Apple has always had the ability to exceed expectations.

Jobs and team understood how to tease and titillate audiences while telling us what your future technology experiences were going to be. We drank it up, cheered loudly and began a countdown for the long lines that would greet Apple stores around the world and promise life-changing innovation.

This launch became something different for Apple. It was viewed as a test for new leadership sans its iconic voice. History will record this release as the beginning of the Tim Cook era and the moment that Apple lost control of the conversation.

Welcome to the hangover, post-crowd source launch.

While the iPhone 4s has the same form factor as the 4, the brains and functionality are better. Much better. There are those that are already pining that the 4s should have been called the 5 so we can all feel better. Imagine customers wishing for a different name just so they won’t be let down. I can’t remember ever experiencing anything like it. Maybe since New Coke.

But different story, different time.

Apple should stick to its current naming nomenclature and keep the numbers the same if the form factor stays the same. The 4s was the right product name. What was wrong was the way they managed the launch. Yes, having the presentation in Cupertino did hint to less drama and implied the probability that there was only a 4X coming. But the expectations were simply too great and completely unmanageable.

The result? Angry and loyal Apple brand loyalists that feel betrayed, many of whom are journalists themselves.

With the loss of its iconoclastic leader, Apple will need to rethink its launch strategy. Jobs could handle any heat because he always knew the company’s next five future moves. He saw the game board in ways no one could comprehend and because of that view he could say “Bring it” when presenting something with the potential to disappoint.

The new Apple needs to understand that its new realities mandate better management of launches and misplaced crowd perception. It’s a different day, different expectation and a different product. Without Jobs, the crowd is in control, and Apple needs to understand that new dynamic.

Mr. Cook, welcome to the Pinhole Economy.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is all the rage. And we all know what it is. Every company approaches it differently. Some choose to implement systems such as Salesforce and Gold Mine to track every lead and contact, while others employ live customer service reps to tackle every problem a customer might encounter.  Others choose a combination of both. But along with CRM, the acronym we really need to start paying attention to is CEM, Customer Experience Management.

We are well aware of the story of United Airlines and the broken guitars: A passenger watches while his guitar is destroyed and nary a finger is lifted to assist him. A YouTube video is made that goes viral and is the first result that comes up on a Google search of “United,” and depending on your location, it can appear even before United’s website. That was poor relationship management. But there has been a shift in customers’ expectations. As consumers gain control over marketing, there is not only expectation of perfect service and products, but also an experience. And that is what they are calling Customer Experience Management.

Steve Ridgway, CEO of the Virgin Atlantic Airways put it perfectly in a recent McKinsey Quarterly article:

“We’re all marketers now. At the end of the day, we fly exactly the same planes as everybody else. If we get our customers off the plane happy, and they go on to talk about that and get others to come and then come back themselves- that’s a huge marketing tool.”

And this coming from an airline that is known for providing an experience, for example they were the first to implement in-air TV entertainment.

But, let’s be realistic. Airlines aren’t exactly known for their experiences. Getting to a destination on time with all your luggage is about the most a traveler can expect these days. However, Ridgway is on to something. How do we create an experience for our customer? How do we make this experience different for each customer? Because I know that a trip to an Apple store for me will include being shown the newest gadgets, trying out the new iPads, and maybe finding a new iPhone cover. My mom’s ideal Apple experience would be “getting out of there in under ten minutes with minimum interaction.”  The experience can be anything. It can be visiting a store, visiting a website, trying a product or service, or flying an airline.

The task seems daunting: creating a unique experience for each customer. So how do we do it? We learn about our customers.  We learn what they want and how they want it. We don’t just survey them or conduct focus groups. We find where they are, where they are talking about our product or service and we listen. We create a one-on-one dialogue so that each consumer feels like they are getting exactly what they want, even if they aren’t sure what that is.

The old saying has never been more true “the customer is always right.” And if you don’t think so, look out for a video on YouTube soon.

Flickr photo courtesy of xcode.

Several people have been credited with the saying: “Seek first to understand, then be understood.”

