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CUSTOMER SERVICE…The LEXUS way!

In a post at the Mavericks at Work blog, Bill Taylor discusses how Lexus follows through on the lofty ideals spelled out in its covenant, which asserts (1) Lexus will win the race because Lexus will do it right from the start; (2) Lexus will have the finest dealer network in the industry; and (3) Lexus will treat each customer as we would a guest in our home.

It's all well and good to have high-minded goals in a mission statement; follow-through is something different. Taylor illustrates how Lexus' commitment could be a standard for customer service:

• Shortly after launching the inaugural LS 400 sedan nearly 20 years ago, Lexus discovered that about 3,000 cars had minor technical problems. The company responded by sending small teams of executives to visit each customer at home. They apologized in person and offered a gift while a Lexus technician resolved the mechanical glitches right there in the customer's driveway.



• Last year, the automaker became aware that 700 ES 350 models had been delivered with problematic transmissions. Instead of installing a new gearbox, Lexus gave owners a brand new ES 350 as a replacement. "Based on surveys, the affected customers were more loyal to Lexus than buyers who didn't have the problem in the first place," says Taylor.

The Po!nt: Writes Taylor, "[W]hen you do go the extra mile, you earn the appreciation and loyalty of customers who have come to expect so little from the companies with whom they do business."

Marketing Inspiration

Potty All Night Long

If you travel to Europe or Asia, you're bound to encounter self-cleaning toilet seats in public restrooms. They work in a couple ways: either a mechanized arm reaches out and sanitizes the seat, or the seat rotates beneath a cleaning element that extends from the rear of the toilet. They're fun to watch, and reassuringly hygienic, but how on earth do you market such a product?

"Most marketing managers would talk about their 'flexible, scalable solutions for toilet-cleaning processes using cutting-edge technology' or some such gobbledygook," writes David Meerman Scott at his Web Ink Now blog. Instead, he notes, manufacturer CWS decided to show everyone exactly how its toilet seat works.

You might be thinking this isn't such a great idea—perhaps you should just take their word that it works well—but go ahead and click on the link. At the beginning of the minute-long ad, you'll see a beautiful blonde model navigate through the chic, all-white bathroom of a high-end nightclub into a spacious stall. She shuts the door behind her, kneels beside the toilet and—wait for it—draws a packet of cocaine from her bra. After emptying the contents onto the toilet seat, she rummages through her purse for a bank note with which to snort the lines she cut. But then, suddenly, the seat starts to rotate, cleaning itself, and ... we'll let you watch how it ends.

By playing with a naughty, yet not stomach-turning, use of public restrooms, CWS demonstrates its product in an amusing way that has now reached a million views on YouTube. And that's Marketing Inspiration.

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Think Twice Before Hitting Send

We talk a lot about the importance of creating a personalized pitch when you want to send a great story idea to bloggers and journalists. Yet if you still think casting a wide, generic net will yield a low, although productive, rate of return, think again. Why? People like Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine, have finally had enough and they're taking action.

In a post at The Long Tail blog, Anderson condemns PR professionals who litter his inbox with irrelevant pitches. "Lazy flacks send press releases to the editor in chief of Wired because they can't be bothered to find out who on my staff, if anyone, might actually be interested in what they're pitching," he writes.

Anderson delivers swift retribution by publishing each of their email addresses with a note that they will be blocked irrevocably. This would be embarrassing enough for the chastised—domains in the lengthy list include powerhouse PR firms—but Anderson's decision to out their addresses also raises the chances they'll be harvested by real spammers. In other words, offenders will be subject to the same treatment they've been dishing out. "Turnabout is fair play," reasons Anderson.

The Po!nt: "So fair warning," writes Anderson. "I only want two kinds of email: those from people I know, and those from people who have taken the time to find out what I'm interested in and composed a note meant to appeal to that." Our best advice: Assume everyone you're pitching feels the same way.

E-Mail Marketing

A Resolution You Can Keep

Did you make a New Year's resolution to optimize your online campaigns in 2008? Probably not. But Reggie Brady says now's a good time to develop a plan to improve your email programs. Here's a sampling of her best tips:

Do your homework. Since good planning starts with an analysis of previous results, consider why some of your campaigns worked better than others or why your list is not growing at the desired rate. Measure your numbers against industry benchmarks with a service like Bronto. "While your own metrics are more important," writes Brady, "you [need a gauge for] how well your program is working in comparison with your peers."

