Coming to a blog near you... the 5Ws strikes again!

... and this time its got its eye on reducing customer attrition...

Marcom case study: the “Hyatt Shuttle” of New York’s Grand Central Station

It’s not often these days I’m stopped in my tracks (no pun intended) by an ad or related form of marketing communication. Most of them seem to fuse with the background becoming invisible in mere seconds. This week was an exception, however, and it underscores one of the core principles any marketer should keep in mind when crafting effective marketing communications…


My encounter with "The Shuttle"
As I boarded the Shuttle train this morning, half-awake from my morning coffee, I was brought to full attention by a completely transformed subway interior (for those unfamiliar, the shuttle is a train that runs between Time Square & Grand Central Station in NYC). Beyond the expected surprise I felt from entering a subway car that had been bathed in the accoutrement of a solitary theme, there were a few reasons in particular that made the experience so memorable. And, it serves as a great example of how marketers can cut through the clutter – objective number one for any marketing communication. This feat was all the more impressive given that it was competing head-to-head with the madness that is midtown Manhattan during morning rush hour.


Why the Hyatt Shuttle = effective marketing communication
So what made the experience so compelling?

For starters, the train’s interior broke any existing schema (or expectation) I had for “what the inside of a NYC subway looks like”. Instead of steely, cool panels, the train was affixed with faux wood “wall paper” reminiscent of some bachelor’s finished basement from the late 70s, pool table & wet bar not included.

In place of slick, high-design ads pressed into the metal picture frames that dot the subway’s interior were color graphs printed on basic white printer paper; graphs that reminded me of the simple bar charts Microsoft Excel spit out circa 1989 . The charts, whose effectiveness was heightened by their simplicity, depicted how much more successful face-to-face meetings are in comparison with video conferencing, email, or phone calls.

At its essence, Hyatt transformed a cold, unfriendly space (the inside of a NYC subway) into a warm, inviting place - the inference being that Hyatt Conference Centers create the type of warm, inviting atmospheres conducive to effective business schmoozing & networking.

Now I’m neither an event planner nor coordinator of large-scale meetings, so I cannot speak to the level of influence "The Hyatt Shuttle” might have on my decision-making for those upcoming conferences.

However, to some degree that’s irrelevant. “The Hyatt Shuttle” compelled me to whip out my blackberry on a crowded train and snap away - much to the annoyance of my fellow commuters. It got me to write this post with blurry crackberry photos attached for the entire world to see (or 0.00022% of the Internet world per my latest Alexa rankings). And perhaps most compelling - Hyatt was able to convert me into an online PR guy who’s apparently willing to work for free. All Hyatt had to do was serve up a unique experience that added a little bit of zest to my otherwise predictable day. Clever, high-ROI strategy… and heck of a marketing communications case study for marketers to sink their teeth into & leverage for their own business.


The Law of the Unexpected
Let’s bubble-up this mini case study and see what useful principles we can derive for you to use in your business… at its core, what made The Hyatt Shuttle so compelling is that it successfully employed the law of the unexpected, which simply states that throw something out there that I don’t expect and you’ll capture my attention... think giraffe in a field of cows, an orange in a bowl of apples, or your waiter at The Four Seasons dressed in a white t-shirt & cut-off jean shorts.


How to apply the law of the unexpected to your marketing communication
Let's get right to what you're no doubt wondering - how to apply the law to your own marcom efforts... (to be continued... coming soon...)


If you’d like to read more about the law of the unexpected and other means for cutting through the clutter, I highly recommend:

• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

• Metaphorically Selling

Engaging Influentials: Twitter and Beyond

By David Capece, Managing Partner at Sparxoo

With the rapid adoption of social media, we have accelerated into a network economy. In a network economy, connectivity enables value to be created and shared by network members. The larger the network, the greater the potential benefits. In the digital world, network activities take place on an open platform that enables participation and cloud computing (think Wikipedia and widgets).

In networks, some members are more connected and active, and therefore have more influence. These influentials are important members because they add significantly more value to the network. In the digital world, they blog, twitter, upload videos, experiment with new gadgets, and create widgets. As early adopters, they tend to be trendsetters that are followed by their friends and sometimes the masses. The book, the Whuffie Factor, talks about Social Capital, and how our society is increasingly motivated to become more useful and creative. Today, more people want to be influencers, and they want to be enabled.

In 2009, Twitter has emerged as one of the most talked about platforms in the network economy. Indeed, there is a simple network exchange on Twitter: influencer creates bite-size content, and follower discovers new information. Here are a few examples of the exchange:

• Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco and California Governor Candidate, has over 500,000 followers. He keeps his followers informed about upcoming events and fundraising, and enables them to interact with him directly.
• Mike Massimino, a NASA astronaut, has over 400,000 followers. He combines his human life story with a behind the scenes look at being an astronaut.
• And of course there is Oprah, approaching 1.4 million followers.

Twitter makes it easy to share your voice and build your presence in the community. RegularGeek’s comment sums up the value: “Even someone like myself, and I do not have a huge social media presence, can talk to and possibly influence about five thousand people. If I have two thousand subscribers on the blog, Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook, the number of unique people could be around 5,000. That is direct contact, and the network effects could create an audience much larger.”

