Marketing

Good advertising makes all the difference: Ad Club Hatch Awards

October 9, 2009 by Susan Getgood

Advertising.

It is often said that consumers don’t like or pay attention to advertising.

Not true.

What consumers don’t like is BAD advertising. Lazy copy. Poor targeting. Offensive stereotypes.

We also don’t like crummy products. No matter how good the ad, it cannot make a crummy product excellent or a dangerous product safe. Regardless of what they say on Mad Men.

We do like — even love — good advertising. Ads that tell a story. Make us feel. Make us laugh. If we’re in marketing, make us wish we’d thought of that.

Tuesday night, I was privileged to attend the 49th Annual Hatch Awards as a guest of the AdClub and got to see a lot of great advertising without having to watch TV or read a magazine.

There’s no way I can do justice to all the award winners in a single post, but here’s a random sampling of the ones I liked most.

My favorite TV spots were Mullen‘s Bruins Hockey Rules commercials. The campaign won a gold as did this commercial “Date.”

If you want more, I posted all the spots over at Snapshot Chronicles.

I also liked Arnold‘s TV spots for the American Legacy Foundation and Hill Holliday‘s series for Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project.

It’s harder to appreciate print advertising in the award show format. You miss the look and feel of the ad in the chosen vehicle. How well it fits (or doesn’t) in the publication. Even so, it was easy to like Mullen’s work for the New England Aquarium and Kelliher Samets Volk/Boston’s newspaper ads for WMBR radio.

Finally, as much as I do not believe in personal branding, I have to commend the silver winner in the personal branding category for the sheer balls of his campaign, malecopywriter.com

You may have noticed I did not mention any of the award winners in the social media or website/microsite categories. Not because the work wasn’t excellent. It was. But my strongest impression was that advertising agencies see, and execute, social media very differently than PR agencies and marketing shops (internal and external) focused on interactive media. Yes, I am about to make a generalization, and welcome respectful disagreement, but the ad agency work seemed to be about production values, not relationships.

In other words, engagement means very different things to the different groups.

Now, I didn’t actually find this surprising. I’ve written before that I have noticed that PR and advertising folks definitely approach engagement through different lenses.

Public relations folks — good PR folks — understand the importance of building relationships with customers. That blogger engagement is a commitment, not a one-night stand. Where sometimes they have difficulty is engaging with emotion and enthusiasm. Their training teaches them to be objective, factual. Storytellers, not promoters. It can be difficult (although not impossible) to shed that skin and engage around emotion and shared values, versus news, facts and benefits.

Advertising professionals, on the other hand, have no problem understanding the importance of emotion in eliciting engagement. Good advertising taps into our emotions to evoke an action. It’s rarely about what a product does. It’s all about how it makes us feel. Where advertising pros can miss in social media is that they don’t dial it down to more personal terms. The message is hype, not human. It’s about producing a slick “viral video,” not about finding a shared value with the customer that encourages her to pass the message on.

That’s where marketing generalists (like me) can help the process. We embrace both approaches – relationship and emotion – and can help organizations best leverage their advertising and PR specialists to develop well-rounded programs and campaigns that truly engage the customer.

Disclosure, FTC and Ad Club

October 5, 2009 by Susan Getgood

Today the FTC published the final guidelines for endorsements and testimonials. Nothing terribly surprising, although I was pleased to see some additions to the examples about blogging and word of mouth marketing that made things much clearer. [Full text of the changes to the guidelines (pdf) as submitted to the Federal Register.]

More from me on this later this week. We’ll also be updating and repeating the Blog with Integrity webinar on disclosure to reflect the final approved guidelines. Follow @BlogIntegrity on Twitter, fan on Facebook or subscribe to the email list for updates.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will be tweeting live from the Ad Club of Boston’s Hatch Awards tomorrow, courtesy of an invite from the folks at 360 Public Relations. Hashtag #AdClub.

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood: Some thoughts about community.

July 7, 2009 by Susan Getgood

What makes a community?

The most important element of community is conversation. You don’t need to log-in to a website to have a conversation online with friends, colleagues and peers. Software, authentication, “enabling technology,” a fan page or a URL all play a part in how we use or access our communities online, but they don’t make the community.

Communities form around shared interests and common problems. That doesn’t preclude products, but most product-based communities are transactional rather than social. We drop in with a question or to see if there’s someone we can help, but we generally don’t “hang out” to talk about products. For example, computer and consumer electronics manufacturers Dell, Sony and HP all have community sites. While a few expert volunteers will literally set up shop within forums like these because they like to help and they like the recognition they get from both the companies and fellow consumers, most users will flow in and out depending on information/support needs and purchase plans.

