MackCollier.com

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Marketing and Movies: Memento

The customer is always right and always ‘remembers’ things from their POV.

Christopher Nolan’s resume as a director is spectacular. Interstellar, Inception, Dunkirk, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight, which in my opinion includes the finest performance by an actor ever; Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker.

But I think Nolan’s masterwork as a director and storyteller is a movie you may have never heard of; Memento.  Memento follows a man named Leonard Shelby with a very unique condition; He cannot make new memories. Throughout the course of the movie, Leonard tells us of the an attacker who broke into his home, attacked him and his wife. The attacker killed Leonard’s wife and in the process of fighting with Leonard, Leonard was knocked unconscious resulting in Leonard’s ‘condition’. Leonard has this scene where he recalls that night to Natalie:

 

Natalie: “What’s the last thing that you do remember?”

Leonard: “My wife…”

Natalie: “That’s sweet.”

Leonard: “…dying.”

 

Leonard’s life since that point has been focused on finding his wife’s killer and extracting vengeance. This quest is obviously made much more difficult by the fact that Leonard cannot form new memories.  In general, he can remember the last 5 minutes or so, but if something startles him, such as a loud noise like a car backfiring, his short-term memory will ‘reset’ and he will forget even the last few minutes. He could be talking to someone and know who that person is, and suddenly forget who that person is or why he’s talking to him. Here’s an example where Leonard is running and trying to figure out why he is running. He then sees a man running too, and mistakenly assumes he is chasing the man:

 

To help put the audience in Leonard’s shoes, Nolan brilliantly organizes the story into 5-minute or so segments. The segments then alternate so that you actually see the ‘end’ of the story at the first of the movie. Then the following segment shows you the first few minutes of the story, then the following segment shows you the next to last segment of the story, so on and so forth until the movie ends in the actual ‘middle’ of the story. Nolan does this purposely to help the audience understand what Leonard’s life is like with his condition. A life lived in 5-minute increments.

Since Leonard cannot make new memories, he created an elaborate system of note-taking to help him make up for not being able to create new memories. He takes Polaroid pictures of important people and places he encounters, and then writes notes on the pictures so he knows why they are relevant to his quest to find his wife’s killer. Leonard even went so far as to cover his body with tattoos which are a list of the most basic ‘facts’ of the case, such as the name of the man he is looking for, his description, and other important information that Leonard needed to have with him at all times.

But the one element of this story that I find absolutely fascinating is how Leonard’s world of truth and fiction, right and wrong, is recreated every five minutes due to his memory condition. In fact, multiple characters in the film use Leonard’s inability to keep his memory to their advantage. In one scene, Natalie tells Leonard that she is about to lie to him, but that it will be a few minutes in the future and Leonard won’t remember that she’s now telling him this. She walks outside and Leonard begins frantically searching for a pen and paper so he can write down what she just told him. As he is searching, Natalie walks back in the house and slams the front door.  The slamming of the front door jars Leonard and causes his short-term memory of Natalie’s previous conversation to disappear.

This creates an ongoing puzzle for the audience to solve when watching this movie.  Because at any time, any character, including Leonard, could be lying, or they could be telling the truth. And if what Natalie is saying now is the truth, that means what Teddy told Leonard in the previous scene was a lie or vice versa. And Nolan gives us at least one example of every character in the movie telling at least one lie. So we are constantly having to evaluate each scene based on who seems truthful and who doesn’t.

But throughout the course of the movie, we learn that Leonard’s version of what happened on and since the night he lost his ability to make new memories, may not be what actually happened. In other words, Leonard through the retelling of the story in his own mind, has likely altered events to make his actions more pure, and to give his quest to find his wife’s killer more meaning.

Now, how does all this relate to marketing?

Let’s go back to that first line in this post: The customer is always right and always ‘remembers’ things from their POV. If you think about it, we all do this. All human beings tend to remember things differently than they actually happened. Maybe by a tiny bit, maybe by a lottabit. For years I remembered my childhood home as being on this sprawling plot of land, with massive fields surrounding it where I played as a child. The entire area seemed to cover miles in my memory. A few years ago, I drove back to visit that area and was stunned at how small everything actually was. What I remembered as being a massive area of land was only a couple of acres at best.

So when it comes to marketing, you need to remember this lesson that we tend to ‘remember’ things more positively when it comes to our own actions.  This is especially relevant when you are working in customer service and dealing with angry customers. Often, these customers can clearly see the company’s fault, and be totally oblivious to what they may have done to contribute to their support issue. The lesson for the company is to not lose its temper and to have empathy for the customer.  Understand the customer’s POV and don’t take any criticism seriously. Studies have shown than when we become angry and upset, our ability to think rationally is diminished, and this increases as we become more upset.