While we are all familiar with Twitter, there are many more communities that engage and enable an influential audience with network principles. One of the key elements of a network is the idea of reciprocity. The idea of “I win, you lose” doesn’t work in a network, or it will fall apart. Instead, there must be mutual win-win exchanges. One such example is at Triggerstreet, was founded in 2002 by Academy Award Winner Kevin Spacey, which is a community for emerging artists. The promise of the network is to democratize exposure and offer a career boost through a network of peers who review your work, rate it, and provide feedback. Further, the network has engaged influentials in the form of participating judges, including Michael Myers, Sean Penn, Snoop Dog, Sheryl Crow, and Liv Tyler.

It is this very concept of participation by influentials that is becoming increasingly important with each passing day. In our world of choice and overcapacity, influentials are an important element of the decision making process. As we de-emphasize paid media such as television commercials and print ads, the power of earned media and word of mouth is amplified. As you consider new ways to share your story and build your reputation, learn from entrepreneurial initiatives that listen to and engage the influentials.

Our first example is Jodangle which helps you listen to and monitor the online chatter by influentials. In an environment where influential content originates from an exploding number of information sources, Jodange provides intelligence on who and what is influencing customers, competitors, and the overall marketplace. In April 2009, Jodangle received $1.2 million of investments.

Our second and third examples are currently in development at DreamIt Ventures, which helps entrepreneurs launch their ventures and build great companies. Trendsta is a new way for trendsetting teens to test and review the latest hot products. Like BuzzAgent, the principal is that word-of-mouth marketing is powerful. Trendsta has even more of a laser focus on the influentials by engaging trendy teens in the digital world. Our final example is Scribnia, which is a rating and discovery engine for bloggers and columnists. Much like Triggerstreet, the promise is to build an influential community that is engaged in sharing creative work and providing feedback.

Consider your role in the network economy. How you are going to add value to and expand your network? As you build your presence and your reputation, listen to the conversation around you, pursue authentic participation, and engage influentials who can amplify your message.

Original post: http://sparxoo.com/2009/07/01/engaging-influentials-twitter-and-beyond/

Grow or die! Product fertilizer to grow your top line

Apologies on the overly dramatic, “please-read-me!” title. I figured I’d jump into the pool with the rest of the bloggers attempting to get the attention of the 1.6 billion of you bouncing around the virtual world.

Anyhow, you’re probably familiar with the phrase, “whatever stops growing eventually dies”. And, while I don’t subscribe to this black & white, morbid declaration, we all know that when it comes to your business, growth is essential.

So in the spirit of doing my little part to help get our economy back on its feet, I’ve decided to write a series of brief articles about different growth drivers (tools, frameworks) you can use to grow your products & your business, and perhaps even add a few inches to your height. So let’s get started…


Growth driver #1: develop different versions of your product to suit different usage scenarios

Take mustard. Yes, mustard.

You’re at a baseball game with some friends. Perhaps you’ve enjoyed a few beers. You head out to one of the fine stadium restrooms to reduce your inner-bladder pressure, and you decide to pick up a hotdog on your way back to your seat. Guldens, right? The perfect neon-yellow goo to spread on your ‘dog. No questions asked. Right place, right time. Guldens all the way.

Flash forward 2 months. You find yourself at a very formal cocktail party. Pinkies out, fancy degrees flying about, drinks you would otherwise never drink, people doing their best to inject British-inflexions. You make your way over to the hors d'oeuvre table and sample a selection of finely smoked meats. Grey Poupon, anyone? Again, no questions asked. Right place, right time. It’s a Grey Poupon moment.

(sorry, I just couldn't help but include the most classic Grey Poupon commercial ever produced. enjoy!)



Let's put aside the mustard and put growth driver #1 to work for you:
1. Make a list of the different situations in which your product or service is used (or needed).

2. For each scenario you’ve identified, jot down those characteristics or dimensions that make it different from the other scenarios on your list. Characteristics could include the physical environment, the people you’re with, your main objective at the time you use the product, your main reason for needing the product, the time of year, the activity you’re engaged in at the time you need the product, etc.

3. For each scenario ask yourself what changes you could make to your service in order to provide greater value to your customers given the unique characteristics of the situation.

Examples could include adding complementary services, increasing or decreasing the performance level of certain features or dimensions, adding or eliminating certain features, making changes to physical dimensions of the product, etc. Whatever you come up with, it should be dictated by the unique needs of your customer under the given scenario.

Real-world examples of growth driver #1. Different versions of the product for different usage occasions.

• Candles: For romantic dinners, for keeping the bugs away when camping, for festive holidays, for scenting the air, for birthdays.
• Travel insurance: For safaris, for ski trips, for family vacations, for cruises, for long-stay trips, for international trips.
• Suits: For hot climates, for formal events, for casual events, for outdoor events, for weddings, for funerals.

What other examples can you think of? Please share them with us in your comments.

Happy growing!

