BrandsAmongMany

JetBlue is regularly at the forefront of the air travel industry. They were one of the pioneering brands on Twitter. They recently launched a deals-via-Twitter feed, @JetBlueCheeps. And now…well now they’ve raised the bar even higher. I just noticed the following tweet via @JetBlue:

At first I had to wonder why it would be worth it. But that lasted for all of about 3 seconds when I realized that I’d just paid $335 for a single round-trip flight in January. For a few bucks more, the All-you-can-jet pass would cover that trip and another weekend jaunt to wherever I want that JetBlue flies (according to the fine print, the pass includes domestic taxes and fees, though international flights will incur a extra cost to cover those).

It appears that this might be a test-run for a further program as it’s only available for travel from Sept. 8 to Oct. 8, 2009 - I’m going to venture a guess that perhaps this is a slow season for the airline. But regardless, for the cost of a ticket-and-a-half, you could take a serious vacation. Or fund your business travel for the entire month.

Personally, I think it’s a great idea. Go JetBlue!

Well, there’s another company going down in the annals of “making the customer’s life difficult”. I’ve been a fan of Valentine One for years. Their technology is above and beyond most other radar detector manufacturers (let’s not get into a moral discussion on the issue here). Granted, at $400 a pop, you pay for the privilege.

Two days ago, I placed an order for a new Direct Wire Power Kit (about 1/2 way down the page) to replace the one that came with my unit. I had installed that one in a previous vehicle and, at $13 for the kit, it’s easier to simply leave it in place and buy a new one than it is to remove all the necessary panels to retrieve the kit. The online purchase experience was satisfactory, though the lack of any confirmation email was a little annoying.

I didn’t think any more of it until the call I just received from their customer service department. They needed a “little more information” in order to process my order, which was odd since their purchase form didn’t ask for any information that I opted not to give them. The woman wanted the serial number from my Valentine. I asked why she needed it and tried to explain that I didn’t have the unit handy to retrieve the number, to which she replied that it was for fraud protection for the customer in case the Valentine were stolen.

Now, I understand that radar detectors are an oft-stolen item and I respect their interest in trying to protect the consumer. But the fact of the matter is that once the thing is stolen, that person can buy whatever they want to go with the unit. They’ll HAVE the serial number right there in front of them in order to verify it. So, in reality, their “fraud protection” program has done absolutely nothing for me, the customer, other than make my legitimate purchase more difficult.

Granted, the woman on the other end of the phone was very insistant that I couldn’t possibly place an order without giving her the serial number, and that this was in my best interest. No matter how much I tried to explain that my Valentine was not easily accessible and that I had purposely created this situation to make my life easier when I went to install it, she wouldn’t budge (and became increasingly rude to boot).

This is incredibly frustrating! Companies, I implore you. If you’re going to put policies in place that benefit your customer, make sure they actually benefit your customer. I run into this type of issue all the time, and frankly it’s getting old. If you’d take ten minutes to think through your policies and approach them from the customer’s point of view, you’d save both you and I a lot of headache. What you fail to realize is that this is just as much a part of the “user experience” of your brand as visiting your website or calling you directly.

Valentine, you wouldn’t have to call to ask for more information that you could have just as easily asked for when I placed the order, and I wouldn’t have to get angry at your utter incompetence in understanding my situation. And as for your “privacy policy”? Well, you screwed that one up:

It would seem that quoting Seth is like standing on a streetcorner and repeating exactly what that guy next to you is shouting, but this quote is well worth repeating:

Doesn’t it feel awesome when all of this just works? I’ve shared stories here and there about my disappointment with various companies and the way I’ve been (mis)handled as a customer. This time I want to turn the tables though and send a big thanks out to Shure!

Now, I’m no audiophile, but I did find out around the time I got my first iPod that apparently I have weird ears. For whatever reason, finding a pair of headphones that fit my ears well is terribly difficult. My search eventually ended a while back in a pair of Shure E2c’s (their “low” end model for about $100. Believe me, I never wanted to spend $100 on headphones, but once I got them I was completely sold.

