Category Archives: Reality checks

August 15, 2012 · 9:43 am

The ROI On A Cup Of Soup

According to what I can find in their public reporting,

Panera Bread

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Panera Bread spent somewhere north of $33 million on marketing last year.  Their financial results are impressive and they get good ROI on that investment.  I’m willing to bet, however, that the best marketing return they’re going to get this year is on a cup of clam chowder and a box of cookies. You might have heard about this story, but if you haven’t, this AdWeek article sums it up nicely.  A dying grandmother wants some Panera Clam Chowder on a day when the local store doesn’t make it.  A grandson calls to ask them to help.  A smart, responsive, caring manager immediately says yes and when the kid shows up to get it, gives him a box of cookies for grandma to go along with the soup.

It being the age of social, the grandson shares the story on his Facebook page.  Half a million “likes” and 22,000 comments later, that cup of clam chowder bought Panera more goodwill and positive marketing than most of the cash it spent.  Let’s think about what went right and why.

  • Someone answered the phone.  Sounds like a small thing but how many companies do these days?
  • Someone made a decision.  Not “I’m not authorized to do that” or “I need to ask corporate”.  Someone decided to do the right thing and was empowered to make the decision stick.
  • Someone went beyond what they were asked – cookies too!
  • A brand behaved like a person!  The kid didn’t call Sue, the manager.  He called Panera which Sue represented.  The wholly human way in which she responded was perfect.
  • Panera didn’t tell the story – the kid did.  Panera didn’t manufacture anything (except the chowder and cookies).  This resonates because it’s real.

The best marketing these days tends to be just like this – treating your customers well and letting them tell the story for you.  Yelp, Trip Advisor, and other review sites are all about this, and their comments often get ported to other social sites (the usual suspects).  More time on service training and less on trying to create viral media might just get you to the same destination.

Did you see the story?  What do you think?

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August 7, 2012 · 10:43 am

Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

U2 provides the succinct summary this morning of some research published by the folks at Lynchpin and Econsultancy.

English: The content of tweets on Twitter, bas...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Those two concerns examined how companies are using and learning from analytics and their Online Measurement and Strategy Report brings us back to a theme we’ve explored previously here on the screed.  In brief, companies are finding out more and learning less.  What I mean, and what the report shows, is that companies have more data than ever about consumer behavior and yet because of a number of factors they find the data less useful and without context.

Here are a few findings:

A majority of marketers worldwide say that less than half of all the analytics data they collect is actually useful for decision-making. Just one in 10 companies thought a strong majority of analytics data was helpful, and less than a third said somewhere between half and three-quarters of all data was useful.

While finding the right staff has been also highlighted as a limiting factor in the report, one other issue that emerges after looking into the responses is that organizational issues are another common frustration.  These demonstrate themselves in ways such as :

There is one team in charge of web analytics – not a marketing team – so for the marketing colleagues it is a fight to try to extract data from the analytics team.

Huge and siloed organisations, complexity of aged infrastructure and sites, legal policies

Getting management agreement on goals.

Education of senior management in understanding the benefit of an integrated digital performance management process.

Once again we find that a lot of data isn’t necessarily a lot of information.  For that to appear we need to formulate actionable business questions that are concerns of as many stakeholders as we can involve and then seek out the appropriate data to answer them.  The more we know the less we understand, apparently, and many businesses still haven’t found what they’re looking for despite drowning in data.   I think that’s kind of amazing and a bit sad.  What do you think?

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August 3, 2012 · 8:43 am

Avocados And Your Business

Foodie Friday is here and today’s topic is an ad I came across while reading one of my favorite food magazines. I own many knives and I’m not opposed to buying more of them. Yes, I realize I only have two hands and it’s generally a bad idea to use more than one knife at a time, so another knife is not a priority. Still, I appreciate that each of the knives I own is of a particular sort and it’s generally a good idea to use a tool appropriate to the task. While a good chef’s knifecan handle almost anything (and our kitchen is equipped with them in several sizes), having a boning knife makes that task easier, just as a good slicing knife or a bread knife can cut meat or bread, respectively, better than can a general purpose blade.

That said, I laughed out loud when I saw an ad for an avocado knife. Seriously. A knife dedicated to cutting, pitting, and scooping avocados.  Of course, I saw a business point immediately.

This is a solution in search of a problem.  I’ve cut hundreds of avocados.  I generally use my smaller chef’s knife to remove the seed and a spoon to scoop out the flesh.  I’ve never had a problem or wished I had a better tool with which to do the job, unlike seeding a mango, for example.  We don’t just come across this mistake in the kitchen.  I’ve spoken with quite a few businesses who have thought that what they were developing was something really important but for which there wasn’t a need.  Or demand.  Or a market.

Obviously consumers aren’t always aware that they have a problem until the solution comes along.  Steve Jobs was a master of this approach.  People like Edison and Bell were as well.  However, for most of us, the identification of the problem – and the market for it – before creating a solution is a better way to spend our business days.  You get the point.  Me?  I suddenly have a hankering for guacamole.

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