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I honestly cannot comprehend what the people at my bank were thinking when they okayed an automated calling system that allowed them to call me with a “personalized offer” only to be put on hold to wait for the next available operator. I don’t know what they were thinking when they called me back to do the same thing, either.
Whoever made that decision should be fired, and not allowed to work in marketing until they undergo a mandatory, day-long ass kicking.
A BusinessWeek article tallying the votes on the state of advertising from the panel of judges at the Effies this year pretty much sums up the typical disconnect between what the traditional ad agency thinks and what the client wants.
True or False: Generating press and buzz is the most important part of building a brand.
The difference is a bit astounding to me. A quarter of agency people versus almost one-half of clients see the importance of press and buzz in building brands. Of course, the agencies, who typically stick to making up creative ideas and placing them on TV or in print don’t typically think in terms of community and conversation, so why would they value it? Clients, on the other hand, have no loyalty to any particular medium or tactic, so they can see things in terms of “what will ACTUALLY help my brand?”
My question is – if getting people talking about your brand ISN’T the most important part of building a brand, what the hell is? The only commercials I can imagine being successful are the ones that get people talking. Personally, I can’t think of any brand that I am loyal to (or vehemently opposed to) that isn’t influenced either by feedback from my social circle or what I read online. I may still be in the minority in that respect, but as the digital immigrants are replaced by the digital natives, press and buzz are going to play huge roles in brand building.
I don’t know why I feel compelled to blog everytime I’m on an aircraft, but there’s something appealing about it for me. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m on a plane, and therefore have nothing better to do.
I’m flying Porter to Toronto today to attend the ICE07 Conference. My colleague Brady is going to be speaking tomorrow morning on what looks to be a great panel with Shel Israel, and I’m going to be in the audience, which as we all know, is the most important role there is.
That aside, I gotta say, I’m impressed by Porter. They’re making a brand promise and they’re delivering. Complementary shuttle service, a bottle of water vs. a tiny plastic cup – a plane that takes off right away and lands 10 minutes earlier than expected. If you contrast this with the Air Canada experience, you know that this is night and day.
Brands are not something that you write in a corporate manual or slap on a website. They are the collective experiences of your customers, and therefore cannot be forced. Porter is living their brand, and Air Canada is just shouting theirs… big difference, especially when I hear from every business traveller I know about how great the Porter experience is.
That’s all I have to say about that. In the meantime, if anyone’s going to be at ICE and wants to chat – feel free to send me an email… ryan at this domain dot ca.
I’m not normally overly evangelical about brands and companies unless I have either had a really remarkable experience with them, or they’re paying me a per diem. But I have to share a story that happened to me tonight.
Less than 20 minutes ago, I had a migraine. Not the kind of migraine the other colleagues in your office tell you they get from looking at a monitor so they can go home early – I’m talking the honest-to-God drymouth, nausea, weeping, lay in a dark room and pray for the sweet release of death migraines. I couldn’t speak properly. I was shaking, sweating and shivering all at the same time.
When I first started going to the chiropractor after throwing out my hip doing a spinning hook kick at jiu-jitsu, he told me that if I ever needed an emergency adjustment, to call. “Why,” I asked “would anyone ever need an emergency adjustment?”
Over time, I started believing a little more in chiropractic, especially when I pinched a nerve in my neck and an adjustment allowed me to turn my head again. If I had a headache coming on, I would normally find that after an adjustment, the headache would subside.
Tonight, I took him up on his offer. A friend of mine had to call for me, since I was unable to speak properly, and he was able to come by my house on his way home. It took about 30 seconds before I could feel a difference. In 10 minutes, my headache was gone. In 20, I was sitting in front of my computer writing this.
When I started going to the chiropractor, I was skeptical. It’s easy to be with any preventative healthcare. It’s also easy for consumers to be skeptical about the value of the service that you provide. My chiropractor curbed my skepticism by being good at what he does, and providing that extra level of service when I needed it most. I’m sure there’s a lesson for everyone who works in a service-based industry to be learned there, but I’m still recovering and am in no shape to find it.
That said, I will now tell everyone I know who gets migraines that a chiropractor may be the answer.*
*I am not a doctor, nor qualified in any way to give you medical advice. Don’t listen to me.
** If you live in Ottawa and are looking for a chiropractor, I highly recommend Dr. Ellard at Glebe Chiropractic.
This, to me, is a great case study in email marketing. A year or so ago, I had an enlargement made of a digital file through Black Photo. In order to do it over the web, I had to provide them with my email address.
Every once in a while, I’d get some kind of newsletter about some sale they were having, delete it, and never think about it again. In the past month, the company managed to step up their usual marketing incompetence and decided to spam the people on their mailing list almost every day for the past two weeks.
I ignored the first few, but after the third or fourth email in one week, I finally scrolled down to the bottom of the message, and clicked the unsubscribe link. I sent my email to the address, with the word “UNSUBSCRIBE” in the subject line, and didn’t think about it again – until two days later when I got another.
“Oh well… just taking a little while to process,” I thought.
Then another, and another. Finally, I wrote to their customer service department explaining why I had unsubscribed, and renewing my plea to be removed from their incessant mailings.
Nothing – and I continue to receive unwanted emails from the company, even today.
This is a perfect example of why email marketing doesn’t work. Email marketing has been ruined by marketers who have no idea what they’re doing. I’m extremely wary of providing my real email address to companies, because I don’t want them to do this kind of thing with it. When companies spam their carefully collected database of customers who have trusted them with their personal information, everyone loses. The company loses customers because they’re alienating them, customers get annoyed because they’re being spammed, and marketers face a marketplace of consumers who are gun-shy about providing personal details – and rightly so.
I guarantee that this is the result of a command from above. It reeks of an executive issuing an order against the advice of the marketing department to send out a daily email to their database during the holidays. I hope this is the case, because if more than one person in their marketing department thought this was a good idea, then they have more problems than just losing subscribers.