Fast-forward to my iPhone purchase, and I found myself looking for a replacement headphone that had the advantage of an inline mic and button for use with the phone. I went straight back to sure and purcahsed a pair of SE210’s (at a substantial discount from an online retailer). Despite my excitement when they arrived, I spent a good 6 months wrestling with every combination of fit sleeve workaround that I could think, but I just couldn’t get them to fit the same way my old Shure’s did. They were constantly sliding out of my ears.

In looking for yet-another replacement, I emailed sure with a question about another product. A customer service rep. named Jim answered my question, informing me that this particular headphone didn’t meet my needs. The conversation, however, continued and I explained my disatisfaction with my new Shure’s. To make a long story short, Jim was nice enough to accept my 6-month old headphones in exchange for a different model that fits my needs perfectly! (I would have purchased them originally had I noticed them on the Shure site, but I digress…)

So, here’s a huge thank you to Jim and Shure’s customer service for makin’ me a happy camper!

I’m not talking about when it breaks. I understand that things wear out eventually, and that complex things wear out faster. (Though a friend of mine did have a minor crisis when her MyBook external HD holding her last four years of creative work crashed in less than a month.) I don’t know about anyone else, but when a piece of technology that I’ve purchased to make life easier or more enjoyable crashes, I get really frustrated.

Case in point is my Garmin FR305 – a GPS watch designed to help runners track their workouts. I had run with, and was an ardent fan of, a Nike+ setup for quite a while. In fact I was part of a group flown to Nike HQ in Oregon a while back to discuss the future of the system and how it served my needs. But once I realized just how innacurate it was, I stopped running with it. The social draw of the Nike+ just wasn’t enough to keep me as a user. So I “upgraded” to the Garmin.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t served me much better. Sure, it’s GPS based, so the accuracy is there. But the software that Garmin has created to interface with the data is terrible. So much so, in fact, that I put off uploading any runs for about six weeks. Of course, when I went to do so this morning, the process failed repeatedly. No error message. No upgrade prompt. It just sat there, leaving me once again furious that Garmin can’t manage to come up with a simple system that just works.

Which led me to the question…why? Do we get just as angry when our non-technological things fail? Or has the bar simply been set so high by the things that do work, that we assume everything should function with thge same ease? Of course, I purchased my Garmin with the expectation that it would work - with ease. Am I really out of line by getting upset when it doesn’t do exactly what I bought it to do? Would I care as much if it were cheaper?

In thinking about these questions, I’m reminded of a post that I wrote a few months ago that was based around a statement we kicked around here at POKE for a while:

The evolution of digital technology has created expectations in consumers that brands simply don’t live up to.

While the application of this statement is a little different in this post than in the last, the words themselves still ring true - though we could change “brands” to “products”. The good bits of technology that I interact with (and those that I’ve been a part of building) have taught me what’s possible. They’ve created the expectation that everything else should live up to the same standards. Unfortunately, too many products are either rushed to market or just not thought out well enough to begin with.

Jason Baer wrote up a great post a couple of days ago called Are New Customers the Enemy of Success? in which he challenges that brands are ignoring the age-old maxim that it’s cheaper to retain a customer than to attain a new one. While I agree with Jason’s point whole-heartedly, I’d challenge that the same thought should be applied earlier in the process. Before we even consider buying new customers vs. holding onto the old ones, perhaps brands should spend more time creating a product that will attract customers on its own. Something that’s so useful, so well thought-out, that people flock to it without the need for advertising. To borrow from well-known terms build me a Purple Cow people!

If you build it, they will come. Here’s a challenge to Garmin - and anyone else out there: take your 2009 advertising budget - heck take HALF your 2009 ad budget - and hand it to your engineers, developers, and UI team with a simple ultimatum: make it better. Every penny that you roll back into the perfection of your product will do far more for your brand than any print ad you’ll ever make.

Want to do it even better? Take the other half of that ad budget and use it to talk to people. Ask them what you could do better. Share your technology and ask them to help if you have to! People are interested in having something that does what they bought it to do. And if you invest some interest in them, they’ll be more than willing to help you do it.