Test new features. Don't let your email programs go stale. Ensure recipients can easily update personal information and preferences. Up the ante by letting readers select message frequency and the specific topics or products they want to hear about. This tailored approach can help segment your audience, which is the lifeblood of a successful email campaign. Says Brady, "If you already see the value of using this technique, it's time to test additional groups."

Make your email work harder. "View your emails with images disabled," she says. "Is there enough supporting text to ... stimulate interest and activity?" Since image blocking is common, you need an effective preview pane and a link to an HTML version.

The Po!nt: There's no time like the present to reassess your email program's strategy. Writes Brady, "Any plans or changes you implement in the first quarter should pay dividends for the balance of the year."

Customer Behaviour

How Customers Are Like Lab Rats

It seems we are more like animals than we may think. In the 1930s, research revealed animals tended to work harder as they got closer and closer to a reward—a phenomenon dubbed the goal gradient hypothesis. New findings indicate this concept also applies to consumer loyalty programs.

Research at Columbia and Fordham Universities found that consumers in a coffee loyalty program bought coffee more frequently the closer they got toward earning a free cup of joe. Another study found that Internet users who received reward certificates for rating songs rated more songs and visited the Web site more often as they neared their goal.

Even the illusion of approaching a reward appears to make consumers work harder toward their goal. When presented with frequent purchaser cards of equal value (a 12-stamp card with two stamps given for the first purchase and a 10-stamp card with no stamp given for the first purchase), consumers in the coffee loyalty program study behaved differently. Surprisingly, the customers given the 12-stamp card bought coffee more frequently, thus earning their reward more quickly than customers who did not get stamps for their initial purchase.

The Po!nt: Customers in loyalty programs speed up their product consumption as they get closer to getting their reward. Experimenting with how customers perceive your offer might improve their uptake.

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Are You Ready to Rock?

Rock stars are, in actuality, fantastic marketers. According to Mack Collier, in a recent post at The Viral Garden, "[M]usicians do such an amazing job of exciting the people that buy their music, and turning them into fans." If your company has an inner Gwen Stefani just begging to break out, here are a couple steps Collier suggests you can take:

Think of your customers as a community to which you belong. Tori Amos fills front rows and interacts with her fans throughout her energetic performances. She makes it clear she's one of them. In the business world, Collier points to Willie Davidson of Harley-Davidson, who conducts in-the-trenches market research by hitting the open road with enthusiasts. "Since the company is participating in the customers' community," writes Collier, "they better understand their customers, and as a result market to them more effectively."

Align your perceptions of a product or service with those of your customers. Rock stars see themselves as cool—and so do their fans, who become cool by association. When the iPhone launched, there were long lines at Apple stores although the item was easily obtained at any (less fashionable) Cingular/AT&T store. As Collier explains, "But it was 'cool' to stand in line to wait for an iPhone at the Apple store. Apple thinks the iPhone is cool, and Apple's customers agree."

The Po!nt: "Marketing doesn't have to be viewed as just a necessary business function, but instead could be seen as a way to excite your customers into becoming fans," writes Collier. "Besides, don't we all really want to be rock stars?"

Marketing Inspiration

Burger King Tells a Whopper

Some recent television ads have featured extremely distressed Burger King customers, distraught after being told that the fast-food giant dropped the Whopper from its menu. The signature burger's demise is, of course, a lie—and one designed to elicit strong negative feedback.

Burger King hasn't actually lost its corporate mind—it's using a negative situation to highlight the Whopper's popularity. In a long-format viral companion to the television ads—a YouTube special styled as a documentary of the experiment and entitled Whopper Freakout—director Henry Alex Rubin tells Burger King employees, "We're not doing this to be mean. We're doing this just to prove a point."

And what a point! Believing the Whopper is no more, customers could hardly contain their love for the sandwich. One gentleman claims to have driven from another state, just to eat a Whopper. Another flabbergasted customer says, "It's the best burger nationwide."
In the viral video, Burger King also has a little fun at the expense of competitors when employees start substituting burgers from Wendy's and McDonald's for their own. The results—when annoyed customers return to complain—are predictably sour. "I hate Wendy's!" exclaims one exasperated diner, no doubt much to Rubin's glee.

