Church of the Customer Blog

How much is that doggie ticket?

2008-11-19T12:56:58-06:00

If you fly with a small dog, be prepared to pay a lot.

I wanted to take Mini, my 10-pound toy poodle, with me during a Thanksgiving trip. My round-trip ticket cost: roughly $300.

Here were the round-trip costs for Mini to ride under the seat in front of me:

American Airlines: $200
USAirways: $200
JetBlue: $200
Continental Airlines: $250
Delta: $300
United Airlines: $350
Southwest Airlines: does not allow pets (except service animals)

On most of the airlines, it would cost nearly the same to stow Mini as a carry-on bag under the seat in front of me as my own seat. On one airline, Mini's ticket would cost more than my own.

Just a few years ago, airlines were touting "fly with your pet" programs. This year, most airlines have raised all of their fees across the board, including pet fees.

Can someone explain the economics of extremely high pet fees? Are the airlines trying to disincentivize carry-on pets, or do they see it as easy money because of well-heeled dog owners?

As for my travel plans, I'm staying put.

Mark Cuban and hating to lose

2008-11-17T14:39:13-06:00

The SEC has filed suit against Mark Cuban, alleging he engaged in insider trading in 2004 with mamma.com to avoid a $750,000 loss. At the time, Cuban was the largest shareholder in the company.

On his blog, Cuban denied the allegations, saying "the Commission’s claims are infected by the misconduct of the staff of its Enforcement Division."

Given how little we've heard from the SEC the past few years, save for how its overwhelming lack of enforcement during the financial industry meltdown, this is a curious case. Then again, Cuban "hates to lose," as he says in a separate blog post about the NBA team that he owns. That post immediately precedes his terse post about the SEC suit.

Cuban hates to lose and, as we learned profiling him and the Dallas Mavericks for a case study in "Creating Customer Evangelists," he sometimes struggles with the competing interests of long-term winning thinking and short-sightedness that can erase winning margins.

His long-term winning thinking is showcased in how he converted one of the worst franchises in professional sports to become one of the most valuable. He did so by making the opponents of his team feel just as welcome at the Mavs' arena with a visitors locker room that's as comfortable and well-appointed as his own team's; after all, opposing players may one day join your team. He made it OK for homemade signs to be brought into the arena (a stern no-no of the previous owners), and encouraged crazy fan loyalty by constantly demonstrating his own. He invested heavily in technology for the coaches and players and a statistician, two largely unexplored areas prior to Cuban's investments. He told us back in 2002 how much he admired the Chicago Cubs and the passionate loyalty of its fan, a loyalty cultivated by its honest, "loveable loser" spirit.

On the other hand, during our conversations with him, Cuban talked extensively of his time of being a daytrader prior to buying the Mavs and how he loved shortsellers "because they keep companies honest." Shortsellers, it turns out, have been partially blamed for the demise of a number of financial institutions this year. Cuban also defined ultimate success in business by being summoned to Congress amid accusations of holding a monopoly on an industry. Microsoft, of course, has spent billions paying fines and perhaps billions more in legal fees extracting itself from monopolist charges. It has taken many years to rebuild the goodwill from the damage caused by its previous win-at-all-costs mentality.

No doubt, Cuban will probably surprise a number of people with the way he defends himself against the SEC's charges. Ever since he was kid selling garbage bags door to door, he's been unafraid to win. The question about the mamma.com case, though, did he go too far to avoid losing?

Nothing against the watchdogs at the SEC, but I hope they're wrong.

Update: Cuban has posted a memo from his attorney, who excerpted his "interview" (unclear if it's a deposition) with the former mamma.com CEO. As we might have expected, this will probably evolve into a good example of a high-profile lawsuit first tried in the court of blog-driven public opinion. The stakes are high.

Whole Foods' next niche?

2008-11-12T16:03:27-06:00

Whole Foods once owned the "organic grocer" category, but no more. Health Magazine's list of healthiest grocery stores now includes traditional chains like Safeway and Publix.

