Isabel Walcott Draves

Getting it Right

A.G. Lafley has been CEO of P&G since 2000. We know P&G gets it to some extent, because they copied SmartGirl.com when they started their teen-girl community.  They also have Tremor, doing sampling and word-of-mouth marketing with the teen community.  But who knew that they "get it" all the way up at the top?

Lafley talks about stakeholders, not shareholders. Just as I recommend!  And the Wall Street Journal called him on this (The CEO as Global Corporate Ambassador). "What does this mean exactly? Who isn’t a stakeholder? What about the shareholders?" Etc.

I don’t know much about Lafley, but this article made him into a star in my eyes. He recognizes that the company is about its employees, its customers, and the communities it pollutes or offends or assists or just interacts with. In short, Lafley recognizes that everyone matters, even if they don’t hold the purse-strings… because ultimately, they do hold the purse-strings.

The arrival of the Internet has given stakeholders a loudspeaker, and allowed them to broadcast opinions that can impact the bottom line. What used to be simply ethically correct or just the "right thing to do", like helping those displaced by Hurricane Katrina or meeting face to face with animal rights activists, has become essential to running a good business. If you want long-term, loyal customers and free advertising (read: good Word of Mouth)

Steven Milloy of the "Free Enterprise Action Fund" doesn’t get it. He thinks it’s a conflict of interest for the CEO of Goldman to be board chair for the Nature Conservancy (because protecting the environment is not in the best interests of the companies they invest in!). He’ll attend GE’s annual shareholder meeting to take the company to task for acknowledging global warming. "The role of these companies is to increase society’s wealth by generating shareholder wealth," Milloy claims.

Yeah, but companies make money by building a customer base. America is built on choice—remember the anti-trust laws? If we don’t like what one company is doing, we can shop elsewhere. Finally, thanks to the Internet, we can tell each other which companies are doing good; and everyone can do their part to make sure that companies that do bad also do poorly. Either Milloy doesn’t recognize this, or he is in denial about the power of customers. We’re not your hostages anymore!

Milloy probably thinks of himself as a great patriot, protecting American ideals. When you think about what America is really about, though, it’s Lafley who gets it right. America is not about making money at the expense of your customers. Long-term, a company that works for all its stakeholders is going to do better for its shareholders, and likely to have more of them as well.

Using the Library

Concord has a beautiful little library, sort of a mini Widener.  I went in the other day to take out some books and didn't know where to start.  Rather than do something sensible like ask my friends to give me lists of books to read, I decided to start at the beginning.

I went to the A's in the fiction section.  I've decided to work in alphabetical order, taking out a few books at a time by authors I've heard of, to see what I like.

I'm about to go back for round two.  Here's where I am so far:

The Inheritance, by Louisa May Alcott (a Concord native).  Her first novel, written at age seventeen.  It's a sweetly moralistic story about the intersection of social class and ethics.  A too-good-to-be-true teenage orphan stays with a wealthy family as a paid "companion" to their youngest daughter.  The wealthy older uncle falls in love with her, but she refuses his hand because her social rank is not worthy.  Then, she discovers she is not only heiress to the family's entire fortune, but of course their equal ancestrally speaking.  She vows to hide this discovery, though, to spare them financial loss and accompanying embarrassment of learning they have treated their equal like shit this whole time.  A morality play.  The prose itself is nothing much.

Excerpt: "With blushing dignity, in few but simple words she thanked him for the honor he bestowed and kindly but decidedly refused his love."

Stories of a Woman's Power, by Louisa May Alcott.  Four short stories about women who manipulate men to get revenge, money, or love.  Quite the bodice-rippers, in a very chaste sort of way.  It was interesting to see history's budding feminist sensibilities personified in Alcott, who fought for women's right to vote and rebelled against the notion of being treated as man's property.  These stories were very forward-thinking for their time; I bet people loved them.

Excerpt: "Neither of the young men could have explained why that hurried glance affected them as it did, but each felt conscious of a willful desire to oppose the other.  Edward suddenly felt that his brother loved Miss Muir, and was bent on removing her from his way.  Gerald had a vague idea that Miss Muir feared to remain on his account, and he longed to show her that he was quite safe."

Spring Came on Forever by Bess Aldrich.  I liked this the best of the four.  It's beautifully written in places, if slightly old-fashioned in turns of phrase at times. The multi-generational love story captures the perspectives of two different kinds of pioneers: farmers and city-folk, over the turn of the 20th century.  It tracks changes in social class from lower to upper, tracks declines in fortune due to the Great Depression, tracks the immigrant experience of becoming American.  It manages to describe perfectly the pain and pleasure of different kinds of love.  Aldrich is just as comfortable with 1860's dialog as she is with 1930's dialog.  This book really is a gem and I recommend it highly to any of you romantics out there who have an interest in American history.