Writes B.L. Ochman at the What's Next Blog, "It's seven minutes long. It pisses off Burger King customers. It makes fun of competitors. In other words, it rocks!" And to break the rules so successfully is utter Marketing Inspiration.

[The above excerpt has been the blog author's personal learning so far amongst various cities and Burger King outlets.]

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Burdened with a Bland Web Site?

If you outsource your Web site design to a firm that uses templates as a quick, inexpensive solution, your site probably has the standard layout: content in the middle; a banner at the top; a menu at the left; and, possibly, a column on the right with ads and resources. There's nothing wrong with a plug-and-play site like this, says Olivier Blanchard of The Brand Builder Blog, except that you won't stand out.

"When it comes to creating or driving a brand," writes Blanchard, "understand that having a Web site that essentially looks like everyone else's, a Web site that looks like you took little more than a couple of hours to put together, a Web site that offers nothing interesting or compelling for your users and fans, [will fall] short of expectations."

If you're concerned about your site's indistinctive design, Blanchard recommends to put a small team of branding, marketing and customer service experts in a room with a handful of customers for a 360-degree review of your site. Then gather their feedback and hire the best Web designer or firm you can find to implement changes or undertake a comprehensive overhaul.

Although expensive, Blanchard argues that creating an extraordinary—or at least adequate—Web presence is one of the best marketing and communications investments you can make for your company.

The Po!nt: "Your Web site is your global storefront," says Blanchard. "You can't afford to allow it to be boring, ineffective or outdated."

Marketing Inspiration

Seal Your Pitch with a Kiss

How, oh how, do you persuade a busy media professional to look at your story idea? If your message is too theatrical, it can backfire; dignified understatement, however, might earn your missive a swift trip to the recycle bin. But David Armano says Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo got it right when they sent him a handwritten note—or, more precisely, a digital photograph of a handwritten note—by email. Armano liked the clever idea so much he stopped everything to say so at his blog.

Though the format captured Armano's attention, Barefoot and Szabo's pitch also works from a content perspective:

• They make it clear they're talking specifically to him by referencing what they like about his blog.


• They make a polite and reasonable request


• They give Armano a personalized URL to download the book

A commenter at the blog takes the duo to task for the your/you're typo in the note, but Armano blithely brushes the criticism away. "That didn't bother me," he replies. "A standard email that was grammatically correct would have failed where this succeeded."

Your Marketing Inspiration: "If you want to grab the attention of someone who isn't always easy to get a hold of, do something special just like Darren and Julie did," writes Armano. "Send a 'love note.' It's that simple."

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It Isn't Easy Being Green

Now is a wonderful time for companies that offer an environmentally friendly product or service. Political, environmental and economic concerns have created a marketplace that's extremely receptive to the idea of going green. But, before you proclaim your credentials from the treetops, consider Jacquelyn Ottman's five rules of green marketing:

• Not everyone shares the same concerns. Be sure your audience is aware of the issue your product addresses, and wants to do something about it. "Whirlpool learned the hard way that consumers wouldn't pay a premium for a CFC-free refrigerator," writes Ottman, "because consumers didn't know what CFCs were!"


• Explain how your product makes a difference. No one wants to feel like their contribution is a drop in the ocean, so provide a compelling demonstration of its environmental benefits—whether on an individual or collective basis.


• Preempt skepticism with transparency. Make it easy for customers to see your commitment is genuine. "Consumers must believe in the legitimacy of your product and the specific claims you are making," Ottman says.


• Position your product as a high-quality alternative. Reassure customers that it performs at least as well as trusted products from your not-as-green competitors.


• Consider the impact of premium pricing. Customers might understand why your product costs more, but that doesn't mean they can afford the extra outlay—or that they think it's worth it.

The Po!nt: According to Ottman, "A strong commitment to environmental sustainability in product design and manufacture can yield significant opportunities to grow your business, to innovate and to build brand equity." But do your homework before diving in.

Print Ads of a kind - VII

Product: BICE - 'Bread is life'

Print ads of a kind - VI

Product: La Farge Healthcare, Barcelona