Marketing with Technology and More

Caveat Venditor is the new Caveat Emptor

Many of us grew up in a society where the consumer mantra was always caveat emptor – let the buyer beware.  Beware for the world was filled with unscrupulous marketers and businesses that would rapidly remove hard-earned cash from your pockets and fill them with cheap products that didn’t work as promised , or deliver as required. 

The world is changing rapidly, and the old maxim of caveat emptor is rapidly changing into a new warning of caveat venditor – let the seller beware.  Today’s consumer no longer is powerless to change things, upset them, fail to deliver on your promises, anger them and you will find the tides of enterprise rapidly shift against you.  Upset enough of them, and the world as you know it may come crashing down on you.

This weekend it happened to the makers of Motrin.  They developed what I am sure both they and their ad agency thought was a “cute” ad that promoted their product by poking fun at mothers and baby carriers (Marketing 101 - never make fun of mothers or their children – very bad idea).  What happened was a literal firestorm of consumer action in the form of extremely negative feedback from consumers (many, but not all mothers) on blogs, Twitter and even in at least one case a 9 minute “protest video.” 

If you are on Twitter, check out the hash tag #motrinmoms, there are literally hundreds of postings about the offending ads.  By Sunday evening, close to 70 blog postings had been tracked mentioning it.  The video poster/blogger Katja Presna received an apology from the VP of Marketing - Pain, Pediatrics, GI, Specialty at McNeil (the makers of Motrin), and the Motrin web site had been completely taken down. 

I think McNeil got the message, unfortunately, there was much more they could have done to avert this disaster, and they could have been a part of the conversation rather than just sent out an email to one of the bloggers.  In the new age of Caveat venditor, if you are the seller, be prepared to play by the new rules.  They are:

• Think before you act – the consumer is watching and if they don’t like your actions, they will report on it (via email, blog, micro-blog, video, pod-cast and other social communications tools yet to be developed.  Ask a simple questions, “if I was my consumer would l like the action I am about to take”? 
• Listen – there is a global conversation happening and some of the talk is about you.  Good or bad, you must know what is being said and you must be listening.  Do you know the places where the conversation is occurring?  Do you have a method and a plan for gathering the rivers of conversation that pertain to you?  You should. 
• Converse – You must be part of the conversation.  This doesn’t mean you get to control it and it doesn’t mean you get to advertise in it.  The great part about today’s social media world is that it is like a giant cocktail party and everyone is welcome as long as they obey the norms of the group.  As a participant you will reap much in the way of rewards that go beyond anything you would find in any other one-way customer communications medium.
• Learn – No one has yet figured out this massive new world.  The great opportunity is if you participate now, you get to learn along with the others who are developing this new field.  The only failure will come from failing to participate.

The Invisible Hand Can Be Seen

Back in my University days I took quite a number of economics courses.  One of the first books most  economics students read in those days (and maybe still do) was Scottish economist Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations originally published in 1776.  I enjoyed that book immensely and thought it gave a great explanation of how an economic system was driven by individuals.  One key premise that Smith built his economic treatise on he dubbed  “The Invisible Hand.”

“The Invisible Hand,” was a great metaphor for how markets used to work.  The basic premise was that in free-markets, individuals, driven by their own-self interest, will act in a way that ultimately maximizes the wealth of a community.  “The invisible hand” will guide each in a way that ensures that by maximizing their own self-interest society as a whole gains the most.  Individuals neither intend to promote the public interest, nor do they even know that they are doing so, yet they do, by trying to maximize their own lot in life.

We know much more about economics today than we did in Smith’s time (yet we still manage to screw it up), however this is not my point here.  I believe that “The Invisible Hand” can now be seen in a way that it has never been visible before.  I was first excited by the Internet and what it initially did to reduce friction on economic activity.  Now, along come social networking tools, and I think they are in the process of severing the invisible hand.  For if you are listen to the social media/net world, it is easy to hear discussions that lay out market direction, before the market actually move.

Honest dialog is occurring about products, companies, politics, ideas, movements, organizations, events and tribes (to use Seth Godin’s metaphor).  People may still operate in their own self-interest, but communicate about it in a rare and extended way that distributes that which is of value to society at lightning speed.  So, self-interest that is self-serving is self-destructive in an unprecedented way.  We are at the dawn of the social network era (think Internet 1995) the basic social networking tools of today, blogs, wiki's, photo sharing, etc along with popular commercial resources (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Plurk, etc) are empowering people to help each other in ways that are extremely transparent and would have been impossible in the past. 

If you are in the conversation, you know what I mean.  If not, be prepared to wake up some day by being slapped in the face by a very visible hand that you just haven’t been looking at.

Good to the last drop

Seth Godin had a post today about marketing that delivers exactly the message marketers (and salespeople for that matter) need to hear as the economy gets tougher.  Now is the time to stick to your marketing progams.  Only he says it in a way that it almost sounds like poetry.

Google AdWords Marketers - Beware! Phisher's are Out There

I think I am pretty savvy when it comes to on-line purchasing.  The last thing I thought is thatI would ever fall prey to is a Phishing scam, but Phishers are crafty. 

