Brains on Fire

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  Happy client?

  Posted on August 24th, 2010 by Robbin and currently 3 commenting.

  
  Dare you to think about a baby laughing and not smile right now. Photo via flickr via five2b4u

  The other day I heard Dodds talking on the phone with a client. He walks and talks so I overheard tiny bits of the conversation.

  I asked him after he hung the phone up. “Happy client?’

  “Yes — we laugh at least once a day. “

  That made my heart sing. Just sing. We work so hard, all of us. It has to be fun. Doesn’t it?

  My motto.

  Have fun and make money.

  Not necessarily in that order.

  So how do you make the work you do more fun? How do you make it fun for your clients? Is fun a part of the new ROI?

  Tags: Fun, ROI
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  Lifting others up. Part two or three. Or four. Who knows.

  Posted on August 17th, 2010 by Robbin and currently 12 commenting.

  
  This photo is from my friend Libby Williams. She took it in my sunroom. WE love her. Check out her blog.

  “Victory in marketing doesn’t happen when you sell something, but when you cultivate advocates for your brand” – Steve Knox

  Steve Knox made a huge, beautiful impact on me at the FIRE session. And set this thought rolling around in my heart and my head.

  He said that the goal of a company should be to create Trusted Advocacy. And while he spent a lot of time talking about disrupting schemas (which was awesome cool), he said something else that got my wheels spinning and really validated a lesson we have learned.

  Lesson number 9 in the Brains on Fire book to be exact.
  
  “Movements make advocates feel like rock stars.” (Okay, I have said it before. Maybe rock star is not the best term, but you get the gist.)

  Steve said one of the ways to create trust is to give without expecting anything in return. (Side note: what makes a remarkable company also seems to make a great person, have you noticed that?)
  
  We call it lifting others up. So many companies these days want to start a community of fans. But think about it. Do we really admire those among us who are looking for fans to be their advocates or are we drawn to people who genuinely lift us up…without expecting anything in return.

  I’ll be honest, I know who I’d rather have dinner with.

  It’s a fine line.

  Don’t go searching for people (fans) to lift your business up, lift them up first. Be famous for the people who love you, for the way you love them.

  Love and recognition form a circular transaction. If you give it out, it’ll always come back to you. Trust it.

  We all on some gut level know that first hand. It flat out works in relationships and it works in business. And finally, finally we as marketers and leaders are starting to embrace the fact that creating a remarkable business is all about relationships.

  We are so very jazzed that those of your reading the Brains on Fire book are reaching out to us by email and such. It’s really a dream come true for me personally. Another dream of mine is to return the concept of love back to the corporate world. Because love is a good thing. Here’s a comment to us by email from DeRay McKesson. Who by the way gave us a ton of constructive feedback we will address soon. But here is a comment from him I cherish:

  + Love. It’s an easy topic/word to avoid and difficult to engage meaningfully. I appreciate that you did not hide behind “passion” but instead let passion co-mingle with its partner “love” throughout the text. At each point, you acknowledged the feeling part of the work of spreading messages in a way that came across as authentic. Solid.

  I woke up one morning recently to this email and it changed my life. It started like this: Dear Brains on Fire, This love is real. So yeah. Not naming names DOUGLAS, but you think we all work harder when you share that sort of thing? Well, guess what? WE all do. Whether we are abolishing sex slavery in the world, reforming high school education or selling diapers. Or scissors.

  You toss bits of love out into the universe and they come back to you. Every. Single. Time. Stay close. WE are crazy mad in love with all of you who are taking your precious time to to read this blog today. Pass it on. Will ya?

  Love and much, much gratitude,
  Robbin

  Tags: Brains on Fire Book, FIRE Sessions, Fiskars, Green Dot Public Schools, Love, love146, P&G, Steve Knox
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  A Quick Thought on Purpose, Not Profit

  Posted on August 12th, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 9 commenting.
  

  Dodds showing off some plastic. Photo via the new intern, Suggs.

  The other night I had a conversation with a friend about marketing, and he asked me a really good question.

  “It seems like there are so many companies out there just trying to peddle me a product - so how do you explain how what you do is different from what they do?”

  A great question, and more challenging from a non-marketer with little frame of reference for the industry. After a few minutes of hard thinking, here’s where I ended up:

  “At its fundamental level, my job at Brains on Fire is to develop meaningful relationships between companies, their employees and their customers.

  There are lots of marketers out there who do simply pedal products, and that’s why you see endless new waves of advertising and other promotions - they have to keep  providing cheap entertainment for their customers to retain interest.

  And that’s the easy route - it’s easy to have a one night stand - but anyone who’s ever been in a committed, long-lasting relationship knows that it takes lots of time and hard work, and that the payout isn’t necessarily immediate.

  It’s no different for companies: long lasting relationships with customers takes time and hard work.

  So, I submit that the reason you feel like so many companies are peddling you a product is because they are. They are more interested in the short term reward of your wallet than they are in the work of an actual relationship with you.”

  Today, I’m thankful to work with a group of people who value the purpose of building relationships over entertaining for short-term profit.

  Tags: Brains on Fire, Conversation, customers, easy, hard, long-term, products, profit, purpose, question, relationships, short term, short term profit, sustainable, Work
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  Movements and ownership - employees and customers behind the wheel

  Posted on July 22nd, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 2 commenting.

  On Monday we talked about why movements require ownership - putting employees and customers behind the wheel. Today we’re gonna look at a few really practical examples.

