Reference Geeks

Can you measure the ROI of customer case studies?

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:09:00 +0000

Mixing metaphors, my view is that having REAL metrics on reference material usage, influence and therefore ROI is pretty much a holy grail but also an area in which there are some folks selling snake oil :o).

Yes we can look at web-stats, make folks register to view assets (poor practice) or view asset usage statistics linked to associated deals via reference fulfilment processes or systems and this does give us numbers but it tells us nothing really about the business impact of case studies.

We operate global reference helpdesk for a few organisations, managing thousands of request per year and yes we can say how often specific case studies were supplied and (in some circumstances) even if they were used and can correlate these against specific deal values. It’s way better than nothing but does not measure ROI.

Here’s the thing:
Imagine you are trying to close a ten-year, billion dollar outsourcing deal and you are part of the pursuit/bid team. You might invest half a million dollars in the bid itself and one of the items you will use at some point will be a written or video case study, assets that might exist anyway that cost $2,000 to $20,000.

Even if the case study was used right at the beginning of the process in order for you to get through to the last round of the pitch, and it gets used just once no-one is going to say that it was not worth creating a $2,000 case study for just one $1b use. Nor can anyone say that the case study had an ROI of 5,000,000%.

It’s the same in the volume space. I’ve seen all sorts of claims about video, and white papers etc. yet we all know that direct sales teams sell most of their stuff using PowerPoint slides, most of which would be unrecognisable to the teams that lovingly created them and also many of which will be for customers that are not approved references!

A correlation between two sets of numbers (we changed this, the numbers did that) is not the same as cause and effect and I’m not always sure the due diligence has been done to independently verify results.

What we DO know is that every piece of research out there and also research we have done for clients shows pretty much the same thing; irrespective of format, customer-approved content in the form of a case study is the most-requested deliverable, used right throughout the purchase cycle (with an emphasis on the early stages) and that measured use is only a small indication of real use because folks keep their reference libraries on their laptops and like to share.

Short of interviewing the entire customer team that was involved with the purchase, the influencers, the decision makers as well as the sales team themselves and asking them which materials were effective and by what percent (and even then you will get subjective answers), measuring usage via request tracking and downloads is pretty much it.

My advice to anyone in this space? CRPs have much better measurement than other influencer marketing activities and we can measure much more interesting and business-impacting stuff with ROI numbers attached than the number of times case studies are used

It's not the number that counts; it's action

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 07:48:00 +0000

Recently I've seen a couple of organisations embracing the measurement of customer/client satisfaction.

This is good, and there's even been 'Net Promoter-esque' measurement methodologies employed based on The Ultimate Question.

Now they have their numbers both these organisations have 'wimped-out' when it comes to the important bit - taking action.

Receiving of the feedback is just the beginning of the real interaction. Sure, you have your number but where's the value for your customers/clients?

Don't ask if you don't intend to act. When you ask for feedback there is an unwritten deal made; that you will act on it, or say why it does not make sense for you to do so.

Surely asking for feedback then ignoring the opportunity for two-way dialogue is worse than not asking at all.

Next-Generation case studies. Where are we going?

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 11:05:00 +0000

10 Customer Reference Jobs

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

The jobs market for experienced customer reference professionals has never been healthier. Currently we know of over ten open positions:

1) UK - Honeywell - home counties
Customer Reference Manager

2) UK - Unnamed Technology Company - London
Customer Reference Communications Manager

3) UK/EMEA - Alcatel-Lucent
Customer Programs Marketing Contractor

4) US - VMware - Palo Alto - CA
Customer Reference Manager

5) Canada - RIM - Waterloo - Ontario
Blackberry Customer Success Programme (contract) job number 1102148

6) US - DELL - Round Rock - Texas
Customer Reference Manager (link to the CRF jobs page)

7) US - Netsuite - San Mateo - CA
Customer Reference Program Manager (link to the CRF jobs page)

8) US - inEvidence - Silicon Valley - CA
Account Director/West Coast Lead

9) US - inEvidence - Silicon Valley - CA
Account Manager

10) US - inEvidence - Silicon Valley - CA
Account Executive

We also know of another couple of contractor positions - contact the customer reference geeks to find out more

Make your case studies FABulous

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 19:05:00 +0000

Things go in cycles, the cuts in marketing budgets caused by the recession have had a positive impact in as much as large organisations are thinking about value as opposed to volume (believe me, as a creative and a businessman there is nothing more depressing than being measured by the number if items you deliver for a client, it's like creating case studies by the gallon/square mile/cubic metre and not a smart business strategy long-term).

