BrandsAmongMany

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!

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.

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.

These days, you can find a Facebook group (or six) for just about everything under the sun. Want proof? Do a quick search through the groups section for “Saved by Zero” and you’ll find nothing short of 11 different groups dedicated to Toyota’s newest television commercial touting their extended 0% financing program. While most advertisers pray for their work to “go viral” (I shudder at the phrase), I don’t think this is what Toyota’s agency (Saatchi?) had in mind.

The backlash against this diminuative little piece of film is nothing shy of impressive. The largest of the Facebook hate-groups has swelled to more than two thousand members in only ten days. But the discussions don’t end on Facebook - in fact the social community is perhaps just the tip of the spear. Enraged (and rarely do I use that word to describe viewers of a TV commercial) viewers are coming out of the woodwork in communities of every type imaginable across the web.

Rants can be found on CraigsList (more than one), on sports forums, on gambling sites, and even on Esquire’s website. Major news sites including Forbes have picked up on the story. Someone even went so far as to create a petition to have the ad pulled.

I think we can safely say that this effort has “gone viral”. But perhaps not in the manner that anyone would have hoped for. In fact, I can’t imagine that anyone expected too much of this ad at all. At a glance, it just another mediocre-at-best car advertisment screaming about finance rates on a dozen models - something we’ve all heard thousands of times by now, unfortunately.

But tick people off just enough and you’ll find exactly how powerful an outlet the web can be. People who use the web to foster any number of diverse interests have found common ground on this one, and they’re not going quietly into the night this time. Sure, plenty of ads have been pulled because they outraged this group of fanatics or that one, but can anyone else remember a commercial that’s been pulled - not that this one has…yet - because it was just plain bad? Keep an eye out. This could set an unusual precedent.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen the spot yet, here it is:

So yesterday morning I got a friendly email from a reader named Lornie:

Hi Danny,
Have you seen this yet? not sure what to make of it….
http://lifetakesvista.com/
Lornie

At first glance, of course, it looks like any other email I get from various PR people looking to promote the newest campaign by agency X or company Y, most of which I ignore (I’m not usually too interested in playing shill for some company’s new TV campaign). The only thing that led me to look into this one a little further was the fact that Lornie’s email didn’t come from a PR company account and didn’t name agency X or company Y. Well, that and the fact that I actually hadn’t seen the Life Takes Vista effort yet.

So after taking a quick look at the Life Takes Vista site, my immediate question to Lornie was…

What’s your connection to the campaign?

To which she responded:

zero. i dont work for msft. (actually unemployed at the moment) not sure if its from msft because i searched the web and didnt see anything on this…or theyre trying to be stealthy!

At first I took her answer at face value. But, in the midst of looking further into the campaign to ready a post, I stumbled onto a couple of other blogs who heard from a “loyal fan”, Lornie:

jkOnTheRun
James Kendrick’s Twitter
The Ranch
Flickr

Of course, these aren’t the only blogs talking about the effort. There’s still the lingering question of who the heck is responsible for this campaign (blatant rip-off?). It doesn’t appear to be an official Microsoft effort. In fact, there’s discussion around that question in a couple of places:

AdRants
CrunchGear

Hrm. As CrunchGear points out, this feels either like a very smart effort by a couple of ad students to get themselves noticed (feels like a reach to me) or an effort by a couple of bored Crispin employees who didn’t get the idea through during the original effort. A little further digging reveals that the Life Take Vista site is being hosted by a company in Denver under anonymous administration - only a stone’s throw from Boulder…

Suddenly Lornie seems less like a friendly reader and more like a PR agent that she seemed like to begin with. Lornie, I’ll be the first to offer my most sincere apologies if I’m wrong - we appreciate a tip as much as the next guy - but this one just feels dirty. A search for the email address the tip was sent from reveals nothing, which would be rather unusual given how many forums, websites, etc. most digitally savvy ad students are signed up for. And a search for Lornie’s full name also reveals nothing…no Facebook profile, no LinkedIn account, no personal website…nothing.

So short answer…I’m not sold. This feels like nothing more than a covert, subversive attempt to get eyeballs on a rip-off campaign. Which it seems to have accomplished - along with building a wealth of negative brand equity. Kudos!

We were selling rich women their own fat asses back to them.

Yep, here we go again, quoting movie lines to make a point about branding. Hey, not my fault if Ed Norton has a way with words (Not sure what scene I’m referring to? Have a look here.).

So, the question is…are we? As marketers (advertisers, branding gurus, digital desperadoes, call yourself what you will) we sell ourselves on our expertise of many areas. Sure, we call it “marketing” or whatever, but when it comes down to it, we’re selling our understanding of human nature (psychology), our ability to tap into that in a manner that will gain attention (creativity), the potential of that message to have an impact on the people we’re talking to (strategy), our ability to sell our ideas through to the client (salesmanship), how well we can actually create what we’ve said we can create (production), and a slew of other bits and pieces that we encounter along the way.