  First, if you missed the last episode, here are a few highlights:

  • So many well-meaning businesses initiate use of social media tools and conversation with their employees and customers, but never let them out of the passenger seat.
  • If you want to build real community, though, you can’t just invite your advocates along for the ride, you have to let them get behind the wheel at some point.
  • Without letting them drive, you’ll never see your employees or customers let out their full potential - which also happens to be the full potential of your brand.
  Ok, on to a few practical examples. There are lots of them out there, but I picked a few different ones that look at ownership from different angles. We’d love to hear about some more examples from you.

  

  Example 1: Engineering and letting the people who use your products help design them.

  Fiskars is an amazing client of ours. Their willingness to let the people who love them most play an active role in the brand continually amazes us. One of the coolest examples, though, is the magic that happened when the brand let some of their biggest fans meet the product engineers - and tell them what they liked and disliked about old products and what they’d like to see in new products.

  That’s right - Fiskars let the people who use their products on a daily basis get together with the engineers to help them brainstorm on how the products could be better. And the engineers loved it - end users giving them practical and useful product improvement ideas. What’s more, one of their meetings even resulted in a new product.

  

  Example 2: Using customer artwork in company marketing.

  Pabst Blue Ribbon has held an annual art contest for the past 4 years. The rules are pretty simple: any art created had to have the Pabst Blue Ribbon can or logo and any sculptures created had to be constructed solely of empty PBR cans. How’s that putting customers behind the wheel?

  Pabst uses a selection of the artwork to display on billboards (giving the original artist full credit). Lots of companies solicit user-generated-content from customers, and many of them display the work online. Pabst (and other companies with similar efforts) takes it a step further and actually involves artists’ work in the companies marketing and let’s the world know it.

  

  Example 3: Asking employees to be the brand of good customer service and putting your money where your mouth is.

  The Ritz Carlton has an incredibly strong commitment to the quality of their customer experience. That customer experience is delivered by their employees, so they obviously have very high standards for their workers. (Sidenote, their employee motto is really cool: “We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen”.)

  But The Ritz doesn’t just ask make customer service a job requirement or simply ask their employees to provide an optimal stay for guests. They give them the power live the brand of customer service. With cash.

  …they’re empowered to deliver the level of service Ritz mandates… Sixty-seven percent of customers leave you because of indifference with how they’re treated. Customers judge the quality of the institution, he said, by the responsiveness of the first person they come in contact with to discuss their problem. Given that, the Ritz empowers and trains the front-line service to resolve conflicts. Part of this entails allowing employees to spend up to $2,000 per guest per day to “fix” any problems, as well as giving employees ongoing problem-resolution training.

  –Milla D’Antonio

  Tags: art, beer, Brains on Fire, Brand, Brands, customer service, customers, Employees, engineering, fiskaneers, Fiskars, Fiskateers, Marketing, ownership, pabst blue ribbon, PBR, Ritz Carlton, user generated content
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  Live (the day after) from NY and SuperGenius

  Posted on July 21st, 2010 by Robbin and currently 5 commenting.

  Okay. So even though it is Wednesday. I’m writing this from the SuperGenius conference in New York on Tuesday. Good stuff so far. There’s a large crowd and a sweet guitar guy to serenade us in between workshops. Music at a conference is calming, don’t you think? Meet Brian:
  
  Andy, the fearless leader of gaspedal, kicked off the day with a great talk on love or marketing. I prefer to think Brains on Fire is in the love business. Because we all need more love. We all want to be loved. Andy made the point that everyone is lovable. B2B, products, causes. Agreed. We preach: Love the people who love you and they will flat out love you back. This is also something Gaspedal preaches that hit home“Companies that can make people happy are more successful.” Amen, Brother Andy.

  Here’s a photo @genochurch hanging with some of the folks from gaspedal and @paullyoung from @charitywater.

  

  I also got a chance to hear @saulcolt speak and meet him in person. Cool pants. And we both love @jonwye. My favorite quote from him: Live the life of your customers. You are singing our song and I am drinking your Kool-aid, Saul.
  

  Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos is brilliant. “Take most of the money you’d spend on marketing and spend it on customer service, so your customers can tell your story. Zappos is customer service company that happens to sell shoes”. Two books Tony recommends to all his associates; Good to Great and Tribal Leadership. Two of Zappos core family values: Create fun and little weirdness. And Be humble. WOW. The other thing I love is this. He said they are always looking for smart people that are not egotistical. Amen to that. No room for large egos in a remarkable organization. I have learned that lesson on occasion.

  I love this guy. I would shine his shoes for free.

  I’m “iphoto happy” today. Some are bit fuzzier than others. But still I thought you might like to see them. Here’s Heather with Tony.
  

  BTW, We also met last night with Dan Ambrosia and Peter Knox of Wiley and Sons, our book publisher. I love them and got so caught in the excitement of the moment, I forgot to take a photo. But we did get to met @heathercondon at the conference, our publicist. Love her.

  Here’s a photo of me, Heather and Geno.
  

  And @thebrandbuilder himself was there all the way from our very own Greenvegas. He gave a nice talk on ROI worth a watch. I think they were all recorded.
  

  One of my favorite take-aways was from a talk I didn’t get to attend.
  From Todd Spencer @doeanderson: It’s human nature to want things that seem hard to get. We agree. There should be a barrier of entry to a community. It’s hard for me to get excited when anyone talks about having millions of facebook fans, what percentage of those folks stay truly engaged. Hmmmm.

  So there are my highlights. If you were there and want to add yours, please do.

  It was a great event and I really have to say, credit goes to groups like gaspedal and WOMMA who are bringing the thought leaders of Word of Mouth marketing together to share and connect offline. I’m humbled and excited to be a part of the Word of Mouth movement.

  Now. let’s go spread some WOM love today.

  Tags: @thebrandbuilder, Andy Sernovitz, charity: water, GasPedal, Jon Wye, Paull Young, saul colt, WOM, WOMMA, word of mouth marketing