Excerpt: "[H]e could have called the roll of the various periods through which that highway road progressed.  Pathless prairie grass.  Grassy road.  Dirt road from which all sign of green had vanished. Graveled highway.  Pavement.  In the valley, the evolution of that road was the history of the people who lived beside it."

A Death in the Family by James Agee.  This dragged a little, in my opinion.  Maybe because he takes 340 pages to describe a three-day period (although this is one of the features the book must be recognized for). I don't think the writing is particularly compelling, although there are a couple of paragraphs near the end that were very beautiful, almost poetic.  The book is notable for its exploration of conflicting feelings about organized religion, and its literary treatment of the topic of alcoholism.  A few tender passages encapsulate quite nicely relationships between father and son, husband and wife, uncle and nephew.

Excerpt: "He thought of the ash tray on its weighted strap on the arm; it was empty.  He ran his finger inside it; there was only a dim smudge of ash.  There was nothing like enough to keep in his pocket or wrap up in a paper.  He looked at his finger for a moment and licked it; his tongue tasted of darkness."

I'm Hatin' It

I decided to check to see what McDonald's is doing to enhance their engagement marketing right now.  To see if they really don't get it.  Sure enough, they do not.

In a recent article in the New York Times, The New Rules of Engagement, Stuart Elliott notes: "Madison Avenue is turning its focus to something called engagement".  Apparently a portion of the Advertising Research Foundation's 52nd annual conference is being devoted to the subject, which seems to be barely understood by most of the marketers quoted in the article.  The Chief Research Officer of the foundation explains that engagement is based on emotional, as opposed to rational, considerations.

He's got this part right: "With engagement, you're on your way to a relationship instead of just a sales transaction."

The International Media Director at McDonald's, Giovanni Fabris, "said the emergence of the cellphone as a medium would significantly improve the ability of marketers to engage with consumers."  Exactly!  Because it's two-way communication, right?  Because the customers can call McDonald's any time they want... No, wait.

Sure enough, Mr. Fabris defines engagement via cell phone as the ability "to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time", a miracle that allows McDonald's to send ads to individuals who, finally, "can be found wherever they happen to be" -- not just when they're in front of the TV or driving past that billboard.

Well, here's a newsflash, Mr. Fabris.  You don't get it.  You're still thinking broadcasting, because you're still thinking "messaging".  The new networked economy is many-to-many: you talk to people, they talk to each other, they talk to you.  That's what engagement is.  You're still in lecture mode, while all of us are having conversations.

Don't Bother Caring about Our Products!

One of the speakers at Peter Kaufman's Intelligent Television conference in Boston in January -- wish I could remember who it was -- said that most innovations, if not all innovations, are created by users.  It stands to reason -- you don't know how much better a thing needs to be until you use it and it lets you down. Companies sometimes appropriate them later, and pretend to have invented them.

So, McDonald's offers this friendly message on their website: "Thank you for your interest to share an idea for a product or service that you believe would be beneficial to McDonald's. Please know, however, that it is McDonald's company's policy not to consider unsolicited ideas from anyone other than our corporate employees, franchise owners and dedicated suppliers. "  (thanks to Pete Blackshaw for the heads-up on this!)

Of course, McDonalds' compared the potential financial upside of getting their next big idea against the financial downside of 1) Going through all those unsolicited emails and 2) Getting sued for stealing someone's idea.  Unfortunately, having been burned before, they felt their best interests lay in warding off the lawsuits.

Wouldn't it be nice if they recognized that creating a relationship with your customer means give and take: you give them food and a smile, you take their money and their advice.  Relationships are based on conversations, where you get to talk while they listen... but you have to listen while they talk.  What about a waiver saying "we're happy to take your ideas but don't expect compensation for them"?  How hard is that?

It just blows my mind.  Companies are throwing themselves into a panic about being unable to force consumers to listen to their messages.  McDonald's is probably paying a bunch of different agencies millions of dollars to help them better "engage" and "build relationships with" their customers! (Here's sample language from a 2003 press release: "...doing these kinds of relationship building initiatives...to make us more relevant") 

Right this minute, they are probably all running around saying "two-way communications!" to each other and giving each other high fives.  And yet they Just. Don't. Get. It.

Insert Foot in (Word of) Mouth

I was fortunate last night to be invited to a small meeting of the trustees of the Wang Center in Boston.  The Wang Center is far more than the Wang and Shubert Theatres, lovely as they both are.  They have community art programs, dance lessons, and all kinds of things going on that more people need to find out about.  Someone suggested I come up with a tagline for them that describes what they do in a nutshell, so here it is.  Culture: it's not just for snobs anymore.  I don't think they'd like it, honestly!  But it's true, that's what they're doing.  More power to them.