If you can show the customer that you have empathy for them and their situation, that will go a long way toward putting them at ease and you can have a much more productive interaction. The customer as a group IS always right because if you don’t satisfy your customers, you will lose them. Now this doesn’t mean every INDIVIDUAL customer is ‘right’ and this is where some people are confused by the true meaning of the phrase ‘the customer is always right’.

Just understand that we all have a unique POV and we all tend to view ourselves in the best possible light. That’s just human nature. Accept that, show empathy to your customers, listen to them, and a productive interaction, whether as a support issue or as a purchase, will be the result.

PS: Hopefully this post has piqued your interest to check out Memento. Here’s the trailer for the movie:

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Why I’ve Decided to Blog More and Spend Less Time on Social Media

Adversity doesn’t create character, it reveals it.

Over the last few years, there’s been a growing sentiment that social media has become more and more toxic, especially in regards to the discussions happening around news and politics.  I’ve heard many people say they have left Facebook completely because they were overwhelmed by the constant arguing and finger-pointing.

Since 2020 is an election year, we all knew it was going to get bad on social media.  What none of us expected was for covid-19 to happen. The election, plus much of the country being on lockdown for most of the year has understandably put all of us under a huge amount of pressure.  We are worried about how to deal with a real or likely loss of income.  We are worried about the health of ourselves and our families. We are worried about the future.

What troubled me, and I especially saw this on Twitter, was how people reacted to the spread of covid. Many people became judgmental, shaming people for not reacting in a certain way or for not taking certain issues or developments in the way that they felt was appropriate. Instead of being understanding and compassionate. I saw too many people judging and attacking.

And what stunned me, was that many of these people were in my Twitter network. Some of these people were friends I had followed for years. On the one hand, I would tell myself that they are worried and scared and rightly so. On the other hand, we are ALL worried and scared, and rightly so.  Being scared and worried doesn’t excuse you from being an asshole.  And a lot of people I followed on Twitter were exhibiting this behavior.

So I decided to ‘de-tox’ my Twitter network. I effectively unfollowed 60% of my network over about a month.  But I started thinking about this, and realized this isn’t a Twitter issue, it’s a social media issue.  People are being jerks on Facebook just like they are on Twitter.  Every community has its jerks.  If they are in the minority, it’s easy to ignore and overlook them. But when the jerks become the majority and start creating and dominating the conversations, I want to opt-out.

That brings me back to blogging.  Literally.

The one thing that I’ve always loved about blogging is the power it gives you to share your voice. It gives you the ability to have a say, to share your thoughts with the world. Today’s social media world is based around the soundbyte. 140-character missives designed to spark instant engagement. Often emotionally-charged attacks and insults that people are compelled to immediately respond to.

It’s the complete opposite of a conversation. It’s yelling in 140 characters, the person that yells the loudest gets the most Likes and RTs.

Blogs are different. Blogs are where you can have your say fully and completely.  You can use 140 characters, or you can use 140,000 if you want.

I’ve talked before about the 4-step process for creating advocacy; Interaction leads to Understanding leads to Trust leads to Advocacy.

On social media, we often never have those interactions. We yell at each other and talk at each other instead of to each other.

With a blog, you have a chance to have your say.  You have a chance to state your opinions and make your case with as many or as few words as you need. You can then respond in the comments, or via email or even on your own blog.

But more than anything, I’m tired of the yelling. We need less yelling and more listening. We need less judgment and more empathy.

We need to be better people. That’s what I think, and it’s a lot easier to say that here, than it is on social media.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: DOJ Targets Google, Twitch Thriving Under Lockdown, Burgers in the Sky

Happy Labor Day, y’all! Hope you had a great holiday weekend and are as ready for Fall as I am! The weather here has been about 10 degrees cooler than normal for the last couple weeks and looks to continue this for the rest of the month. Bring on Fall!

 

It’s been fascinating to watch how consumer behavior has changed during 2020 as we are all spending a lot more time at home. This is also altering how we consume content and the types of content we consume. This actually factored heavily into my decision to double-down on blogging, I think you will see more people spending more time reading and consuming blog content for the rest of this year and into 2021.

Another content source that’s thriving in 2020 is video-game streaming platform Twitch.

I’ve written about how content creators are leveraging Twitch in the past and will have more on this later in the week.

On a bit of a surprising note, the amount of time we are spending listening to podcasts is down slightly in 2020:

https://twitter.com/Claire_Harris82/status/1299678670622085121

This is actually quite revealing. At first blush, you would think podcast listening would go up as we are spending more time at home. But the fact that it will go down suggests that most of us listen to podcasts while driving to work.  The fact that eMarketer is projecting a rebound for podcast listening by 2022 helps support this thought.

What’s the key takeaway? If you are looking to start a podcast, 2021 could be the right to, as more of us return to offices for work, and the daily drive to and from work becomes a thing again.

