Playing Chicken With Your Brand: The Need for Authenticity

If we ever needed an illustration of how social media has changed the dynamic of corporate communications, we need look no further than Chick-fil-A.

It’s no secret that the leadership of the quick-service chicken chain is openly hostile towards same-sex marriage; they donate millions of dollars to anti-gay organizations. Dan Cathy, son of the founder, uses what he calls Biblical principles to run the business. The restaurant is not open on Sunday; they operate debt-free.

How does this play out on social media?

Putting the Social in Social Media

We talk a lot here about the need to belong, and why participating in groups is so important to people. Right now, let’s talk about the mechanics of how people get into groups in the first place, and what they do to stay well-positioned in the group, once they’re in.

Groups are formed by affinity; like-minded people gravitate toward each other. One way for the individual to be welcomed into the group is to announce they have the same values and beliefs as the rest of the group. Chick-fil-A does an exceptional job articulating its organizational values to the public. Customers who find these values in alignment with their own will favor Chick-fil-A. Customers who find these values counter to their own obviously will not.

Social media provides the platform where groups form and engage with each other. After Dan Cathy’s statements confirming the organization’s committed negative stand on same-sex marriage, the Jim Henson Company decided it no longer wanted to work with Chick-fil-A. They made their decision public on Facebook.

In response, the next day, Chick-fil-A posted paper signs in their franchises, announcing Jim Henson toys would no longer be available at Chick-fil-A due to a mysterious safety recall.

That’s the type of incredible coincidence the internet just loves. Gossip and speculation flew faster than the speed of light. There are countless articles, blog posts, and social media postings questioning the sincerity of this voluntary recall. Chick-fil-A did not present as credible. The bad impression compounded when it became obvious that someone was manufacturing sock puppet Facebook accounts to defend the brand.

It did not help matters that the Consumer Safety Protection Commission has reported no known safety issues with the puppets.  The CSPC is the governmental agency that usually handles this sort of thing.

It’s hard to be taken seriously as an organization guided by Biblical principals when you look like you’re bearing false witness. This, more than anything, is what may do real, lasting damage to Chick-fil-A’s brand equity. People believe what they believe about equal rights for all: a chicken restaurant is not going to change their mind—no matter how good those Waffle Fries are!

But now an element of doubt has been introduced into the equation. Chick-fil-A’s biggest fans (the people we’d call their Brand Lovers: the most profitable, engaged customers) and those who are favorable toward the brand are faced with uncomfortable questions.

An Alignment of Values

Were they lied to? And if they were, why? The customers who adhere to this brand and its values are not people who would leave over a forthright statement that acknowledged that the chicken restaurant parted ways with the Jim Henson company over political differences.  Lying is bad enough.  Lying for no discernible reason is worse.

Not every Chick-fil-A customer will ask these questions.  But some of them will, and they’ll talk to their family and friends. Brands are built on trust between the customer and the organization. There is a vital and critical sense that the values of the brand are in alignment with those of the the customer.  Right now, Chick-fil-A’s knocked the cart right off the rails. Even if they’re not lying, it looks like they are.

It’s obviously a tumultuous time at the company. Don Perry, VP of Public Relations, recently died. To move forward, especially in the arena of social media, it’s essential that the brand focus on bringing its actions back into alignment with the values their customers know and expect. Honesty is the best policy. And in today’s fast paced social media environment, verifiable honesty is even better.

What do you think? What advice would you give Chick-fil-A as they move forward?

August 8, 2012 by

The Lost Years? Lessons Learned From Microsoft

Kurt Eichenwald, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, has investigated what he calls Microsoft’s Lost Decade—a period of lackluster performance and diminished profitability. He lays blame squarely at the feet of a cannibalistic corporate culture.  The story is getting lots of attention, particularly as it relates to the controversial management practice of “stack ranking.”

Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, went to Forbes to reply.  His response (Lost decade? What lost decade?) is full of enthusiasm for Windows 8, Bing (currently #2 in the search engine marketplace, trailing Google by only 51.2%!) and the Surface, Microsoft’s computer/tablet hybrid designed to showcase the power of Windows 8.

Which one of them is right?