Successful company-sponsored social communities establish around shared interests, not the product per se. An example is National Geographic’s WildCam community, originally hosted on the site but now using a Facebook fan page. The conversation in the community is about the animals, not National Geographic, but the brand is reinforced continually and subtly.

What do online communities look like?

Let’s take the common picture of online community and break it down a bit.

The simplest online communities form around blogs of like subject matter, with the conversation happening on blog comments, in blog posts and across the public networks like Twitter and Facebook.

When we think about online community, though, our minds usually turn to more formal social networks. With a username and password and features such as forums, discussion boards, in-system mail, blogs and friend lists. But these communities are not a homogeneous lot by any stretch of the imagination.

You’ll find enthusiast or advocate sites. Some are barebones, others are more sophisticated, and while they may monetize with advertising or grow into businesses, they generally start because somebody cared and so did her friends. They had passion about something.

Businesses of all sizes are adding community features to their websites. Some by simply adding a discussion board or customer content area, others by building full-fledged community sites.

The tool set is just as varied, ranging from simple tools like open-source forum/discussion board software and content management systems to free community platforms like Ning to comprehensive solutions from companies like Powered.

Layered over the private networks are the big public social networks, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. Of these big three, Facebook has the most traction as a consumer social network and multiple options for companies to use it as part of their social media strategy: advertising, fan (company) pages and Facebook Connect. LinkedIn seems better suited for business-to-business strategies, particularly referrals and networking and I’d put MySpace at the opposite end of the spectrum from LinkedIn — strong in entertainment, particularly music, and definitely consumer, skewing younger than both Facebook and LinkedIn.

If a company wants to actively embrace or create a community, what should it do?

The very first question you need to ask — even before where are my customers and what tools should I use — is: Are we willing to make the long-term commitment to the community? Do we have a plan for sustaining the engagement? It’s one thing to start a conversation with the customer. It’s another to keep it going.

If you aren’t certain you will be able to sustain the engagement, you are much better off doing a short-term campaign with a defined beginning and end. This sets the right expectation for the customer while giving you some experience with the community. Blogger outreach is a good starting point. Read my blogger relations category for strategy and tactics.

Let’s say, though, that everyone has deeply drunk the kool-aid and wants to charge ahead and build a social media base site beyond the company website. It’s time for questions two, three and four:

Where are your customers? Facebook? Twitter? Some other social network? Waiting for someone (like you) to build a space that’s “just right.” Or has someone already built a social network or online space that meets the same need, attracts the same consumer? If so, you may be better off exploring a relationship with that site.
How active are your customers likely to be? Active creators or passive consumers? You’ll want to tailor the content of a community site to the needs of your customer. You don’t want to create a slick (and expensive) site with video mashups and interactive games if your consumers don’t like to do that sort of thing. It’ll look like you threw a party and nobody came. Starting point: check out the Pew and Forrester demographic models.
Do you have, or can you create, regular content for a site? Blog content. Video. Podcasts. Case studies. FAQs. Educational content. Content about interests you share with your customers. Things they will want to use and share with others. This is very important when considering the scope of your online site. The more of this “stuff” you have, the more you can do with and on a community site. If the pickings are slimmer, you need to narrow your scope to something you can execute flawlessly and with flair. In doubt? It is always better to start small and expand the scope as you experience success.

The answers to these questions will form the base of your strategy. Some general thoughts:

Odds are pretty good that many of your customers will be on Facebook, so it should form part of your strategy.
If you have the content to populate a rich community site, you might benefit from incorporating Facebook Connect to allow your users to easily share content with their friends on Facebook. Other benefits of Facebook Connect: simple authentication using Facebook credentials and increased potential to recruit new members at a lower acquisition cost. BUT: there has to be stuff to share. Worth sharing. Product Spec Sheets do NOT count.
If your content is a little slimmer, you should start simply. Perhaps add a single forum or discussion board to your company website or build a Facebook Fan Page. Use it to test the waters, including the capacity of your firm to generate robust, share-worthy content and the level of potential participation of your market.

—

I was briefed recently by the folks at Powered about their Facebook Connect functionality. For large companies with the budget (typically $250K and up), a social networking company can cut the learning curve and lighten the management burden of a big community site. As the saying goes, they can do it all for you. Smaller to mid-sized companies that don’t have that much available budget? You can still learn a lot from what the big boys and girls are doing. Check it out and adapt what works for you. Need some help? Call me. 🙂

The customer service disconnect

June 11, 2009 by Susan Getgood

The customer service disconnect is not an unintended/accidental hang-up. Nor is it the insidious phenomenon that influential bloggers and tweeters seem to jump to the top of the queue while others languish. The “celebrity” effect has always existed, to one degree or another. Funnily enough, with social media, it has extended to a broader circle, beyond the famous to the “niche famous” like digital celebrities and other online influencers. That sort of makes it more democratic 🙂

The customer service disconnect is a far more disturbing side effect of the rise of online & social media marketing.