 

One of the emerging stories I’ve been following the last couple of years is how the big tech/social media giants are increasingly making questionable moves from a censorship and free speech standpoint. I’ve talked before about how Twitter is confusing many of its users with inconsistent application of content policing, but sites like Facebook and YouTube have made similar moves. The reality is that as long as humans are policing content on social media sites, they need to be able to check their own internal biases toward that content, and apply rules evenly to all users. If they cannot, and a culture of bias is allowed to grow and fester at these companies, that can lead to an environment where users either leave, or worse.  I think we will see all big social media sites have few users in 5 years than they do now.

 

I love this. Burger King will be redesigning its restaurants to create more contactless options for food delivery, but also will be moving the kitchen and dining areas OVER the drive thru lanes! I think this is very innovative, Burger King is betting on the fact that people will continue to want contactless options for food payment and delivery after we move past covid, but they are also factoring in that when we do fully reopen, many will want to get out more, and putting the dining area over the drive thru lanes helps create a unique experience for dine-in customers. This will no doubt improve the mood of customers that dine in, which will also improve the mood of the BK workers.  I love this and I would be surprised if we didn’t see other fast food chains try to copy this design.

 

Hope everyone has a great Labor Day, see y’all tomorrow!

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Toolbox Saturday: The Editorial Calendar Plugin

Welcome to the first edition of Toolbox Saturday! Every Saturday I will talk about a tool or technique you can use to make your blogging, content creation or social media efforts just a little more effective and efficient.

When I decided to ‘relaunch’ my blog, I wanted a plugin that would help me visualize the posts I have running for the rest of the week, and month.  Basically, I was hoping to find a plugin that would show me all the upcoming posts that were due to publish, on a calendar.

Luckily, that’s exactly what I found with the Editorial Calendar plugin.  Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like for this blog in September:

At a glance, I can tell what my editorial calendar looks like.  I can see the first week is ready to go, and the remaining weeks still have work to do.  Also, I love how it lets me get a list on the right side of all the unscheduled post drafts I have ready to go.  Over the last 11 years of blogging here, I have started a lot of posts that never made it past the ‘draft’ stage. This gave me a way to see what all those drafts are.  Now granted. some of the older drafts covered topics and information that may have been relevant 5-10 years ago, but no longer was.  So those were scrapped, but I also found many great ideas that had been buried for years in my drafts section.

I’ve heard so many bloggers, the vast majority really, say that they have plenty of ideas for posts, they just don’t have the time to write. I have the opposite problem; I struggle to come up with ideas for content.  Once I figure out an idea for a post, the actual writing of the post takes no time at all. So anything that can help with the content creation process, I want to know more about it! I also assume that a lot of you, whether you are a blogger for your business or a content manager for your company, you have more time to pick up tips and tricks on the weekend. That’s why I wanted to run Toolbox Saturdays on the weekend, so more of you would have time to implement these tools and tips on your own blogs to help take your blogging efforts to the next level.

Hope everyone has a great weekend, see you on Monday!

 

PS: My buddy Andy Crestodina at Orbit Media asked me to pass along this link to take his blogger survey.  He’s been doing it the last few years now and it’s always interesting seeing the results.  I’ll share the results from this survey in a later post when they are ready!

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What Happens When Your CEO Wants to Talk Politics on Social Media?

“Very bad things.” answered every content manager who has ever had to deal with their CEO wanting to do this. Politics are divisive enough most days, but especially now in an election year.

But the boss comes to you, wants you to set them up a ‘blog’ so they can get some stuff off their chest.

You will advise them this is a bad idea, they will immediately alienate half the customer base, etc. But the boss is determined  “This election is too important to stay slient!” they might say.

Sigh. So if you decide to move ahead with the boss’ idea of having a blog to talk politics, focus on talking about the values that are consistent with your brand, and avoid hot-button topics such individual candidates. The realty is, as soon as you mention one of the two candidates running for president, most people have an immediate and visceral reaction. So if your CEO truly wants their message to be heard, encourage them to write about the values of the candidate they support moreso than the candidate himself.

Let me give you an example of why this is so important.  College students in their late teens and early 20s have historically been more liberal in their political thinking. This is across the board. As they age, they tend to become more moderate, and eventually more conservative in their politics. Not true for everyone of course, but for the group, it holds.

So most college students view themselves as thinking more as a liberal. Several years ago, a group of pollsters went to college campuses and asked students what they thought of some of then President Obama’s policies. The students overwhelmingly favored the policies. Then the pollsters started asking students what they thought of those same policies, but didn’t explain that they were coming from the President. Pollsters found that when students didn’t know the policy was coming from Obama, they were less favorable toward it. In another example, in 2016, pollsters talked to college students about what they thought about Bernie Sander’s policies, but for each policy, the students were told that it was actually Donald Trump’s policy.  The students overwhelmingly disapproved of the policy when they thought it was coming from Trump, and were shocked when they learned it was actually coming from Sanders.

