The Final Say

"Don't let it end like this.  Tell them I said something."
Pancho Villa, last words 1877 - 1923

Endings are important.  When it comes to customer service, endings are perhaps the most important time in the customer interaction, primarily because it is your last chance to leave the customer with a good impression, the last chance to correct any mistakes or missteps and the last chance to make things exceptional.

I was once eating lunch with a colleague at a restaurant that was part of a national chain.  During the course of lunch, a cockroach crawled across our table.  Neither of us at the table were happy about that, but neither of us freaked out either.  It did put a certain pallor on our lunch, which ended sooner than we had expected because of the unexpected visitor.  When I mentioned what had happened to our server, she expressed appropriate dismay and asked us to wait to talk with the manager.

My first response was that this was good.  They were taking our experience seriously and wanted restaurant management to know and have a chance to apologize.  But as my colleague and I waited for more than 15 minutes to talk with the manager (we kept being told he would be right there) our anger at the situation grew.
By making us wait for so long (this was a business day and we both had to get back to work), the manager took what would have been a minor situation and escalated it.  Instead of giving us the impression that they took the cleanliness of the restaurant and the quality of our experience seriously, the absent manager highlighted the fact that we just weren't that important.

We had more than 15 minutes to think about the little creature that crawled across our table and what that probably meant about how many of his siblings were crawling around other parts of the restaurant.  As we had more than 15 minutes to wait, we thought about the meals that we didn't finish due to this incident, the time this was costing us waiting for the manager and the poor attitude of the staff (actually only the manager, but anger has a way of painting with a broad brush.)

When the manager finally decided to attend to us, he immediately went into a rather lengthy and detailed description of all the pest control measures that the restaurant engaged in, which is now and forevermore the first thing I think of when I think of this chain.  I am sure their advertising agency will be pleased to know that.  It also seemed as if the manager was saying that we couldn't possibly have seen a cockroach because they invest a small fortune on chemicals and exterminators to keep them at bay.  In the end, the manager spent another 10 or 15 minutes blathering on about restaurant pest management as if he were preparing for the test on that chapter of the manager's manual.

When I finally interrupted him and told him that we needed to be going he asked us to wait just a minute more and scurried off (somewhat like a cockroach I was thinking at this point.)  When he returned he proudly handed us each certificates for a free dessert, next time we returned and purchased a meal.  He then charged us for the full meal we were unable to finish.  We shook our heads, paid our bill and left.  It took me and my family more than 10 years to go back to any store in that chain.

The manager missed an opportunity by a mile.  By ignoring us and our situation, he ended the situation poorly.  A little sympathy would have made us go away satisfied and we probably would have forgotten it after a few retellings around the office.  A discount of our bill or waiving the bill altogether would have made a bold statement and probably would have had us leaving the restaurant feeling pretty good about the place.  A bold action like that would have said to us that they cared about our experience and since our experience wasn't great, they wanted to do something about it.  I suspect it also would have helped us feel that it didn't happen very often because they couldn't afford to waive everyone's lunch receipt.

YOU have the final say on what type of experience your customers have.  YOU have control over the last impression you and your organization makes before your customer walks out or logs off.  Especially when a customer has a poor or less than excellent experience, YOU have the chance to turn it around into something positive.

YOU have the final say!  Make it count!

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Everything is Marketing will not be published this Friday as I will be out of state attending a memorial service for my father-in-law.  Please take the time you would normally spend reading my blog to call or write to a loved one and tell them what they mean to you.  See you again on Monday.
Bill

The Apple of Everyone's Eye

After 13 years as the Best Global Brand, Coca Cola has lost a bit of its fizz.  In the last week, international branding and marketing company, Interbrand, who evaluates companies on their global brand appeal, has named Apple as the Best Global Brand.  Interbrand looks at a number of factors, including financial success and market influence in making their list.  Tech companies tended to dominate the list this year, with Google taking the second spot, IBM in fourth, Microsoft in fifth and Samsung in eigth.

In separate news, Emily Chasen of the Wall Street Journal reported that "U.S. nonfinancial companies held $1.48 trillion in cash as of June 30, according to Moody’s review of the more than 1,000 companies it rates. Cash stockpiles have grown by about 2% from $1.45 trillion at the end of last year, and up 81% from $820 billion at the end of 2006."  What makes this relevant to the story about Apple being the top brand is that 10% of those cash reserves, or about $147 billion, belongs to one company...Apple.

So Apple, well known and with lots of cash on hand, is like that kid you resented in high school...more popular and richer than anyone has a right to be.  

And just like that kid in high school, the future looks bright for Apple.  Their massive cash reserves will afford them the ability to develop or acquire the technology that they need to keep their stable of products popular and in demand.  Their ubiquitous name and logo will keep them in the minds of tech-hungry populous.  Their aura and mystique and money will provide them some ability to survive the occassional stumble or misstep without losing customer loyalty.

