Yeah, We Got Lucky

November 10th, 2007

As I enter the office for a meeting, the receptionist behind the counter stands. She stands for no other reason than to afford me respect and shake my hand as I'm welcomed.

Receptionists are usually friendly and professional as they answer the phone and announce the arrival of yet another visitor. But I've never experienced one standing to honor my presence. I take note!

As my meeting with the firm's CEO proceeds, I explain how demonstrating a brand is more important than talking about a brand.
"How is branding different from marketing and sales? What do you mean by Brand Ownership? Don't quality products and hard work speak for themselves?" - all common first-time questions from prospective clients.

As our meeting progresses during lunch I explain how strong brands must be both different and relevant. Midway through our meal, the CEO asks, "You've been to our office. Did you notice anything different and relevant about us?"

I told them of my experience of being greeted by their receptionist and how important it made me feel.
The CEO was not surprised - he receives raving comments about his receptionist all the time. He did admit her actions were not an intentional part of living out their company's brand – she just has good instincts and knows people. Lucky for him he hired well.

The receptionist's actions were even more relevant in this case since she worked for an outplacement firm. Chances are when a person walks through their doors it's someone who's just lost their job and a lot of their sense of value.
Creating a remarkable and relevant brand experience is sometimes as simple as remembering what it feels like to be a customer, then designing different and relevant actions around what you remember.
You can't always bet on hiring a very perceptive receptionist!

Quoted from ownyourbrand.com

Unforgettable

November 15th, 2007

"My memory flows like a movie - nonstop and uncontrollable!"

Known in medical literature only as AJ, she remembers everything about her life – even the mundane. There have been people with great memories in the past, but AJ is unique. Her extraordinary memory is not for facts or figures, but for her own life.
In fact, her inexhaustible memory for autobiographical details is so unprecedented and so poorly understood the scientists who have been studying her for the past seven years, had to coin a new medical term to describe her condition: hyperthymestic syndrome.
Wouldn't it be great if your customers and clients remembered you the same way – or would it?
There are two ways you become important enough to become a rock-solid memory:

1. Work long and hard to identify the right set of promises your "sweet spot customer" will call useful and unique. Then focus every ounce of your organization's energy on keeping those promises.

OR

2. Make promises to the marketplace and fail to keep them.

Customers remember promises made and kept and promises made and broke. Both are important, but for very different reasons.

So, how do you want to be unforgettable?

Quoted from ownyourownbrand.com

Competitors Formerly Known As Your Employees

OwnYourOwnBrand.com

September 16th, 2007

We, who are your lowly employees feel the time has come to tell you that every Thursday we have been meeting, as a group, to devise ways to keep you in perpetual uncertainty, frustration, discontent and torture by neither listening to you as much as you want, nor quitting you without notice.

Your CPA is in on it, plus all your key suppliers and your ex-partner; and we have agreed to disappoint you and your customers as long as you "boss" us without leading us.
In letting you in on our Thursday meetings we realize we have placed in your hands a possible antidote to your frustration and indeed to your loss of customers. But since our Thursday nights
have united us with entrepreneurial spirit and ambition with you as the heart of our motivation, we feel hopeful you will continue to make unreasonable demands on all of us while we discover our own brand and seek financing to launch our own business.

This bit of blog poetry was inspired by the real life employees who have become brand owners of their own ventures having learned what to do and not do under the many "bad bosses" we all have known.

Quoted from ownyourownbrand.com

STRIVE FOR INNOVATION ARC

A story arc is a continuing storyline. Its purpose is to move a character or a situation from one state to another, or to galvanize change. This is a pattern evident in work and play, in life itself.
Innovation is more than one shot, more than a chapter. What it constitutes is a narrative series in which one episode of change unfolds into another. Like a story arc, innovation can result in dramatic effect but it is and remains hard work. Innovation can be described as episodic reaching of a high point. It brings out the best in us. The motivation of innovation-charged groups can be striking. Cooperation, not competition, is the driver of positive outcomes toward an empathic future.

"The amplitude and velocity of change is such that companies are more at risk," says Paul A. Laudicina, author of World Out of Balance. The word "companies" means people. In as much as there is a drive to have a strong command of preparation when disasters happen in order to respond to sudden change, there is a drive to help people live and work collaboratively and efficiently. This same drive embodies innovation. In asking the tough question "What if…?" innovation's intent is that the best, not the worst, is yet to come.

