Ready, Shoot, Aim

In this era of Twitter and Instagram, there is considerable pressure on companies and brands to be timely and topical and try to grab their share of the viral madness of a given issue.  In this era of citizen journalists and a smart phone in many pockets, companies and brands are compelled to try to be the first out of the gate with a comment about a topic.  It is a Ready, Shoot, Aim culture.

The truth is, however, many companies end up doing much more harm then good to their brands  when they display their clumsiness or cultural insensitivity through a poorly written or ill-timed tweet or post.  The chances of this happening go up exponentially when a company is focusing more on timeliness (we want to be the first to comment on this) than appropriateness.

Occasionally a company hits a home run.  Ironically, a perfect example of a company hitting a home run is the tweet that Oreo sent during last year's Super Bowl.  When the power went out and most of us were growing weary of listening to the announcers try to fill an unexpected long period of time, the marketing team for Oreo was working hard and effectively.  They came up with a simple, brilliant, topical tweet.  You can see that tweet here and at the end of this blog.  It was funny.  It was inoffensive.  It filled the time while millions of people were waiting for the Super Bowl to start again.  It got retweeted over and over again.  It went viral.  Opportunities like the Super Bowl power outage are rare. Companies being ready to take advantage of those rare opportunities are even rarer.  Oreo was the company that took the best advantage of that opportunity.  They are still enjoying the benefits, as people like me continue to talk about it and share the tweet.

But it is not easy to do this.  Many companies, trying to be quick-witted or topical or edgy, end up sounding tone deaf, insensitive and just plain nasty.  Take for example, the ads for Blush Lingerie connecting their underwear to Edward Snowden uncovering things.  You can find these slightly NSFW ads here.  The ads are not that funny and somewhat tone deaf.

It also seems as if some marketers can't resist joining in on a world event that is garnering lots of attention.  For example, consider the tweet by Kennith Cole, a clothing designer of some renown, who tweeted ""Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC"  His next tweet, 2 hours later, was an apology about making light of a "serious situation."

Every marketer dreams of doing what Oreo did in the Super Bowl.  To a marketer, it is like hitting a walk off home run in the World Series.  But (as I totally overuse this sports analogy) every home run hitter says you strike out a lot before you hit a home run.  The trick is to make sure your strike outs don't do serious damage to your brand.  The trick is to make sure your misses are simply misses and not culturally or socially insensitive to the point of being all people remember about your brand.  The trick is to tie your brand to an event that is easier to make jokes about, like the Super Bowl, rather than one in which people are killed and maimed, like Arab Spring or the Boston bombing.

Finally, and I think most important, it is more important when using social media to tie your brand to current events to take a bit of extra time to get your message right.  No one is talking about who had the first advertising tweet tied to the Super Bowl power outage.  Rather, they are talking about the brand who got everything right.  The brand who took the time to aim before they shot!

Know Your Stuff

I once had a salesperson make an appointment with my boss and myself to tell us about his company and the product that he felt we could use.

He was on time, well dressed and did the required small talk very well.  But when it came time to give the presentation, he couldn't get the PowerPoint presentation on his laptop to work.  After watching him struggle with trying to get things to work for 10 minutes or so, it was clear that he couldn't give the presentation without the PowerPoint crutch.  He asked if he could reschedule the meeting.  We declined.

If you are going on a sales call or making a presentation, know your stuff.  Things happen with technology.  If you aren't prepared to move forward without laptop assistance, you aren't prepared. Be prepared!

Make 'em Laugh!

Marketing is about making connections.

Studies have shown that most people make purchase decisions emotionally and then sometimes rationalize those emotional decisions with facts.

So it stands to reason that if you are a marketer or a salesperson and you can get your target audience to respond emotionally to your message -- you make them laugh, or cry, or feel nostalgic -- then you have a better chance of making that connection.

It seems to me that a good strategy is to have a message that communicates the emotional impact and benefits of the product or service but with enough details that the potential customer is able to act on the purchase decision and enough facts for them to justify it.


Some other posts to my blog that you might enjoy:
Read the Label: Pay Attention to the Subject of Your Messages
Could I have a few moments of your time?

Managing Expectations: Under Promise and Over Deliver

I recently wrote a post about problems I had with my phone line.  What I didn't write about was the result of that call for help to the phone company.

Things didn't start out well.  I called on Saturday afternoon and was told that the soonest they could send someone out was "Tuesday morning between 8 and noon."  Less than thrilled to be without phone, and especially Internet service, for so long, I accepted my fate and made arrangements to take Tuesday morning off of work to be here when the phone company arrived.  Trips to the library and to local restaurants that offer free WiFi allowed my wife and I to check email and take care of some work we had to do.

Imagine my surprise and delight when I got a call Monday afternoon from the phone company repair guy who said he was on they way to our house and wanted to talk about the problems we were having.  My delight was doubled when he told me that the problem was most likely on the outside and that I didn't need to meet him at the house.  In a final example of excellent customer service, this gentleman had the courtesy to call me back, tell me what he had done (most of which I didn't understand) and tell me that everything should be working again.  This was a classic case of someone exceeding my expectations.

I think over promising has to be one of the most common mistakes made by marketers.  More and more companies, in order to make a better first impression, are making claims and promises that are closer and closer to the best possible outcomes their consumers should expect for their products and services.  While that might be effective in garnering more first tries, when the average customer experience falls below the marketing assertions, the majority of your first tries will also be last tries.

The company that under promises and over delivers is taking a long term marketing path toward building a strong customer base.  While a company taking this approach might engage fewer customers early on, many more of their customers who do try their product or service, will continue to be customers if their expectations are exceeded.

If the phone company had told me the repairman was going to be there Monday, I would have gotten the exact same service, but my expectations would have been different.  I would have been less thrilled with the outcome. 

Doorways

Your customer is standing in your doorway.  In 5 seconds or less they are making a subconscious decision on whether they are going to have a good experience or a bad one.

What are you doing in those 5 seconds to convince them it will be good?