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  • A Salute to Companies Sticking to Their Guns

    Posted on August 11th, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 2 commenting.

    I’d like to share a few thoughts that have been floating around in my head - I might re-visit them in more depth later, but I think a little discussion could be a good thing - even if they’re in rough form.

    The fact that voices of customers are online and discoverable is quite amazing - companies everywhere are learning more about how which people view, use and talk about their brand, products, experiences, etc.

    I think, though, that this ‘power of voice’ is a double-edged sword. One reason is because, as Joshua Blankenship points out (1), the ability to comment on the internet can reveal just how mean people are. Another reason, though, is that I think the knowledge that a company can hear your voice has also given people the ability to complain like they’ve never complained before. Complaining can be good; the ability to discover a customer’s bad experience and mend a relationship is invaluable, and the internet has allowed companies to meet needs in incredible ways. But it also seems that some customers have hijacked the idea that “the customer is always right” as an excuse to complain about or demand unreasonable things en masse, using the information swarm of the internet as the vehicle for their voices.

    A few examples:

    Salute 1: MG Siegler wrote an interesting article (2) related to feature demand - his discussion of the iPhone ‘copy and paste’ outcry is an interesting example of a company sticking to their guns despite negative outcry from their customers. (Side note, this is not a discussion of details about Apple’s feature release or the iPhone as a device, it is a reflection on their devotion to user experience):

    Jobs cited the iPhone’s cut, copy, & paste functionality as one example of Apple getting a feature right. I have to agree. For two years, everyone complained (myself included) that Apple didn’t have this functionality. Could Apple have done it sooner? Of course. But would it have been half-baked? Probably. Just look at how it works on other devices — or maybe I should say: look at how poorly it works on other devices compared to the iPhone.

    Release details, timelines, opinions on devices, and even outcome aside, Apple’s devotion to user experience should be saluted. Customers complained and demanded the feature, but Apple didn’t give in to public opinion (have they ever?) - they stuck to their guns and released the functionality when it was consistent with the user experience that is their brand.

    Salute 2: I first heard about Intelligentsia Coffee after Geno and Heather had visited on a trip to Los Angeles. Geno’s description was so interesting to me - “When I ordered, they made it the way they think a latte should be made, and that’s what I got.”

    After a little bit more digging, I found out that the company’s founder, Doug Zell, has an intense devotion to “providing coffee in the way it tastes best.” (3) His devotion has led to the removal of the 20oz. drink size form their menu - a move that will allow users to experience coffee in an amount that doesn’t allow for unbalanced ratios (like the larger sizes do).

    In a market where major coffee brands are marketing all sorts of options (more variety of flavors, consistent introduction of new types of drinks, etc.), Intelligentsia deserves a salute for their commitment to providing the best coffee experience possible, even if that means decreasing options for customers.

    Salute 3: Google offeres several phone features (phone number, voicemail, SMS) through a service called Google Voice. All of the features are used through an internet browser and, following suit with most of Google’s offerings, it’s free.

    Not so long ago, there were rumors in the techno-sphere that Google was going to release an actual desktop application for Google Voice, and potential users rejoiced. The project came to a halt, though, when Google’s founders questioned whether a desktop application was consistent for a company who developed browser-only technology.

    Blogs ranted about the injustice of halting the project and a petition to continue development circulated.

    But Google’s internal struggle to continually evaluate their brand and clearly define which types of technology they want to develop should be saluted.

    What do you think? Have customers always complained and demanded as much as they do today, or has the visibility of their voices on the internet just made us more aware of it? Any other good examples of a company staying true to their brand despite complaining and demanding customers?

    • (1) - Joshua Blankenship’s article, “On the State of Comments on the Internet,” can be found here.
    • (2) -  MG Seigler’s feature-demand example can be found in his article, “What’s Missing From iPhone 4 Is Part Of What Makes It Great,” here.
    • (3) - Read The Chicago Tribune’s coverage of Intelligentsia’s decision to decrease options here.
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  • Sherlock Holmes on social media popularity

    Posted on August 5th, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 10 commenting.

    There has been a lot of internet-noise lately concerning the ’super-famous’ personalities that are littered across the social media landscape. Whether the noise is about meaningless numbers, unfounded claims or lots of over-hyped opinion, people are questioning the merit of the quest for online fame. (We’re some of those people).

    As I’ve observed the phenomenon of rising stars (and the rise of their critics), I can’t help but be reminded of a strikingly similar state of affairs in the fictional life of Sherlock Holmes. The analogy isn’t perfect, but I think it will serve my point well.