The point in these studies is that many Americans, especially in an election year, have very emotional reactions for any ideas that they believe are tied to a particular candidate. But if you disconnect those ideas from either candidate, people ‘calm down’ and are more likely to listen to the idea. As long as they don’t think the idea is tied to the candidate that they can’t stand!

So if your CEO is determined to write about politics, encourage them to NOT write about the candidates, and instead write about the values and policies of the candidate they support. Ask them to think about why they support that candidate, what beliefs they agree with, and also ask them how those values beliefs tie into your company’s core values and beliefs.

Point out to your CEO that he or she wants the readers to LISTEN to their ideas. And as soon as the CEO introduces the candidate they support into the equation, half the audience will immediately tune out. And since the CEO’s audience will ideally be the company’s customers, that could easily result in lost business.

Focus on the values and policies of the candidate, not the candidate himself. Highlight the values and policies that tie to the core values of your company.

That’s how your CEO can effectively walk the tightrope of blogging about politics.

 

PS: As we head into Labor Day weekend, I want to wish everyone a safe and happy few days off. And since Labor Day is the unofficial end of Summer I wanted to share this instrumental from FM-84 which just oozes the vibe of being a teenager during the Summer circa 1985.  Have a great weekend!

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Here’s What Every Perfect Product Review Has

Think about what would be the perfect review for your product. Think about the elements it would include, what the customer would highlight.  I bet you have in mind a list of features you want the customer to mention in their review, right? Maybe you want the customer to point out that your product is reliable, right? Also add some general statements about how awesome and trustworthy your brand is, perhaps? Put all this together and you would have the perfect review for your product, right? The perfect mixture of highlighting all the right features, while also pointing to the reliability of your brand.

I can assure you that none of that comes close to defining the perfect product review.

When many companies think about what defines a great product review, they focus on what they want the customer to say about the PRODUCT. They have a list of all the features and attributes they want the customer to mention, maybe a couple of gushing compliments about the brand in general.

Instead, the perfect product review is one where the customer talks about THEMSELVES. But…they talk about themselves in the context of how your product made them BETTER at something.

Here’s a snippet from one of my favorite reviews for my book, Think Like a Rock Star:

“Second, more than any other I’ve read, the book inspired me to take action. These are practical ideas that you can implement right away, not well-meaning tips to put in your idea file, never to be seen again. I hadn’t even finished reading chapter one, and I already implemented one of his ideas.”

See the difference? This review isn’t talking about me or the book, it’s talking about how reading the book prompted a positive change in behavior FOR THE READER. This is what I want to see as a customer reading reviews, I want to know how the product IMPROVED the life of the customer that wrote the review. Because if it helped the customer who wrote the review, that makes me believe it can help me as well.

The perfect product review is one where the customer talks about themselves positively. The customer talks about how your product made a positive change in their lives.

 

Which review for an SUV do you think is better?

“This is the best car I’ve ever owned.” – Positive about the car.

“Driving this car made me feel safer.” – Positive about how the customer felt driving the car.

 

Which review for dog food do you think is better?

“It was a great deal, easy to serve portions, and the price was right.” – Positive about the dog food.

“I noticed that my dog was more active and seemed happier as soon as he started eating this.” – Positive about the change in behavior of the owner’s dog.

 

Which review for a camera do you think is better?

“This camera comes with all the bells and whistles you need to take great pictures.” – Positive about the camera

“This camera made me a better photographer.” – Positive about how the camera changed the behavior of the customer

 

If you think about it, we don’t buy products, we buy the change in our lives that happens when we own those products. When we buy a car, we aren’t buying the object, we are buying what the car allows us to do.  We aren’t buying the laptop, we are buying what the laptop allows us to do. We aren’t buying the mattress, we are buying a good night’s sleep.

Think about how your marketing helps influence the reviews your products receive. The features you highlight in your marketing are often the ones customers highlight in their reviews. What if your marketing helped customers understand how their lives would change as a result of owning your product? Customers would buy your product based on the promise of the change or changes it would make in their lives. Then if your product met the customer’s expectations, that would be shared in their product reviews.

Sell the benefit of your product, more than the product itself.

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Marketing and Movies: Ford vs Ferrari

A few days ago I noticed a marketer instructed her followers on Twitter to treat their customers as potential ‘mouthpieces’ for their brand. While I cringed at the idea of companies viewing their customers as simply being a ‘mouthpiece’ for the brand, the reality is that such a notion will resonate with a lot of companies. Many companies do view its customers as nothing more than promotional channels. This is an incredibly short-sighted view, and it fails to acknowledge the true value of your customers. And it doesn’t create the relationship that lets their talents and abilities shine the brightest.