Let’s start by talking about this Lost Decade thing.  To begin with, how do we decide which years are lost? Microsoft hasn’t been knocking anyone’s socks off with their innovation or sales numbers. (Eichenwald is quick to point out that the revenue from the iPhone far exceeds the revenues generated by all Microsoft products combined.) But Ballmer isn’t wrong when he points out that invention and innovation take time, refinement, and resources. Those years aren’t lost, Ballmer argues. They’ve been quietly necessary.

Harley-Davidson isn’t known for being a particularly quiet company, but they’ve had their share of lost years. During the infamous AMF era, the now-iconic company was in a death-spiral. Quality had tanked, customer satisfaction was a thing of the past, and the brand was headed toward oblivion until a group of dedicated individuals took action to save the company from within. It was a hard time for the brand, a time where they were neither innovative or productive. Yet they’ve recovered, and today are the dominant motorcycle manufacturer in the domestic market.

The Vital Role of Culture

It’s important to note that internal cultural changes played a pivotal role in Harley-Davidson’s revitalization. It turns out to be pretty essential that people build products they’re proud of. Understanding the intrinsic motivations of your work force—those unconscious psychological forces that lead your employees to choose your organization as their employer—is an essential step in effecting meaningful organizational change.

And that brings us back to Kurt Eichenwald.  He’s focused on the problems within Microsoft’s internal culture. The mechanism by which employees expect to be recognized and rewarded for their contributions to the brand’s success has been fundamentally broken, he argues, by the stacked ranking system.  It’s not unlike grading on the curve: 10% of your people are star performers, 70% are your average folks, and the bottom 20% aren’t cutting the mustard.  They need remedial education or they need to be replaced.

Rather than creating an atmosphere of collaboration and innovation, this methodology fosters fear, anxiety, and individual competition.  The focus is not on being the top 10%, it’s on avoiding being regarded as part of that bottom 20%.  Where the employee’s attention is focused is where the company will inevitably go.  You can make a ship so safe it sinks.

What does this mean for Microsoft?  The decade past may not be lost, entirely, but dangerous lessons have been learned inside of that corporate culture.  If Microsoft wants the innovation, creativity, and spark that they’ll need to remain relevant, much less competitive, in today’s tech market, changes need to be made.  Understanding and recognizing what motivates people to do their best work for you, their most creative, higher-order thinking, is a good place to start. The shift toward a more humanistic corporate culture is where it begins.  Who knows where it will end?

August 1, 2012 by

Beyond Batman: Understanding The Events That Shape Our Customers

We join with the world in sorrow and grief over the Aurora, Colorado massacre.

As a culture, we’ll be a long time figuring out what went wrong, and why. As business leaders, we have to understand the impact of events like this have on our customers.

For the owners of movie theaters, this is a huge and immediate concern. But what does it mean for the rest of us? You may not think there’s an immediate connection. If you’re selling women’s clothes or automobiles or the finest financial planning instruments, at this point, you’re thinking, “Exactly what does this horrible shooting have to do with my customer base?”

Culture, Community, and The Ties That Bind

We’ve talked before about the fact that our customers don’t exist in isolation. Approaching business from a humanistic perspective means understanding that we’re all connected: every single customer is part of a family, a neighborhood, a larger culture. The groups we belong to partly define us. Our behaviors, decisions, and world views are partly shaped by the behaviors, decisions, and world views of the people we associate with.

It’s important to remember that systems—all systems, every system—move inevitably from stability to instability. Entropy is a universal force. Things come undone. We see this on the physical level as well as the social level.  Once great institutions—the central forces that guided and shaped every decision that people made—are not so powerful anymore.

People no longer identify as strongly or as wholly with their church, country, or community as they once did.  This process can take place over the course of time—an in-depth examination of American Catholicism is a good example here—or it can happen very rapidly. How many people applying to work for your organization this week are going to have Penn State proudly listed at the top of their resume?

The groups may falter and fail, but the need to belong remains. Let’s bring our attention back to Aurora for a moment. Examining the coverage of this horrific event reveals one surprisingly strong narrative thread: outrage that this shooting happened specifically in a movie theater. People go to the movies to be entertained, surely, but they go for other reasons: to be anonymous in the audience, free from the responsibility to be aware of and engaged with others, and to give over one’s attention wholly to a story. The setting may be secular, but the experience is close to sacred. To be violated here, in this fashion, is not a trivial thing.