On my quick, first-thing-in-the-morning perusal of Twitter, one of the tweets that caught my eye was from @notcot:

Of course, you throw “extortion/mafia” in front of anything social web related and you’re going to have mouths running and attention gathering. Twitter converstaion about Yelp!, the SF-based user-review company, has skyrocketed this morning in the wake of an article published in the East Bay Express. In the article, author Kathleen Richards (who you can email here) blasts Yelp! for actions that make it something of a web-based mafia family, eliciting payment for the removal of poor reviews and bullish tactics around advertising sales…

when John asked Mike what he could do about his bad reviews, he recalls the sales rep responding: “We can move them. Well, for $299 a month.”

As expected, the article prompted a quick response from Yelp! CEO Jeremy Stoppelman. Jeremy goes out of his way to refute the claims by citing an advertiser who’s profile includes a bad review. He also questions the validity of Richards’ sources, claiming the value of anonymous sources is suspect in general.

(Whew! Now the scene is set…) So what can we take from all of this (without hopping on the finger-pointing bandwagon)? A couple of things…

The situation does bring to light an interesting question around the power of a successful “2.0″ company like Yelp!. The power of those companies is the expectation of visitors that the information they’ll find there is truly generated from others like themselves. Start to break down that system, and you’ve muddied the waters. The idea of a “web 2.0″ mafia - a site or collection of sites that have enough power to actually threaten or change the value of what we find in a socially connected digital world - is downright scary.

Perhaps this is the reason behind the talks of Google being taken apart for monopolistic practices. A friend made a very good point about Google’s future as one of the most powerful media companies in the world, especially over the next decade as data becomes both the currency and analytic tool of choice. Not that I’m making any claims about supporting the plan - at least not without a lot more research.

The other question at hand is one of those “how would you have handled it?” moments. I can’t say that I’m particularly impressed by Jeremy’s statements. His blog post comes off as extremely defensive and, worse-yet, not particularly well thought out. (I don’t personally see the point he’s trying to make by calling out this advertiser unless it’s simply that even paid advertisers can garner poor reviews.) All it seems to do is add confusion and fuel to the fire rather than make me believe in Yelp! as a business. Which is a shame, given that Yelp! is one of the older social sites out there. One would think that they’d be in a position to set the bar for the way companies handle trying times.

Part of today’s talk that’s making the rounds is the announcement of SI One, Southwest Airlines’ newest custom jet design. I remember when the Shamu plane was launched - probably about 15-20 years ago. It was right around the time that Sea World opened in San Antonio, and there was a bunch of chatter about Shamu One, a Southwest jet painted to look like an Orca whale.

Unlike the more wholesome, endearing patterns of the past, however, SI One is undoubtedly more risque. I’m all for branded airline partnerships. In fact, this is a great idea. If you can bring my ticket price down by putting an image on a plane in a place where I don’t even have to see it as a passenger, more power to you! This one, however, just feels a little…off to me. Not to complain about scantily clad women, but from the brand’s perspective, exactly what value does this bring? Other than giving the plane an undoubtedly Hooters-esque appeal I mean?

I think Kevin’s comment on the Southwest Airlines Blog put it pretty succinctly:

Take a look around. The sky is falling – at least in the advertising and creative services industries. According to AdAge, almost 19,000 jobs slashed in the U.S. in December alone. By their count, that brings the total number of abolished jobs to 65,000+ over the last year. No one is immune. Even the almighty Crispin cut about 7% (60 people), though they were apparently careful to maintain their creative staff. The same can’t be said for some of the bigger names here in NYC (a couple of close friends of mine were laid off from creative positions after 4.5 years at the same agency). If you’re looking to keep up with the agency layoff reports, @adagencylayoffs is a good place to start.

Overall, there’s no denying it. Things are BAD. But then…how surprised are we? We’ve been crying like Chicken Little for years now that things need to change in the industry - that there are the “get its” and “get nots”. As I stop and look around, it’s hit me that the moment of change just might be upon us. This recession/downturn/whatever might just prove to be the moment that marks the tipping point for the “traditional” model, the moment when big business begins to understand that this whole “internet thing” is not going away. Yeah, we’ve been saying it for years now, but in the face of true survival, perhaps things will begin to sink in…

Of course, many of you agencies will simply flounder until you embrace the change - you all say that you’re willing to change, but you actually have to, you know, change. It’ll be a race to the finish. Brands are already starting to see the value in these changes; they’re starting to understand that digital agencies can lead the way in idea generation and that “advertising” doesn’t have to actually be advertising. If agencies can keep up, they’ll survive. Otherwise…

It’ll be an interesting progression to watch. I’ll be keeping a close eye on things, and I’d love any further thoughts on where things are headed!