The niche is gone. Organic has gone mainstream.

When that happens, pricing advantage dissipates, as do margins, as Whole Foods announced some ugly profit results last week, including taking a big cash infusion from an investor. With competitors hammering you on price and stealing your market growth, do you compete on their playing field of lower prices, or do you develop a new niche?

A new niche, of course. For Whole Foods, or a like-minded store, one opportunity is "special diets," including those related to food allergies.

It's not a small niche. Food allergies in children have risen 18% since 1997, affecting 3 million children today. Nearly 4% of adults, or 12 million people, have food allergies. Another 3 million people can't consume gluten (ceilac disease). In this niche you could include aging baby-boomers who focus on low-sodium, low-fat, dairy-free diets or people who adopt alternative diets like veganism.

Whole Foods has a breadth of products for special diets but based on my own recent diagnosed condition (candida overgrowth), I had no idea. I discovered by chance that my Whole Foods store has a staff nutritionist who'll freely help customers with special diet meal planning. Carly the nutritionist knew all about candida and helped me understand what I could eat and not eat, and pointed out myriad wheat-free, yeast-free and sugar-free products in the store. I so do not cook, but my Whole Foods has an expansive prepared food case. Every dish is meticulously labeled detailing its ingredients, pointing out clearly if it contains gluten or wheat.

A niche of people who prioritize their health, no matter the price, exists. Is that so much of a luxury?

UPDATE: The nutritionist at my Whole Foods Store (the flagship store at 5th and Lamar) is a pilot project. No other Whole Foods have such a program. Yet : )

Also I just discovered that the Jewel-Osco grocery chain just opened a "green store" in Chicago that is eco-friendly in design and operation and features an on-site dietitian.

SWOMfest '08 highlights

2008-11-03T12:30:53-06:00

SWOMfest '08 is now for the history books. A thousand thanks to everyone who attended our first-annual conference and party for the Society for Word of Mouth.

Some conference highlights:

Curtis Harris of Fellowship Technologies rocked a SWOMfest '08 tattoo.

Owen Mack of coBRANDIT won best costume at our 80's pre-conference party for dressing up as Pee Wee Herman. He even wore killer shoes like the ones Paul Reubens used to dance to "Tequila" in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure." Thanks to Young & Free Texas for sponsoring the party. More party photos here.

The Thriller dancers kicked off the conference. They were an ad-hoc, amateur troupe that met for the first time early on the morning of our event. They were among the 881 Austinites who'd recently been part of Thrill the World, the world record-breaking performance of everyday people around the world doing Michael Jackson's "Thriller" dance simultaneously. Neal Stewart from Flying Dog captured the video.

The Texas Social Breakfast, sponsored by Dell, took Web 2.0 aspects like tagging, favoriting and pieces of flair, and applied them to the analog model of in-person networking, making conversation starting points easier.

Blue Avocado, an Austin start-up that produces stylish recyclable grocery bags, launched at SWOMfest. The company provided one of their cool products as the conference bag.

Recorded videos of the speakers are here. Thanks to Owen Mack at coBRANDIT for broadcasting the conference live on his cell-enabled camera.

Some reviews:

Spike from Brains on Fire: "A whiz-bang event filled with great speakers -– and even more importantly –- great interaction."

Virginia Miracle of Ogilvy PR: "SWOMfest was a blast from the 80’s themed pre-party to Thriller dance recreation kickoff to the final case workshop."

Neal Stewart of Flying Dog Brewery: "SWOMfest was different than any other marketing conference I’ve attended."

Geoff Knox of Dell: "SWOMfest turned out to be not just a refreshingly different conference but an event that provided some great insights and an opportunity to rub elbows and socialize with people from a wide range of locations and industries."

Jay Ehret from the Marketing Spot has "4 Hot Ideas from SWOMfest" on how to create word of mouth for small businesses.

Rob Williams recorded his thoughts from Haley Rushing's talk about "finding your purpose."

Connie Reece live-Plurked the event.