Right now, our customers are largely conscious of this. We know a woman who told her mother she was going to a midnight showing of Batman, to show solidarity with and compassion for the Aurora victims. Her mother’s advice? Wear sensible shoes. Just in case you have to run. You never know.

A year from now, two years from now, those words may have faded, but the sentiment will remain, tucked away in the collective unconscious of our customers. The spaces we assumed were special and sacred, different from the rest of the world and free from the world’s worries, aren’t, really. This will shape their decision making in new and complex ways. We see this after every large scale traumatic event, even if it appears that our customers aren’t directly affected.

It is our role, as business leaders invested in providing superior service to our customer base, to be aware of the changes in group behavior. Some people are going to buy running shoes in the wake of Aurora. Some people are going to buy guns. What about your customers? You need to know what they’re are going to do and why they’re going to do it. That’s the type of awareness that separates leading organizations from the rest of the pack.

July 24, 2012 by

Up In Smoke: What To Do When Your Market Disappears

Last week, we talked about a powerful Thai campaign designed to encourage people to stop smoking. There are lots of people who get pretty happy when folks kick the cancer-causing habit, but we have to admit that the sentiment is hardly universal.

Tobacco farmers aren’t big fans of the stop-smoking movement, as you might expect. Fewer smokers means a smaller market for their crop.  Other companies are feeling the pinch too. Cigarette and pipe manufacturers, ash tray makers, and lighter companies are all experiencing dramatically declining domestic sales.

What’s going to happen to these brands if the whole planet eventually goes smoke free?

Let’s look to history for some answers. After all, it’s not the first time consumer demand for a product has dropped off precipitously. Markets can and do disappear.  Have you tried to buy an 8-track player recently? Good luck with that. The same thing can be said for floppy disks and manual typewriters. Try locating a pay phone somewhere near you. It might take a while.

When a market disappears, the companies that depended upon that market tend to choose from three options. One option is to hang in there, catering to the nostalgic customer. Markets never disappear entirely. Did you know that there are still zeppelin manufacturers? Another option is to go out of business entirely, and a third option, far more popular, is to stay in business but change what you do. The Royal Typewriter company, for example, today specializes in consumer information technology, including cash registers, shredders, and copier supplies.

Understanding Your Customer’s Unconscious Expands Opportunities

There is another option for companies facing a dwindling marketplace, but it’s only open to those brands who have a deep and comprehensive understanding of the unconscious psychological motivators that drives their customers to choose them over all other competing brands. In this strategy, you continue to do what you do, but you present it to your customers in a whole new way.

For example, let’s look at Zippo. Full disclosure: we wrote about Zippo in Customers First, discussing their dubious brand extension into the world of fine fragrances. Now, however, we think the brand is on the right track as they embrace a new strategy.

Zippo built their brand by positioning themselves as the lighter of choice for the rugged, resourceful man. Their customers saw themselves as can-do guys, who wouldn’t let something like a little bit of wind stop them from enjoying a cigarette when they wanted one—or from being there for a damsel in distress who needed a light.

That wasn’t all. Zippo lighters made it possible for the average Joe to tap into his inner MacGyver. Portable, dependable fire is a handy tool to have. You can start a signal fire. You can smooth the end of a fringed, frayed rope. In a pinch, you can warm canned food with a lighter. In a really bad pinch, you can even cauterize a wound—although we, ourselves, would never recommend such a thing!

Zippo understands that their best customers may never, in fact, use their lighters to do any of these things. Chances are that they’re much more Yogi Bear than Bear Grylls. That doesn’t matter. They’re far more likely to do these things than they are to smoke, and having a Zippo makes it possible.  What Zippo is selling here is empowerment. When a man uses a Zippo, he’s able to connect with a powerful archetypal masculine image that resonates on a deep and primal level. It’s a tangible way for consumers to connect with an internalized vision of their best self.

You’re just not going to get that from flicking your Bic. We’ll see what happens over the coming years.  We’re fairly confident that the smoke-free trend is going to continue. Habits change, even deeply ingrained habits like smoking. But unconscious psychological motivators? Those are constants—and those constants can be used to ensure brand longevity, even when an entire market goes up in smoke.

