Marketing Roadmaps

Susan Getgood

Sundance will be “Electrified”

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I mentioned in last week’s post about Torchwood that I would miss the first episode because I would be at the Sundance Film Festival, and promised more information this week.

I’m going out to the Festival to support a new client, Maxwell Street Documentary, at the premiere of the film, Electrified- The Story of the Maxwell Street Urban Blues.

The film will be launched at a party at Harry O’s in  Park City next Friday January 25th. In addition to the screening of the film, there will be a live performance by acclaimed blues guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd and blues legend Hubert Sumlin. Actor Chevy Chase will be master of ceremonies. Fender has also donated a limited edition “Electrified” guitar that film executive producer Les Walgreen will present  to online auction house Charity Buzz for an auction  to benefit The Center for Environmental Education Online.

I’m doing media/blogger outreach and developing a blog for the film. If you are going to be at Sundance on the 25th and would like to come to the screening, email or Twitter me.

Electrified tells the definitive history of the Chicago blues. Narrated by actor Joe Mantegna, the film chronicles how the urban neighborhood of Maxwell Street created a unique environment of commerce and cooperation that led first to the hard-driving sound of the urban blues, and ultimately to rock and roll. Interviews with many of the legendary bluesmen who “studied at Chicago’s Maxwell Street school of music,” including Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Charlie Musselwhite, Jimmie Lee Robinson and the “father of rock and roll” Bo Diddley, complement the film’s historical narrative and create an exceptional history of this important era in American music.

A companion film, Cheat You Fair: The Story of Maxwell Street, documents the last days of the historic Maxwell Street market. It premiered to critical acclaim at the Chicago International Documentary Film Festival in April 2007, and is scheduled to be shown at the Amnesty International venue at Sundance January 18-20 and the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago on February 2.

Both Electrified and Cheat You Fair were written, directed and produced by longtime Chicago resident  and Emmy nominated producer Phil Ranstrom who began the projects in 1994 shortly before the Maxwell Street market was demolished.

We’ve put some short clips from both films up on YouTube. They are all great, but here are my two favorites:

"We come up the hard way…" Uncle Johnny Williams on how the blues were born

Eddie "Jewtown" Burkes performing "Step It Up And Go"

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Cleaning out the cupboards

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I really do have some awesome posts planned, just no time to write this week. So instead, I thought I’d clean out my virtual cupboards of some goodies for you. Don’t look for a theme, these truly are "small pieces very loosely joined" (nod to David Weinberger.)

First, some science fiction. Torchwood begins its second season on 1/26 on BBC America, and a few more trailers have surfaced. Official trailer. Two scenes from the first episode. Warning: As Twitter pal Dave Parmet and I discussed yesterday, Torchwood is DoctorWho with the naughty bits (his words) and without the most annoying David Tennant (mine). In other words, expect to see some adult relationships of all sorts in the show. And on these clips.

Battlestar Galactica is (finally) due back in April, and spoilery bits are starting to surface on YouTube. Here’s the latest one.

Now, unfortunately, I will not be able to watch Torchwood on the 26th because I will be at the Sundance Film Festival. Tough break, huh. I’ll have more information for you on Monday, but the short version is, I have a new client who is premiering a film during the Festival and I will be going out for the launch party on January 25th.

Speaking of Sundance, be sure to check out HP’s Backstage At Sundance blog. Longtime readers will recall that I helped develop this blog two years ago. Last year, they started featuring videos of impromptu performances by musicians attending the festival, a tradition I believe they plan to continue this year. 

BlogHer Business and New Comm Forum are both fast approaching. At BlogHer, I will be speaking, including a case study from a client project. More on that when the agenda is published.  At New Comm Forum, I will be moderating an "Alumni" Panel during lunch on the first day. We are inviting attendees from previous years to share a social media/ new communications project or campaign that applied the knowledge they acquired at New Comm Forum. The criteria are pretty simple:

  • you attended a previous New Comm Forum;
  • your project was done sometime in the past 18 months and you are free to share information about it;
  • you’ve never spoken at a previous New Comm Forum.

If this sounds like you, contact me at sgetgood@getgood.com or  twitter.com/sgetgood.

Finally, colleague and friend Kami Watson Huyse has a great post today — an interview with John "Pat" Philbin, the senior communications person who took the heat for FEMA’s fake press conference last fall. You can read it on her blog or listen to the full interview at For Immediate Release.