Lots of Tweeting during and after the conference. You can read all tweets here. More conference photos are here.

What we learned:

Food makes a huge difference in the overall recommendability of a conference. We knew that prior to SWOMfest but we confirmed it. If you pay $695+ to attend a conference and the organizers feed you a box lunch, you're getting ripped off. Our caterer, 2 Dine 4, prepared an outstanding Texas-themed breakfast and lunch. Thanks, Gina and crew!
A conference is a performance, and the venue sets the mood. We held SWOMfest at the brand-new Long Center for the Performing Arts, which came equipped with great acoustics, sound, projector and facilities. That gave it a huge advantage over hotel ballrooms, which can be pretentious and staid. That said, seeing the video of the Thriller dancers showed us how much more we needed to decorate the stage around our theme.
Liberal breaks are a must-have. We scheduled several 30-minute breaks and a long lunch with no program or speakers. That was a hit with attendees, who said they loved having time to meet and chat with others without being rushed.
When you don't get what you think is reasonably possible, go to the top. After the Long Center first said installing wi-fi was impossible, then prohibitively expensive, we turned to Cliff Redd, the center's executive director. With his help, we negotiated a deal by which we'd pay $500 to have a wi-fi network installed, which worked beautifully. Our thanks to everyone at the Long who worked hard on our behalf, including Gabrielle, Jim, Jeff, Laura and, of course, Cliff Redd. Get well, Cliff!

Now it's on to planning for the '09 conference.

Watch SWOMfest live

2008-10-29T05:35:00-05:00

We're not dead. It's that SWOMfest is almost here. OMG, we have been working our butts off preparing.

If you're planning on joining us in Austin tomorrow, SWOMfest will rock. If you can't be there in person, we'll be streaming a good deal of the conference/workshop/party live, starting at 9 am CST Thursday, Oct. 30.

You can watch the presentations in the media player on the front page of the SWOMfest site. Scroll down the page to see the player. Here are the sessions that will be broadcast and their approximate start times.

09:00 am: Opening and welcome
09:20 am: "WOM and the DNA of Your Organization," Ben McConnell
09:40 am: "How to Discover Your Purpose," Haley Rushing, The Purpose Institute
11:10 am: "Creating a Spreadable Story," Yaphet Smith, screenwriter
01:10 pm: "The Science of Networks," Jackie Huba
02:00 pm: "How to Teach WOM at a Big Company," Sean McDonald, Dell
03:05 pm: "Using Social Media for New Markets," Trey Reeme, TDECU

Note: We're using cellphone-based streaming technology for the live broadcast. THX it's not. We hope it works. It might not. Guess it depends on the mood of the technology gods.

Bailout transparency

2008-10-21T16:23:14-05:00

Was over before it began, according to a site that is tracking the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street.

BailoutSleuth.com (via TechDirt) has been examining all of the bailout documents released by the Treasury Department and is finding page after page of redacted data, often related to how much money companies will earn for their work with our money. (You'll remember that the first bailout vote in Congress failed, largely because representatives were inundated with calls from angry citizens about the bailout's lack of transparency.)

If a company showed as much contempt for its investors at this administration does for its citizens, the penalties would be significant. Transparency is not conveniently relevant to a desired outcome.

WOM about the race

2008-10-21T11:07:22-05:00

Chances are you know about the Net Promoter Score, a tool that indicates a strong correlation between the total number of customers who'd recommend your company or product and your future revenue growth.

MotiveQuest is riffing on that idea with the Online Promoter Score, which samples online word of mouth to determine a future trend. They're showcasing their tool with the presidential race.

To compile its numbers, the company says it monitors about 30,000 messages from 6,000 people each day from a few dozen political sites, parsing the positive from the negative.

What do you think: Will the percentages of online promoters on Nov. 4 correlate to within a percentage point or two of the general election outcome?