July 10, 2012 by

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs

maslow-hierarchy-human-needs

Abraham Maslow postulated that humans have an ascending order of needs and used a hierarchal pyramid to prioritize them. At the bottom levels of the pyramid are our physiological needs—like food, shelter, and clothing—that we need to survive. As these needs are met, progressively higher needs present themselves: safety and security, social interaction, and self-esteem, all topped by self-actualization, a term Maslow used to describe the ultimate human need to learn, grow, and reach one’s full potential.

Physiological Needs

These needs can be divided into two categories:

1.The first category is made up of needs that are homeostatic—the need to maintain an internal, biological balance—and include such things as salt concentration, sugar concentration, and water concentration in the blood. If a substance is out of balance, there will be a desire to consume foods that bring these levels back into balance.

2.The second category includes those needs that are not homeostatic, such as sleep and sex.

Both of these categories are deeply rooted in the biological systems of the body. More importantly, if one were to strip a person of material possessions and psychological identity, physiological needs would be the primary driver of that person’s behavior. All actions would be directed at satisfying basic needs, and the person would seek an environment to satisfy these needs. Near a large bike rally, Wal-Mart noticed that for temperatures above 88 degrees, beer sales went down and water sales went up.

In modern societies, it is rare for anyone to experience this level of physiological-driven motivation. It would be even rarer to find an individual who is completely dissatisfied for an extended duration of time.

Safety Needs

Once physiological needs are satisfied, safety needs emerge. These include the need for security and stability. If you were to strip someone of everything but his or her physiological needs, safety needs would become the primary motivator, but not with the same sense of urgency as physiological needs.

As with physiological needs, modern society ensures that safety needs are sufficiently satisfied for the vast majority of adults. Safety needs occur on smaller scales and are seen in people’s desires for certainty: job stability and insurance policies—a general preference for the known over the unknown.

Belongingness and Love Needs

When physiological and safety needs are met, belonging needs emerge. These include the need for affection, relationships, and belongingness, as to a group. In daily life, people exhibit these needs in their desire to marry, have a family, be a part of a community, a member of a church, a brother in a fraternity, a member of a gang, or a member of a bowling club. Belonging is also a part of what they look for in a career.

It is at this level that the support and social structure of modern society becomes insufficient to fulfill a person’s needs. Modern society shows its fragmentation in the breakdown of traditional groups. Increased mobility has left many feeling disconnected and unfulfilled. The importance of neighborhoods and families to an individual’s well-being has been overlooked. Moreover, there’s no indication this fragmentation is going to slow down. Maslow cited these unmet needs as being the primary cause for mental disorders. He commented, “We have largely forgotten our deep animal tendencies to herd, to flock, to join, to belong.” This need reveals why consumers choose to be part of brands that offer them connection and belonging, such as Jimmy Buffett’s Parrotheads or Harley-Davidson’s H.O.G.

Esteem Needs

Maslow divided the next level in the hierarchy into two categories: the need for esteem from others and the need for self-esteem. The need for esteem from others is met externally and includes the desire for status and dominance, while the need for self-esteem is met internally and includes the want of independence and mastery.

Maslow believed the healthiest way to satisfy esteem needs was to have both internal and external esteem needs met as a result of a person’s authentic nature, so that any respect gained would be merited rather than derived from the presentation of a false self.

Self-Actualization

At the top of the hierarchy is the need for self-actualization. By this, Maslow meant the need to be what one has the potential to become. In Motivation and Personality, Maslow wrote, “Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are ultimately to be at peace with themselves. What humans can be they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self-actualization … It refers to people’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely, the tendency for them to become actualized in what they are potentially.”

At this level, the needs lower in the hierarchy are satisfied, and, therefore, cease to motivate the individual. However, the need for self-actualization cannot be satisfied, and any satisfaction that is gained only serves to further motivate the individual.

July 6, 2012 by

More Powerful Than Heroin: Using Cultural Stories To Connect

PhotobucketTobacco is one of the most addictive substances on the planet. It was way back in 1987—a quarter century ago—that smokers were first told that it was easier to give up heroin than cigarettes.

Today, the CDC reports that 19.3% of American adults smoke. That’s nearly one in five, which is pretty bad. In Thailand, the numbers are jaw-droppingly worse.  27% of the entire Thai adult population smokes.  46% of adult men do: that’s nearly every other guy you meet!

Thailand’s government is very interested in reducing the numbers of people who smoke.  They’ve used a video campaign that we think is fascinating, because it deals in a very complete and sophisticated way with one of the most important unconscious psychological factors that influences people’s behavior: the cultural story.