A quick Google search gives credit to Steven Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People so I’ll go with it here. What Covey and many others are trying to impress on us is the idea that until you understand who you are communicating with in terms of motivations, desires, interests, preferences and their overall being, you can’t expect them to understand you.

As marketers, we want to communicate what makes us great. Why our brand, product or service is better than the competition. But how do we know we’re better? Is it based on our research of the competition? Is it based on a room of marketing and product managers developing rationale for why we’re better than the next guy?

If this is how you are developing your communication strategy, your process is broken.

You need to first listen to what your customers and prospective customers have to say before you can begin to apply any brain cells towards how you’ll market your brand. The key idea here is to listen. Listen to interests. Listen to needs. Listen to motivations. Listen to dislikes. Listen to challenges. Listen to preferences.

By listening and understanding your audiences, you can then start thinking about how to position your brand. How to connect with your audiences. How to communicate with them. How to motivate them to respond and take action.

Instead of speaking in a language based on what you and your marketing team think is relevant and important to your audience, you’ll now be speaking a language that is relevant to them. A language they understand. One they want to respond to. One that understand them, their needs, their interests, their desires. Couple this approach with the competitive landscape and your unique brand offerings and you’ll be speaking a language your audience understands and will drive a return on your marketing investments.

Flickr photo courtesy of orkomedix

As we’ve discussed, the in-person experience of a convention needs to be at the forefront. It also needs to make financial sense.

But at its most basic level, we must be entertained.

Going back to the sports analogy in the last blog post, many thought putting baseball on the radio would kill attendance. Now we have television contracts that are in the billions of dollars.

Offering digital or virtual offerings of a trade show will not kill conventions. They must be embraced.

But, the digital experience needs to be an extension of the existing conference. Especially at AIA, where it’s extent is currently an obscure box on the website that displays a mere two clips from the convention.

But that’s not the worst part.

The most frustrating portion of the entire convention experience is located smack in the middle of AIA’s site.

Well how soon is soon?

Simply put, a convention this big must not only be accessible from anywhere, but also engaging. With some thoughtful (but not overly exciting) additions to the convention, architects who are unable to attend the convention will certainly be willing to invest in viewing the show online. Even better, offer more to those who DO attend each year, and you’ll convert the online attendees into in-person attendees over time.

Give everyone access to workshops, but only give education credits to those in attendance. Give everyone access to speaker keynotes, but ensure meet-and-greets with those in attendance. Give everyone access to brochures, but have workshops right on the show floor. You get the idea.

Even more, what AIA needs to give attendees are connections. Engage attendees not only with the exhibits, but also with each other. Make AIA a gathering place where architects from across the nation want to convene and share ideas.

The clear place to start is the convention floor. Rather than a static exhibition grid, create an interactive design that allows attendees to convene and discuss the exhibits as they move around the floor. Set up speakers throughout the show floor to create an intimate vibe. Then build upon these nooks based on the convention location. Hire a jazz band to play hourly at the New Orleans convention. In Cleveland, rock and roll.  In Memphis, blues. Playing upon the location makes the convention enjoyable and relatable.

The goal here is simply to create a connection. Give attendees a chance to mingle with themselves while enjoying some entertainment. Open up the in-person experience. Make AIA something to talk about.

We’ve seen it work before.

One show that seems to get it right over and over again is the TED national conference. TED is a non-profit that brings together new ideas in technology, entertainment and design and has shows throughout the country year round. But it’s the national conference that attracts thousands of eager attendees around the globe, perhaps due to its lineup of world-renowned and inspiring speakers. Best known for promoting ideas worth spreading, TED promises attendees four days of “unexpected connections, extraordinary insights and powerful inspiration.”

It’s cliched, but it delivers.

TED’s combination of intellectual consistency plus new insights brings attendees back year after year, and makes for a truly unforgettable in-person experience. Plus, among pages of written articles and summaries, its website offers “A Taste of Ted,” a three-minute recap of highlights from past shows. By offering only a taste of the conference, TED leaves much of the excitement to the in-person experience.