So what IS value when it comes to case studies?I don't mean cost. I reckon value = great stories that meet a genuine need from prospective clients, making our client's solutions real in a way no amount of marketing bumph ever could (fifteen genuine words from a happy customer must be worth 100 words of messaging, feeds and speeds).

This also means maybe NOT doing so many, or doing them later (when there are benefits to talk about).

Quantifiable benefits...hmmm

The fact is that anyone creating case studies for global organisations will be aware of the drive for metrics with everything (I like fries with everything but that's another story).

Do you know how to be FAB?

Feature
Advantage
Benefit

I never ceased to be amazed how many good marketers get confused about this; we all learnt it, maybe we forgot so here's recap:

Features provide Advantages, Advantages provide Benefits.

Feature - The Reference Geeks blog is online
Advantage - This allows you to access it from any Internet-enabled device, anywhere
Benefit - Which means that no matter where you are, if you read it you can stun your boss with your customer reference knowledge and gain the promotion you have always dreamed of (OK I'm dreaming here)

The benefit statement is the WIIFY (what's in it for me?) and once you start to think this way you will be amazed how rarely you see marketing that really nails this, people seem to get stuck at the Advantage stage (describing the features).

Of course you know this stuff, my next blog post is about sucking eggs...

Just for fun though, go back and read the last case study summary you wrote and see if it was as FAB as it could have been.

Webinars for beginners

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Thu, 20 May 2010 21:11:00 +0000

We hosted our first customer reference pros webinar today. A really interesting experience as it's the first time we've set one up from scratch (we normally do these for clients using their infrastructure and support). The content and presenting was good, as was the turnout (39 folks from all over the globe) which was great and it was a learning experience for everyone, not least of all for me.

I learned:

Even though it's a pain to have to register for an event, avoiding this step is not the right strategy long term. Better to make it as easy as possible and do all you can to ensure folks realise you won't spam them.
Test the technology. We had a line drop a few mins into the event however we had tested earlier and so could carry on with just a moment of hesitation. Having 39 of your peers on the line certainly focuses the mind!
Ensure people that ask questions state their names first (oops).Maybe use a 'hands-up' process or questions via email
No matter how many ways and times you state the dial-in and code there will always be a few people that cannot see it. Have email support running during the event, on another laptop and run by another team member.

I'm looking forward to gettting the replay online tomorrow and to doing the next one!

Out and About

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Fri, 14 May 2010 14:12:00 +0000

It's been a really interesting couple of weeks; I've been lucky enough to work with some international marketing students, had dinner with another 17 Customer Reference Pros and also met a few other new people, including a specialist AR consulting company, an English freelancer in France and a very smart Spanish reference pro in England.

What have I learnt?

B2B marketing is not really covered by Degree courses, probably as its not as sexy as consumer
Think not just about what your customers may say to analysts, but how responsive they are (does it take ten phone calls to get hold of them? the analysts will give up before this point)
Marketing students can get enthused about what we do and see the value of advocacy very quickly
Before taking a film crew up a mountain check the customer actually uses your product
Automated Voice Recognition is being deployed to get reference content from salespeople
Online communities need a critical mass and nurturing. Just build it and they probably won't come

I've also been organising a series of six customer reference pro webinars, a first for me so fingers crossed the technology works!

Socially irresponsible!

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:37:00 +0000

Three years ago I saw Jeremiah Owyang and Ben McConnell speak about new tools becoming available and how the new fangled ‘social media’ and ‘citizen marketers’ were going to change customer advocacy. Forever.

They each spoke of a connected world where genuine peer opinion was still equally or more valid and influential than carefully-crafted PR, the difference was that this online opinion would shout louder and have more impact than any marketing we were currently doing.
This stuff would change what we do and how we thought about customer advocates. A seminal moment.

For me this was the first time I’d truly seen the connection between the ethereal world of the web and the day-to-day existence of the customer reference professional. Not everyone agreed and some did not want to agree as they could see the impact.

Three years later...I am annoyed about how things are working out. I'm optimistic too, even wondering if we should even consider giving marketing money away to another part of the the organisation...you can read it here

The Oracle case study test

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:32:00 +0000

At least this is how I remember it (I told someone today that it was Adobe, sorry I now stand corrected).