Connect With Your Customers: The Cultural Story

The video begins with images of people standing outdoors, smoking.  Some people are standing alone, while other people are standing in small groups. A small child, not even yet into their teenage years, approaches, pulls a cigarette out of their pocket, and asks for a light.

In every instance, the adults refused to light the child’s cigarette. In fact, the vast majority of the adults went on to tell the child why they shouldn’t smoke at all. One woman told the child how cigarettes contained insecticide, while another man talked about the many diseases associated with smoking. Still another man talked to the child about not being able to play and have fun if they smoked.

(You can see the video for yourself here, in this Adweek story.)

Ok. Let’s take a break for a moment and look at what is happening here.

All of these adults, the ones who are refusing to light the child’s cigarette, are sharing a contemporary cultural story with them. In this complex narrative, tobacco plays the ultimate bad guy. The adults take on the role of wise adviser or guru in this tale. It’s their job to prepare the child—a hero-in-training who doesn’t even know they’re in peril—with the warnings and wisdom they’ll need to prevail over the looming peril of addiction.

When we watch the adults telling this cultural tale, we can see that they’re really invested in the storytelling. They feel compelled to not only share this story, but to share it in the most effective way possible.  There’s a real effort to share the anti-smoking rhetoric in a way that the children will understand and find relevant to their experience.

Think about the man who talked about the child not being able to play any more. He didn’t tell this kid, “Someday you’ll experience decreased cardiac function if you keep this up!” or “In 30 years, you won’t even be able to think of taking the stairs!”  All of that would have been meaningless to the kid. The adult focused on the benefit that would matter most to the child—and he did this intuitively, automatically, reacting to the child’s request within seconds.

That’s a powerful demonstration of the power cultural stories have upon us. These narratives surround us, making up the subtle cultural background of our lives. If you asked any of the adults in that commercial, chances are none of them are professional anti-tobacco educators. But the role of the cultural story that smoking is bad, especially for children plays in the society is so pervasive and overwhelming that when presented with the actuality of smoking children, these individuals  felt compelled to reinforce the narrative.  They may not be professional anti-tobacco educators, but they did quite an impressive job as amateurs.

The Power of Cultural Narratives

As marketers, we need to understand which cultural narratives affect our customers the most. We also need to know how our customers see themselves in relation to that cultural narrative. And for that, boys and girls, let’s go back to commercial:

After hearing the adult’s reasons for refusing them the light, the children handed the adults a note, and then quickly left the area. The note read, “You worry about me, but why not worry about yourself?” along with a helpline number. Many of the adults threw their cigarettes away at that point. All of the adults approached retained the brochure; the helpline experienced a 40% increase in calls.

What happened? Ogilivy Thailand, which produced the campaign, did two very smart things here. In Thailand, as in much of the world, the cultural norm is that children are the ones stories—especially instructional, moralistic stories—are told to. They’re not the ones who tell the instructional, moralistic story. By placing the child in the counter-intuitive role of the wise adviser or guide, the unconscious is shocked into a new state of awareness and receptivity. The adult who was not aware they were being taught at all find themselves overwhelmed by the wisdom of the lesson they received.

This cognitive shift is accompanied by the realization that one’s role in relation to the cultural story has also changed. The adults who were, in the first version of the tale, the powerful wise adviser and guide, can now regard themselves as the child’s role: they themselves can be the hero-in-training, preparing to fight off tobacco’s addictive powers.

Changing your role in a cultural story is a powerful thing.  The call to be a hero—especially if it comes at the right time—can transform a life. We don’t know yet how many of those helpline calls will result in someone giving up cigarettes for good, but we feel safe in saying that it’ll be more than a few.

Understanding the unconscious, and leveraging that understanding to create effective messaging can do amazing things. If this knowledge can be used to break consumers free of one of the most addictive substances on the planet, what can it do for your brand?  That’s something well worth thinking about!

July 3, 2012 by

Social Media and the Power of Public Knowledge

We’re starting to hear the rumbles, here and there, from businesses of every type and every size. Social media, the marketing tool that was supposed to deliver amazing results, doesn’t seem to work very well for some companies. They say effort invested isn’t providing anything much in the way of meaningful results.

