January 16, 2015 · 12:10 pm

Home Cooking

This week our Foodie Friday Fun revolves around home.  In particular around Mom’s home cooking.  Some moms aren’t great cooks.  Some moms (like the one who taught me how to cook – not my own, mind you) could open a restaurant and it would be packed every night.  It really doesn’t matter how good their food is.  What matters is that whatever they produce comes from your home and that experience is imprinted on your senses.

I bring this up because of the thought that was triggered last night while I was watching “The Taste.”  Chef Marcus Samuelsson said “Food can give you a sense of home” and it really resonated.  It immediately brought to mind a couple of dishes that bring me back home no matter where I encounter them.  A great pot of Sunday Gravy, filled with meatballs, sausage, and braciole.  Beef flanken nestled in a dense broth.  They, among others, transport me to a place filled with happy memories.  If the dish is spectacular, so much the better.  Even if it’s just OK I give it extra points.  It’s the memory of comfort that’s important.

I read a quote once that every cuisine has a soul food or a food that makes the people of that ethnic group’s soul sing.  I believe that.  I also believe that it a great thought for any business.  We need to ask ourselves if there is a way to tap into the collective sense of home that our consumers have.  How do we make their souls sing?  How do we elicit happy memories even though our product is new or innovative?  The second level of Maslow’s hierarchy is safety.  How do we bring that feeling to our customers?

It can be done.  There is a humorous ad campaign out now from Ally Bank that taps into this.  Every spot revolves around the typical sort of fears we face each day in the modern world and how you can depend on Ally no matter what.  The spots are generally pretty funny and I think they tap into that notion of the safety home brings.

We need to work on bringing that sense of home to our brands.  Up for the challenge?

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January 14, 2015 · 1:44 pm

The Crap Experience

I’m going to let you in on a little secret today. Many of us spend a lot of time thinking about how we can attract new customers and retain all of our existing ones. That’s as it should be. There is, however, one thing you might not be thinking about. That’s the little secret.

The consumer experience today has been dumbed down. I don’t mean that in the intellectual sense. I mean crap experiences have become the norm. As a result, consumer expectations are pretty low. Let me explain.

Think about traveling via airplane. 30 years ago you walked through the airport. There was a cursory security check but you could carry your coffee through and your shoes stayed on your feet. You had a reserved seat with decent leg room, even in coach. You could stow your bag, you got a hot meal, and the price of these things was part of the fare you paid. Does any of that sound vaguely familiar today?  Nope.  We expect a horror show at security and the fare we pay bears little resemblance to what we’ll spend to make that trip.  In short, air travel sucks and we expect it to.  If the flight lands roughly on time we call it a good flight.  The crap experience is the norm.

Another example?  Maybe you spent $50 on a new video game.  You get an hour in and it crashes or the characters don’t render or you can’t move them because a “wall” has mysteriously appeared on all sides.  Think I’m making this up?  Ask anyone who bought the latest Assassin’s Creed game.  We just wait for the patch.

You can find crap experiences all over.  Hotels, restaurants, online retailers – heck, it’s hard to find one business segment that’s not riddled with them. So while our goal should always be to reach the highest standards possible, the key to success these days may lie in just three words:

Just. Don’t. Suck.

That’s a little step forward that will immediately put you above the norm.  Not sucking means you are running down the road from the crap experiences consumers have been forced to accept. Can you do that?

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January 13, 2015 · 11:50 am

Hitting The Bullseye

I spend a lot of my day working with clients on tech.  If it isn’t about how to implement the latest and greatest platform in other marketing efforts, it is about using the data we’ve gathered via web, social, and other business analytics to improve tactics and guide strategies.  We look at a lot of numbers and at a lot of methods with which to gather more.

One of the things I feel it’s critical for me to do is to play the role of a Cassandra of sorts – to see the future but to hope I’m believed a lot more than was the figure from mythology.  The one thing I keep “prophesying” to them is that we can stay on course and out of trouble if we keep our eyes focused on the customer.  They can’t become just aggregations of data.  They’re not just numbers.  They are the reasons why we’re in business.  They have names, faces, significant others and maybe even children.  They’re us!

Much of the ad and marketing technology today has little to do with the customer.  You might think that odd since much of it is based on getting to know the customer on a very granular level.  That’s true, except the focus is on the technology and data, not on the customer.  Thinking about social media is important but only after we’ve spent time thinking about the customer.  Are they on social platforms?  Why?  What are their expectations when they use them?  How do they want to interact with brands in that space, if at all?  Sure mobile is important but a discussion of mobile apps needs to begin with an investigation of how your consumer base behaves on that platform.  “Build it and they will come” is tech centric, not human centric.

Start with your business objectives and your consumer needs.  Move to technology and data after that.  The consumer is the bullseye, not the platform.  Thoughts?

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