Thesis #30: Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady, but the breakup is inevitable—and coming fast. Because they are networked, smart markets are able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed.

Brand loyalty. An interesting concept in itself, considering all along I’ve been purporting that people don’t identify with companies, they identify with other people.

Since we’re talking about companies here, and companies really suck at having relationships with their customers, I’d argue that a large portion of the “brand loyalty” in the marketplace has nothing to do with relationships at all.

I think that brand loyalty, however it’s being formed, really boils down to one thing:

Habit.

We’re human, we’re creatures of habit. The path of least resistance is always saught, and habit is often a contributor to that behavior. When companies are trying to build brand loyalty, they’re instantiating themselves as part of their customers’ habits.

But the path of least resistance has changed. It’s foolish for a company to become a part of a person’s habits, and then simply rest on their laurels. There needs to be regular reinforcement. Networked markets are constantly informing each other of new habits, and the perceived cost of changing habits is the only thing in their way.

Fighting this battle gets time consuming and costly for the companies, and to some customers…it’s irritating.

When a company is willing to embrace the forms of communication we’ve been talking about all along, and empower it’s customers and employees to interact like humans, that’s when brand loyalty starts to feel more like going steady.

There are emotions at stake. “Changing partners” has a high perceived emotional cost.

Is your brand a habit, or are we going steady?

Thesis #28: Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market might see what’s really going on inside the company.

Why is it that so many marketing initatives are designed around carefully constructed and controlled channels of communication?

Because everybody knows what everybody else is up to, thanks to the web. And worse: everybody thinks they know what everybody else is up to, thanks to the web.

Marketing and PR should not be damage control (that’s legal’s job, right?).

If something is going on inside your company that you’re worried about your customers knowing about, it shouldn’t be marketing’s job to keep that from spreading by obscuring it with a smiley marketing project.

Instead…maybe the company should stop doing that thing they don’t want their customers to know about?

Thesis #27: By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep markets at bay.

The Public Relations department (or a hired firm) is often the gatekeeper for communication in a business. I’ve always found that amusing, since the methods of communication chosen by most PR practitioners are designed to protect the business and it’s interests (and there’s more on that in our next thesis).

When I was in a fraternity in college, everyone was allowed to speak on behalf of the fraternity when it was good. We saved the “single point of contact for all communication” for when shit really hit the fan. You don’t want everyone talking to the cops. But during recruitment, it was everyone’s shared responsibility to share in the communication with our new potential members.

By limiting the number of people allowed to communicate with the pulic on behalf of the company, the company is doing what we tried to do when the cops showed up at the fraternity house: keep them at bay.

But by limiting the number of people allowed to communicate with the public on behalf of the company, something else happens: that communicator’s guard goes up. If they’re the bottleneck for communication, they can only field so much at any time. Any additional communication above their comfortable threshold, their instinctive reaction is to block new requests out, and a distant uninviting, and arrogant voice, is a highly effective way to alienate your customers and keep them at bay.

Furthermore, they’re excluding the communication that goes on outside of their carefully controlled communication channels, rather than using their momentum to their own benefit!

The lesson here: don’t just allow, empower your company’s employees as well as your customers to communicate, instead of relying on a single point of contact. Try to remove communication bottlenecks except when absolutely necessary. I believe that the arrogance and distance in the collective communication “voice” of the company will begin to fade away.

Thesis #26: Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.

In the last post, we talked about how Yelp empowers Carrie Estok to effectively communicate with their users. The second takeaway from the conversation I had with Carrie and Phil relates to this thesis, and has to do with companies that get reviewed on Yelp.

At the end of the day, there are two kinds of reviews on Yelp: positive and negative. What business doesn’t want to hear positive reviews from their customers? The problem is, that’s the only kind of review that many businesses want to hear. There’s been lots of talk about businesses negatively reviewed on Yelp threatening to sue for defamation.

Now, I see where these businesses are coming from. And considering Penny Arcade’s “Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory“, malicious defamation certainly increases in probability online. But Yelp is a community first. And when you’ve got a community contributing, there are checks and balances, and thoee sorts of intentionally malicious reviewers tend to be filtered out.

But here’s the kicker: if someone was poorly reviewing your business, offline, they’d be talking smack and you’d have no idea about it.

Yelp is providing a chance for users to talk about your business, and for you, as the business owners, to do something about it! For free! Stop being a knucklehead and realize how valuable that is for you!

Companies are petrified of what their customers have to say about them. The attitude of “What happens when someone says something bad about me online” is ridiculous. This should not be your cue to call out the legal team. It should be your cue to reflect, and go “hm, maybe they’re right. Let’s see if we can show ‘em what we’ve got”. And then, with the help of someone like Carrie, relate to that very real person having that very real problem.

You’ll never satisfy everyone, but that’s not the point. Carrie had some really great insight: the companies she’s made contact with that got negative reviews and at least tried to improve, won her (and other community members’) respect. Even if the service didn’t really improve, their ability to come down from their Ivory Tower, take criticism constructively, and at least recognize that there could be an issue and make an attempt to correct it is far better than ignoring the problem.