That’s a lot of “expertise” – a lot of different minds – that comes together to be successful at this thing we do. That’s lot of points along the way for something, even the smallest point, to go slightly awry. It’s no wonder, then, that we might occasionally get caught up in our own heads. It’s easy for us to get excited and see the potential behind an idea that makes perfect sense to us, based on our background, but has little meaning or resonance for the “average joe”. It’s easy for us to get caught up in the excitement of buying back our own fat asses.

This begs the question: how much of what we do, especially digitally, actually reaches out into the “real world”? How many of the soccer mom’s in Wisconsin engage in the newest methods of digital communication – the mechanisms that we often consider the forefront of the digital revolution?

Consider this: just the other day I found myself explaining Twitter to a project manager at a popular traditional “hot shop” that we’re partnering with on a current project. If she didn’t know what Twitter is, can we expect the masses to encounter a message that we propagate using it as a distribution tool? Probably not.

Perhaps more importantly, though: do they have to? If the mechanisms that we’re using to reach the influentials are successful, does it really matter if the soccer mom hears directly from us? Isn’t that the point of targeting the influencers - so they’ll spread our message to the masses? Aren’t the social media tools that we use to spread our gospel really just weapons in our arsenal that can be used to reach the specific people we want to hear about our cause because we know that they’ll help spread the word?

Or more simply put, are we buying or are we selling the fat asses? And do we have the gumption to accept the voice of reason and understand when we’re getting caught up in our own heads? I don’t expect a simple answer. It will vary by company, by project, by client, by concept.

But as soon as we lose awareness of the question, we lose our ability to control the answer. And once that’s gone, we’re just another cog in the fat ass economy.

Remember that little anecdote about “word of mouth” we posted recently? Here’s another example…

Think about this: when consumers LOVE your brand or your product, if you’re lucky they’ll tell their friends about it. It’ll jump to mind when someone says, “hey, do you know where I can get XYZ around here?” If you’re really lucky, you might find a blogger who will share it on their site. Then, maybe, it’ll get picked up and spread. Maybe.

But when consumers are UPSET with your brand…you’d better watch out. They’re gonna tell the world through every outlet they can get their hands on. And they’re willing to work for it. They’ve got that little emotional fire burning in them and only some good, old fashioned retribution will put it out.

See what I mean?:

Need further convincing? How about the Fail Me Is More Like It site that an annoyed customer created during the MobileMe debacle?

“Word of Mouth” is one of those popular catch phrases these day. Everyone wants to know how to make it work for them. There’s not really a secret key to make it “work for you”. There is, however, a really, really easy way to make it work against you: piss off your customers. The notion that people will be vocal when they’re upset, but don’t say a word when they’re happy is pretty standard. You’ll always have a disproportionate number of complainers willing to bash you your product compared to the silent masses who happily go about their daily lives with your product in tow.

Case in point…
Sean Howard of CrapHammer fame tweeted this the other day:

The tweet links to this post on Bikeforums.net, a popular cycling message board. (As far as I know, Sean isn’t a cyclist, so how he stumbled into this post, I’m not sure, but it probably got passed to him by someone.) The post, by Bikeforums user ReachHigher, outlines her story of a recent visit to Wal-Mart via bicycle. Due to the lack of bike racks outside the store, she opted to walk her bike into the establishment (a practice that she’s apparently done before), only to be turned away by the “greeter”. The arguement that ensued involved a removal of clothing in protest to a policy that the store manager seemed too flustered to back up. We’ll let you read the rest here, since the story itself isn’t the prime purpose of this discussion…

The main purpose here is to point out just how quickly certain stories will spread across the web. The day that Sean tweeted this, I believe the discussion on Bikeforums was at about 2 pages. It now sits at 15 (at the time of this posting). A quick search reveals a number of other sites that have picked up on the story:
Bikeforums.net
The Consumerist
Fark
Digg
BNet Industries
Liberty Forum
The Outskirts
The Nerd

Unfortunately, the stories that spread like this are far more prevalent than the positive ones  (which do happen though, check out the Zappos Story if you’re not familiar with it yet). Regardless of whether your story is positive or negative, though, this is a perfect demonstration of the power of the spoken word. Whether someone is touting your new business to their friends at work, or venting their frustrations about a major retailer, the word will spread.

Certain things can help that will help your word along. Here’s a few quick thoughts…
Finding the right people: who is going to “get” what you’re doing and who you are? Who’s going to enjoy and appreciate your efforts and be willing to spread the word? Those are you Brand Evangelists. Cater to them.

Tackle everything that comes at you, good or bad: What would you do right now if you were Wal-Mart? Ignore the situation? How about taking part in the conversation? Don’t make excuses, don’t throw money at the problem, but take an active role. Maybe install a bike rack?

Be honest: This is probably one of the most important things ANYONE can do. As soon as companies try to hide something or change the rules, people are quick to call BS. Honesty is always the best policy. Most people understand that businesses are around to make money. Do so in a responsible manner, and they’ll be more likely to work with you rather than against you.

Have some other ideas? Do share? What do you look for in a company that you find yourself telling friends about? What are you quick to bash someone for?