. So think to yourself, who, in rural towns across Ohio, would be the go-to person(s) when it comes to sports, nutrition and performance – all wrapped up in respect and a source of authority?
High school football coaches.
Smart, right?
Think about it. Football is huge in small-town Ohio. It’s an honor and privilege to be on the team. So if you’re on the team, your coach’s word is law. And also if you’re on the team, you’re more than likely a popular kid in the school – so you have people watching and looking up to you. Coach says drink chocolate milk because it’s good for recovery, you drink it. Others ask you why and then they drink it, too. This has a huge trickle-down word of mouth effect.
Results: Straight from the case study:
Kroger’s chocolate milk sales in the Cincinnati region increased an incredible 475%. That is a Kroger system-wide record for increase in milk sales;Kroger management could not believe so much milk was being sold. In markets across Ohio, milk consumption increased 12-28% YTD as verified by IRI Scandata. This was 10 times the rate of the rest of the country. The sales rise was so dramatic that concerned convenience store owners even contacted the agency staff about chocolate milk’s possible illicit use because of the unprecedented sales to teenage boys (remember “Whipits?”).
There is a lot more to the WOMMY-winning case study that you’ll find interesting, so be sure to head over to the Fizz site and take a look.
The biggest take-away for me is this: Influence comes in all shapes and sizes. And it takes carefully planned, insightful digging to find out where your story is going to resonate. The days of making a list of influential bloggers and then pitching them are waning. Because the very definition of online influence is changing on a daily basis. It’s a moving target. And if it’s where you put all your hope (and money), you’re bound to fail. The social media marketing world is falling into a Facebook, Twitter and blog rut. As John Bell said at the recent WOMMA conference: “It’s our job to build belief in the fundamentals.” How true. When we forget the basics, we will fail. When we forget that 90% of word of mouth happens offline, we will fail. But when we combine online and offline in meaningful ways, it opens up a whole world of opportunity. Easier said than done? Of course. Impossible? Not on your life.
I’m a huge proponent of the good ol’ marketing tactic of “surprise and delight.” We see it in many forms these days – across industries and in many different contexts. The problem is that most of these stunts are thinly veiled attempts to promote the brand, which, I think devalues the very reason to surprise and delight a customer or an audience.
I’ve always held to the belief that when we surprise and delight a person or group, we have to do it selflessly. That is, we have to do it with the expectation that we (as a brand) will get nothing in return. The thing is, when you go into it expecting NOTHING is typically when you see the biggest payoff. When you go into it expecting a big return then you are building that into the stunt in the first place, which the typical consumer can smell a mile away.
Surprise and delights are just that – surprising and delighting. They get shared. They get talked about. They are very WOM-worthy. As talked about in the Brains on Fire book (shameless plug) and my former colleague Greg Cordell used to say, “Be famous for the people who love you, for the way you love them.” Or another way to think about it is to become “Fans of your fans.”
I recently stumbled onto what I think is a good start for a surprise and delight campaign with “Honda Loves You Back.” Simply, they saw that a band recorded all of their videos in their Hondas, so they set out to do “everything we can to make them famous.” Here’s the story:
And then, of course, those kids at Coke and their never-ending stream of Happiness. I never get tired of these videos.
Sure, not all of us have the revenue or time to have big Surprise and Delight campaigns. But sometimes the smallest things mean the most. Like picking up the phone and thanking a customer for being a customer. Or sending them to a secret website to pick out a t-shirt for free (and hey, maybe that shirt doesn’t even have your logo on it!) The point is, we’re all capable or it. Surprise and delights put the human factor into all this marketing. And we all know we could use a lot more of that.
Feel free to share a surprise and delight that’s happened to you or one that you’ve heard of. I’m always curious.
Over cocktails with colleagues this week, we were talking about the usual – agency life, working with clients and oh, yeah, how the Internet has become one big pity party with a lot of whiners and complainers.
This is nothing new. In fact, the amount of noise that complainers make is getting louder and louder. To be clear, I know there are MANY legitimate things that we can complain about. But because we live in the age where anyone with an Internet connection “has a voice,” we’ve become used to reading our “friends” posts about delayed flights. Bad drivers. How their coffee is too hot. Even complaining about all the complaining (guilty). I’m sure the human behavior scientists are having a field day with all the data they’re collecting when it comes to wanting to be heard and ego and on and on. After all, studies show that the number one reason people post things on social media is for ego-driven purposes.