The first response seems to be platform flight. Facing Facebook failure, organizations decide to move on. They decide to focus on Twitter, and if that doesn’t pan out, they move onto Pinterest, perhaps, or Instagram.  It’s the digital equivalent of the African Savanna, where the herds are traveling ever onward, perpetually in search of a water hole that will quench their burning thirst.

It’s not a bad strategy, if you’re an elephant.

If, however, you are a company that wants to build meaningful relationships with your customers in a profitable and enduring fashion, it’s a disaster.

So what’s going wrong here?  It’s a simple problem. We’re focusing too much attention on the media aspect of social media, and not nearly enough on the social end of the equation.

Understanding Social Media: The Power of Public Knowledge

Let’s start this whole conversation by saying this: it’s not Facebook’s fault you’re not connecting with your customers. It’s not Twitter’s fault, nor Pinterest’s fault, nor even Instagram’s fault. All of these social media platforms do exactly what they say they’re going to do: provide a fairly easy-to-use way to share your content easily with anyone who wants to listen to it.  If nobody’s listening, it’s not the communications vehicle that’s the problem. It’s the message.

In other words, don’t blame the radio if nobody dances when your band’s song plays. The people have proven that they’re willing to dance — if the music has the right beat. When a song comes on that they like, they dance.

If you want to use social media effectively as a marketing tool, you have to understand, on a fundamental, humanistic level, what causes people to participate in online conversations. Why does someone join Facebook in the first place? What drives them to post their thoughts and feelings? What encourages them to like a company page, to comment on that page, and to share the content they see there with others?

Steven Pinker has some great answers. We encourage you to watch this video — it’ll take about 10 minutes of your life, but it’s 10 minutes that will make you a better marketer. Of particular interest is the bit on public knowledge.  It starts at about minute 8.

Watch that, and then think about the Arab Spring revolutions that rocked the Middle East. Pinker points out that it’s the phenomenon of public knowledge that sparks community action. What we learned from the Arab Spring is that social media is an ideal vehicle for creating public knowledge.

Knowing that someone else has the same knowledge you do, and is experiencing similar emotions as a result of that knowledge, is an extremely empowering and motivating experience. Dominant organizations have learned the lessons of Arab Spring, strategically using their social media presence to create the experience of public knowledge within their target audience.

Harley Davidson is doing this on Facebook with their Harley Davidson Worldride Campaign. Go to their page and check it out. During a two-day event, where Harley riders are “taking over the world,” fans are encouraged to log in and share how many miles they’ve ridden. So far, the results have been astronomical — the total miles would bring you to the moon and back!

This is public knowledge in action. Riders are sharing their distances, true, but they’re also sharing their experiences. They want to tell what a good time they’ve had. Hearing about other people’s good times on the bike motivates those who haven’t gone riding lately to get the hog fired up so they too can participate. Even the people who can’t go are logging in to share their support, explain why they can’t participate, and offer encouragement to those who are riding.

Real world activity can, with the proper, strategic encouragement, drive social media activity, which in turn can drive real world activity. That’s the power of public knowledge. It transforms governments, it builds brands, and it is the only thing that’s been proven to change the world. If your organization isn’t tapping into the power of public knowledge now is a good time to start. Give it a shot before you give up on your latest social media endeavor. You’ll be glad you did.

June 26, 2012 by

Hungry Like the Wolf: Winning the Battle of the Bands

What do you call a brand that has enjoyed long-term success, remaining profitable and vibrant for over 30 years, while the vast majority of their early competition struggles for relevancy?

In the music world, you’d call that brand Duran Duran. Get ready for your 80’s flashback! We’re going to talk about what it takes to create enduring customer loyalty.

What Happens Tomorrow: The Evolution of a Brand

In the 1980’s, Duran Duran was hitting every note perfectly. They were one of the most successful bands of the decade. Fans loved their New Romantic sound. The fact they were the prettiest boys in rock didn’t exactly hurt the situation.

Fashions change, and the fashions in music change faster than most. The collective soundtrack started getting a harder, edgier sound—the first whiffs of Grunge were riding on the wind—and the members of Duran Duran did a very smart thing. They recognized who their very best, most loyal fans were, and they made a substantial commitment to connecting very closely with those fans.

Dominant organizations win because they identify what it is their customers value most about interacting with their brand and then deliver exactly those things comprehensively and consistently.