Coming down from your Ivory Tower to build relationships means letting down your guard, and being prepared to hear the things that you couldn’t from all the way up there.

Some will be good.

Some will be bad.

With the appropriate perspective, it’s all valuable.

You have nothing to be afraid of besides your own ignorance of what’s being talked about inside your marketplace.

Thesis #25: Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

The issue with companies coming down from their Ivory Towers, as we’ve discussed repeatedly, is that companies aren’t particularly good at talking to people.

Worse, is that the real people inside the company that are good at talking and building relationships aren’t empowered by the company to do so.

At the Twestival in Philadelphia this past week, I met Phil Baumann and Carrie Estok. We had a really awesome discussion about Carrie’s work with Yelp (one of my favorite companies) as a community advocate, and the real value that she’s able to provide to the Philadlephia community, as well as the businesses being reviewed on Yelp.

If you’re not familiar with Yelp, it’s a review site. But unlike Amazon, it reviews businesses. And more importantly, it’s local. As we’ve discussed before, people don’t trust marketing nearly as much as they trust their peers, so the recommendations shared on Yelp are authentic and peer-to-peer. They can be good, they can be bad. They’re all honest, from the perspective of the author. And Yelp continues to find ways to capture the customer-to-customer conversations and expose them for the benefit of other customers, and ultimately, for the businesses being talked about as well.

I think part of why I like Yelp so much because of how “Cluetrain-y” their model is.

There’s two things I took away from my conversation with Phil and Carrie related to this thesis:

First, Yelp as a company embraced a mechanism for coming down from their Ivory Tower: hiring and empowering community advocates. This type of job has been recognized as extremely important for any community oriented business, and increasingly, any business at all.

While Carrie and I didn’t discuss this explicitly, I’m fairly certain that she’s able to do her job best because Yelp empowers her (having carefully selected her) to be their representative, and to represent the community she’s a part of.

That’s the difference. It’s impossible for “Yelp”, the business, to be a part of every community that they service. But they knew the importance of building quality relationships with their users and the businesses that their users review, so they needed representation. Furthermore, that representation would be most effective if it came from within the community. There was no Ivory Tower for that person to have to come down from. That person, in this case Carrie, is able to continue being a member of the Philadelphia community and have the tools and facility that Yelp provides at her disposal. Yelp trusts her to be an ambassador for their communication. If they didn’t, there would be no point to having her on staff.

The second takeaway from our conversation will address the next thesis, Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.

I did not forget about this series, I swear. Going offline for 9 days has taken a bit harder toll on my workflow than expected, so I’m a few days behind.

My promise to you is to be back on track before the end of this week, hell or high water.

Thesis #24: Bombastic boasts—”We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ”—do not constitute a position.

This is the sort of “positioning” that you may sling in front of your investors…but your customers don’t give a crap.

Your customers, if they care about anything, it’s what you are committed to. At least one of the things you’re committed to should be them, at least in their mind.

Boastful “positioning” is about as valuable as a mission statement. Remember when Guy Kawasaki suggested that business ditch meaningless mission statements for meaningful mantras? The real reason the mantra was valuable was it gave businesses something to execute against.

Something to make decisions against.

Your “position”, should it be to “become the preeminent provider of XYZ”, says nothing to your customer about how you plan to make decisions, only where you plan to get with those decisions, even if it includes sacrificing them.

Today, I challenge you to drop your position for a set of core values.

A value system is a set of consistent ethic values (more specifically the personal and cultural values) and measures used for the purpose of ethical or ideological integrity…The first value category is Core Values, which prescribe the attitude and character of an organization…

In your business, your core values define how the members of your company will act and who and what are your priorities in order to attain desired goals for the business.

Core values put people first.

Unlike a boastful “positioning”, which does not.

Thesis #23: Companies attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.

I don’t like this thesis. Well, I don’t like the second half of it.

I do agree that companies need to own who they are. But the second part of this suggest something dastardly.

Something that, if you’re not careful, it leads you down a road of being unauthentic.

You can’t just hire a clever copywriter to position your company as quirky, off the wall, or funny because that’s what your market wants.

That’s not the point.

If your position only exists to appease your market, you’re doing it wrong.

Your position shouldn’t be what everyone else thinks, it requires introspection, and a strong set of values. Not only does that make it easier to take that position, but it lets all of the bullshit of trying to maintain that position go away.

If your market doesn’t care about your position, you’ve got two options: pick a new position to execute against, or pick a new market.

Here’s the clincher.

There’s only one of you. There’s always another market.

Be yourself. Be authentic. That’s the only position you can have.

My boy Gary Vaynerchuk has a lot to say on this, he calls it “executing against your own DNA”. You have to know what you are, and own it.

Thesis #22: Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.

In the previous example, I pointed to a couple of very tangible experiences where a sense of humor improved my experience as a customer. But aligning those experiences with this thesis, you begin to realize that there’s more to humor’s effectiveness than clever scripting.

Wikipedia sez humor occurs when:

• An alternative (or surprising) shift in perception or answer is given that still shows relevance and can explain a situation.
• Sudden relief occurs from a tense situation. In this context, humour is often a subjective experience, as it depends on a special mood or perspective from its audience to be effective.