Innovation is more than a new year's resolution, it is the pursuit of betterment in a world both troubling and interesting at the same time. like disaster's continuum of change, the continuum of innovation also persists. Individual efforts are conducive to leaving our world a little better. Aligned to Grandin's passionate practice of "doing practical things" and "creating systems," innovation is not beyond one's abilities. With this in mind, anyone can innovate.

Mastering Disaster by Jennifer Reingold, Fast Company

The Elegant Solution : What’s the next big thing?

This question is plastered throughout media and can be misleading.

When it comes to innovation, size and scope does not matter in improving lives. One's sphere of influence, however small, can lead to critical and incremental change, from home to classroom to workplace.

Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation"
by Matthew E. May

Big Ideas (Meatball Mondae 11)

In a factory-based organization, little ideas are the key to success.
Small improvements in efficiency or design can improve productivity and
make a product just a bit more appealing. New Marketing, which exists in
the noisy marketplace, demands something bigger. It demands ideas that
force people to sit up and take notice.

At the same time that we see how game-changing ideas (like the iPhone)
can trump little improvements, we're also noting the end of the "big idea" in advertising.

There's a difference between a big idea that comes from a product or
service and a big idea that comes from the world of advertising.

The secret of big-time advertising during the 1960s and '70s was the
"big idea." In/ A Big Life in Advertising/, ad legend Mary Wells
Lawrence writes, "... our goal was to have big, breakthrough ideas, not
just to do good advertising. I wanted to create miracles." A big idea
could build a brand, a career, or an entire agency.

Charlie the Tuna was a big idea. So was "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz."

Big ideas in advertising worked great when advertising was in charge.
With a limited amount of spectrum and a lot of hungry consumers, the
stage was set to put on a show. And the better the show, the bigger the
punchline, the more profit could be made.

Today, the advertiser's big idea doesn't travel very well. Instead, the
idea must be embedded into the experience of the product itself. Once
again, what we used to think of as advertising or marketing is pushed
deeper into the organization. Let the brilliant ad guys hang out with
your R&D team and watch what happens.

Yes, there are big ideas. They're just not advertising-based.

The whole series is here. http://www.meatballsundae.com

http://www.meatballsundae.com/

Quoted from Seth Godin's Blog

Thanks for calling, please go away

Most customer service organizations are architected around a simple
idea: interacting with customers is expensive, driving costs down is a
good thing, thus getting people to go away is beneficial.

Think about it: most inbound customer service people are rewarded for
on-phone efficiency. Calls per hour. Lack of escalations. Limited
complaints. What's the best way to do that? Get people to go away.

If you're on this system and a long-time customer calls in with a
complicated problem, one that's going to require supervisor intervention
and follow up, what's your best plan? Is it to spend an hour with this
person over three days, or is the system designed to have you politely
get them to just give up?

I'd focus on building a system that measures [sales rate before call]
vs. [sales rate after call]. If the sales rate goes up, give the call
center person a raise. It's that simple.

Paypal seized the money in my account on Friday. After seven years as a
user, they decided my new DVD project was suspiciously successful and it
triggered all sorts of alarms. The first step was a call from them... a
cheerful person asked me a few questions and all seemed fine. Then, with
no warning, they escalated the process. The system they put me in
treated me like a criminal and at every step they made it difficult for
me to keep going. Phone calls were made, and I spoke with two incredibly
friendly people who were clearly unable to do anything other than be
friendly. Both people were happy to talk to me for as long as I wanted,
but neither person was able to do anything at all. The system is clearly
designed this way... to insulate the people who make decisions from the
actual customers. The desired outcome (I go away) doesn't seem like it's
aligned with the corporate goals (I stick around).

The question I'd be asking is, "Do people who go through process and
manage to prove that they are not criminals end up doing more business
with us as a result of the way we treated them?" If the answer is no,
you're probably doing it wrong.

The last straw was this: After I put together all the documents they
wanted (including a copy of my passport) and created a PDF, I tried to
upload it. They don't take PDFs, the alert box said, just JPGs. So I
sent the images and get this notice:

I followed up with the email address on the screen and got an email
back, informing me that the email I had mailed to at PayPal wasn't
monitored.

Sigh.

[PS in the ninety minutes after I posted this, I heard from a slew of
people. Guess what? Every single one had a Paypal horror story to share.
Once you teach an entire organization to mistreat customers, it's hard
to fix.]

Quoted from Seth Godin's Blog