It is somewhat amazing that Apple is on the top brand list at all.  In the 90s, the company appeared to be gasping on fumes.  Swallowing its pride, the Board of Directors wooed Steve Jobs back to the company he started and the rest, as they say, is history.  The other remarkable thing is that Apple has hit this high water mark two years after Jobs' death.  Given past history, some pundits speculated whether Apple could grow, thrive or even survive without Jobs at the helm. 

I don't expect that Apple will repeat Coke's 13 year run as Best Global Brand.  For one, I suspect Coke's longevity as Best Global Brand had a lot to do with more than a century of strong branding and marketing throughout the world.  Apple hasn't been around that long, nor as consistently successful or global.  Second, Google is nipping at Apple's heels.  Coca Cola, at number three, is significantly behind the two tech giants in Brand Value as calculated by Interbrand.  More than any other company on the list, Google also has impressive cash reserves and reputation that will allow it to almost compete with Apple, if it chooses, in growth and branding games.

Regardless of what happens in future years, right now, its good to be Apple!

Do you have an Oak Marketing Strategy?

Last weekend, my daughter and I were discussing the trees in our backyard.  Specifically we were discussing what to do about a Burr Oak that we planted several years ago and a Maple that had grown nearby. I was touting the benefits of the Maple, because it had gotten so tall, so fast.  My daughter called it a "weed tree" and complained that it was crowding out the Burr Oak, keeping it from getting the sunlight and water it needed.

Burr Oak tree, West Dundee, IL.
Diameter: 49.7". Estimated age: 300+ years.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It struck me that the debate we were having was a good metaphor for the debate marketers have all the time between short term promotional campaigns and brand building; between short term and long term marketing.

Just like the trees in our back yard, short term marketing has the potential to crowd out long term marketing and brand building.  Opportunistic one-shot advertising and promotional campaigns have their place.  They can be very effective and useful...in the short term.  Like the maple tree, they are nice to look at and it is easy to see their benefits.  But if those campaigns aren't managed, and carefully used within the framework of a larger, long term marketing strategy, you run the risk of using all your resources, all your sunlight and water, on something that grows fast and then is gone.

For those of you who don't have an arborist nearby, let me explain. Burr Oaks are slow growing and long lasting trees.  Burr Oaks can live to be 300 to 400 years old.  That means there are Burr Oaks around that could have provided shade for a young Benjamin Franklin.  Maple trees grow fast and last an average of 75 to 100 years.

Like the Burr Oak, a strategic marketing plan provides long-lasting benefits.  It takes a long time and a lot of patience to build a lasting brand image.  But if you give it the resources it needs, and manage the other activities competing for those resources, your time and efforts will be rewarded with something truly special. You develop something long-lasting and awe inspiring.

You develop an Oak Marketing Strategy.

Frozen Twinkies

Twinkies (Hostess Twinkies is a trademark of Hostess Brands LLC). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Before last winter, the most prevailing story, or urban myth, about Twinkies was the one about the guy who found a 20 year old Twinkie behind his couch and it was still soft and consumable.

Twinkies were right alongside cockroaches as the things most likely to weather a nuclear holocaust unscathed.

Then last winter disaster struck. Hostess, the company that made and sold Twinkies filed for bankruptcy.  More importantly, they announced the end of the United States production and distribution of Twinkies and several other brands.

Suddenly, Twinkies were the most popular formerly ignored snack on store shelves.  People stocked up with  cases and cases of the cream-filled sponge cake treats, anticipating a healthy black market of contraband snack cakes.  Besides, they last forever, right?

Then the white knight arrived.  Investors came and bought the Twinkies brand, as well as those of several other snack cakes, with the intention of returning them to production.

There was joy in Snackville...except among those who were sitting on cases of Twinkies.

Then strange things started to happen.  Hostess Brands LLC, the new owner of Twinkies, started issuing press releases that included terms like shelf life and talked about selling frozen Twinkies to some retailers to help extend expiration dates.  This was very confusing and contradicted just about everything I "knew" about Twinkies and their lack of a need for an expiration date.

I have come to the conclusion that the masterminds behind Hostess Brands LLC are actually marketing geniuses.  First, they manage to "rescue" a suddenly beloved brand from the expiration bin at fire sale prices, waiting long enough that a frenzy had been built up about the brand that hadn't been seen since the likes of New Coke.

Then, they wait six months to bring back the lunch box delicacies, further tamping up demand.  Then, announcements about the reintroduction include talk of expiration dates and freezing for selective retailers.  Suddenly, we are comparing Twinkies to more delicate baked goods instead of cockroaches.

Well played, Hostess Brands!  Well played!

In the Pink: The Branding of a Color

This blog is being reposted.

I complimented a colleague the other day, who was looking sharp in a new pink dress shirt.  "It's salmon," he corrected me.

It got me to wondering how pink got so strongly identified as the color of femininity (and to a much lesser extent, blue as the color of masculinity.)

I think most brand managers would kill to be able to have a brand association as strong as the association of females and pink (or light red as another male colleague always calls it.)