For Duran Duran, it turned out that what the fans valued most is interaction with the band members and special access. The band provides these things: they recently put on a mystery show in NYC with free tickets for the most ardent fans, and they maintain an impressive social media presence, including a membership site where exclusive photos, videos, and music is posted. Band members share their birthday celebrations with the fans.  There are members-only contests to win autographed copies of music magazines.

Understanding the Peak Emotional Experience

It all has a very gushy, over-the-top Tiger Beat feel. That’s the point! Key to the band’s enduring popularity is understanding the peak emotional experience the fan is looking for.  It’s not enough to hear Hungry Like The Wolf one more time. Repetition of a product is not enough to sustain a relationship. Duran Duran’s fans want to feel the way they felt when they heard the song for the very first time, when the lyrics and beat delivered an intoxicating message designed only for their ears.

Social media has made it much easier for Duran Duran—and any other brand that wants to create sustainable customer loyalty—to connect with their customers. 860,000 Facebook fans are the first to hear news about the band. There are behind the scenes rehearsal pictures, live-blogged media appearances, and more. These efforts help the band’s best fans feel like they have a special status. They belong to the Duran Duran community. They’re heavily invested in the band—most fans have been to multiple concerts and purchase all available music—and the band is diligent and committed to maintaining that connection.

They know that if they keep providing their fans with the peak emotional experience, the fans will keep coming back. They know this because it’s worked for them for 30 years.  Is it great music? We don’t know, but it’s definitely good business!

June 21, 2012 by

Does Robin Hood Go To Starbucks? A Little Matter of Coffee Mugs

In Customers First, we talk about Starbucks and some of the ways that the brand appeared to be heading off track.  It’s only right and fair that we should raise our coffee mugs and salute Starbucks when they get it right.

Check out this NY Times article about Starbucks’ decision to source their coffee mugs domestically.  It’s the tale of how Starbucks, a company with 200,000 employees, started doing business with American Mug. Here’s the Cliff Notes version:

American Mug was a company that was headed toward closure.

American Mug was a company that was headed toward closure in a town full of businesses that were similarly in trouble—or already closed.

American Mug is a ceramics company. The ceramics industry has floundering badly domestically due to competition with China.

Starbucks chose American Mug as their supplier rather than go with a Chinese source even though the American-made mugs are more expensive.

Do you see what they did there?

Right in front of your very eyes, Starbucks has tapped into the power of a contemporary cultural story and leveraged it to strengthen their brand dominance and customer loyalty.

Let’s talk about that contemporary cultural story bit first. As people, we all experience problems—all kinds of problems, all of the time. We have big problems and little problems. We have problems that affect us very, very personally, and some that don’t seem to bother us at all. We identify with the problems of others—of our friends and neighbors, colleagues and countrymen.

All of these problems create a level of tension within us. Tension is no fun. It makes us uncomfortable. It makes us unhappy. We’re strongly motivated to relieve these tensions and we’re keenly aware of and generally resentful about situations where we feel ourselves powerless to effect any type of change that would relieve the tension we’re experiencing. It’s the drive to relieve tension that causes us to seek solutions to our problems.

Cultural stories are the narratives we’ve built up collectively to record and relay relevant information about the best way problems can be solved. Cultural stories contain the solutions to problems, acting as a guide that we can use when making decisions.

Robin Hood and Starbucks

In a time of great hardship and gross economic disparity, people embraced the tale of Robin Hood. He took from the rich, especially those deemed to have wealth unjustly, and gave to the deserving and virtuous poor. Cultural stories are extremely powerful forces in a society. It’s important to understand how these tales influence the listener. Does exposure to Robin Hood result in generations of children who grew up to be bandits? Or do we get, instead, generations of children committed to the idea that inequality must be challenged?

If we look at British society today, and we look at British society at the time when Robin Hood tales were first told, we see that while the situation is by no means perfect, things are a whole lot more equal than they used to be. The arrow may not have hit a utopian bullseye, but it’s on the target.

When we talk about contemporary cultural stories, we’re talking about the tensions and pressures our customers are experiencing right now.

Starbucks’ best customers are feeling a sense of economic oppression right now. Even if they aren’t in a tough situation themselves, they know and easily identify with people who are. This creates an internal tension: anxiety and worry about one’s economic security is very unpleasant. We are strongly motivated to resolve our internal tensions, but who do you blame for an omnipresent sense of economic peril?

