MackCollier.com

by

Never Believe That Your Voice Isn’t Worth Sharing With Us

Over the last week I had a chat with two of my dear friends.  These are people that for the past few years have both been very influential in the social media space, and have both garnered a high level of respect.

One of those friends was Beth Harte.  I called her up to see what was new with her.  Well she had just deleted her Facebook and Twitter accounts, she told me.

Wait…what?

Yep, Beth had quit cold-turkey on the two biggest social media sites on the planet.  Why?  Because she wanted a fresh start, and wanted to be using these sites because she WANTED to, not because she felt the pressure to maintain a presence she may not care about anymore.

This is one of the many things I love about Beth: She is true to who she is.  How many of you right now are following people you would like to unfollow but you don’t cause want to ’cause drama’.  Or maybe you’d like to pull the plug on a social media site, but you can’t bring yourself to do it?

But the other conversation I had with a different friend was the one that really touched me.  And I’m not gonna tell you who it was cause it doesn’t matter and I wouldn’t have told you about my conversation with Beth if she hadn’t posted it on Facebook that she was leaving.

The second friend told me that she sometimes felt as if what she had to say wasn’t ‘worthy’ of other people.  As if her voice wasn’t as valuable and didn’t deserve to be heard as much as someone else’s.

How many of you have thought the exact same thing?  I will tell you the same thing I told my dear friend: That’s total bullshit.

Probably the most wonderful thing about Social Media is that these tools give all of us a chance to express our own unique voice.  In my mind, that is truly the promise of social media.

Perhaps the worst thing about social media is that some people will believe that their voice doesn’t deserve to be heard because someone has been talking louder and for longer than they have.

Stop it.  The only reason you are reading what I am writing today is because in 2005 when I started blogging I was stubborn/dumb enough to believe I had every right to put my thoughts out there with Seth Godin or Guy Kawasaki or whoever the hell I wanted to.  And I had every right to make a complete fool out of myself in the process (and often did!).

But the point is…I always believed that my voice had value and that I deserved to be heard.

So do you.   It literally breaks my heart that some people in this space believe that their voice doesn’t deserve to be heard because their Klout score isn’t high enough, or because they don’t have X number of Twitter followers.

If I had just one wish for you, it would be that you would stop worrying about what others think and say and do, and find your own voice.  Find the passion that stirs your soul, and let it loose.  Never believe for one minute that your thoughts aren’t worth sharing.  Why do I keep writing about Think Like a Rockstar?  Because I believe in my heart that the future of marketing relies on companies better connecting with their customers and cultivating advocates for their brand.  If you don’t want to read those posts then I will shake your hand and wish you well, because I’m not changing my voice to suit your ears.

And neither should you.

I’ve never really watched American Idol, but on Wednesday night I was watching and saw this performance by Skylar.  Now since I am a speaker, I tend to focus on the delivery of speakers moreso than the topics they are covering.  I do the same thing with singers, I watch their posture and how they relate to the crowd.  That was what mesmerized me about Skylar’s performance.

First, she’s singing Gaga.  A country version of Born This Way that many in the audience probably hadn’t heard before.  She swapped up the lyrics in some places.  In other words, she took the song and made it her own.  And refused to apologize for it.  She was completely in charge of the room and totally confident because even though she was singing a version of the song that might have been unfamiliar to some who heard it, she sang it in her voice.  Which is why it was so awesome.

http://youtu.be/0zLEHNsbLmI

My wish for you is that if you aren’t already, that you’ll find the courage to start sharing your unique voice.  Because we are waiting to hear it.

by

5 Reasons Why You Need to Stop Marketing and Start Teaching

Another gem from Kathy Sierra, click image for post

I think many companies are completely misusing Social Media as a marketing channel. These content-creation tools are the perfect outlet for companies to create content that teaches their customers how to solve their own problems, how to be better at something they love, how to kick-ass.  Teaching and empowering your customers creates a level of loyalty that regular marketing could never hope for.  Here’s 5 reasons why your company should stop marketing to your customers, and start teaching them:

1 – Teaching gives you a competitive edge.  Let’s be honest, most of us in the business world are operating in a crowded marketplace.  There’s no shortage of competition, and many of your peers may have deeper marketing budgets than you do.  But the funny thing is, a lot of businesses don’t like to pull back the curtain and actually teach their customers about their products and how to properly use them.