Let's talk about Tribes

2008-10-18T11:51:23-05:00

WHAT: Live conference call with Seth Godin, Ben McConnell, Jackie Huba, and Michael Port about Seth's new book, "Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us." We'll discuss how the Internet has enabled everyone to lead a tribe and create movements with customers, employees or neighbors.

WHEN: Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008 at 2 pm EDT.

HOW MUCH: Free. Sign up here.

Can't make the live call? Not to worry. Register for the call and you'll receive a link to the recorded version.

Ticket for charity

2008-10-13T11:34:32-05:00

Andy was planning to attend SWOMfest then realized it's the same day as his wedding anniversary. Smartly, he decided to stay home.

He's auctioning his ticket on eBay, with all proceeds going to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. A SWOMfest ticket is $325; Andy's auction is at $150 right now.

The word of mouth mayor

2008-10-08T19:06:48-05:00

To support Austin's participation in Thrill the World, an attempt to break the world record for the largest synchronized “Thriller” dance on earth, Austin Mayor Will Wynn showed off his moves. Not bad for a tie-wearing politician.

Check out the video press coverage.

Being in charge sometimes means doing weird things to build enthusiasm for a program or rallying the troops. Mayor Wynn isn't afraid to venture out toward the weird to generate some word of mouth. It is Austin, after all. The weirder the better.

In his two terms, he has also:

Strutted down the runway in a revealing outfit to support a local clothing designer
Jumped off of a city bridge to help promote a local independent film
Dressed up like a zombie to support yet another local independent film

(Thrill the World Austin is one of the many things you can watch or participate in during SWOMfest's Word of Mouth Weekend. I'll be there doing the dance.)

How bad is it?

2008-10-06T11:51:19-05:00

A quote from a shopper in suburban Chicago in the Times today summarizes what many people are experiencing from the increasingly louder drumbeat of bad economic news:

“All the talk about how bad it is out there has started getting in my head."

And the financial crisis hadn't even affected her family. That's the trickle-down effect of perception.

Economists have been warning that the trickle-down effect of the credit crisis on Wall Street will spread to any business that relies on credit as a capital resource.

Has it? Is the credit crisis affecting your company and how it spends money on marketing, sales, or operations?

Take the poll and/or sound off in the comments.

13 reasons to attend SWOMfest; 10 registrants get a free...

2008-10-02T09:44:27-05:00

SWOMfest '08 -- the daylong conference/workshop/party on Oct. 30, 2008, to help you bake word of mouth into the DNA of your product, service or overall organization -- is a month away.

It also happens to be the first-annual event for the Society for Word of Mouth, which we founded earlier this year.

SWOMfest '08 is teeming... teeming! with an exciting and eclectic group of experts who'll help you focus on developing a word-of-mouth strategy that delivers long-term benefits and results, not half-baked, short-term tactics that cost big bucks.

Attendance is limited to 200 at the brand-new Long Center, right along the banks of Town Lake in downtown Austin, so you'd better hustle up, Holmes.

Should you go? Here are...

13 reasons why you should attend SWOMfest:

To meet other Swomies who understand that, except for one company out of a billion (it sells blenders) viral videos do not translate into sales.
Big-thinking presenters like Haley Rushing of GSD&M's Purpose Institute and Hollywood screenwriter Yaphet Smith, who bring a unique perspective to word of mouth you won't see anywhere else. (You read that right: a screenwriter.)
It won't decimate your training and education budget. At $325, SWOMfest is affordable compared to other word-of-mouth conferences.
No boring and self-serving panels.
Each attendee gets a hot off-the press book from one of the following authors: Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Dan Roam, Tim Manners or Geoff Colvin. Thanks, Portfolio!
An optional Word of Mouth Weekend tour in Austin, Texas, after SWOMfest. Explore the city ranked as the most creative (and weird) in the U.S. It has more word of mouth stuff happening than you can shake a blog at. We have mapped out a tour of places that will spark your word of mouth imagination.
If you're part of a non-profit organization, you can attend for half price.
Pre-conference '80s party. SWOMfest '08 is during Halloween week, so we'll blind ourselves with costume party science on Wednesday, Oct. 29, the night before SWOMfest. The pre-conference party theme is the '80s. Bring your Devo energy dome and leg warmers. We'll have prizes for best costume. Then we'll adjourn to see the best '80s cover band ever, the Spazmatics.
Live DJ. DJ Mel has spun at big-name gigs like Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits music festival. Mel will be spinning all day at SWOMfest. Yup, a DJ at a business conference!
Beer all day. The gonzo guys at Flying Dog Brewery will provide their spectacular craft brews throughout the day.
The chance to win a Dell 20-inch widescreen, flat-panel monitor. Thanks, Dell!
John Moore, Connie Reece, Richard Binhammer and Sean McDonald from Dell, the crew from Brains on Fire, and Virginia Miracle, will be there as well as all of these people.
Bragging rights for being at the first-ever SWOMfest.