While we understand that AIA can not immediately rival the fervor and excitement that is TED, it has to start somewhere. Anywhere, really. Look at Apple’s WWDC. Look at Google’s IO conference. These are events, not just tradeshows. Attendees are highly creative, visual people. We need to cater to them.

And the simplest way to do that is by creating connections. The digital convention? That’s the easy part. But to create an interactive show that will engage and connect your audience? That is a goal that, surely, AIA can reach.

Part 1: Back of the Napkin: Doing Some Math at the AIA Show

Part 2: Rethinking the Convention: AIA and Beyond

A transition from ghost town to bustling convention.  All it takes is some rethinking.

We’ve discussed some issues at the AIA national convention, namely that it could have been better attended. The lack of bodies (plus the pricey cost for a lead) led to an uneventful show with the numbers to prove it. Perhaps the lack of general desire to attend the show – both the actual convention and the virtual show – is where the problem begins.

And where the solution resolves.

Yes, we recognize there are outside forces at work. But AIA needs to find the balance between a unique in-person experience and an accessible online show in order to be relevant. There must be qualities of each that make us eager to explore what the national convention offers on both ends providing fundamentally different, yet exciting experiences. AIA must prove that the national convention can be even stronger than it used to be.

And it must understand it’s the in-person experience that must come first.

Let’s compare the in-person experience to the potential virtual. Of course, many offerings are the same. Key vendor information and keynote speakers aren’t to be magically changed. But certain things at the AIA are simply unavailable online, to their benefit. The energy and buzz of the show floor, networking opportunities, personal interactions with company representatives, and even in-company/firm camaraderie can be huge benefits for in-person attendees.

Now they must build upon these offerings, which doesn’t necessarily require adding more activities at the convention. Instead, understand what makes AIA great and build upon it. Redesign a show into something that simply can’t be missed.

Let’s take some cues from the world of sports.

Nowadays it’s easier than ever to experience a game from the comfort of your living room. Yet, ticket prices in professional sports continue to rise. Obviously, there’s something special about being at the arena for the live event. Maybe it’s the free t-shirts they throw to the fans. Maybe it’s the combination of music and pyrotechnics. Or maybe it’s the feeling you get when you jump out of your seat, accompanied by the screams of thousands of fellow fanatics.

The AIA national convention needs to be an experience. What keeps fans coming back to sporting events isn’t the actual game. It’s the smells, sounds, feelings and people that make attending sporting events so popular. There’s a reason Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference sells out in two hours.

But that doesn’t mean the digital experience can’t be made better. In fact, they should work together. Stay tuned to see why.

Part 1: Back of the Napkin: Doing Some Math at the AIA Show

Flickr photo courtesy of ikaink

Tombstone, Ariz. Bodie, Calif. AIA show in New Orleans.

What do these three locations have in common? Last week, they were all ghost towns.

For those of you who aren’t in the world of architecture, design and building products, the 2011 American Institute of Architects National Convention took place in New Orleans last week.  A rather important convention. In fact, the biggest in the space. Held in a lively town.

And yet, total desertion.

We expected drops in attendance. After all, there’s a global recession out there. For example, in 2009, AIA promotional material “expected” 27,000 for the conference in San Francisco. And by 2010′s AIA in Miami, the conference had 17,000 in attendance.

But it’s not just about attendance, we need to ask the exhibitors. Ask them how the show is performing. And in talking with a few of them, it sounded pretty dire. But doing some of my own back-of-the-napkin mathematical analysis, it looks even worse.

Marketing the show: $20,000

Booth design, labor, setup, booth space: $100,000

Five employees to man booth: (5 x $700 per day in labor, hotel, per diem x 4 days): $14,000

Total cost:$134,000

Sound excessive? Just wait, one exhibitor mentioned they received around 125 leads at the show.  $134,000 for just 125 leads, and a cost per lead of $1,072 and change.

Seems a little pricey.

While results may vary, this type of investment with such little return is unsustainable. There are a million ways to reach prospects at much lower price points.  It’s clear that the convention is beneficial to architects, but it may be time for marketers to rethink about the math that goes with the show.