During a presentation at the Customer Reference Forum in March this statement was so good it's been at the back of my mind ever since.

It went something like:

“When you are deciding whether to publish a case study, if you remove your company and product names, insert those of your competitors and the case study still makes sense then you have not highlighted what makes your company or products different.”

Food for thought.

Doing the big stuff in a 'need it now' world

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:05:00 +0000

How do you find time to concentrate on the important as opposed the immediate?

Allocating time for thought and creativity is something that does not easily fit a standard business plan or weekly agenda when there is always going to be more 'need it now' than you can manage.

This year is a case in point: it's March already, how did that happen? A lot achieved (interesting client work, a research project, team growth, new clients, masses of planning and our 2010 Customer Reference Forum involvement) yet five or six of around ten important long-term development projects are waiting for action.

I'm sure it's the same for you, the issue is that some of these projects are the self-created 'what-if's that no-one is going to chase yet these are the ones with the capacity to change everything.

There is a lot of 'need it now' that is not real; sometimes deadlines are ridiculous due to poor planning, other times we put pressure on ourselves by over promising and sometimes the 'need it now' is simply not real.

I'm making rest of March about the big stuff, the long-term, the potential game-changers. They may be sitting on the 'hard pile' but these projects are the art and the fun as well as long-term business and career critical.

Do you have some 'big stuff' ideas and projects just like this? We need to get into the routine of allocating big-stuff time in a 'need it now' world.

New Year, new philosophy, new Godin's Linchpin

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:09:00 +0000

2010 finds this reference geek back in a newly-organised office, no idea of the feng shui impact but the room seems to flow much better than before. I'm really excited about the possibilities for this year and reckon it's going to be a breakthrough year on many levels both professional and personal.

With this in mind I've just finished reading the advance 62 pages of Seth's new book, Linchpin; exactly the right thoughts and energy for taking a new year head-on.

Can't wait for the full book to be available in the UK.

Social Media 'Pimp' sells friends, fans & followers

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:40:00 +0000

It's human nature for a percentage of the community to want to rig the game; we've ranted before about pay-for-post middlemen before now there's a new social media pimp on the block - USocial.

These guys allow you to buy up to 100,000 'followers' on Twitter and up to 10,000 'friends' and 'fans' on Facebook.

Well that was the case until a couple of days ago, Facebook has said this service breaches its terms of service and served papers on uSocial, who in response has temporarily suspended its Facebook 'friends' service (but is still advertising its 'fans' service).

Also we're not sure how but it appears USocial has been collecting Facebook login information which is says it will now delete.

The company also claims to boost Twitter followers with several different offers, from 1,000 followers in a week for $87 to 100,000 within one year for $3,479. Surely we won't have to wait long for a response from Twitter.

It's suggested that you can market to these people (whoever they are, if they exist) and of course claim your company has more clout that it really does.

The 21st century equivalent of the direct mail list? Maybe so but somehow this practice seems both more personal AND even less connected and relevant, making it sadder and slightly grubby in the process.

News Corp vs. the Google age. Guess who's going to lose

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:08:00 +0000

Murdoch may stop Google news searches. Really? :o)

The death of newsprint has been coming for years; it's interesting to see how newspapers are trying various tactics to monetize the shift to the Internet as the worlds of old marketing and news delivery crumble.

News Corp has previously mentioned charging for online access to news and now Rupert Murdoch has apparently said he believes search engines cannot legally use headlines and paragraphs of news stories as search results.

For someone used to leveraging a near-monopoly I think it's interesting he hasn't recognised he's met one far more powerful and this one's based on openness, not limit and control.

News Corp vs. the Google age. No prizes for guessing who's going to lose.

More from the BBC here

New FTC endorsement & testimonial guidelines, do they affect you?

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:17:00 +0000

The new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising come into effect on December 1st 2009. Any of us that work within the US, or with US organisations anywhere in the world will be impacted so please take note.

We have no definitive legal opinion yet however let's review the main points:

From a blogging perspective things are simple; clear disclosure of any material connection with a company/product/service mentioned is required.

The press release indicates these rules apply to Testimonial Advertisements, Bloggers and Celebrity Endorsements; at the very least the new rules should be integrated into blogging guidelines (claims and full disclosure) and also claims-based advertising/marketing campaigns.