And, just for fun:

Ran into a quick, interesting read from blogger Jake McKee titled Reason #234593 People Don’t Trust Companies (via a tweet from @meat99). It’s a quick, interesting read about the recent fumble by Beanie Baby maker Ty and their newest addition to their doll lineup: Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia. (If the significance of the names doesn’t hit you immediately, don’t worry - it took me a minute too. Perhaps it’ll be more clear if you consider the names of the newly annointed first-daughters of the Obama family…)

It didn’t take long for the action to make waves - CNN has good coverage of the issue, which resulted in an official statement by White House representatives, here. When pressed on the matter, Ty’s initial statement was full of legalese and “cover our collective asses” language:

A Ty representative told CNN the company generally avoids naming dolls for “any particular living individual,” because doing so might interfere with how kids use their imaginations to play with them. But they wouldn’t reveal the source of their inspiration for the new figures, telling CNN that information relating to the development of the company’s merchandise — including how it comes up with products, product names, and trademarks – is proprietary.

However, it appears that this tone didn’t fly in the slightest. A quick look at the Ty website reveals that just ten days since the CNN article was published, the manufacturer has already added both dolls to its “retired” list and renamed them:

“In deference to the wishes of the First Family, Ty Inc. has officially retired the Ty Girlz names Marvelous Malia and Sweet Sasha. We have renamed the dolls Marvelous Mariah and Sweet Sydney.

While the names Marvelous Malia and Sweet Sasha were inspired by this historic time in our nation’s history, the dolls were not intended to bear the likeness of the First Daughters.

Of course, the note, presented by Ty Warner (founder and CEO of Ty), still smacks of that “I’m sorry you feel that way” type of language. Rather than a genuine apology, it seems to have an underhanded feel of “I’m sorry we won’t be able to make money off you…” I think Jake put it well in his original post; Ty has succeeded nicely in presenting consumers a reason to purchase from someone else.

I have to admit, this is really the first year that the term Cyber Monday has entered my lexicon. The idea makes perfect sense: an upswing in internet purchases the first workday back from Black Friday because people are buying things they couldn’t find over the weekend. I don’t have an issue with the concept of Cyber Monday…

What I find rather disgusting, however, is that companies are making a blatant attempt to extend the already overtly (and overly) consumeristic tendencies of Black Friday. By taking a term that was coined to encapsulate the economic trend of seasonal shopping and making it a forward-facing marketing term, retailers are attempting to sucker just that much more money out of us. And this year, they’re not taking it lightly:

There’s even been websites dedicated to it. Shop.org has created CyberMonday.com to keep track of all the deals, including a bunch of exclusive ones. And the list above barely scratches the surface. Of course, if you look at Shop.org’s About statement, things become a little more clear:

Since its inception in 1996, the Digital Retail Industry has joined with Shop.org to create a community of like-minded executives with the common purpose of advancing their industry through the sharing of knowledge, experience and expertise.

With over 700 member companies and thousands of actively participating executives, today’s Shop.org network is more vital than ever. The association is focused on the challenges and opportunities most pressing to Digital Retail:

All of which sounds great from a consumer perspective. A coalition dedicated to making digital retailers more aware of best practices and easy-to-use websites. Until you get to the final couple of sentences in that mission statement:

Shop.org’s exclusive focus is to provide a forum for retail executives to share information, lessons-learned, new perspectives, insights and intelligence about online and multichannel retailing

“Retail executives”? Wait, I’m not a retail executive! And now I’m not so convinced that they’re interested in me as a consumer at all. In fact, I’m feeling more like their mission is take as much from me as they possibly can, and to collaborate on how to best milk me for more. Yup, feels like Cyber Monday is another step toward scraping all meaning other than credit card debt from the holiday season.