    For those unfamiliar with the mysteries, Holmes is author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s private detective-hero in a series of stories published in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And he is quite an interesting protagonist - he is cast as an obsessive detective mastermind who has shaped his brain into a razor-sharp tool of logical deduction. Those who know of him in London revere him as a supreme authority in solving cases of crime.

    But in the stories, Sherlock Holmes was not popular in public media.

    In fact, Doyle provides a very interesting contrast to Holmes’ lack of appearance in the news: two Scotland Yard inspectors who, though competent in their work, repeatedly turn to Holmes because they are unable to solve cases. Doyle also portrays the inspectors as being in competition with each other, both vying for coveted headlines in popular publications.

    In one story, Holmes captures a criminal that has evaded both Scotland Yarders, but in the end, the pair takes credit for the victory in the newspapers and Sherlock’s role is horribly understated. Upon reading the article, the true hero concludes of his work in the case that “the result of all our Study in Scarlet: [was] to get [the inspectors] a testimonial!” (Doyle, 96)*

    I’ll quote my good friend Josh Hallet (1) to summarize the point:

    “Popularity isn’t the same as authority.”

    And it isn’t the same as capability. And it isn’t necessarily proof that you’ve done anything significant other than achieve popularity.

    The similarity between Holmes, the pair of inspectors and the current social media landscape is that there are ‘famous’ people online who can and do sway a massive amount of public opinion to believe that their popularity is proof of their authority and, worse, capability in their chosen area of ‘expertise’. And, as Vincent Ferrari points out in a thought provoking article (2), the famous (and becoming famous) people feed off of each other. And when the feeding turns into a frenzy, oftentimes the end goal becomes a repeated effort towards popularity as opposed to doing actual work for actual people who have real problems that need creative solutions. As our wise friend Jamie (3) says, “There are the doers - the ones that actually contribute and produce work…and there are the folks that just talk.”

    Let me be clear - I’m not taking a stab at social media and I’m not defaming everyone with a gigantic presence in it. Like Vincent says, there are many really smart, really talented people doing great work in social media.

    But I am saying that as we look around ourselves, many of the talented people that Brains on Fire has deep respect for would rank comparatively low in online popularity. And it’s always because they’re running businesses and doing their best work for clients. They don’t feel the need to play the digital back-scratching game and constantly prove to their followings how competent they are. Their work speaks for them.

    And, like those who come to Sherlock Holmes, when someone wants to hire based on real work with real results, they’ll hire a pedigree of proven cases, not the guise of popularity.

    • *Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003. Print.
    • (1) You can find Josh Hallet at http://twitter.com/hyku
    • (2) You can find Vincent’s article, “Is the Echo Chamber Ruining Social Media?,” here.
    • (3) You can find Jamie Plesser at http://twitter.com/jamieplesser
    PS - I’m trying a new citation format where I place outbound links at the end of a post. I’ve found lately that I enjoy reading an article all the way through, digesting, then exploring the relevant information. Let me know what you think.
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  • Honesty is the best policy, especially for change (the token Facebook post that addresses a bigger issue)

    Posted on June 3rd, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 1 commenting.
    Change

    A little change from yours truly.

    If you’re a techy, social-media-interested, mobile-device-and-industry-loving type, the last several months have been an infofeast. And I’m sure you’ve been gorging yourself with tasty news-breaks and weekly statements from industry titans.

    One such hot topic has been privacy policy changes from your favorite social media monster, Facebook, and its fearless captain, Mark Zuckerberg. If you’re not familiar with the issue, this post on The Evolution of Facebook Privacy from Matt McKeon provides a brief synopsis (for the record, I appreciate his dispassionate presentation of data and balanced view in the article - no angry bias here):

    In the beginning, it restricted the visibility of a user’s personal information to just their friends and their “network” (college or school). Over the past couple of years, the default privacy settings for a Facebook user’s personal information have become more and more permissive. They’ve also changed how your personal information is classified several times, sometimes in a manner that has been confusing for their users. This has largely been part of Facebook’s effort to correlate, publish, and monetize their social graph: a massive database of entities and links that covers everything from where you live to the movies you like and the people you trust.

    The issue has brought multiple stakeholders to the table: confused and upset users, marketing thinkers, social media strategists, internet theorists, business and management critics and even the Federal Trade Commission.

    Many of these groups have different voices in debate as well. Jennifer Valentino-DeVries (of The Wall Street Journal’s tech arm, Digits) points out that search trends suggest that user consideration of deleting personal accounts has risen sharply in response to the updated privacy policies. One thinker from Wired Magazine’s Epicenter, (Fred Vogelstein, thinks that the updated policy could be a good thing - a stepping stone in Facebook’s quest to challenge conventional thinking about internet privacy. Other critics attribute complications to founder Zuckerberg’s youth (see this article from bnet.com). As expected and as before with privacy update problems, the social giant itself has responded to the backlash with apologies and updates (you can read about details from the CEO himself in a Washington Post article). And, as  Business Insider notes, Zuckerberg’s past (controversial) commentary raises cause for concern. Needless to say, it has been very interesting (and fun) to watch the conversation unfold.