Here's one more reason: Jackie and I will host a 45-minute conference call for the companies of each of the next 10 people who register. Just you and us. We can discuss your biggest or thorniest marketing challenge, how to create more customer evangelists, how to convince your boss about word of mouth, what color socks go with brown shoes... whatever you'd like.

Go register.

Social media as customer service

2008-09-30T13:24:29-05:00

Some stats from a recent survey conducted about Americans who use social media sites and their interaction with business:

60% interact with companies using social media
93% say a company should have a presence in social media
85% say a company should not only be present but also interact with its customers via social media
56% say they feel a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment
43% say companies should use social networks to solve customers' problems
41% say companies should use social media to solicit feedback about products and services

(Source: 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study, from an online survey conducted Sept. 11-12, 2008 by Opinion Research Corporation among 1,092 adults comprising 525 men and 567 women 18 years of age and older. Margin of error +/- 3%.)

Social media is the new customer service. When social media-driven customer service is combined with the work of citizen marketers, it becomes a force for more credible problem-solving (and less expensive customer service costs). With its inherent market research opportunities, social media has crossed over to the category of obvious strategy.

Update: Nathan tracks real-time examples of one company's social media-driven customer support in the U.K. travel industry. If anything, the example company's responses on Twitter and a travel blog help neutralize skepticism and lightly tinged anger. With the right combination of empathy and problem-resolution, a customer vigilante is sometimes just a few degrees away from turning into a customer evangelist.

Why the bailout package failed

2008-09-29T16:20:25-05:00

Here are the headlines from just two pages in today's Wall Street Journal:

"Financial troubles humble U.S."
"Tighter terms for car loans promise to deepen troubles for sluggish sales"
"Jobless report likely to show gloom beyond Wall Street"
"Rescue may not revive economy"
"Bailout gives Fed, Bernanke key roles"

Those weren't even the front-page headlines.

Those headlines are a backdrop everyone can understand in this big and complicated story. Yet, today's historic vote in Congress for a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street failed on a vote of 228-205.

Why? One clear reason was the most important backdrop: the story of what the bailout would do. The most important story is always the first one. When we first learned about the bailout, the story we heard was that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would have unquestionable, czar-like authority (by a former head of a Wall Street firm, no less). There would be no review process or transparency about the administration of the program. There would be no (initial) curbs against Wall Street CEO pay, which everyone knows is outrageous and symptomatic of the greed that got us into this mess in the first place.

Those three story points stoked vast numbers of citizens to call their congressional representatives to reject the bailout, no matter how much the plan matured or was made more sane by Republicans and Democrats working together. (One report said calls to congressmen were averaging 100-1 against the bailout.)

Those initial three, easy-to-comprehend points reinforced the existing storyline we've come to know all too well the past eight years: rich, out-of-touch, transparency-unfriendly fat-cats who become bureaucrats, and vice versa, are manipulating the levers of power behind a cloak of secrecy to further enrich themselves. It's a storyline most of the American public has come to find revolting and, frankly, dangerous.

