Capturing reality
Friday, August 29th, 2008This video is a great satire on the world of brute force branding. It’s from Geert Desager of bringtheloveback.com.
Archive for August, 2008
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Tweet ThisA web community amused by brute force branding
Thursday, August 28th, 2008After years of proudly saying, “I’m am not addicted to any TV shows,” I must humbly admit that I am now hooked on a show. Yes, it’s Mad Men.
Besides the great writing, always-developing characters, and nostalgia for the years I was in diapers, I’ll admit to a warm feeling of schadenfreude watching ad agency execs make asses of themselves. Stupid Super Bowl ads in 2008 can trace their genealogy back to the ill-conceived, liquor-lubricated advertising guess-work of 1960 portrayed on Mad Men.
AMC TV is now running a “You Could Be On Mad Men” contest. The wonderful irony is that a television show about the origins of one-way, brute-force, mass-market advertising is using an up-to-date Web 2.0 forum to engage Mad Men fans in a community of obsession. Viewers have submitted videos of themselves doing one-minute monologues from six of the show’s characters. With tons of creative videos and hundreds of comments on these entries, I suddenly have a window into what other fans are thinking about the show. These demonstrations of admiration from other “customers” beat any ads for the show that the crew at Sterling Cooper could ever come up with.
The entrants didn’t stop at gender boundaries, with men portraying women and vice-versa. This is also ironic, since the show highlights the anachronism of office sexism so vividly. Here’s a creative example of a woman playing the male lead, Don Draper and another of a man playing Don’s wife Betty.
A ton of feathers
Monday, August 25th, 2008After landing in Baltimore late this afternoon, I popped over to Annapolis to meet with my colleague Dan Harris and his associate Steve Holt for a short social get-together. Over drinks and a bite to eat we got on to one of my favorite topics: How most companies don’t tap the potential in their existing customer base. We were discussing how companies reflexively focus a disproportionate amount resources on acquiring new customers at the expense of developing their current customer relationships.
Steve was making the related point that it’s much more profitable to have fewer, high-producing customers than many low-producing customers. He suddenly improvised a great line: “A ton of bricks weighs as much as a ton of feathers, but it takes up a lot less space.”
What a great image! Managing a ton of feathers requires a lot of overhead “space” in your company. If you can concentrate your revenue “weight” in some very profitable bricks, you’ll be in much better shape.
Joni’s back … at this very moment
Saturday, August 16th, 2008One of my favorite lessons from writing We and studying customer relationships is that the best wisdom for business often comes from everyday life. A few weeks ago I wrote a post describing an inspiration from listening to a Joni Mitchell song when I was in Europe. Today, Joni’s plain wisdom inspired me once again.
Just now, at 33,000 feet on the way from Atlanta to Chicago, I was listening to her song Chelsea Morning and heard one of my favorite passages:
Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning and the first thing that I knew,
There was milk and toast and honey, and a bowl of oranges, too.
The sun poured in like butterscotch, and stuck to all my senses,
Won’t you stay, we’ll put on the day, and talk in present tenses?
One of the key components of a relationship-building encounter is that you and your customer need to both be fully present, engaged in the present moment. As I wrote in this recent post on tompeters.com, one of the easiest ways to kill a sales conversation is to be focused on the next step in the sales process, ignoring the opportunity to create an encounter RIGHT NOW, in the present moment.
When Joni wakes up into her Chelsea morning, she is fully engaged in the “what’s happening now.” What does she want to do? Talk in present tenses.
That’s profound. Even while you are in a discussion with your customer planning the future, or recapping the past, be sure that you are in the spirit of the present tense.
When you are engaged in dialogue with your customer, think, “Won’t you stay, we’ll put on the day, and talk in present tenses?”
Wow. Thanks again, Joni.
We disagree, Jeffrey
Thursday, August 7th, 2008Jeffrey Gitomer is one of the leading experts in sales, by any measure. His Little Red Book of Selling and seminars are legendary. But I have to disagree with him this time.
Yesterday, a number of people forwarded me Jeffrey’s latest Sales Caffiene newsletter, in which he recommended that his readers banish the word “We” from their vocabulary as they interact with customers. The people who sent me the newsletter were curious for my reaction, since, as they know, I believe that “We” is one of the most important words to describe a customer relationship.
Unfortunately, Jeffrey sees the word “We” only as a tool for bragging about your own company, as in “We are #1 in our market” and “We’ve been a leader since 1982.” He says that you should avoid the word “We” because it’s more important to talk about your customer, not about yourself.
Yes, of course, it’s more important to talk about your customers than to talk about yourself. But, to me, “We” isn’t about bragging about yourself, because the “We” I’m thinking of doesn’t only include you and the people in your own company. The “We” I am aiming for is one in which your customer can’t think of you without thinking of himself at the same time. In your customer’s mind, your company evolves beyond being “them” or “those guys” to being “We,” because the customer sees the two of you bound in genuine partnership.
So, I’ll agree with Jeffrey in that you shouldn’t brag about how great “We” are, since your customer doesn’t care. But I also want to encourage you to embrace the word “We” … not in the way Jeffrey describes it, but in the way you aim for your customers to view their relationship with you: As a “We” relationship.
If you don’t know Jeffrey Gitomer, check out his site. It’s full of amazing ideas. But this is one on which “We” disagree.
(For a quick description of a We relationship, check out the first audio link on this post.)
Birds fly away, and so do customers
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008A few mornings ago, I was taking a relaxing walk with my friend Ezra in the Gan Sacher, a park in Jerusalem.
Birds were everywhere in the park. I had my tiny Flip video camera, and I trained it on the birds as I walked up to them. Of course, as soon as I would get close, the birds’ defensive instincts told them to fly away. As I tried to walk gingerly up to the birds (without much success), it reminded me of the defensive instincts customers employ to survive the barrage of marketing messages that interrupt them everyday.
This silent 90 second film is just a simple thought for today, inspired by birds trying to live their lives without interruption.
Can a customer relationship be perfect?
Friday, August 1st, 2008Is a perfect We relationship attainable with a customer?
It really doesn’t matter. Imagining a perfect We relationship is what matters. That vision will guide you to create the relationship that is the best relationship possible with this customer.
This is a lesson that is not new. Plato, more that 2300 years ago, pointed out that everything in the real world is imperfect, but that we can understand the essence of things by comparing them to an absolute “form” which we have never actually seen. Have you ever seen perfect blue? Witnessed perfect justice? Heard perfect truth? Plato would say that you haven’t, that every thing you see in the world is only a shadow of a perfect form. But, through inherent knowledge of that perfect form we understand the things that we experience in real life. (How we get that knowledge is another story – see Plato’s Theory of Recollection if you are interested)
Similarly, it may be impossible, with a given customer, to create a perfect We relationship. But, by imagining a perfect relationship, as if it were a Platonic form, you have something to aim for. That fact that you will never attain perfection is beside the point. Aim high, and the relationship will be as strong as possible.
Like many things, a relationship is not an on/off switch. A relationship is more like a dimmer switch. Imagine total illumination, and turn up the brightness.
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