This lesson was at the front of my mind as I recently watched the movie Ford vs Ferrari. In the late 1950s, Ford decided that it needed to do a better job of appealing to younger car owners. The marketing department (headed by future Chrysler CEO Lee IIacoca), decided that the way to reach young car buyers was via racing, more specifically, by having Ford win the 24 Hours of Le Mans, one of the most prestigious auto races in the world. At the time, Ferrari was dominating Le Mans, and Ford approached Ferrari with an offer to buy the automaker, which greatly insulted Ferrari. In the process of refusing the offer, Enzo Ferrari greatly insulted Ford CEO Henry Ford II, which compelled Ford to go all-in on winning the race at Le Mans.

Ferrari had dominated Le Mans because racing was the heartbeat of the brand.  Motorsports and producing impeccable racing cars was at the heart of Ferrari’s culture. This wasn’t the case at Ford. So Ford, not having the love of motorsports and racing that Ferrari did, approached its entry into Le Mans as a business move, moreso than as a move motivated by a love of racing. Ford hired former Le Mans winner Carroll Shelby to create a car and team that could win Le Mans. But Ford tried to impose its culture on the effort, telling Shelby that he cannot have Ken Miles drive for the team, since Ford wanted a brand spokesperson moreso than the best driver to be behind the wheel at Le Mans. The result was a disasterous finish for Ford at its first attempt at Le Mans, which almost resulted in Ford firing Shelby.

Shelby kept his job, and continued working with Ken Miles to build a car that could win Le Mans for Ford. When Le Mans approached the following year, Ford continued to insist that Miles not drive the car, contending he would not be the proper spokesman for the Ford brand. The ongoing negotiations between Shelby and Ford led to this emotional scene from the movie:

Ford was making a mistake with its entry into Le Mans that many companies make today when they approach better connecting with their customers. Many companies approach this as a business proposition, but they fail to realize that it’s a people proposition. Your company cannot inspire its customers to take action on behalf of your brand if your brand is attempting to view your customers simply as potential sales. Forging better and stronger connections with your customers has to be ingrained in your brand. You have to have a culture that seeks out and pushes to forge deeper connections with your customers. Not simply because you want more sales, but also because you honestly care about the people that buy your brand’s product and services.

Ford went on to let Miles race at Daytona, which he won. He then went on to race at Le Mans, and led the Ford racing team to a 1-2-3 finish at Le Mans. Ford would go on to win 4 straight Le Mans, all driven by cars build by Shelby and Miles. Ford won at Le Mans by learning to trust the drivers who understood the sport of racing on a level which the brand did not. Likewise, if your brand wants to build better relationships with its customers, you will also have to trust those customers and listen to what they have to say.

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Why I Turned Off Comments

The short answer is that I want to focus more on my writing for the time being. The longer answer is that conversations about and around blog posts are incredibly fractured, and have been for about a decade. One of the great things about blogging from 2005-2010 was the amazing conversations that could happen in the comments section of a post. Blog comments are typically more in-depth and fleshed out, than comments you see on social media, which tend to be more like soundbytes. Before social media sites like Facebook and Twitter went mainstream, blogs were where the commenting action was at. And great comments led to more great comments, and before you knew it, there was a long discussion happening in the comments section that ended up being more valuable than the post itself. In fact, in the early blogging days I always had the goal of writing a post that led to a discussion in the comments section that was more interesting than the post itself.

I’ll write about this more next week, but I think in many ways, social media has hurt our ability to communicate more than it has helped.  And I think that’s readily apparent when you look at the comment section of most blogs. The volume of comments is down sharply across the board. Yet the funny thing is, spam comments keep chugging right along.  So if you are a blogger, you begin to realize that a lot of your comment moderation time is now spent just dealing with spam, whereas a few years ago, it was quite easy to lose a couple of hours a day responding to wonderful comments on your blog. Many prominent bloggers have already dropped comments for this reason alone.

Another reason why I’ve decided to turn off comments is because when I decided to recommit to blogging, one of the promises I made to myself was that I would give myself permission to write about more topics that I want to write about.  It won’t all pertain to marketing, business or anything related, as I talked about yesterday. I quite honestly want the freedom to write about what I want to write about without having to worry about some person who has never read this blog before commenting and saying I am an idiot simply for taking a stance they don’t like. Once I’ve been blogging again for a few weeks, I may decide to reopen comments, we’ll see how it goes.

But I do want to hear from you, and my email is always open, and you can always find me on Twitter.  Although I will admit, I am spending less time there. Again, more on that here in one week.

 

BONUS:  I’ll be joining my good friend Kelly Hungerford tomorrow at #SEMrushChat on Twitter to discuss matching your content creation to your marketing funnel.  Hope to see you there!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: The Relaunch

So starting today, you will see a LOT more activity here. One of the things I have always struggled with when it comes to content creation is the content calendar. Figuring out what to write about and when to write it. I think I’ve finally hit on a content creation system I can use and replicate.