The large change is that it seems when making any claim one also needs to know what the generally anticipated outcome is; often easier said than done.

Taken from the press release:
‘Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor.’

Imagine a diet DVD advert/press release/brochure claiming someone following the regime has lost 60 pounds. No issue in substantiating this however it could be that the generally anticipated outcome for diet regime DVDs is for them to be used once before becoming drinks coasters (probably for hot chocolate with marshmallows).

What we need to talk about is the generally anticipated outcome when the product is correctly implemented and I'm not sure how this is covered/differentiated in the new guidelines.

In summary
The blogging side is straightforward, other marketing activities less so. These new rules will impact any claims-based activity and therefore the need for rigorous case studies will increase.

Three questions still remain for me and I hope to be able to answer them soon:

1. How are advertising, websites, campaigns, events and press releases impacted?
2. Are case studies directly impacted? (specifically the collection/sign off of metrics)
3. Is there any increased liability for customers providing metrics in case studies?

The full guidelines are here

This video from the FTC focuses on the blogging aspects of the endorsement guidelines.

Call (312) 416-9980 and talk to our CEO

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:15:00 +0000

I like this. 37signals is clearly not a boring software company.

Disagree? Phone their CEO and tell him.
Have a suggestion for a new product feature? Do the same.

Jason Fried, 37signals' CEO, takes calls at (312) 416-9980 from 3pm to 5pm central time every Tuesday and Thursday.

Taken from their website:

'Every Tuesday and Thursday from 3pm - 5pm central time, our CEO (Jason Fried) is standing by to take calls from customers, prospective customers, or anyone who has a question about 37signals.

Note: Unsolicited sales calls will not be taken during this time.

What can we talk about?
You can call and ask product questions, pre-sales questions, suggest feature requests, lodge complaints, offer praise, share ideas, discuss recent blog posts, or talk about good or bad experiences using our products. Anything that’s on your mind is fair game. Jason's here to listen, share, and be available to help in any way he can.

How long can we talk?
In order to accommodate other callers, we ask that you keep calls to 10 minutes or less. Thanks.

If I can't get through, can Jason call me back?
Jason is only available for direct calls on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3pm to 5pm central. If he's unable to take your call he won't be able to call you back if it's outside these office hours. But you can drop him an email at jason at 37signals dot com and he'll try to get back to you as soon as he can.
You can also contact Jason via Twitter @jasonfried.'

Glaswegian interpreters (rubbery gubs?) required

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:57:00 +0000

We've worked in and translated from 21 languages but have just become aware of a new translation service required in Glasgow, just a few hundred miles from our UK HQ.

A translation firm is recruiting interpreters to help visiting businessmen understand the Glaswegian dialect, which some consider the most impenetrable in the UK.

Normally this company translates documents but it seems there is a genuine demand for this service.

See the full BBC article here. Some examples of the dialect are:

Beezer - (something good)
Bingo Bus - (police van)
Boudo - (money)
Connie - (candle)
Donner - (a walk)
Dreich - (bad/wet weather)
Fae - (from)
Geeza - (may I please have)
Heavy Scran - (good food)
Melt - (face)
Naw, Nae - (no)
Piece - (sandwich)
Rubbery Gub (big mouth)
Shoot the craw (leave in a hurry)

Everyone's a Critic But They're Not Very Critical

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:56:00 +0000

Apparently online reviewers are not nearly nasty enough, tending to leave positive reviews - the average is around 4.3 stars out of five.

Interestingly, negative reviews seem to be trusted more; on the basis you can't please all the people all the time companies with some negative feedback will be perceived as genuine and worth dealing with.

Paid or company reviews make a mockery of review mechanisms; added to this there is a lot of online discussion concerning sites removing or making it difficult to add negative reviews. Not easy to police.

I think it's time for a score of 3 to be seen as good; 5 as excellent, or even better for a 10-point scale to be used.EBay does not like sellers with average feedback of less than (on a 5-point scale) so we have a way to go.

Go on, get real with your online reviews, not every transaction can be 5-point-tastic.

Huge numbers in just a few seconds - Gary’s Social Media Count

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:32:00 +0000

Well done Gary Hayes for creating this; volume is not the same as value however some of the numbers are simply mind-boggling. This table puts social media into some sort of context, even if it's just comparable.

Philips - half-right social media strategy is not good enough

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:12:00 +0000

Meet Mathias Thorell, known to me and the other 11,690 members of Philips Streamium Café as 'Tias'.