My virtual cupboard is now pretty bare. Meatier posts next week. Promise!

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The 08 Meme

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Todd Defren tagged me in the "08 for 08" meme. Tell eight things folks don’t know about you and then tag the requisite eight more folks. Now, at this point, after blogging for three years, I can’t imagine there is much you don’t know about me.  For goodness sake, just look at the masthead of my photo blog …

However, since I haven’t had time to write anything serious in 2008, I figured this was as good a chance as any to get something on the boards for the year.

1. As a child I hated athletics. I much preferred to read a book. The one time I went downhill skiing with family friends (in 3rd grade) I managed to fall down, ski under a picnic table and collide with a garbage can. Or at least that is how I remember it. As an adult, I’ve taken up downhill skiing, cross country skiing, snowshoeing, hiking, aerobics and have a treadmill that I use at least every other day. Go figure. 

2. I’m trying to find time to write a book. And start a software business.

3. Of all the things I do professionally, public speaking is just about my favorite. Okay, if you know me this isn’t MUCH of a surprise, but gimme a break, eight things people don’t know is bloody hard when you’ve been active online since 1993.

4. I’m a really good cook and have subscribed to Bon Appetit for more than 20 years. Nearly all of those back issues are in the basement. Ref. item 3 above, one of the things you’ll find if you "google" me is a recipe for German Chocolate Cake I posted in a newsgroup in the early 90s.

5. I got a Canon Digital Rebel for Christmas. And Santa brought the family a Flip camcorder. This is not news to folks who read Snapshot Chronicles as I am already inflicting my videos and pictures on them.

6. I just started working on a very cool project that will take me to the Sundance Film Festival later this month. More next week.

7. I love Christmas. Everything about it, including Christmas Carols. This year we had three full-size Christmas trees — two at home and one at our vacation home in Vermont where we spent the holiday. My husband thinks I need professional help 🙂 I’m not sure whether he means to put up and take down the trees, or something else … Pictures on Flickr.

8. Speaking of my husband … While I write about my son often, and occasionally mention my mom, I rarely write about David here because he is a very private person and  prefers to stay in the background. So, you don’t know, until today, that without his love and support, it would have been very difficult for me to achieve what I have professionally, both in my past life as a software company executive, and now with my businesses, and still have a family and five dogs and three cats and everything else that we work so hard to enjoy.

I suspect that most of the people I would tag have already been tagged in this meme, so if you haven’t and you’d like to tell us eight things for ’08, consider yourself tagged.

Happy New Year.

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Customer Service: the final volley (for 2007 at least)

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(warning, long post)

Earlier this month, I wrote two customer service posts. In the first post, "if customer service is the new marketing,"  I wondered, if this is indeed the case — if  front line interactions with customers are as or more important than any marketing campaigns we might devise, why is so much customer service still so awful. The second post featured comments from two bloggers who recently wrote about their own less than stellar customer experiences, Mir Kamin and TDavid.

Originally, I was going to wrap up the series with an "objective" analysis of the customer service problem, to see if we might be able to understand the macro factors causing it to be so bad as well as the unique micro factors in customer service excellence that perhaps we could model in our own attempts to improve.

Well, all that got thrown out the window last Saturday. Instead,  I am going to share an "epiphany" I had on the whole topic after a most disastrous customer experience.

First the story. Saturday morning, December 21, my son and I were driving from our home in Mass. to our vacation home in Vermont. My husband had a few things to do at home so he was following later. We had a carful of stuff, including three of the family dogs. Just after we got on Route 89 — the one the runs the whole "width" of NH to Vermont, we got a flat and pulled off the highway. Not the breakdown lane, I got off the highway all together hoping to find a gas station. This was around noontime. I called my husband, who was still at home and then called AAA once I determined from my GPS that the nearest service station was more than three miles away.

And the comedy of errors began.

Call Number 1: Service Rep says that Southern NE AAA cannot help me so transfers me to Northern NE AAA. Except he doesn’t. He disconnects me.

Call Number 2 (immediately after): I connect with another rep, who really does try to help. I explain the problem and where I am — on the Hopkinton/Route 103 exit off 89 West in NH. Remember this part, it is important. She gives me a case number and promises to rush a crew out. I assume (yeah I know) that she knew how to do something that the first rep did not.

10-15 minutes after we hang up, inbound call: AAA trying to understand where we are. So I tell them, again. We hang up.