Starting today, there will 6 new posts a week.  Yes, I said SIX! And the content will be arranged similar to how a newspaper is organized into sections, or how a TV’s primetime schedule is organized.  Here’s what you can expect:

Monday – Monday’s Marketing Minute. A post with a few of the top marketing, content. customer service and digital stories that caught my eye within the last few days.

Tuesday – On Tuesdays I will have an ‘opinion’ post, similar to the Editorial section of a newspaper.

Wednesday – Marketing & Movies. This series is going to be SO much fun! Every Wednesday I take one of my favorite movies and talk about a great marketing or business example from the movie.

Thursday – Marketing Educational/Thought Leadership posts. These will cover a marketing topic, often related to digital, customer experience, brand loyalty, etc.

Friday – Friday Free-For-All. I’ve given myself permission to blog about ANY topic I want on Fridays. It could be marketing, it could be Egyptian archaeology, it could be astronomy. But I’d suspect business and marketing topics will be discussed more often than not.

Saturday – Since this is the weekend, posts on Saturday will focus on tools, how to get better at blogging or some other digital tool or application.  Much like how PBS, for instance, always runs programs devoted to home improvement, travel, cooking or crafting on the weekends.

I’m really excited about getting back to writing regularly and focusing on blogging, which is my first digital love and one I’ve been wanting to get back to for a long time.  I hope you’ll enjoy the copious amounts of content coming here.  On with the show!

 

So one of the biggest changes we’ve all experienced in regards to covid in 2020 is shifting our personal spending from offline to online. Yet while eCommerce sales are setting records in the US, eMarketer has found that digital display ad spending for retailers won’t increase that much. Why do you think this is?  My first guess would be that retailers are restricting ad budgets across the board in response to overall lost sales as a result of covid. Let’s hope for a strong economic rebound later this year and in 2021.

 

 

We talk a lot about building great brand ambassador programs here, so I loved Goldie Chan’s article on B2B Ambassador programs because she asked several influencers with experience in this area to share what they have learned.  Plus it was exciting to see friends like Kerry Gorgone and Lee Odden featured! As a fellow member of Adobe’s Insiders Program, I can agree with Lee and Kerry on how well-structured the program is.

 

 

Joe Rogan is an interesting guy that often makes some really good points about business and politics on his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience. I thought this quote about Twitter was spot-on: “There is no empathy in these conversations and that’s a big part of the problem [with Twitter].”  He thinks Twitter won’t be around much longer, and I agree with him.  I don’t think we will have a Twitter in 2025.

 

I love this tweet from former Alabama/Oklahoma standout QB Jalen Hurts:

Companies are always wondering how they create and cultivate more fans. 90% of it is simply taking the time to acknowledge the ones you already have.

 

Finally, congratulations to my blogging friend, Helen Rittersporn on recently blogging for 2,000 straight days! Helen is a #Blogchat alum and has in the past sent me special postcards to mark her blogging anniversaries.  Here’s the ones she sent for her 2000th straight post:

You can learn more about Helen at her blog Anchored Scraps, which is devoted to ‘old-style correspondence through handwritten letters between kindred souls’. Lovely, thanks again Helen, I’m going to try to channel some of your blogging dedication in getting my blog back off the ground!

See y’all tomorrow!

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Want to Create a Brand Ambassador Program? Here’s 10 Things to Remember When You Do

Brand Ambassador Programs, Social Media

Your family owns 5 bakeries across the northern part of your state. The bakeries have developed a reputation for creating delicious cakes and pastries, speedy deliveries, and exceptional customer service. Which has resulted in a lot of happy customers!

You manage the social media presences for the five bakeries. You are monitoring the Facebook page for your bakeries today, and as usual you have several new comments from customers. These comments are almost always positive, and today’s mentions are consistent with a typical day:

Sarah: “The birthday cake we bought for my son’s 10th birthday party was delicious! It made the party, I had three moms come up later and ask for the recipe, and I was tempted to claim I made it, but gave them your address in the end (ha!). So expect Tina, Jess and Kym to show up soon!”

Tom: “You guys saved our Thanksgiving! As always, we were too ambitious in our dinner-planning and just didn’t have time in the end to bake the pumpkin and pecan pies we needed to finish off desert. You guys came through at the last-minute for us, even delivering on the day before Thanksgiving! As an added bonus, our out-of-town relatives loved both pies and said they would be stopping by as they leave town in a few days to take another home with them!”

Amber: “Have been a happy customer for the last 5 years, your double chocolate cakes and blueberry streusel muffins are my favorites, they always make our meals special. Are you planning on opening a location in Lancaster? All my friends have heard about how delicious your cakes and muffins are, so you have a ready customer base if you do!”

 

In reading these comments, a light bulb goes off: These customers have taken ownership of the sales, customer service, marketing and promotion processes for your bakeries. Without guidance, these customers have taken it upon themselves to help grow your business.