We've never met, emailed or spoken but it's clear Tias is an interesting guy. Originally from Sweden he was a Senior Flight Test Engineer on the Saab Gripen but now works as a Systems Engineer and IT Manager in Santiago, Chile.

In his spare time Tias contributes to Streamium Café , a user group for a range of wireless multi-room music players from the consumer electronics giant, Philips.

To say Tias contributes is somewhat of an understatement, 2,651 helpful posts to date which equates to over two per day.

It strikes me that Philips is treating their 11.5k members as an outsourced R&D and Customer Support team, offering virtually nothing in return other than a place to 'talk', either oblivious to the reputation-management issue coming its way or arrogant enough to think it can do as it pleases.

At least they have got it half-right; to date Philips has enabled conversation among its customers and kept a very low profile other than removing spam and offensive (to members, not about products) comments. Commendable but not nearly good enough.

Unfortunately Streamium is not iPod-simple, nor is it inexpensive. The challenge for Philips seems to be how to move this technically-advanced product from the smallish early-adopter geek market to the mass consumer market.

Most Streamium users get the 'story' - the way products can change the way we live, some Café members are not only willing to put up with the glitches and idiosyncrasies, they are actively trying to solve the bugs and improve the product.

Take the software; if you have ripped 200 CDs onto a Streamium (slowly - plate tectonics will have moved your Streamium a few inches closer to Africa before you have finished ripping the latest Chili Peppers ' triple album) it's not something you would wish to repeat any time soon. The backup software supplied by Philips is lame and not open-source thus will remain so.

Back to Tias, he (with assistance from other members of the user group) has spearheaded the creation of the vastly superior track managing software (WACHandler), available to all, for free (donations welcomed).

Think about the cost of the forum and the benefit to Philips; 11.6k members helping each other and providing product roadmap ideas for an item with an average price tag of around $350 per room, that could either be returned to the stores, or worse.

Just think what Philips could achieve with:

Technical support given to Café members (a different entry point, not an additional cost)
Product idea competitions
Notification of firmware and product updates
A chance for Tias and others like him to review new products
Factory tours
Biogs of the developers
Streamium stories with photos - real case studies

Enthusiasts and user groups are powerful, I don’t believe Philips understands how fortunate it is - this is a response to members asking why its moderators remove spam but will not 'engage' more fully.

'The purpose of StreamiumCafe is creating a community for Streamium users. It is a community where Streamium users can help each other out with problems they are facing or where people can discuss about improvements that can be made etc. Unfortunately this is not a support forum where Philips engineers or technicians are available to provide support. This is the logo you see, when entering www.streamiumcafe.com'

Just think what you could achieve with that number of engaged advocates, or just a few guys like Mathias Thorell.

Customers comment - Google Sidewiki meets Brands in Public

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:14:00 +0000

Not just one but TWO new ways for the opinions and comments from Joe Public, (both advocates and detractors) to be made visible in a relevant way, either gathered together or actually alongside an organisation's webpages, one from Squidoo and one from Google.

Brands in Public

Nice project this. My colleagues and I have been evaluating Radian6 and other social media monitoring tools this year with some success and it's really interesting to see what the Squidoo team has been cooking up around brand.

Brands in Public is a single page about a Brand, unofficial pages (but not for long I suspect with the sponsorship options) that aggregate together positive and negative comment from Twitter, YouTube, blog posts. Google trends too. The good and the bad.

here's Dell In Public so you can check out the concept

Google Sidewiki

This is far, far more controversial and I cannot believe Google will be able to keep Sidewiki in this form.

Sikewiki adds an expandable column to the lefthand side of your browser (via Google toolbar) where you can read and add comments about the content on the specific web page you are viewing at the time.

There is no 'owner' or moderator, rather Google uses algorithms to try and ensure the most useful content appears higher in the list and hateful comments are way lower.

'Open' and 'social' are good however this sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen IMHO.

Does anyone remember Third Voice? Exactly, we have been here before; maybe Google has the muscle tomake it work this time.

Sidewiki could be a game-changing tool which benefits everyone however there is a lot of bigotry, ignorance and hatred out there, as well as lame marketers that create negative comments about their completion rather than creating great ideas that spread.

I'm watching this one with interest.

Google does not use keyword meta tags to find your case studies

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:55:00 +0000

Recently the subject of keywords and META tags has come up with a couple of clients.