But no, this post isn’t going to be about how bad customer service stories get shared more than good ones. And it especially isn’t going to be about how to turn detractors into advocates.
Instead, I want to talk about telling your customers (or A customer) to go screw themselves. First of all, this is not a luxury all brands can afford. In fact, it’s one that very few can pull off. The example that comes to mind is the Alamo Drafthouse (from about a year ago). If you haven’t been or don’t know, the Alamo is a movie theater that serves you food and drinks during a show. They also have quirky film screenings with themes like quote-alongs, sing-alongs, shooting cap guns during action movies, etc. But what I REALLY love about the Alamo is how, before every movie, they explicitly warn you that if you talk or are on your phone during a movie, you get one warning and then you’ll be escorted out of the building (“we’ll kick your ass out” is how they so delicately put it). Because, as they say, they don’t mean to rude, but if you’re gonna be, then so will they.
If you’re not familiar with the story, an intoxicated young lady got kicked out of a movie for being loud. She called and left a message voicing her disgust that she couldn’t believe such a thing would happen. That they ripped her off. That this is America, for cryin’ out loud. But did the Alamo apologize and invite her to come back for a free movie? No. Instead, they made an example out of her and turned her voice mail into a commercial.
It went like this:
1) Brand has policy. 2) Brand highlights policy outlining rules and consequences when you break the rules. 3) Customer breaks rules. 4) Brand gives customer the finger.
Like I said, not all brands have this luxury. But because the Alamo stood up for what they believe in and pushed back on a whiny customer, it not only endeared its current customers to love them even more, but they won new awareness and probably customers because of it.
Holy moly, this makes me giggle like a little schoolgirl. We live in a world of contingency documents and crisis planning. We prepare for the worst-case scenario. We cringe at the stories of vigilante customers and fear the almighty social media influencers. Brands spend half their time trying to figure out how to engage with their customers and the other half preparing for the backlash of engaging with their customers.
Again, allow me to reiterate. AT&T can’t do this. Ford can’t do this. American Airlines can’t do this. But when it comes to niche brands with deeply loyal followings, there’s an opening. No, you shouldn’t be looking for opportunities on how you can tell your customers to go fly a kite. But if you have a set of simple, ironclad rules that come with your brand and someone breaks them, then a whole new set of opportunities opens up.UPDATE: Since penning this post yesterday, I was reminded of this tried and true story about Southwest Airlines from the book “Nuts.”
Jim Ruppel, director of customer relations, and Sherry Phelps, director of corporate employment, tell the story of a woman who frequently flew on Southwest, but was disappointed with every aspect of the company’s operation. In fact, she became known as the “Pen Pal” because after every flight she wrote in with a complaint. She didn’t like the fact that the company didn’t assign seats; she didn’t like the absence of a first-class section; she didn’t like not having a meal in flight; she didn’t like Southwest’s boarding procedure; she didn’t like the flight attendants’ sporty uniforms and the casual atmosphere. And she hated peanuts! Her last letter, reciting a litany of complaints, momentarily stumped Southwest’s customer relations people. Phelps explains: “Southwest prides itself on answering every letter that comes to the company and several employees tried to respond to this customer, patiently explaining why we do things the way we do them. [Our response] was quickly becoming a [large] volume until they bumped it up to Herb’s desk, with a note: ‘This one’s yours.’ In sixty seconds, Kelleher wrote back and said, ‘Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you. Love, Herb.’
Personally, I love hearing stories of brands fighting back. When it’s done “on brand” and is legitimate, it can go a long way. And who knows? Maybe one-day things will even out and the cry-babies will think twice before they post that negative comment about the tiniest thing.
In our day-to-day marketing lives, when we’re all down in the weeds, dealing with regulations or crisis or product launches or whatever today may bring, it’s easy to forget the basics. But once you step back, it helps everything come into focus. In this case, the thing that I’m talking about is the way you see your brand (or your client’s brand for us agency folks) and the way your customer sees your brand. When those two things align, everyone wins. When they don’t, well, we live in a world littered with those very companies trying to solve that problem by yelling louder and outspending the next guy.