There are a lot of answers to that question, but “Unfair Competition From China” is a very, very popular one. Unfortunately, there’s not much one person, as an individual consumer, can do to impact the balance of global trade. This adds a sense of hopelessness and frustration to the internal tension.

And here comes Starbucks to save the day. Like Robin Hood, they snatch up the gem—the lucrative mug contract—from the Chinese, perceived to be unjustly rich in terms of manufacturing contracts, and award it to the struggling American industry. They’re the hero in this coffee talk.

For the typical Starbucks customer, the mug sourcing change will not affect their lives in any concrete way whatsoever. But by frequenting Starbucks, and allying themselves with the brand, these customers now have their chance to stand up and join with Robin Hood. They’re supporting the company that’s fighting back against China—and they can do it without making any change in a routine they already enjoy. They become heroic by association.

It’s a smart strategy.  To be a hero is a noble thing, an appealing prospect. When we act heroically, we feel better about ourselves. We like who we are. Starbucks has created a way for their customers to tap into that powerful emotional experience vicariously. We think it’s a good move, in the right direction.  What do you think?

June 13, 2012 by

Some of Our Best Friends Are Zombies: The Value of Brand Modeling When Facing a PR Disaster

It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye!

It was almost a year ago when we wrote this post, highlighting an innovative, effective emergency preparedness educational campaign from the Center for Disease Control.

In an effort to get people to stock up on bottled water, first aid supplies, and other hurricane-season necessities, the CDC urged people to prepare for the most outlandish of possibilities: a zombie apocalypse.

The campaign was very obviously tongue in cheek. But then this happened, and this happened, and this happened. (Warning: don’t read if you’ve got a squeamish stomach!)

Suddenly, the prospect of a zombie apocalypse doesn’t seem so laughable anymore. People are starting to get freaked out. CDC spokesman David Daigle made it clear to the Huffington Post that the “CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead,” a story that has been picked up by countless media outlets as an official denial of zombies.

The CDC did what it had to do in this situation: answer questions promptly and as completely as possible with scientifically accurate, verifiable information. By providing this information and calming fear, the CDC was fulfilling the community  need for an authoritative voice on public health concerns—even the most ludicrous!

This is in alignment with their Brand Vision, and is, as such, a good decision. Barring the appearance of an actual zombie-causing virus, they’re off the hook from a PR perspective. Almost everyone believes that zombies aren’t real, and it appears that excessive drug use was far more to blame for these gruesome incidents than any potential pathogen.

But sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real. Every organization lives with the possibility of some unforeseen event causing the media to call with all sorts of complicated questions.  What’s the best way to handle these situations? Brand Modeling provides the answers.

Brand Modeling: For Bad Days and Blunders

Some day, somebody who works for your organization is going to screw things up. They’ll say the wrong thing, to the wrong person, at exactly the wrong time. You’ll be let down by your merchandise, or get caught up in a political firestorm, or make a change you think is amazing but that your customer base hates with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. (Reed Hastings, are you even listening?) Bad things happen.

It’s how organizations react to those bad things that separates the dominant organizations from every other company out there. Being on top doesn’t mean your brand never makes mistakes. Ask Apple about that. They’ve had amazing successes—and they’ve had CEO Steve Jobs on stage explaining “We’re not perfect” just days after the eagerly anticipated iPhone 4 failed to amaze.

Instead, dominant organizations thrive because they address even the largest PR disasters in a fashion that fulfills their customers expectations of how the brand should act in an awkward situation. These nuanced expectations are revealed throughout the process of Brand Modeling, which couples in-depth understanding of the unconscious cultural and psychological forces driving consumer behavior with objective analytical tools. When the model is complete, it becomes possible to predict, with a high degree of certainty, how your best customers will respond to anything you do—from opening a new location through handling the bad days and blunders that every company experiences.

There’s a significant competitive advantage to be found in the ability to predict customer behavior. When you know ahead of time what type of response your best customers will appreciate the most, you know what approach to take when responding to your PR crisis. This allows you to continually build customer loyalty and strengthen the bonds the public has with your brand.  It really works.  As our zombie-loving friends at the CDC would say, “That’s what happens when you use your braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnns!”

June 6, 2012 by