As a business we are regular Adwords users on Google.  I had not used them in a while, so I reactivated a somewhat dormant account the other day.. A day later I ger an email telling me that my account information is not up-to-date, and that I need to correct it.  Diligently I clicked in the message and went to the site that the email pointed me to adWRods.com .  When I spell it out, it is obvious, but without the emphasis, it is easy to go to a bogus site.

When I arrived at the site, it looked just like the Google site, and I readily provided the requested information.  The last thing I would want is our Google campaign shut down because my credit card information was obsolete.  Fortunately, the latest versions of the major browser try to give you a heads-up.  In my case, I received a message that made me look closely at the URL.

I was like they fly in the spider web.  Once I was caught, I was doomed.  Phishers are creative and ingenious.  You have to be diligent every time you provide credit card information.  The identity you save may be your own.

United Airlines - What were these people thinking

I received an email from United Airlines today asking me to participate in a study on the "Elite Membership" kit they sent to me.  I looked at the survey and thought - who put this together, their marketing intern.  Actually, I think a marketing intern would have done a better job. 

The four data points related to all items were (you could only pick one):
- Received it
- Read it
   Received it and Read it
- Don't remember

So here is the question - can I read it if I don't receive it?  It would not taken much brainstorming to figure out that this did not make any sense.  Then it asked me about my membership card, and had the same four options.  I don't know about you, but I don't usually do much reading of my membership cards when I get them.  The second page of the survey asked how useful this information was to me.  I can't believe that they really think much of the advertising they throw into their envelopes these days is very useful to anyone.

It brings me to my point.  We assembled and sent out SubscriberMail's annual email survey in conjunction with the EEC this week.  We initially sent a small sample to test questions and reports.  When we got the sample back, there was a major back end issue with reports.  We were able to reconfigure the survey and send it out correctly.  If you are doing a survey, testing a small sample can give you great feedback on how to improve questions and what the reporting will look like.  Don't trigger a survey without testing.   Perhaps I was in the United test group - for their results sake, let's hope so.

The Web - Instant Market Research

I love the power of the web for feedback.  I had a community project I was involved in, and as part of that project I needed to conduct a simple survey.   Before the web, undertaking this task would have been daunting.  I would have had to print up surveys send them out (if I could afford the postage).  Then wait until the surveys were returned and then tabulate them.  If I wanted to get more details, I could get really fancy and run cross tabs. The cost of doing this kind of research was out of the scope of most community organizations (and many marketers).

Tonight, I sat down at my computer, used Zoomerang to put together a very simple survey.  I used our SubscriberMail system to send a message to the community (who had opted in to hear from us).  Literally five minutes after I launched the survey, the data started to pour in.  I can easily run cross tabs, and I can automatically send a follow-up email to anyone who has not clicked through to the survey.

As a marketer...what is not to love.

Marketing's Philosopher

When I was out at TED this year I ran into Seth Godin.  I wish I had more time to spend with him as I think he is a marketing genius.  He's often referred to as a guru.  I think that is the wrong moniker.  I think he is really a marketing philosopher.  Sometimes he makes simple statements that boil things down to their essential nature.  Today he posted the following:

"Persistence isn't using the same tactics over and over. That's just annoying.

Persistence is having the same goal over and over."

If more salespeople and marketers paid attention to this advice, the world would definitely be much more enjoyable (and less annoying).

Navigating to success

My daughter is in college, and is working on a project for one of her classes.  She is working on a presentation for her speech class about the effect of web design on consumer behavior.  She sent me a copy of the speech outline and one of the key items in her talk really hit me as it relates to web interfaces:  “Shopping patterns and consumer behavior are not just random acts.”

This is basic marketing, but it is amazing how often major organizations forget about this.  From experience I know that the challenges related to user interface design is that many organizational factions get involved and everyone has a perspective.  What you often end up with is a design that looks like the elephant that was described by six blind men. 

Never forget that in most situations, people come to your web site with a specific goal in mind.  Very few will end up there by random chance.  Don’t design a website or email message from your perspective as a marketer, but from the perspective of the visitor.  Marketers are so used to push marketing that sites are often designed from the perspective of “here is where we want to push you” or “this is what we want you to buy”.  When you do this with little regard to ease of navigation, your website is doomed to underperform.

A great example she uses to illustrate this is walmart.com.  Just visit the site and move your mouse around.  There are so many navigation components that you can easily get lost.  Her research indicates that on an average day, the number one retailer in the world has .2 percent of all global internet traffic (compare this to Amazon, whose daily reach is as high as 5 percent).

In addition to these points, as a father, it is wonderful to see your daughter have such insight – she makes me very proud.

PC uses a Mac

John Hodgman, better known as PC from last year's Apple commercials, as well as a very funny Daily Show contributor was caught on film at TED using a Mac by Erik Charlton.  Read Erik's flickr posting for a real laugh, and a great story behind this picture.

Hodgman presented an extremely humorous program on his encounter with aliens. 

Zappos in the Airport

I was in the airport in San Diego last week, and while going through security, noticed that something was different than at other airports.  The little baskets that you put your shoes and laptops in had liners.  These liners were promoting online shoe retailer Zappos.  Easch had a different promotional slogan. What a great marketing idea.  According to information I have found on-line, this is being piloted at several airports.  The company providing the service, SecurityPoint, provides the TSA with the bins at no charge, and charges the companies for the advertising.