Then  it dawns on me. They think we are in Hopkinton  Massachusetts.   Even though I was pretty clear.

So I call back. This is my Call Number 3 to AAA. It’s probably around 12:45, 1 pm by this time. New service rep. Finds the file. Confirms my suspicion that they are sending the crew to the wrong place. Connects me to AAA Northern NE, who cannot figure out where I am. Umm. Aren’t they supposed to know the roads? Anyway, a very long call later, we *think* someone is on the way.

Around quarter to two, though, I get a little nervous so I call back. Call Number 4 if you are still counting. Unfortunately, I still have to call Southern NE AAA because that’s the number on my card, and I neglected to ask for the Northern NE number when I was on the phone with them. Rep manages to transfer me, and I get the information that a wrecker is on the way from Manchester. For those of you who don’t know the area, that’s not far from where I broke down. Maybe 20 minutes. She also gives me the direct number to call, which comes in handy a little while later.

So we wait. And finally around 2:15… my husband and a local cop show up at the same time. Yes, you read that right. My husband made it from Hudson Mass. BEFORE AAA from Manchester NH. The police officer calls AAA to see what the scoop is, and while he is on his phone with them, AAA calls my phone. The wrecker is lost. This is probably about 2:30 or so.

WIth directions from the officer, the wrecker finally finds us, and the mechanic quickly fixes the flat. We’re on our way shortly after 3pm, with another 90 minutes to drive to reach the house. It was a brutal day, but that’s not why I share the story.

Here’s the epiphany. The people weren’t the customer service problem. Or at least not the worst of it. The process was the problem.

Each person was  trying to help, but the system is set up so poorly that they just couldn’t provide a good customer experience. For whatever reason, Southern NE AAA can’t enter a problem in NH and have Northern NE AAA then pick up the call. And of course the whole mess was compounded by the fact that either the rep or the system made the initial faulty assumption that our Hopkinton was in Mass. I was also thrown by the fact that the reps — even the Northern NE AAA reps — we spoke to couldn’t figure out where we were. Don’t they publish maps??

The people sincerely wanted to help. But they couldn’t because the system got in the way. As a result, AAA failed miserably to efficiently deliver the roadside assistance service that is the reason I (and most people) joined AAA in the first place.  And my son and I were stuck by the side of the road for three hours on a cold but clear December day.

So when we experience truly excellent customer service, either the system is set up to allow such great service — think Nordstrom or Zappos. Or an individual rises above the inadequacies of the process.

Shouldn’t we be aiming for the former? Systems and processes that allow customer facing employees –whether service, sales or marketing — to deliver the positive experiences we all want.  I don’t tend to do big end-of-the-year posts, but if I were to wish for one thing for us as customers and marketers, it would be that: systems and processes that let us satisfy, not frustrate, the customer.

As for AAA, I do intend to contact the organization and share my concerns. I still think it is a great organization that delivers a valuable service.

I just wish it had done so a little better last Saturday.

A final postscript:  The local police officer only found us because a fellow cop coming off duty called it in.  It never occured to me (or apparently any of the many other cars that passed us) to call the police. He told me that you should always call the local police in an emergency, even something as simple as a flat tire. They often can get AAA or a wrecker out faster, and certainly we felt safer on the side of the road once we had the cruiser there.

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WhyMommy & give Peas a chance

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cross posted to Snapshot Chronicles

Over the past week or so, a movement took shape on Twitter to support a fellow blogger Susan Reynolds recently diagnosed with a difficult-to-treat form of breast cancer. As a result of a comment she made about using frozen peas to relieve pain in the affected breast, folks started adding images of peas to their Twitter avatars in a show of support. I don’t know Susan, but many friends and acquaintances do, and  I truly admire bloggers facing life-threatening diseases who write about their battle in an effort to help others.

So,  I decided I would put up a new Twitter avatar. A decision made easier when the Queen of Spain’s talented husband offered to make pea avatars for people, meaning you wouldn’t be subjected to my sketchy graphics skills.

However, I decided I didn’t just want peas. I’ve written here before about a courageous woman fighting inflammatory breast cancer, Susan Niebur, also known as WhyMommy, who used her blog and the community of mommy bloggers to spread the word about this rare form of cancer.

I wanted my avatar to honor both Susans.

So today, in their honor and also in memory of friends and family lost to cancer, my Twitter avatar is a pink Y, for WhyMommy, wearing a pea necklace, for Susan Reynolds.

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