Maybe what this financial crisis will finally change about American business and government and the interplay between the two is the unquestionable need for transparency. A Google-friendly form of governance. Let's hope the secret-keepers in charge are finally, and forever, driven from power.

Update: Bob McTeer, former president of the Federal Reserve in Dallas, on why the vote failed:

Every "ordinary American" I talked to about the plan, including family and neighbors, misunderstood the plan and hated it. They viewed it as using their tax dollars to bail out rich corrupt Wall Street types. Despite repetition over and over on TV and in the press that the bailout did not involve ordinary government expenditures but involved a purchase of assets that would be resold, most likely at a profit, that message never sank in. The legislators faced almost unanimous negative feedback from their constituents.

Despite the repetition on TV and in the press (let's call it "the advertising"), the details of the revised bailout never sank in because the first story was the one everyone remembered.

The importance of the first story of a new company, product or initiative can never be overestimated. The first story is the benchmark. It's an encapsulation of greatness, evil or indifference. It's the context for word of mouth, which will almost certainly carry the most credibility.

Energy vs. quality

2008-09-24T18:33:54-05:00

Singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, who sold 3 million copies of her album "Solitude Standing," on what it takes to create a hit:

Raw energy and great ideas spark the public interest better than attention to 'quality.'

So true when it comes to (many) new products and services.

I salute Crispin Porter + Bogusky

2008-09-19T11:36:44-05:00

Talking about ad agencies and their campaigns is not a regular feature of this blog.

But I have to hand it to CP+B for its recent work with Microsoft, not for the ads -- for resetting expectations of Microsoft. Now, it seems, that Microsoft can take creative risks. Whoa. That'll stir people up!

The first set of ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates were so far out of left field that it was impossible for the big talkers in technology not to: 1. be excited or 2. be sanctimonious. You loved them, hated them, or were baffled by them. That made them polarizing, therefore a strong foundation-builder. (Note: they weren't offensive, the stereotypical route taken by stereotypical agencies to generate buzz.)

The next task: Reframe how your competition frames you. With a new series of ads, Microsoft has reframed Apple's "PC is a stereotype" frame. Take a look:

Now that Microsoft is sitting atop a big pile of word of mouth, is reframing the persona of what it means to be a PC user -- you're not a schlub anymore, as Apple would have you believe -- what next? After all, Microsoft products are still Microsoft products. New and magical unicorns aren't streaming out of Redmond.

Will it reframe conversations inside Microsoft?

Will it encourage Microsoft to take more risks, not with security, but with expectations?

Will it encourage Microsofties to defy convention and not be pummeled into submission?

Will it encourage Microsoft to understand the Apple user, not crucify them (which happened to me and Jackie on the Microsoft campus at the end of a workshop we were conducting!)?

I see this as a campaign to change both external and internal expectations.

Whatever the outcome, it's fascinating to watch the real-time evolution.

Five years later ...

2008-09-17T14:05:57-05:00

In 2003, Al Bartholet took a big risk in launching Folk Alley, a web-based public radio station. Public radio is risk-averse, so Al put his reputation, and perhaps his career as a public radio station general manager, on the line by dedicating significant time and money into launching a new, grassroots-driven, online folk music station.

"There were plenty of naysayers who gave me dozens of reasons why we should not invest so much time and effort into what some called a distraction," he wrote yesterday, the station's fifth anniversary. "There was a point early on when [I received] a list of reasons why we shouldn't be moving forward."

Five years later, Folk Alley is thriving; it has accumulated $1 million in pledges, amassed a database of 90,000 listeners (unheard of in public radio) and has set the standard for web-based public radio in the United States. (Disclosure: I'd worked with Al and his crew to launch Folk Alley.)

Building word of mouth into the DNA of your organization involves breeding unconventional thinking, making unpopular decisions and taking more risks than usual. Bypassing the seductive gatekeepers of hierarchy and conformity are often the most difficult tasks.