Getting a sense of humor is hard because humor is fueled changing your perspective.

Business is notorious for stagnation. So long as profits aren’t down, there must not be a problem.

Stay the course. Stay the course.

Oh, that massive inefficiency in our process? Who cares.

Didn’t I tell you, profits aren’t down?

It boggles my mind how many businesses don’t seek improvement until there is a problem. And more often, they can’t even see the problem until it’s too late because they weren’t checking operations from more than the most comfortable angle available. On their asses. Behind their desks. Looking at spreadsheets.

Changing your perspective in itself is a valuable action for you to take for your business. Along with an opportunity to understand and, maybe even invoke some humor about your business, you have a chance to take a look at business process from that new vantage point. Poke holes. Experiment.

There’s a LOT to be said for some quality self-analysis, and the willingness to take on a sense of humor is a good incentive.

This is your chance to own your problems instead of keeping them outside of your field of vision. Maybe you can even make a joke about the problem once you know about it.

Relief of tense situations

Shit happens.

If you freak out, like a deer in headlights, you’re paralyzed.

Isn’t there something soothing when someone can take an otherwise tense situation and diffuse it with humor? It needs to be done carefully, but the sense of likability that can come with a good understanding of humor has a good chance of taking the edge off some potentially tense situations.

Some notes, though.

1. Don’t be condescending.

That’s part of being genuine.

1. Don’t laugh at the customer. Laugh at yourself.

That’s humility.

1. You want them laughing with you.

That’s teamwork, and that’s progress.

Thesis #21: Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.

There’s a misconception in corporations that seems to stem from the manufacturing era. That misconception is that work and play are mutually exclusive.

Now, hang on a second. I’m not so bold as to assume that just because someone is serious all of the time that they aren’t a hard worker. Or that they work too hard. Or anything like that.

What I want to point out is two things:

First: this thesis points to companies and says “lighten up”. We’ve already established that “the company” is a construct full of people. Those people operate within a culture which is based on their own behaviors, but also with the guidance of the company’s leadership.

So in order for a company to “lighten up” as this thesis suggests, we’re talking about a corporate culture shift, which is a pretty large undertaking because people don’t really take imposed culture very well. Instead, “lightening up” needs to be a holistic change for the company.

This is hard. Really hard. Especially in a litigious country like the US of A, companies are afraid of humor because of the potential for harrassment lawsuits.

Again, the one human emotion that companies are any good at expressing, fear, and it’s in the way again.

Note: I have a little bit of a problem because I also think that this thesis is a little bit one sided. In order for companies to lighten up and take themselves less seriously, people (read: customers) need to be prepared to view companies as fallible constructs full of people, just like them.

I wonder if this is a problem that will be sorted over the course of a generation or two. Already, we’re seeing indications that new companies can enter an otherwise humorless industry and lighten things up.

Let’s look at one industry that many of us love to hate: airlines.

Flying the Friendly Skies

There is practically nothing to laugh about when it comes to flying. The experience sucks.

I hate waiting in line. The food is crappy. The seats are small and my legs cramp. Crying children. Smelly people.

I’m cringing as I write this because I know I’m getting on a cross country flight in 24 hours.

I have a ton of respect for people who spend their lives in airports and on airplanes, because it’s one of my least favorite places to be. I love to travel, but I don’t like the experience of getting from here to there.

With two exceptions.

Southwest Airlines and Virgin Air.

Both of these airlines have competitive pricing, more comfortable seats…all sorts of amenities that I appreciate. But that’s not what makes the experience special.

Unlike the majority of their competitors, who view air travel as a sort of cargo delivery process, Southwest and Virgin have lowered their guard and exposed a sense of humor.

In the case of Southwest, many of their flight attendants have taken the otherwise droning takeoff and landing announcements and spice things up. I imagine there’s some scripting that the attendants share because I’ve heard some of the same quips, but in other cases, it’s been clear that the attendant took this chance to show off their own sense of humor.

My experiences with Virgin have been even better. Their company mission statement (not just for air travel, for the entire Virgin brand) reads:

We believe in making a difference. In our customers’ eyes, Virgin stands for value for money, quality, innovation, fun and a sense of competitive challenge. We deliver a quality service by empowering our employees and we facilitate and monitor customer feedback to continually improve the customer’s experience through innovation.

Not too far from the humorous Southwest attendants, check out Virgin’s pre-flight safety video:

As a side note, Southwest and Virgin are two companies very active in social media, both having numerous social campaigns under their belt and active Twitter Service Representatives (see @southwestair and @virginamerica). These companies have a sense of humor, and strong senses of human social interaction, as part of the company’s existence.

It’s not (just) a campaign. It’s part of the company’s being. The companies empowering their employees to interact like normal human beings (who have a sense of humor) instead of agents of a machine (that doesn’t).

Can this be done in a pre-existing company? I think so.

It will take time.

It will take leadership.

It will take commitment.

And it will take trust.

Hm. Maybe this is going to be harder than I thought.