Years ago I spent a Summer selling pesticides and lawn care products at Lowes throughout Northwest Alabama.  I had never sold before in a retail environment, and being an introvert, the idea of stopping people and selling to them as they walked up and down the isles at Lowes scared the hell out of me.  Luckily, I had a great mentor that was also a professional landscaper.  As such, he understood all the products we were selling as well as the competitors’.  So I learned about all the products so that I wasn’t selling the products, I was selling solutions to problems.

So when a customer walked up and started looking at the pesticides, I didn’t try to push them toward a particular product, I asked them what problems they were having.  Once they told me what problems they were having, I explained to them what was causing the problem, and how to fix it.  Then I showed them which products would work best for them.  And sometimes (and this is key) the product I was selling wasn’t the best option.  If that’s the case, I told the customer and pointed them toward the competitor.

The end result was that I made more on commissions from sales than I did on my actual salary as a vendor.  In fact the area I serviced led the nation in sales for multiple product lines.  I think a big reason why was because we were focused on trying to teach our customers how to solve their lawn-care problems versus trying to simply sell them our products.

2 – Teaching creates value.  If I’m in the market for a digital camera, what I’m really looking to buy is a way to take better pictures.  So if you are trying to get my business, don’t throw a lot of techno-babble at me that I won’t understand anyway, teach me how to take better pictures.  By teaching me how to take better pictures with a digital camera, you’ve already solved my core problem.  So by creating that value for me, I feel on some level like I ‘owe’ you my business when it comes time for me to buy a digital camera.  I want to reward you for the value you gave me, free of charge.  Now granted, the product still has to do the job, but creating value for me via teaching makes me feel much better about committing to the purchase.

3 – If you teach me, that helps earn my trust, and loyalty.  I am used to marketing.  I am used to companies trying to ‘trick’ me into buying their product.  I’m not used to companies teaching me how to be better at something.  That’s unexpected, and that gets my attention.  If your company can create value for me without asking for anything in return, that makes it far more likely that I will listen to your message, and share it with others.  Plus, it greatly increases the chance that I will trust you, and buy from you.

And don’t be afraid to spotlight the competition, if they have a better product.  Recall in the first step how I mentioned selling lawn-care products in Lowes.  Often, I would encourage a customer to buy a competitor’s product if I really thought it was the best solution for their particular problem.  You wouldn’t believe how many times I had a customer come back a week or two later and tell me that I was right about the competitor’s product working on their ant problem, now did I have a suggestion for getting rid of wasps?  I sure did and this time, my company’s product was better.  Since my first suggestion had worked for them, they trusted that this one would as well.

4 – Valuable content get shared.  During this week’s #Blogchat a few of us were discussing how Twitter has become our source for information.  We know that the people we are following will be sharing valuable information, so they send it our way, and then we pass it on.  Why?  Because we want to create value for others.  If someone sends me a really useful article, the first thing I want to do is RT it so others can get value from the article as well.  If your content teaches, that creates value, and greatly increases the chance that it will be shared.

5 – Sharing what you know means sharing your passion, and that inspires people.  Don’t we all love hearing someone talk that truly loves what they are doing?  Because they aren’t talking from a script, they are sharing what’s in their heart.  Teach what you know and share with us why you love what it is you do, and who knows, you may convince us to love it just as much.

 

So when you are trying to sell your products, again think about selling solutions to problems instead.  Think about how you can teach your customers to solve the problems they are encountering, or simply how to kick-ass at whatever it is they love doing.  Oh and BTW, blogs are excellent tools for this 😉

Besides, helping someone kick-ass at something is often the best marketing you can create for your products.  Here’s a bonus video from Jason Fried on the value of teaching as marketing: (HT @Copyblogger) –

by

What’s the Difference Between a Brand Advocate and a Brand Ambassador?

ManWMegaphoneLet’s say Stacey, Jennifer and Tara are on lunch break at the mall, and are headed to the food court.  Jennifer asks where they should eat, when Stacey points out that Olive Garden has their unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks lunch, it’s delicious, and well under $10.  Jennifer agrees, that does sound pretty good!

Stacey is a brand advocate for Olive Garden.  She loves the restaurant and eats there at least once a week.

But right when they are set to go to Olive Garden, Tara says “Well I think I will go to Chick Fil-A.  I tried their new spicy chicken sandwich combo and it was delicious!  It comes with fries and a drink for only $5.89.  Plus, I have three $2 off coupons, so we could eat at Chick-Fil-A for about half what it would cost at Olive Garden!  Y’all want to come?”