When small is big

2008-09-16T17:12:47-05:00

I'm sharing this video with you for two reasons:

If you don't know the agency Brains on Fire already, you should.
Small things can be big ideas without big bucks. Brains on Fire is sending several of its people to SWOMfest '08 next month and decided to buy an extra pass as a giveaway for one of their blog readers. They produced a short video about the giveaway. It could have been a safe and conventional video, but that's not how BoF works, which is why this I'm sharing this video.

Why customer rituals work

2008-09-16T11:52:10-05:00

You may know I'm something of a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.

Every city I've called home, and many I've only visited, has had a bar where Steelers fans gather to watch our beloved team crush its unworthy competitors. (OK, I get a bit rambunctious when it comes to football.) Here in my relatively new home of Austin, I was happy to find a bar nominating itself as the local headquarters for Steelers fans.

The reality is, it's an OK place. There's one, lineman-sized difference between the Austin bar and the bar in Chicago where I previously worshiped every Sunday: A lack of rituals.

Rituals are the code of ceremonies observed by an organization. They are the shared experiences of a group. They create emotional glue. To an outsider, a ritual can be weird, wacky or just plain stupid. To people inside the organization, they may be metaphors for life, death, or renewal. For never-say-die Steelers fans, rituals can symbolize all of the above.

The lack of rituals at the Austin bar makes it simply a place to watch the game. It has low energy. It doesn't do anything to back up the claim of being headquarters -- or a "Stillers" church for the rest of us.

But at the Chicago Steelers bar (and others I've visited), the rituals were abundant:

A live polka band playing the Steelers' fight song after scores
Wiping one's feet on an opponent's jersey at the front entrance
A gregarious fan leading the crowd in the "Here We Go Steelers" chant before crucial 3rd downs
A ready supply of Terrible Towels to wave when the team makes a great play
The wearing of Steelers jerseys, t-shirts, hats, earrings, etc.
Serving Iron City beer (a Pittsburghian brew)
Reserved tables for regulars
Tailgating in the bar parking lot before games, just like at home

All rituals. All done regularly, no matter what, for it's repetition of rituals combined with emotional subtext that creates meaning. People will tell their friends and family about the rituals they experience when the context is right. That just leaves it up to an organization being open and brave enough to establish and follow rituals that's difficult, as my Austin bar proves every week.

For your business, have you devised rituals for your customer evangelists? What shared experiences allow them to build a worshipping foundation?

Your marketing mix

2008-09-15T08:01:24-05:00

Marketing mix sounds like it could be a box item on a store shelf.

Yet for some reason, that's the familiar term among marketing veeps and managers when it comes to thinking about the coming year. (And it's about that time.)

Here's a great Fishburne cartoon to print out and include in your plan if the boss insists on using the same ol' mix that just doesn't work anymore.

Microsoft's reframing

2008-09-12T15:36:32-05:00

There sure are a lot of "I don't get it" comments out there about Microsoft's ad campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. It's continuing today with the release of "episode two."

The comments are everywhere, especially among the tech bloggers, who tend to be driven by instantaneousness, not subtlety. Features are answers. Story is subtlety.

Yup, a lot of comments. Which is part of the point.

With the help of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Microsoft is in the process of reframing the discussion about Microsoft. It is building a new persona.

A persona isn't established by one commercial. Critics of the Gates/Seinfeld program are missing the point. After all, "Seinfeld" the TV show didn't become a lasting cultural force in the United States after a few episodes.

Microsoft is off to a good start with this new persona-building. But here's the real challenge: for Microsoft to have its products, processes and people authentically reflect the smart-ironic nerd concept it has successfully gotten people to talk about this week. Like "Seinfeld," that'll take years, too.

Have an important problem to solve

2008-09-12T05:55:00-05:00

In researching the science of how things replicate and spread, I've spent time time catching up with the work of Dr. James Watson who, with Francis Crick, discovered the structure of DNA in 1955, eventually earning the duo the Nobel Prize.

Dr. Watson could easily be a consultant about success. He gave a fascinating talk at Google last year and began with "a few reasons why we became famous."