So while you are probably sitting at your desk wondering how it could possibly be worth the costly investment, know that there are ways to rethink the convention.  Ways for exhibitors to be in touch with their audience. In fact, a better audience. Stay tuned.

Part 2: Rethinking the Convention: AIA and Beyond

Flickr photo courtesy of n0ll

Do you manage email marketing campaigns? If you do, you’ll want to read this.

Email marketing comes in many sizes and flavors. There are monthly newsletters, promotional offers or coupons or special announcements. No matter what type of commercial emails you send, you can always improve the process and the results.

The focus of this post is how to make mid, to large scale programs more efficient. If you manage multiple lists and multiple templates, chances are you spend a lot of time on repetitive tasks. This is costing you precious time and creating opportunities for error. Maybe you have an email marketing agency managing this for you. How are they managing the process? What steps in the process can you remove in order to gain efficiency and accuracy?

Here are a few things you can do to improve:

1. Streamline the internal communications process of receiving email content. If you manage a monthly program for multiple store locations or internal divisions of a company, create a better process of collecting the monthly specials, offers or events. Suppose you have 50 or 100 stores that send you their monthly offers. Create an online form where they need to submit their information. Set due dates so you can manage expectations. If your internal customers are not able to submit their information by a due date, their email will not go out on time.
2. Consolidate send dates. Rather than sending 50 or 100 email campaigns per month, send one or two. This can be done by creating templates and using relational tables. There is some up-front work that needs to be done to set up the tables and load in content but this will save hours down the road by not having to deploy email sends over and over again through the month. Using relational tables allows you to send campaigns once or twice a month and the store specific images, and content will be pulled into the template in real-time.
3. Don’t be afraid of templates. Solutions such as Silverpop allow email marketers to create templates that preserve the unique nature and brand characteristics of individual stores or divisions.
4. Manage expectations. When email programs grow and need to scale, you need to introduce this type of process so you can manage expectations. If 100 sites are sending you their monthly promotional information on their own schedule, you won’t be able to keep up with timely campaigns. Chances are you will be sending campaigns late and not meeting expectations. Having scheduled send dates once or twice per month while leveraging technology such as relational tables allows you to manage expectations. Your internal customers will know when their campaigns deploy and when they need to sumbit information to allow time for writing, loading, testing and deployment.

Remember, email marketing does not have to be labor intensive. Templates are not a bad thing. Use templates and relational tables. Cut down on manual entry and inefficiencies. Create more accurate work. Use technology and smarter process to be more efficient and get better results. You’ll save time, money and have internal customers that are satisfied with your service, and the results you produce. With the internal or agency time you save, you can reinvest those budget dollars into other marketing vehicles that you’ve been wanting to test and grow your business.

Looking to improve your email marketing process or results? Give us a shout.

Flickr image courtesy of jessedybka

Great news for B2B marketers targeting small business owners.  With the recession, we are seeing a surge of new entrepreneurs hitting the market.

According to the annual index of entrepreneurial activity published by the Kauffman Foundation, last year’s pace of new business creation was at its highest since it began tracking 14 years ago.   This is no surprise considering that “necessity” entrepreneurial activity can stem from the lack of traditional jobs.  This means that there are more small business owners that need more products and services.

But don’t join the running of marketers, just yet.

They feel the surge of increasing marketing efforts daily.  Not only are they managing endless tasks and pressures of being a small business owner, they are digging out from under countless offers, messages, and solicitations from entities like Quicken Intuit and AMEX Open that claim to be able to save them time and money with products and services that will make their business better.

Small business owners, like all consumers now, pull information from marketers only when they need it.  They search for it when the time is right for them for two really important (and somewhat obvious) reasons.  First, they have to protect their “mind-share” – it is critical to the success of their business.   Marketing messages only clutter their mind and shift their focus away from their business.  And more importantly, even if they wanted to, they don’t physically have enough time to go through every solicitation in the midst of all they are doing to drive the success of their business.