    Ok, there’s you’re token marketing coverage of Facebook news. Now on to the bigger issue.

    Internet privacy opinions, young management critiques, user abandonment and social media theory aside, I think one of the big questions here relates to change and honesty. Let me explain:

    As our good friend Dan Heath reminded us at the School of WOM, change is generally hard. Whether it’s good change or bad change (see the plethora of opinions on internet privacy), it’s likely uncomfortable change, especially in the period right after change has occurred. Also, change becomes more difficult when it seems, or actually is, complicated for those undergoing the change. Heath explained that in order to make successful transitions, “people need crystal clear direction that they are going to change.”

    Most of the time, some level of change is necessary for any business that wants to remain viable - including Facebook - and that means that a business’s end users are likely going to experience some degree of change at some point in their relationship with that company. And there’s a good chance that it’s going to be uncomfortable to some people, whether it’s good change or not. So how do you navigate change?

    Honesty.

    The “crystal clear” direction that people need in order to process change. In short, it’s explaining the change, the reasoning behind the change and the consequences of the change to the people that it affects - and communicating those messages before, during and after the change occurs. Not everyone is going to like adjustment, but at least they’ll know exactly why they don’t like it and they’ll have the explanation directly from the source/cause of the transition.

    Facebook effected a change that they knew would be controversial and difficult for users (this isn’t their first privacy rodeo), many of whom found out about the consequential modifications from sources other than Facebook. Users also had to seek third-party guides on how to properly handle their personal information after the change. Facebook did respond with admittance of mistakes as well as updates to their web service, but they came as a result of heated backlash from the community.

    Pushing changes that cause people confusion and force them to seek other sources for clarity isn’t just a bad idea for Facebook and internet privacy, it’s a bad idea for any business making necessary transitions that have consequences for their customers.

    We know that honesty is always the best policy, but nowhere is this more true for a business than in their ability to navigate the waters of change.

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  • Marketers, fisherman and the double-sell

    Posted on April 14th, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 0 commenting.

    I’m just not all that passionate about gardening or fishing, but whenever I go to the doctor’s office I have a strange habit of reading articles that would never enter my normal information queue.

    My most recent trip’s choice found me engrossed in several angling articles in a Field and Stream issue. I was really into them for some reason - shark-bites in the Abaco Islands and progressive ice-fishing techniques make for interesting stories.

    One story in particular, though, caught my attention and reminded me of a dilemma that many marketers face.

    Patrick Sébile is an incredibly accomplished French fisherman and lure-maker. His debut in the lure industry is a classic story in itself: he wanted a lure with certain behaviors and he couldn’t find one on the market. So he did his homework and made his own, which turned out to be a top performer.

    I had wanted to create a hard bait that swims like a real fish, so I studied everything from how fish actually swim to the hydrodynamics of a hard body in water. Eventually, I was able to make some segmented parts that moved in a true baitfish motion.*

    What’s more interesting, though, is his explanation of the desire behind creating a lure in the first place:

    Importantly, this was much more than just a good looking shape designed to catch fishermen before catching fish.*

    What a great statement. It cuts to the simple heart of Sébile’s passion: catching fish. And it also points to a long-time question raised in the fishing gear industry - ‘do manufacturers make tricks to catch fisherman or baits to catch fish?’

    I think this serves as a parallel to the double-sell that marketers often face when working as a third party for a brand. Not only are we charged to create compelling ideas that will inspire and capture customer’s attention, but we have to package those compelling ideas in a persuasive, engaging format that will inspire and capture a potential client’s attention (and budget).

    And it’s easy to slip away from the first-things-first mindset. And the first things is always how what we do (or don’t do) will affect the customer that our client or potential client interacts with.

    We’ve lost if we’ve perfected pitching without changing the end users’ experience for the better.

    *Merwin, John. “Bullet Points: Fishing.” Field & Stream Feb. 2010: 20. Print.

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  • What if marketers were band from talking about social media on social media services?

    Posted on April 2nd, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 0 commenting.

    A little Friday smile for you.

    Marketers are an odd breed. And sometimes we like to make fun of ourselves. So we asked a funny question on Twitter recently and got a huge kick out of the answers.

    Enjoy.

    Also, happy birthday to Brains on Fire. We’ve been burning for 11 years. Here’s to 111 more.

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