Tara is a brand advocate for Chick Fil-A but she is also a brand ambassador for the chain.  The difference in this example is that Chick Fil-A has reached out to Tara and is working with her to help her get the word out about the chain.  By doing things like giving her coupons on products that she can share with friends.

So you could say that Stacey is a brand advocate for Olive Garden that the franchise hasn’t connected with in order to see if she wants to become a brand ambassador.

The basic difference between a brand advocate and an ambassador is that a brand ambassador has a formal relationship with the brand.  The brand has connected with them and is in regular contact with them.  Typically, the brand does this in order to help the ambassador better promote the brand and educate their friends and people they come in contact with about the brand.  This can be very powerful because as we all know, we trust our friends and other customers more than we do brands.  It’s just human nature.

However, there’s a big caveat to this approach.  Notice I said that most brands want to leverage ambassadors as a way to promote their brand.  What many brands don’t spend enough time on is focusing on the feedback that their ambassadors can collect about the brand.  Since their ambassadors are constantly talking to customers about the brand, it’s a wonderful way for the brand to get real feedback from customers on the brand, what they like, and dislike.

So if your brand is considering launching a brand ambassador program, think about how you can empower your ambassadors to promote your brand, but also think about how you can encourage your ambassadors to get feedback from customers on the brand.  Then make sure you find a way to collect that feedback from all your ambassadors, so you can act on it.

If your brand wants to launch a brand ambassador program, here’s 10 things to remember.

by

Think Like a Rockstar: How Taylor Swift Connects With Her Fans At Concerts

Let’s say you’ve taken your two daughters to a Taylor Swift concert and your seats are in the infamous ‘nosebleed’ section, and it seems the stage is a mile away.  The seats still cost you a small fortune, but your girls are loving the show anyway as the concert goes to intermission.  After a few minutes in the darkness suddenly the fans in your section start cheering and you turn around to see a spotlight guiding Taylor herself walking down the stairs just a few feet away, as she takes her guitar and begins performing!  Just like that the worst seats in the house have become front row, and what was already a great concert for your little girls, just became a night they will remember for the rest of their lives.

Because Taylor Swift just created something amazing for the people that love her.

I was reading about this yesterday in a great post by Jennifer Blanchard over at ProBlogger’s place on how Taylor goes out of her way to connect with her fans.  During her Fearless tour, Taylor was known to leave the stage during intermission, only to reappear at the back of the arena, where she began playing for fans in those seats farthest from the stage.

Another way that Taylor creates something special for her biggest fans that come to her concerts is with the T-Party.  The T-Party is a place where Taylor and her band like to crash before the concert, where they can hangout, play video games, etc somewhere in the arena.  But during the concert, Taylor’s family and helpers will be scanning the crowd looking for the fans with the most ‘spirit’.  The ones that are the most excited, the ones with the crazy outfits, or sometimes it will be the quiet girl that came by herself.  They pick a couple dozen of these fans, and invite them back to the T-Party after the concert!  Then Taylor and her band come back to the T-Party and hang out with the fans for a few hours, signing autographs, playing video games with them, and just hanging out.

These instances perfectly illustrate how Rockstars don’t have fans because they are Rockstars, they have fans because of how they treat their fans.  Taylor doesn’t have to go out of her way to play for the fans in the nosebleed section, but she does.  She doesn’t have to go to the extra time and expense of setting up the T-Party events for just a couple dozen fans after the concert, but she does.

Because she loves her fans.  And her fans know that, and they love her right back.  We marketers make this brand advocacy stuff a lot harder than it needs to be.

But the skeptical marketer will ask ‘Is connecting with 24 fans really that big of a deal?’

We’ve talked about this before, but companies and Rockstars, for the most part, have completely different approaches to marketing:
brand advocacy

Most companies want new customers, most Rockstars want to connect with their biggest fans.

By having a T-Party, Taylor touched the lives of those 24 fans.  And then they will go home and tell their friends, and tweet about it and Facebook it, and just go crazy.  Taylor understands what most Rockstars do, that she’ll get new customers tomorrow because she delighted her existing fans today.

And that will happen after every concert, watch the above video and note what happens at the 1:46 mark.  When the woman is explaining to the group what’s going to happen, as soon as she says ‘T-Party’, the girls in the front row immediately grab each other cause they knew exactly what the T-Party was!

Year after year, Taylor is looking for ways to connect with and delight her biggest fans.  Even if it’s only 24 at a time.  Her approach has helped make her beloved by millions and one of the most famous people on the planet.