So, how do we reach small business owners?  Quite simply – be ready when they really need you and give them what they really need.

Help small businesses instead of marketing to small businesses. They can see right through marketing gimmicks and flashy sales messaging.  Get to know your market like the back of your hand and offer real solutions to make a real difference in their business and they will notice.

Relevant content is imperative. Solutions to a small business owner may come as a product or service, or it might come as relevant content (information) that can make an impact on their long-term business plan or their day-to-day business functions.  Something that helps make the dozens of daily decisions they make a little easier.  Consider alternative content sources in addition to your traditional marketing vehicles to get your message across to this busy audience (videos, podcasts, articles, blogs, web content).

Make sure you are found when the search happens. Small business owners (like everyone) go directly to their laptop to search for products and services for their business.   Make sure you have what they are looking for and have it search engine optimized so they see it first.

Get to the point quick. They need to get back to business, so make sure you get to the point.  They don’t have time to dig through layers of messaging.  If you help them quickly and easily, they will appreciate you for thinking of their business and their time-crunched business realities.

At the end of the day, if we as marketers aren’t helping small business owners when they need it, our messages will end up in the trash (literally or virtually).  But, if we make a difference for them when they really need it, a true relationship can begin.

If you have any questions about how to reach small business owners, please give us a shout!  We would love to help you help small business!

Flickr photo by smays

Honesty marketing has shown up in many marketer’s playbook lately.  Usually as the cornerstone of a crisis management campaign for an unexpected and unfortunate situation.  Toyota used it because of their faulty brakes. BP needed it because of the biggest environmental disaster in US history.  Domino’s had to turn decreasing sales around and confront customer feedback that their pizza tasted like cardboard. Not fun stuff to deal with and they each definitely needed good PR and fast.

Each one of these companies felt the need to break down walls and connect with their customers in an open, honest way.  In theory, if consumers can identify with your brand on a deeper, more personal level, they will be more receptive to your efforts to make a not-so-great situation better.

I’ve actually enjoyed seeing the messaging for these brands unfold.  When they stripped away the glitz and glam of their marketing mask and spoke instead from the heart of their brands, it was revealing and refreshing.

Toyota and BP responded by developing a campaign of TV spots expressing their presumably genuine feelings and actions towards making a problem right.  They highlighted employee dedication to safety and how significant the clean up efforts have been.   Of course, they did this to counter the negative press.  I know that and so does everyone else.  But the spots also reassured me that they are trying their best and I related to what they were going through, what they were doing about it and why. I do feel better about their brands as a result of seeing them.

Hearing from the head honcho also shows top down dedication to problem resolution.  Domino’s CEO talked openly about the process they went through to make their pizzas taste better.  This included a complete recipe redo, extensive focus groups and taste testing.  Taking it one step further, they will only show real Domino’s pizzas in their commercials, not the ones that are “perfected” by food stylists.  So, with all that, I truly see some significant changes and am willing to give them another try.  If they had just come out with a campaign that said “New and Improved Taste,” I’m not sure I’d even blink.

Here’s the real opportunity:  Honesty marketing is a great way to connect with customers even before a crisis hits. Why should a problem be the conduit to an open line of communication with your consumers?

Building trust is priceless when it comes to setting and delivering on a brand promise.  And the best way for customers to trust your brand is to speak to them openly and honestly.  Sharing your intentions, your goals, your process, and even your culture helps consumers relate to you and believe in your brand.   It makes your brand come alive and sets it apart from others.  And, it is far more comfortable to connect to a brand you trust than a brand out to just “sell you something.”

Honesty marketing can be messaged through mainstream or social media, direct marketing or one-on-one communications. It is a pretty versatile tool you can use to connect and engage your customers.  And more importantly, it is one that can increase long-term customer loyalty.  And honestly, isn’t that what we all want?

If you’d like some other insights on how to use honesty marketing as a part of your overall brand planning and marketing, please contact us.  We’d love to be open and honest with you!

Flickr photo courtesy of Eyeline Imagery