Anyway, so there I was at this lovely cocktail party, and the topic of Word of Mouth Marketing comes up, and a lovely trustee asks me if I have heard of, what's it called, BzzAgent?  Now, the truth is that BzzAgent is doing a great job spreading the word of mouth marketing meme, and they have some amazingly successful campaigns.  They've also been working really hard to dispel the notion that they're covertly turning your friends into walking advertisements, by pushing openness and so forth.  You could say tons of good things about them.  I would recommend them to a client, certainly.

But what do I pick to bring up?  The New York Times Magazine article, The Hidden (in Plain Sight) Persuaders, which I called "negative" and, I said, led several companies to refuse to do business with them.

Before I knew what hit me, the elegant woman I was speaking with was defending BzzAgent with a passion, and I was left sputtering cluelessly in her passionate wake.  And then, and then, after an eternity, she said she was Dave Balter's mom (he's the founder). I felt myself getting dizzy and blacking out... the next thing I knew, I woke up and it was all a dream.

I wish!  No, it really happened... and here I am, new in town and all, hanging out my Word of Mouth Marketing shingle at all the hotspots.  Why wasn't I thinking that BzzAgent was a Boston company?  Why wasn't I looking more closely at her nametag?  Turns out Mrs. Balter was leading the trustee's meeting, too.  Sigh.  I wonder if she will ever forgive me.  Your son's company is awesome, Mrs. B!  You should be really proud of him!  I really mean it.  Damn.

We finished out the evening attending a reading of Tennesee William's Night of the Iguana at the Shubert.  Absolutely incredible, on so many levels.  Too bad that was the only performance, or I would buzz it.

A Great WOMM Campaign

I was so excited to see a Word of Mouth Marketing campaign that really resonates.  Hershey's "Take 5" candy bar campaign started last year with a $17M TV blitz that brought in $28M worth of sales (sounds like pretty slender margins to me, especially once you give 50% to the retailers).  Researchers discovered that people liked the candy, but not the DDB ads.  Step One of a good WOMM campaign: A product people really like.

The Take 5 brand switched to a new agency, Arnold, that could offer traditional and "nontraditional" marketing techniques - read, marketing that leverages a many-to-many network instead of relying on broadcast communication.  Hopefully Arnold is up to the task; they seem to have done great this time.  Step Two of a good WOMM campaign: marketers eager to leverage the network effect.

Arnold brought in 69,000 BzzAgent evangelists to pass out free samples.  Step Three of a good WOMM campaign: knowing when you need to call in the experts.

Hershey is also recruiting evangelists on its own Take 5 website, running ads on major websites to attract traffic, and passing out samples at movie theatres.  They have a cool "crane game" on their website that is actually fun.  It's smart of them not to rely on BzzAgent for their evangelists; but it also looks like they are sending their own evangelists to BzzAgent; I wonder who "owns" them and if they have established a dependency on their vendor.  Step Four of a good WOMM campaign: leveraging all aspects of your network.

I was thrilled to see that Hershey is also inviting fans to create their own 60-second commercials, and their website visitors will choose the winner.  This really creates a relationship with their customers, because it suggests that Hershey doesn't just view them as "consumers" with gaping mouths and bulging wallets, but as human beings with intelligence, creativity, and decisionmaking skills.  Hopefully this is actually Hershey's attitude... but even if they are just faking it, it's a step in the right direction.  Step Five of a good WOMM campaign: including an open-source marketing initiative.

Finally, the Take 5 website itself is responsible.  In obeisance to COPPA law, it lets kids know when they are leaving for another website, when information is about to be collected, and when something is an ad, and it does this in a clear, no-nonsense way.  Step Six of a good WOMM campaign: respecting your customer relationships.

Unfortunately, the Take 5 website only works if you have Flash, which is a way of insisting your viewers do things your way.  This is a mistake; those without full web capability should not be turned away at the door.  It violates step six.  And how hard is it to create a non-flash version of your website?  There's no excuse for this.  Next Time: Universalize your website.

If done right, this broad initiative is likely to be cheaper and more effective than last year's ad blitz.  Not-so-ironically, the only part of it that rings false to me is Arnold's TV ad campaign, "six 15-second spots humorously depicting how far consumers might go to get a Take 5 bar".  I haven't seen the ads, but if they are integrated with the website game, it sounds like a copy of "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle". 

Considering that the rest of the campaign is giving them away for free, for awhile they might be all over the place.  You might go to a friend's house and see 15 of them on the table, and the friend might invite you to "take as many as you want, they were free".  You're not exactly putting yourself out to acquire the candy bar when someone at the movie theatre presses it into your hand.  I highly approve of the sampling, but it should be paired with a campaign that, at minimum, makes sense taken in conjuction with a sampling initiative.  Next Time: integrate your broadcast campaign with your network campaign.