How’s your company’s approach working?

Pic via Flickr user Inez Boldrin

by

Here’s What I Believe…

…that companies need to stop focusing on the tools, and start focusing on the connections that the tools help facilitate.  It’s not about understanding Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, it’s about understanding customer behavior.  Anyone that tries to tell you differently is selling something.

…that companies will get the biggest benefit from emerging digital technologies if they work within the framework of the customer’s existing behavior.  Figure out why you customers are spending their time with these channels and tools, then you can figure out how to connect with them in a way that creates value for them.

…that participating in a conversation changes that conversation.  Don’t like the conversation happening around your brand?  Then start participating in that conversation, and change it.

…that buzzwords are a hurdle to understanding.  Speak in as simple terms as possible to explain your ideas.  If you use too many buzzwords and jargon you risk limiting understanding of your message.  Or worse, you may convince me that YOU don’t understand the concepts you are discussing.

…that customers don’t want to be mouthpieces for brands.  Stop viewing Social Media as a ‘new and exciting way to let customers tell our story!’  Your customers have their own stories to tell via Social Media, and they are far more interesting than yours.

…that Twitter isn’t a Social Media Strategy, it’s a Social Media tactic.  Tactics are what you use to accomplish a strategy.

…that Steve Knox was right, victory in marketing doesn’t happen when you sell something, but when you cultivate advocates for your brand.

…that customers deserve more than companies are giving them.  They deserve brands that understand them and embrace them and give them a reason to fall madly in love with them.

…that Marketing is ultimately a tax that brands pay for not speaking in the voice of their customers.  Understand your customers, speak in their voice, and you’ll win their loyalty and money.

…that we need fewer conversations.  Brands have two distinct conversations happening around them, the internal conversation they have about themselves, and the external one their customers are having.  The further apart these conversations are, the more trouble the brand is in.  The more aligned the conversations are, the stronger the brand.  Hugh was right.

…that the customer’s ability to smell bullshit is greater than your ability to sell it.  So please stop.

…that companies need to stop selling the product, and start selling the benefit.  Make your communications customer-centric.  Think about WHY I would buy your product and how I would use it, and you just might convince me that I need it.

…that companies need to stop worry about ‘acquiring’ new customers, and focus on delighting their existing ones.  New customers cost 6-7 times more to acquire versus retaining an existing customer, while fans spend more than the average customer, and refer business equal to almost half what they spend.  Yet marketers everywhere want ‘new’ customers, even at the expense of their existing ones.  This is madness.

…that Rockstars have figured out that they’ll get new customers tomorrow from delighting their existing fans, today.  And they won’t pay a penny in ‘acquisition’ fees.  I’m amazed that more brands aren’t learning from this approach.

…that if you believe in your customers, they will believe in you.  Stop treating them like anonymous numbers, they are real people living real lives every day.  Just like you.

…that brands need to stop putting the spotlight on themselves.  Put the spotlight on the people that make your brand amazing; Your customers and employees.

…that customers are more connected and empowered than ever before.  So are the brands that embrace them.

by

How Do We Create a Fan-Centric Company?

Brand advocates, fans, brand advocacy

Last year, my friend Liz Strauss challenged me to think about how companies could better connect with their fans, and vice-versa.  I wanted to think about how this process would actually take place inside a company.  How would a company identify and connect with its brand advocates?  How would it create and continue a connection with that group?  How would it facilitate a flow of communication from the company to its advocates, and vice-versa?  How would it act on that information internally, and who would handle it?

Some of these same questions have been rolled up into the thought-process of what a ‘Social Business’ could be and we talked about it yesterday, although not in the detail I was hoping for.  But last year when I started trying to wrap my head around what this framework could look like, I realized with the events I would be speaking at and attending in 2011, I would have plenty of opportunities to talk to some pretty big brands and companies about how they are connecting with their fans.

So that’s what I did.  At almost every stop in 2011, I made it a point to set up meetings to talk with companies about how they were connecting with their brand advocates.  We’re talking VERY large companies, and usually the people I talked to were CEOs or CMOs.  After probably a dozens or so interviews in 2011 with big companies about how they were systematically connecting with their brand advocates, I came up with this answer:

They weren’t.  The closest would probably be Dell’s DellCAP program (Disclosure – I had a very limited role in helping Dell flesh out some of the initial ideas behind it and executing them), which I obviously think is a fabulous program, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say it’s solely based on connecting with Dell’s brand advocates.  All the companies I talked to saw the importance of its brand advocates, and several were doing things like monitoring for positive brand mentions and responding, or maybe highlighting fans on a Facebook page, but for the most part there wasn’t a formal process in place where the company regularly connected with its advocates.  Several expressed to me an interest in taking that next step, but they wanted to know what that process would look like.  This is why I kept harping on the need for more detail around ‘Social Business’ for the same reason in yesterday’s post.