Specifically, it’s the disconnect between the online marketing, community engagement, shopping bots, live chat consultants and interactive advertising we experience BEFORE we purchase a product, and the lack of similar options AFTER we buy. When the only way to get satisfaction for a customer issue is to call or email the service department, and then wait, on hold or for a reply.

Customers don’t have different pre- and post-sale expectations about the product and their experience with the company. We buy a product and we expect a seamless experience. We also expect our vendors to treat us as well as customers as they did when we were prospects.

Which of course doesn’t always happen. Cell phone companies are notorious for giving better deals to new customers. Software companies often have better deals for new buyers than upgrading customers; sure, they’ll extend the better price if the customer asks for it but you have to know, to ask.

Unfortunately for the companies, it’s a whole lot easier to know all the offers on the table, for whatever sort of product, than it ever was before.

And consumers are increasingly frustrated by having to use old media to rectify problems or complete transactions, when the bulk of the interaction is on new media.

Some examples of the frustration

My son recently signed up for an online site that uses some of his personal information. Under COPA (Child Online Privacy Act), a parent has to extend permission for children under age 13. But the only way to do it was by fax or snail mail. Total disconnect for my son (and my husband and I too). Twenty-four hours later, the permission had still not been processed and my son was pissed that he couldn’t play on the site.

Catalog retailer Lands’ End does a super job all around — online marketing and customer service. Have a question while shopping? Use live chat to ask your question. Need to change an order that hasn’t been shipped? No problem. Many post-sale transactions can even be done online. When you do have to call, the telephone reps are courteous, helpful and you never have to wait.

But, good as it is, recently I had a transaction that showed that even the best have room for some simple improvements in the connection between marketing and customer service.

I’m a regular Lands’ End customer. I’m on the mailing & email list and have an account and stored preferences on the site. I’m in their system, full stop. This spring, I placed an order on a Friday evening. The same weekend, on Sunday, when I opened my email, there was a promotional email for Free Shipping, starting that day. I phoned customer service, asked for the free shipping to be applied to my order and it was with absolutely no problem. Great customer service.

Even better though would have been an email that Sunday morning telling me that because my order was placed within 48 hours of the start of the promotion, it was automatically applied and my shipping was now free. Would I like to add some items? That would be superior, unforgettable customer service.

It’s not easy

It’s not easy breaking down the functional barriers between marketing and customer service, no matter how good the company is. The larger the company, the firmer and broader the barriers between the silos. At a small to mid-sized company, odds are the players all know, or at least know of, each other. The disconnects may occur but it’s easier to sort it out when your desks or departments are side by side.

Scale up and up and up to the multi-national consumer products companies. Many outsource first line phone support and customer service lines to India and other countries with large employee pools and lower wages. But even if the functions aren’t separated by a thousand seas, often they might as well be.

Organizational barriers, language barriers, corporate politics, reorgs, workforce reductions all play a part, but the truth is that customer service and marketing probably don’t speak with each other enough. Once a year, maybe twice a year at an annual meeting that is often more a dog and pony show than an opportunity to solve mutual problems. Each side takes their assigned pieces of the puzzle and regroups internally to figure it out. Report back next year.

I’m being deliberately harsh and stereotypical. I know that many companies already try to punch through this wall in a variety of ways — multi-functional task forces, employees chartered with facilitating cross-functional communications, CRM systems that make information available across the enterprise.

I just don’t think what we’re doing so far is going to be enough in a world where one customer problem aired on a social network like Twitter or Facebook can spark a customer service conflagration. And the fire spreads pretty fast. You don’t have days to respond. If you’re lucky, a few hours. These customer brouhahas also seem to erupt on the weekends — for example, Motrin Moms. Makes sense, right. That’s when most people are catching up on their personal stuff.

Solution?

I don’t have one. Because there isn’t a one-size fits all solution here.

What is clear though is that marketing and customer service cannot waste time arguing about who owns the customer relationship. They have to put their heads together to figure out how to satisfy it in the new reality.

That may mean cross functional teams tasked with cooperating on a daily, not annual, basis. It may mean new Customer departments staffed with experts from all the disciplines. It may mean figuring out how to use the CRM system as more than a sales/marketing database.

There are as many possible solutions as there companies; every one will be different. Even if they make exactly the same products, the people are different. Within the firm and without.

In the end, it’s all about people. And our expectations.

What we don’t expect is a customer service disconnect.