In the interest of replication and spreading his knowledge, here's my summary of Dr. Watson's prescription for work:

1. Have an important problem to solve.
While in college, Watson saw an x-ray photograph of DNA. It captivated him. What was its physical structure? The two-dimensional structure of DNA had already been solved, but no one knew its three-dimensional structure "probably because it was too complicated." Except for Linus Pauling and "some people in London," no one else was working on the answer. That was the motivation Watson and Crick used. "We worked on something before it's time had come," Watson says.

2. Give yourself time, but cap it.
The choreographer Twyla Tharp says the paradox of creativity is that it's better when it's restricted. That squares with Watson's teaching, too. "You shouldn't work on a problem if you think it'll take you 10 years, particularly when you're young. You'll be out of a job." Watson recommends giving yourself three years to solve a big or important problem. "People will sort of of trust you and put up with you for three years," he says.

3. Talk to your competitors.
The x-ray of DNA that inspired Watson was taken by Rosalind Franklin. She was trying to figure out the 3-D structure of DNA, too, but she didn't want to work with Watson and Crick. "She didn't like Francis because he was loud." Plus, Franklin wanted to discover the structure herself. Watson and Crick reached out to their competitors; "you tell them what you think, and they'll tell you what they think and pretty soon, you can get very close to the answer."

4. Never be the brightest person in any room.
If you are, no one can help you. Neither Watson or Crick knew chemistry, even though it was at the heart of what they were trying to solve. Watson had copied diagrams out of a chemistry textbook, but the textbook was wrong. If he and Crick hadn't made friends with a quantum chemist who helped them with their chemistry equations, they never would have discovered the double helix, Watson says. The lesson is that "It was very useful for me to be brought up thinking I wasn't bright because it was very easy then to ask for help."

5. If you need help, ask for it quickly.
"Don't wait a week to ask for help!" Speed matters. After all, you only have three years.

Customer vigilantes take it to the streets

2008-09-05T08:11:08-05:00

Zane shares an example of how far customer vigilantes will go to spread bad word of mouth about a company that refuses to resolve a problem.

He took this picture near his home in Iowa. He passes the sign every day, which reminds him to not hire the company in question.

Today, what starts as a local issue can blossom into a PR nightmare via Google and its voracious feeder system, social media.

SWOMfest: Live DJ, beer and the '80s

2008-09-02T15:03:56-05:00

Here's some of the stuff we're announcing today for SWOMfest '08 to make our first-annual business conference unlike any other business conference:

Pre-conference '80s party. SWOMfest '08 is during Halloween week, so we'll blind ourselves with costume party science on Wednesday, Oct. 29, the night before SWOMfest. The pre-conference party theme? The '80s. Bring your Devo energy dome and leg warmers. We'll have prizes for best costume. Then we'll adjourn to see the best '80s cover band ever, the Spazmatics.
Live DJ. DJ Mel is a turntablist in the purest form of the art; the party rocker. Renowned as one of the most prolific djs in the business due to his wildly popular Rock the Casbah 80s parties, DJ Mel recently returned to Austin from a gig at Lollapalooza 2008 in Chicago. DJ Mel will be spinning all day at SWOMfest. Yup, a DJ at a business conference!
Beer all day. The gonzo guys at Flying Dog Brewery will provide their spectacular craft brews THROUGHOUT the conference. Inspired by Hunter S. Thompson, with labels by renowned artist Ralph Steadman and a tagline of "Good Beer, No Shit," Flying Dog Brewery is a word-of-mouth case study all its own.
WOM Weekend. There's more word of mouth stuff happening in Austin than you can shake a blog at. That's why we'll provide SWOMfest attendees a guide to the many fun and interesting things happening in Austin the weekend that follows SWOMfest, including Halloween on 6th Street, the Cathedral of Junk, Airstream Cuisine (yes, gourmet food out of trailers) and a 2,000-person version of the Thriller Dance.

People learn more when they're having fun, which is why SWOMfest will be unlike any other business conference. Register here before it sells out.