But what if you could give these customers guidance in how to better promote your business and grow your customer base? What if you had a way to work directly with these customers to give them the tools they need and WANT to help share why they love your business with their friends, family, and other customers?

That’s where a Brand Ambassador Program comes in. Over the last few years, companies have begun to realize the benefits of having a way to connect directly with their most passionate customers to drive business growth.  While customers as a whole don’t trust brands, they do trust other customers.  Especially passionate customers that love their favorite brands.  While a marketing message from a brand will likely be ignored, a passionate recommendation from a fellow customer will be taken far more seriously.

This has a lot of companies researching how to create a successful brand ambassador program, and how to work with brand ambassadors. Let’s start with some definitions:

What is a Brand Ambassador? A brand ambassador is a person who works to promote and represent a brand in its marketplace. Brand ambassadors are often current customers who were already advocating for brands before they started working with them, but some brand ambassadors are chosen because they have a large following or are viewed as influencers. Brand ambassadors have a working relationship with the brands they represent, and are given instruction on how to interact with customers in the marketplace, based on the business goals for that brand.

What is a Brand Ambassador Program? A brand ambassador program is a business program that organizes brand ambassadors and creates an ongoing, working relationship between the brand and its ambassadors. A brand ambassador program is used to manage the ongoing, working relationship between the brand and its ambassadors, and provide ongoing training and instruction for its ambassadors, as well as support. Most brand ambassador programs work closely with other areas of the business, such as marketing, sales, customer service, and product design.

So if your company is considering launching a brand ambassador program to connect with your brand advocates and ambassadors, here’s 10 things to remember:

1 – Spread the word internally as well as externally.  Getting internal buy-in is just as important, if not moreso, than getting customers excited about your efforts.  If your brand advocacy program doesn’t have INTERNAL advocates pushing it along, its chances of success are going to be greatly reduced.  Launching a brand ambassador program takes time and energy.  Immediate ROI will be very hard to prove, it’s a long-term process.  Which is why it pays to have a team of people that are pushing for patience.

2 – Research, research, research.  You’ll have to invest a lot of time in discovering WHO your brand advocates are.  You might think you know who they are, but there’s rarely a ‘one-size-fits-all’ view.  You’ll also have to monitor ALL conversations with your customers.  Not just online conversations, not just offline ones either.  Look at both.  Also, make special note of the customers that go the extra mile to connect with you, the ones that write you letters, even if they sound negative.  Companies often confuse passion for the brand with negativity aimed at the brand.

Whenever I talk to companies who are curious about launching a brand ambassador program, one of the first questions is “How do we find our brand ambassadors?” The good news is, potential brand ambassadors will often find you! Customers who are good candidates to be ambassadors for your brand will often proactively reach out to your company. They will email you with feedback on your brand, they will respond to you on social media, they will call your customer service department with feedback.  Ideally, you can select enough qualified ambassadors for your brand by simply cataloging the customers who are already connecting with your brand proactively.

3 – Start small, grow big.  You don’t have to have a million members in your brand ambassador program.  In fact, I’d rather have 10 truly passionate brand advocates than 10,000 members that are merely ‘meh’ toward the brand.  If you start small and select those that are truly passionate about your brand and its vision, the growth will come organically as these passionate people will help you identify others just like them.

Additionally, it simply makes good business sense to start small with your brand ambassador program, especially if this is your company’s first attempt at such a program. Whenever you take on any new initiative like this, especially when working directly with your customers, there will be mistakes made. This is why I advise my clients that if possible, start with a small group, nail down the process, then you can expand the scope of the program after you’ve worked the kinks out. In other words, start small, nail the process, then grow.

Here’s an example of how this could work. Let’s say your company has fitness centers across the United States, your company has 425 centers and operates in 23 states, but you have the most locations in the Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta markets. Instead of rolling out a comprehensive, nationwide brand ambassador program with 500 members, it might make more business and logistical sense to launch a 10-person brand ambassador program for just the Chicago market. After spending the first year perfecting the program and process for the Chicago market, in the second year you could launch brand ambassador programs for the Los Angeles and Atlanta markets. After nailing down the processes for these markets, your company can then roll out a comprehensive, and nationwide, brand ambassador program.

4 – Make membership exclusive.  This ties into the previous point, but you don’t want ALL your customers to be members of your brand ambassador program.  You want to give them hurdles to jump, obstacles to overcome.  In other words, you want to weed out the customers that aren’t committed to the brand, or the program.  The true advocates for your brand will already be doing much if not all of what you would require of them as members of the program.  It also pays to cap membership, and to give the existing members a huge say in who the future members are.