Case studies can be a large investment and quite rightly you want the reference materials you create to reach the largest audience possible and also for the major search engines to pick them up.

I was amazed to learn Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking (and Google is not alone here).

This change happened some years ago due to keywords meta tags being abused via the addition of hundreds of unrelated words or naming competitors and their products. Rigging the game can only be a short term ploy.

Google also states the 'description' tag is not used for search ranking but IS displayed in results (which I know as I had a typo in mine which took a while to propagate through once I had changed it)

Of course keywords may have a use for less sophisticated search engines and also many companies use these for the search functionality of their document management systems.
See video below or read the transcript.

The most annoying phrase of all time...

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:15:00 +0000

Is 'of all time'.

You will currently see or hear it ten times a day and when you think about it the phrase is total nonsense.

In fact it's the most annoying phrase recorded, or to date :o)

UK approves TV product placement - are we heading for The Truman Show?

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:06:00 +0000

Traditional media is going through considerable change; some wonder if and in what format printed newspapers will survive (Ben M noticed UK newspaper loyalty schemes) while interruption-marketing such as TV advertising is trying to work out how to cope with falling revenues (not simply recession-driven as they would have us believe).

Until now UK TV channels have been fined if company logos are not obscured or covered.

According to the BBC the government now believes that placement should be allowed in some circumstances and will announce the change next week.

Product placement will not be permissible for the BBC or children's programmes on any channel.

As with paid blogs it's essential that viewers know that this promotion has taken part. My knee-jerk reaction was that this move has to be a a bad thing however as the BBC article points out, we are already watching masses of imported shows from the US and sports events already carry a large amount of sponsorship. Movies and rock concerts are full of product placement too.

In a world where TV and other interruption advertising has is becoming less and less effective (no one is paying attention unless they choose to) this move provides a revenue stop-gap.

The big question is where does 'push' or 'interruption' marketing go next?

Maybe we are not heading for The Truman Show however marketers and production companies need be careful; if product placement gets silly viewers will simply vote with their remotes and everyone will lose.

When we all know it's broken

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:23:00 +0000

It's Saturday morning and I've made a quick dash into B&Q (Home Depot in the US?). Heading for the checkouts I become aware that there are none open, not a single one.

Someone armed with a spreadsheet and some graph paper had worked out four self-service checkouts can fit in the same space as ones manned by humans AND they can save the staff costs by getting their customers to scan their own items. A great idea (actually no).

Not only this but they fitted them in a store that has never had more than half the checkouts open (does not need the space) and two members of staff were required to help and pacify the irate builders forced to scan their loads of bricks and numerous heavy items and placing them on the weight-sensitive box designed to lessen theft.

Of course using my rare gift I had managed to select two items without bar codes and rather than looking them up in a book (as would happen at any normal checkout) a staff member was send to obtain the numbers. He simply swapped the items for ones with codes so it's misery for the next person to select them, and groundhog day for the other staff.

All this to save the cost of two minimum-wage staff. The cost to their business of dissatisfied customers and negative WOM must cost thousands.

This reminded me of the website thisisbroken and the funny Seth Godin video on the same riff (the series/parallel taxi rank example is great).

I know it's broken, the shop-floor-level B&Q staff know it's broken, how much custom will B&Q lose before management realise it's broken too?

Express checkouts (which sort of imply it's quicker for you to do things than for trained staff) - great for cornflakes, less so for concrete.

Agency giants lumber onto the WOM bandwagon. Yawn...

noreply@blogger.com (Robin Hamilton) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:37:00 +0000

Omincom and the other lumbering giants now feel its time to get on the WOM bandwagon. When you check the detail it's just the same old 'control' nonsense in a new format; this is still 1950s marketing.

Yawn.

When are agencies such as this going to realise their game is over? Buzz is largely vanity and an irrelevance and what drives WOM and advocacy in general is the total customer experience; companies that do remarkable things get remarked on. Simple as that.

The smart money backs the specialist agencies that help advocates tell their story effectively and 'spin free'.

The half-promised 'viral WOM in 5 easy steps' approach that occurs when large agencies try to 'productize magic' is a hoax; it cannot be planned by an agency, nor can it be bought.

This is not yet another opportunity to push messaging, it's a conversation.

Wake up, smell the coffee and if it smells great then tell your friends and see what they think :o)