Tag Archives: Marketing and Advertising

November 1, 2013 · 10:35 am

Ssshhhhh…

Foodie Friday, and this week I want to talk – very quietly – about secrets. You might be familiar with the fact that some restaurants have secret menus. They range from the unofficial like Starbucks (you pretty much have to describe to the barista exactly what you mean by a Red Candy Apple Frappucino) to the official but hidden menus at In-N-Out Burger which puts the hidden menu on its website.  McDonald’s, Chipotle, and pretty much every other chain has off-menu items, as do many top restaurants.

What I find strange isn’t that some customers are “in” while others are left wondering what that was the other table was eating.  No, what I think is really odd are those establishments that are themselves hidden.  These are restaurants – and many of them are very good – that go out of their way to hide.  No sign,  and often an unmarked door so you can’t be sure of the address.  In fact, The Times just reviewed one of these places (so much for keeping THAT secret)  and pointed out the restaurant is in a basement. It is closed four nights out of seven. Its sole offering is a $100 tasting menu that is not posted in advance. Substitutions are not allowed.  Not exactly a prescription for embracing the customer and yet the place got two stars (that’s damn good here in NY, folks) and you know it will be mobbed.

There are hidden places in other cities as well so it’s not just a NY phenomenon.  But it got me wondering why a business would do this.  I get the whole “the first rule of Fight Club is don’t talk about Fight club” mentality.  I know many people like to be in on the secret and know something that someone else doesn’t.  But given that Yelp, Urbanspoon, and other review sites are out there, the odds of keeping the menu and the business itself secret are pretty slim.  I mean there are even websites dedicated to outing these places. Why bother trying?

Maybe it’s the sense of belonging to something even if they’re not really “secret.”  Maybe it’s an incredibly clever form of marketing.  In a time when it seems as if every business is trying to get louder, these are standing out by making no noise at all.  Interesting, right?

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October 31, 2013 · 8:34 am

Churn

We have a statistic in the television business called churn.

English: Butter churn, Dunserverick Museum One...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Actually, it’s more about the cable TV business and it’s short for churn rate.  As is sometimes the case, Wikipedia defines it nicely:

Churn rate, when applied to a customer base, refers to the proportion of contractual customers or subscribers who leave a supplier during a given time period. It is a possible indicator of customer dissatisfaction, cheaper and/or better offers from the competition, more successful sales and/or marketing by the competition, or reasons having to do with the customer life cycle.

Obviously, if a company is to grow, that growth needs to exceed its churn rate – you need to gain more customers that you lose.  Simple, right?  It points out pretty clearly that keeping customers is at least as important as adding new ones.  That simple thought is what popped into my head as I read the results of some research from the Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Survey.  You can look for yourself here.

What they found was that companies are not working hard enough to stop consumers from switching. In fact, among people who changed service providers – banks, phone companies, retailers – 81% said that the company could have done something differently to prevent them from switching.  Maybe it’s not as simple a thought as it might appear?  As MediaPost reported:

The report says that while service providers… have more data and insights into consumer desires and preferences than ever before, providers have failed to meaningfully improve customer satisfaction or reverse rising switching rates among their customers.

Ouch.  So what does that mean specifically?

  • 91% of respondents are frustrated that they have to contact a company multiple times for the same reason
  • 90% by being put on hold for a long time
  • 89% by having to repeat their issue to multiple representatives
  • 85% of customers are frustrated by dealing with a company that does not make it easy to do business with them
  • 84% by companies promising one thing, but delivering another
  • 58% are frustrated with inconsistent experiences from channel to channel

Marketing is often focused on growth.  However, as any financial person will tell you, improved profitability can come from cutting expenses as it does from growing revenues (and I’m a strong advocate for the latter since those cuts often kill growth and revenues but that’s another screed!).  Churn is the cutting of losses and helps reduce costs – I think it’s cheaper to keep a customer than to acquire one.  It’s also something that businesses can fix if they focus on it.  None of the study’s findings are difficult to address IF there is an awareness and a commitment to do so.  Is your business ready to do that?

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October 24, 2013 · 8:38 am

Sharing Is Caring

As you might have guessed from many of the posts here on the screed, how brands should behave in today’s marketing climate is a big focus of mine.  That focus is due to the questions I get asked by my clients on a regular basis both with respect to media and technology.  Which is why I found a recently released study by the folks at Edelman so interesting.

Called brandshare (they used the lower case, it’s not a typo!), the study sampled 11,000 consumers in the U.S., UK, Canada, France, Germany, Brazil, India and China, and evaluated approximately 212 local and multi-national brands.   You can see a slide deck on the study here.  It found that an overwhelming majority (90 percent) of people across eight countries want marketers to more effectively share their brands. Yet on average, only 10 percent of people think any given brand does it well.  As you know, I believe any time we see gaps between expressed consumer desire and actual brand performance, there’s an opportunity.

So what exactly did they mean by “sharing?”  The study measured six dimensions of sharing – shared dialog, shared experience, shared goals, shared values, shared product and shared history – and found a link between effective brand sharing and business value; the greatest business value coming from shared product and shared values.  Obviously it’s not just companies asking for retweets and Facebook shares!

A large majority (91 percent) of respondents said they want to have a hand in the design and development process, with that desire being equal among those in developed and emerging markets. People also want complete openness about product performance with nine out of 10 wanting to know how they are made and how they should perform against competitors.  We’ve talked about transparency before but this demonstrates the extent to which consumers have come to expect it.

Of the six sharing dimensions, shared values has the highest unmet demand among people. More than nine in 10 (92 percent) respondents want to do business with brands that share their beliefs. In addition, nearly half of the respondents (47 percent) want brands to be more transparent about how products are sourced and manufactured, just over four in 10 (43 percent) want brands to do more to give back to their communities.

I think this quote sums it up nicely:

“Marketers must evolve from a traditional linear model of focus groups that ends with the consumer to one that involves people at every stage. Brands must also synchronize their brand marketing and corporate communications narrative into one cohesive message, while redesigning current engagement channels to incorporate higher-value sharing.”

So now that you know it, what are you going to do about it?

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