5 – Connect with your advocates and create ways for them to connect with each other.  Your advocates are special people, you don’t want them on an island, you want them connected.  Create a central ‘homebase’ for the current members of your program, but also stay connected to other advocates that aren’t yet members.  And make your existing ambassadors aware of these advocates, and have them ‘vet’ them for possible membership in your formal ambassador program.

6 – Pay your ambassadors.  This is one of the biggest misconceptions about brand ambassadors.  They DO want to be compensated but most do NOT want to be given money.  Sure, we all love money, but for a true brand advocate they usually want other things.  Like access, empowerment, and acknowledgement.  A few years ago when I worked with Dell on its #DellCAP events, the customers weren’t paid to come (travel was covered), but they were given access.  For example, they got to tour Dell’s Social Media Listening Center, then they got to spend 30 minutes talking to CEO Michael Dell.  That’s pretty heady stuff for a Dell advocate.  When they go back home, their friend might brag about having the latest and greatest Dell laptop, while they can respond with ‘Oh yeah, well Dell invited me to their world headquarters and I got to chat with Michael Dell himself!’  That’s a great example of rewarding your advocates.

Here’s another example: I once worked with a software company to design a brand ambassador program for its users. The majority of the users of this software were small business owners. After surveying its users, the software company discovered that these small business owners were desperate for social media and content marketing advice. So we created a series of webinars just for members of the brand ambassador program that would have a different expert deliver a webinar on a different marketing topic to brand ambassadors. This benefit had nothing to do with the software company, it was completely focused on what would be valuable to brand ambassadors. If you’re brainstorming ideas for possible benefits you could give your brand ambassadors, check out this exhaustive list of benefits that Harley-Davidson offers members of its HOG group.

7 – Give your advocates direct access to the brand.  The members of your brand ambassador program should be given direct contact with multiple key executives within the brand.  In fact, I would suggest making 1 or more of the ‘top’ members of your brand ambassador program part of the team that’s responsible for reporting on the progress of the program to the C-Suite.  The idea here is to make sure that the voice of your brand’s biggest defenders and advocates is always heard at the company, from the top down.

8 – Create a feedback loop between the brand ambassadors, and the brand.  I outlined the process for this loop in this post.  You need to have a way to let your ambassadors have direct access to the brand, as mentioned above.  But at the same time, the brand needs to respond to the brand ambassadors and give them feedback on their feedback.  Additionally, the brand needs to take the feedback from its ambassadors and distribute that feedback internally and not just silo it among the employees that are working directly on the brand ambassador program.

9 – Give your ambassadors the tools to create something amazing.  Again, you want to start small and grow organically.  And you want that growth to be fueled by your existing advocates.  You want to embrace and empower your existing advocates, thus the creation of the brand ambassador program.  But you also want your existing ambassadors to have the tools to embrace and empower other advocates that aren’t yet members.  And tying back to the earlier points about giving ambassadors direct access to the brand, when your existing ambassadors find other advocates, they can immediately bring them to the brand’s attention.

10 – Transfer ownership of the program from the brand, to its ambassadors.  When you create a brand ambassador program, you need to realize that long-term, this will belong to your advocates.  You’ll always be there, and you’ll always have a voice, but the idea is that you want your most passionate customers to eventually take over this program.  Maybe you’ll start out with a ‘board’ over the program made up of 5 key brand executives, and 5 brand ambassadors.  But over time, as your ambassadors become familiar with the program and its function and goals, you need to let them have control.  Again, you don’t want the voice of your company to dominate this effort, you want the voice of your most passionate customers to have control, because those customers are going to be connecting with other customers.

 

 

But perhaps the most important thing to remember when creating a brand ambassador program is who you will be working with:

Every single day you’ll be working with customers that love you. Customers that love your brand as if it were their own, and who will work with you every day to see it grow and prosper. Let’s be honest, it’s pretty awesome to work every day with people that love you and believe in you. That’s exactly what happens when you create and launch a brand ambassador program.

 

BONUS: When you are ready to pitch your idea for a brand ambassador program to the C-Suite, make a plan that details exactly how the program will benefit the brand, and exactly how it will benefit the ambassadors who participate. Carefully and clearly spell out all the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that will be measured and tracked, as well as an explanation of why it is important to do so. Also, give a thorough timeline of the roll-out of the brand ambassador program, for at least the first 6 months of the program, 12 months is better. Assume that there will be a healthy amount of skepticism from upper management about the success of a brand ambassador program (since your brand has likely never launched one), so the eventual signoff by the CEO or CMO will greatly depend on how well you address these concerns head on.

So there’s some ideas to consider when you get ready to create and launch an official brand ambassador program.  This won’t be easy, and it will take a lot of time, but if you are committed to connecting with your most passionate customers and willing to empower them, the results will make program a huge success.  If you need help getting started, let’s explore how we can work together to create an ambassador program for your brand.

 

DOUBLE BONUS: Want to see a great example of an employee brand ambassador program?