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Additional posts that discuss growth strategies:

• Innoviation via other worlds: a tool for generating powerful ideas for your business
• Enhance your innovation by tapping your product's value-creation web

Great books that discuss scenario-based product innovation:

• Marketing Imagination, New, Expanded Edition
• The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty
• What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services
  

Using segmentation to develop your marketing strategy

While there are many ways to harness the power of segmentation, one of the broadest and most valuable applications is for designing your marketing strategy – a strategy that clearly defines who you’re targeting, what you’re going to offer them, where you’re going to reach them, and how you’re going to sell them on your product & brand.

The key “superpower” of segmentation is that it enables you to take a population of consumers and group them based upon similarities they share with respect to the very attributes that you use to define your marketing strategy (i.e., who to target, what to offer them, etc.). What this means is that the segments you derive from the segmentation process will have their preferred marketing mixes already “baked into them”. Powerful stuff.


Segmentation for designing marketing strategies is a 2-step jig

Step 1: Identify “the who”

In the first step you identify “the who”. Who are those consumers in the population who have expressed interest in your product category or who have needs addressed by your product category? In this step you’re simply separating out those interested consumers from the rest of the general population.

Step 2: Identify your target segments
The second step is where things really get cooking. In step 2 you take the population of interested consumers and group them based upon their similarities with respect to “the what, why, where & how” of your product category.

In this step your goal is to identify the most attractive segments for your business to target – segments for which the following are true:

• One or more of your products meet the segment’s functional & emotional needs
• Your existing channels for selling, servicing & awareness-building align with the segment’s channel preferences and media-consumption habits
• Your product & brand positioning align with the segment’s “reasons for buying” from both a functional and emotional perspective
• You can identify the segment in a cost-effective manner
• The segment is large enough in size and profit-potential to merit investment in a distinct marketing mix

By the end of step 2, you will have identified one or more segments that:

• Are interested in one of more of your products
• Are most effectively targeted using a distinct marketing mix
• AND, are large enough to merit your investment in this distinct marketing mix

These segments will become your target segments and along with their distinct marketing mixes represent your marketing strategy. To reiterate from the intro, the beauty of this approach is that by basing part of your segmentation on similarities shared by consumers across key components of your marketing mix, the segments you derive come with their “marketing instructions” already included.

What about segments you choose not to target?
So what about segments that don’t meet enough of your targeting criteria? What should you do about them? The answer is that it depends.

For those segments large enough in size & profit potential you may consider developing new products, building out new channels, or creating communication strategies that better meet their needs and more effectively “speak to them”.

On the other hand, for those segments that are very small or that would require major retooling of your operations, extensive employee training, or significant stretching of your brand, you would likely leave to other companies to pursue.

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More posts on segmentation:

• What is customer segmentation?
• Segmentation and targeting
• Using the 5 W's to inform segmentation & marketing strategy
  

Great books & articles on segmentation:

• Making Segmentation work (PDF)
• Market Segmentation: How to do it, how to profit from it
• Counterintuitive Marketing: Achieve Great Results Using Uncommon Sense (One of the best general marketing books with a terrific chapter on segmentation

Show-Don't-Tell Marketing: enhance your marketing communications by using "picture-words"

"Show, don't tell!"
Yes, that annoying piece of feedback you received from your your 6th grade English teacher in creative writing class is as important for marketers to practice as it is for writers of fiction.

Let’s illustrate the point by looking at the following tag lines:

• "Use Lowenstein’s fertilizer and ensure the health & vitality of your lawn!"
• "Use Lowenstein’s fertilizer – it’ll make your lawn so green, so thick, and so soft you’ll ditch your bed and sleep outside on your grass!"

So how do these two tag lines differ? (Other than the 1 sentence vs. 2 sentence thing)

Unlike tag line 2, you can’t see tag line 1 in your mind’s eye. T1 uses non-visual, conceptual words like "health" and "vitality". T2 goes the visual route. It paints a picture in your head - you sleeping on a plush bed of the greenest grass.

Tag line 2 brings the benefits of Lowenstein’s fertilizer to life. Tag line 1 requires that YOU bring it to life, which requires mental energy – a non-starter for today’s consumers.

An easy tool for improving your sales & marketing copy

Step 1 - Assess
Take your sales copy, email campaign, landing page or what have you, and ask:

• Do the words paint a picture in my mind? How vivid is that picture?
• Does the picture clearly express the core benefit of my product? (Why paint a beautiful picture that doesn’t help sell your product?)

Step 2 - Identify
Identify the conceptual/abstract words in your copy – those words that don't paint clear pictures in your head.

Step 3 - Improve
Take the list of conceptual words you identified in Step 2 and do either of the following:

• Replace these conceptual words with visual counterparts
• Add visual words to your copy that bring your conceptual words to life. For example, if you're using the word "healthy", you can add visual words like "32-inch waistline", "glowing, beautiful skin", "well-sculpted muscles", etc.

In closing... whether your 6th grade English teacher had strong coffee breath, a grating voice, or a curious way of holding his chalk, when he shouted those three little words, “Show, Don’t Tell!” he was speaking the Marketing Gospel. Heed his words. Because if the consumer can't see the benefits he'll receive from your product, the consumer won't buy it. Amen.