But perhaps the biggest roadblock to companies adopting a formal process for connecting with their fans is they don’t understand who they are.  My friends at Brains on Fire call this figuring out the identity of your advocates, but I think of it as asking ‘What’s the heartbeat of your fans?’  Whats the one thing that binds them together in a love of your brand?  Even at the DellCAP reunion last year, at one point I was talking to a Dell exec and we were looking at the attendees and going around the room and we realized that they all loved Dell, but for very different reasons.  Some loved the product, some loved the people, some loved the service.  But they were different people.  You had the hard-core gamer that professionally competes in contests over here with his Alienware laptop, and the mom who writes a blog on tech for other moms over here.

Yet understanding who your fans are and why they love you is a step that cannot be overlooked and skipped.  I honestly think this is why Brains on Fire is so successful because they invest the time and energy for their clients in helping them understand who their fans are and what their identity/heartbeat is.  We all love the Fiskars/Fiskateers case study, but remember that it was made possible by Brains on Fire doing a LOT of research and figuring out how Fiskars’ customers were using its product, and realizing that a passionate scrapbooking community existed that loved the brand.  Without investing that time and energy in research, the resulting movement wouldn’t have happened.

I’ll wrap this post up now cause I see it’s starting to resemble a thesis, and we haven’t even gotten into what the formal process would/could look like.  I’ll dig into that in the next post on this topic.

But for now, if your company wants to really connect with its fans, make the starting point understanding who they are.  What’s their heartbeat?  What’s the ONE thing that unites them in a love of your brand?  To put this in music terms to help you understand, Lady Gaga doesn’t have fans, she has Little Monsters.  The Grateful Dead has Dead Heads.  You need to find that one thing, because that’s their passion point.  And in doing your research to better understand your fans, don’t rely solely on online research.  Look for ways to get feedback from your fans in an offline setting.  If you only hear from your fans that are online, you are getting an incomplete view of who they are and why they love you.

What are some examples of brands that you think do a great job of connecting with their fans?  Which ones do you think have found the heartbeat of their advocates?

by

Think Like a Rockstar (VIDEO)

I’m thrilled to share the following video from my Think Like a Rockstar talk at Bazaarvoice’s World Headquarters in Austin back in January.  This isn’t the complete presentation, it’s right at 9 mins, but I think it’s the best 9 mins 😉  This video gets to the heart of why I think Rockstars do such a better job of marketing than most companies do, and it all starts with their approach and who they are targeting (Hint: Most companies and marketers are doing it wrong).

And here’s the slides from this presentation:

Think Like A Rockstar

Thanks again to my friends at Bazaarvoice for filming the presentation, I hope you enjoy both the video and the deck!

by

Tapping Into the Power of Customer Conversations With Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice, Think Like a Rockstar, Brand advocacy

Over the past few years I’ve discovered that two of my favorite things to do is present Think Like a Rockstar, and visit Austin, Texas.  Luckily, I got to do both this week, with the added bonus of learning a lot more about an incredibly interesting tech company called Bazaarvoice.  I’ve known Bazaarvoice’s CMO Erin Nelson for a couple of years now, having first met her when I worked with Dell on its first #DellCAP event while Erin was the CMO at Dell.  And I’ve known BV’s Manager of Content and Social Strategy, Ian Greenleigh, for about as long.  In fact, the insights that Ian provided to this post on how negative feedback online actually HELPS most brands, made the post one of the most popular ever written here.

In short, Bazaarvoice offers a suite of products to clients that do two things:

1 – Help them give their customers the ability to give feedback on products and services via reviews, ratings, etc.

2 – Helps these clients collect and interpret this feedback so that they can use it to make more informed business decisions and improve existing business processes.

