Archive for the ‘Relationships’ Category
The Marketing & PR Conundrum: Lying to Customers
In a recent BNET post “Lying to Your Customers? Come on, Everyone’s Doing It,” author and customer advocate Christopher Elliott shares six companies who have lied to their customers: Tavern on the Green, Ford, Microsoft, Office Depot, Cablevision, and Apple.
Lies or Business As Usual?
The chef at Tavern on the Green lied about gluten free pasta. What is the big deal, right? If a diner has food allergies, it is a huge deal. While Chef Damian Cardone may not have thought too much about the “white lie,” those with gluten allergies likely suffered the consequences of their meal. Tavern on the Green’s reputation is known far and wide—making it an iconic brand. Now, it’s doors are closed after filing for bankruptcy.
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Tags: Apple, Brand Reputation, Branding, Cablevision, Ford, Marketing, Marketing Management, Office Depot, Public Relations, social business, Tavern on the Green | 
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Saturday Morning Reads: Do Marketers Need to Become Social Psychologists?
As marketers, how much psychology do we need to understand to make sense of what our customers are doing socially?
Are they trying to tell us what they want or need by engaging? Or, is it simply that they are utilizing social networking to become influential among their peers?
What happens when a customer becomes popular within his or her chosen social network? What are the chances that a brand can piggyback on this newfound influence (i.e. brand evangelism or word of mouth)? On the other hand, could popularity and potential narcissism cause a customer to leap to a more desirable brand that is as equally popular as them?
We know that people join social networks because they want to be part of a group. Should marketers be required to have a deep understanding of group dynamics in order to analyze group interactions and how they may or may not impact business efforts?
Will the more socially advanced organizations expect that their marketers will understand how social networks and psychology affect market dynamics in order to project future revenues?
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Saturday Morning Reads: South by Southwest (SXSW) Cares — Japan Tsunami & Earthquake Relief
I would be completely remiss if I didn’t put a spotlight on SXSW Cares this weekend.
If you aren’t familiar with South by Southwest (SXSW), it’s one of the largest conferences and festivals in the world that brings music, film and interactive together every year in Austin, Texas. On the eve of this year’s Interactive portion, an unthinkable act of nature hit Japan and devastated a country and its people.
I wasn’t able to attend SXSW this year and while I missed seeing my friends and connecting with new ones, I’ll be honest—I didn’t miss the often narcissistic ‘see and be seen’ party atmosphere. That said, the beauty of SXSW is that it is what YOU make of it.
That is why I was so proud when I started hearing the news about SXSW Cares, which was started by my friends Leigh Durst and Deb Ng (along with Rob Wu of CauseVox, Jess Lin and The American Red Cross). It would have been so easy to get swept up in panels, book signings, parties, socializing and photo ops, but this team was heads down in trying to make a difference and trying to help those who needed it most.
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Tags: #sxswcares, American Red Cross, CauseVox, Deb Ng, Japan, Japan Tsunami & Earthquake Relief, Leigh Durst, Rob Wu, SXSW, SXSW Cares |
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Saturday Morning Reads: Is Smaller Better When it Comes to the Customer?
People have been asking me if small businesses are better at being customer-centric. So, I thought I’d do a little research this morning to see what the trend is. As you will see, the discussion on the topic goes back a few years. I will need to do some digger deeper to provide examples of small businesses who have been successful as a customer-centric business (Note: adding that to the “to do” list. If you know of any, be sure to let me know.).
The one thing I noticed when researching—and this is very important—is that a lot of articles and blog posts around the topic of small business and customer-centric were focused solely on customer service.
Please understand that customer-centric and customer service are not synonymous.
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Tags: Customer-Centric, Small Business, SMBs |
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Designing An Organization from the Outside-In
“No company will tell you, ‘I don’t want to be customer centric,’ but do you know the difference between taking an inside-out versus an outside-in approach?”
-Ranjay Gulati
Most companies (small to Fortune 500 and everything in between) are not customer-centric—even if they think they might be (market-oriented or customer-focused isn’t the same, but they are a great start!). Driven by revenue generation, product and service development (i.e. profit centers) usually takes the lead and determines the hierarchy, culture and power within the organization. While products and services may be innovative, creative, and useful often the complete inward focus creates a fundamental disconnect between function and actually solving a customer’s challenges—from the customer’s perspective—and therefore companies only gain a temporary brand loyalty foothold. It’s why products and services (whether B2B or B2C) continue to face the challenge of commoditization. Even if customers force fit a product or service that alleviates short-term pain, there is still the hurdle of solving long-term challenges. If they are not focused on or solved, the next company that comes along with a solution and complete focus on achieving loyalty will win. Because companies focus on short-term gains, they lose 50% of their customers every five years or so. Ironically, it is more costly to acquire new customers than it is to make existing customers satisfied.
Breaking the Cycle
There is a reason why companies are not customer-centric. It is an operational practice, which can be difficult, challenging and downright painful especially considering it requires a hard look at what—and who—is wrong when it comes to focusing on the customer. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible, however. There are examples of B2C and B2B companies that get it like Zappos, Southwest, Target, Best Buy, Carnival Cruise Lines, Cisco, Jones Lang LaSalle, and Lafarge.
So then, how does one break the cycle of being solely hierarchical and product-driven?
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The Harte of Marketing by Beth Harte is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.theharteofmarketing.com. [If you have a question about what you can use from this blog, click on the above Creative Commons link to learn more.]