Erin shares more about Bazaarvoice’s products and how they help clients in the interview at the end of this post.  But I was delighted to hear the focus Bazaarvoice puts on helping clients collect information from their customers, then using that information to improve their business processes.  I’ve been saying this for years (and repeated it on Wednesday while visiting BV), but the promise of social media for business lies in FEWER conversations.  Meaning that the brand and its customers aren’t having two completely different conversations, but rather that both groups better understand the other, and as a result, their conversations are more similar.  Which means the company can improve its marketing and communication efforts, which leads to lowered costs, and increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

While I was visiting Bazaarvoice, I was lucky enough to interview both Erin and Ian and wanted to share those with you.  I think both interviews are fascinating for completely different reasons.  Erin talked a bit about Bazaarvoice and its products and also offered some fascinating insights into the feedback customers leave online (for example, she explains why 4-star reviews are typically more valuable for a company than 5-star), and also talks about how brands can use the information gained from its customers online to make more informed business decisions.

Ian heads up Social and Content Strategy for Bazaarvoice, so he has a job that a lot of us would want 🙂  I asked Ian to walk us through ‘A Day in the Life’, and he also tells us the very unique approach he took in getting his current position, after applying for and not getting the same job!  If you are interested in becoming a Social Media Manager, you’ll definitely want to listen to our chat.

Both interviews are linked below, just click the link and it will open in a new tab for you and start playing.  I was very happy to spend some time with Bazaarvoice this week, and look forward to returning to see them in April for their annual Social Summit!

Interview with Erin at Bazaarvoice

Interview with Ian at Bazaarvoice

Disclosure: Bazaarvoice paid me for my trip and to present Think Like a Rockstar, but did not pay for this post.  

This was one of the first things I saw when I arrived at Bazaarvoice, so I knew it was going to be a great trip!

by

IBM Study: CMOs Look to Focus on Social Media, Connecting With Brand Advocates

Not sure how I missed this, but a couple of months ago IBM released the results of a survey it did of 1,700 Chief Marketing Officers about the future of marketing, specifically the next 3-5 years.  One of the questions asked was what technology CMOs plan to increase their use of over the next 3-5 years.  The top three answers were:

  • Social Media
  • Customer Analytics
  • CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

Another question asked of the CMOs was what were their priorities for managing the shift toward digital technologies.  The number one priority according to the CMOs is enhancing customer loyalty/advocacy.

The beauty of social media is that it allows smart companies to better understand their customers.  Now, companies can simply monitor the conversation happening around their brand, and gain great insights into who their customers are, and what they want.  This leads to greater understanding of their customers, which leads to more effective and efficient marketing.  Which leads to an increase in customer advocacy, and loyalty.

Smart companies are already investing in aggressively monitoring and mining online conversations around their brand, and as a result, they are finding that participating in a conversation changes that conversation.  Rockstars have always understood this, and have actively embraced their fans, and have gone out of their way to connect with them.  Which is a big reason why Rockstars have fans, and companies have customers.

Finally, it seems that companies are beginning to understand the importance of understanding and connecting with their brand advocates.  And in case you’re still not convinced…

brand advocates, think like a rockstar

 

by

IKEA Fans Ask For a Sleepover So the Company Gives Them One

IKEA, community-building, brand advocates, fans, think like a rockstar

Over 100,000 IKEA fans took to Facebook to create a page called “I Wanna Have a Sleepover in IKEA“, and the brand granted that wish to 100 lucky members, sending them to their signature warehouse in Essex in the UK.  The fans were given the royal treatment, including snacks, massages, sleep advice from an expert, and goodie bags.  A strict Pajamas-Only dress code was enforced, but unfortunately it seems that few pillow fights broke out.

This goes to the heart of something I talk about in Think Like a Rockstar: Create Something Amazing For the People That Love You.  IKEA was smart enough to see that their fans had self-organized into this group, so all they had to do was find 100 lucky fans, and make the group’s dream come true.

Now to be sure, this was a BIG expense for IKEA.  Even if all 100 selected fans were local, they had to outfit the store, bring in experts, plus all the goodies, manhours, etc.  But when you Google ‘IKEA Facebook Sleepover 100 Essex’ you find almost 90,000 entries covering this event.  That is a LOT of free publicity for IKEA, and almost all of it is positive.  I’m not sure what IKEA would say the PR value of 90,000 positive articles and posts is, but I’d guess it’s probably more than what they spent on this event.

And yes, you may argue that ‘Well IKEA can do this because their customers are the Cult of IKEA!‘  Maybe one reason why IKEA has such devoted fans is BECAUSE of events like this?

Feed subscribers please click here to watch the video in the post.

HT – PSFK.