Marketing: Fun and Useful – try now!

I recently traveled with G Adventures, “the great adventure people” taking two trips: one in the Galapagos Islands, and one hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. As a consumer making personal choices I do wear my professional marketing hat, and I critically examine the claims that companies make. The value proposition (what a company and brand proposes to a potential customer that the customer would consider valuable and good value in exchange for time, effort and a sum of money) is at the heart of marketing design, and yet it is hard to do well. Where does a value proposition come from? What are the ingredients? There are some good resources that I use in my classes, from Kevin Lane Keller, David Aaker and others. I also like what is often termed the “Disney Grid” as it combines company vision and values with promise. I recently did a joint session with my OBHR colleague, Daniel Skarlicki, with our PTMBA students, where we drilled down on company values as a basis for uncovering the ingredients of a compelling and credible value proposition.

So where does G Adventures fit in all of this?

Look at the values of the company, on the website or below, on the t-shirts. These action values: lead with service, do the right thing, create happiness and community, embrace the bizarre,we love changing people’s lives – these are very specific and guide the company’s behaviour, collectively and at an individual level. Because they are not generic they raise expectations that the company will be different and live up to these values.

It’s easy to be skeptical and think that these are just a “bunch of words” dreamed up in a glass tower.

So, what was my experience in test-driving the G Adventures’ promise. In the Galapagos it was good, but on the Inca Trail it was superb. Roger, pictured below, was our CEO – Chief Experience Officer, and he lived these values. On each of the five values I can think of several examples in our 5 days together where Roger was guided in his actions by these values. One example will suffice here – as I struggled with paperwork to get onto the trail for the extra hike up Wayna Picchu, Roger stayed with me in line for 40 minutes. When I thanked him, he simply said that it was the right thing to do – clearly, he was leading with service. Wow, did I appreciate it, and feel positive about my whole trip. What I am less clear about his how G Adventures recruits and trains – that is a follow-up investigation for me to learn a bit more about the magic that has been concocted here.

Coming full circle, my informal “formula” – VP = V*P*A. Without values, where does the value proposition come from? There may be something functional, but in competitive markets, it is hard for this to enduring and distinctive. So, values, activated passionately provide one way to authentic, compelling value propositions. Food for thought if you find your value proposition stale and lack lustre – go back to values.

Much has been written and circulated on the views of Steve Jobs – one of the seductive aspects of the tendency to soundbite or tweet points, and then generalize them, is to make a point that sounds good, but is misleading. Let’s look at what Steve Jobs supposedly said about market research, and what his actions bear out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/technology/companies/19innovate.html?hpw:

<<Shortly before the iPad tablet went on sale last year, Steven P. Jobs showed off Apple’s latest creation to a small group of journalists. One asked what consumer and market research Apple had done to guide the development of the new product. “None,” Mr. Jobs replied. “It isn’t the consumers’ job to know what they want.”>>

I was fortunate to receive a copy of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs as a gift, and I’ve just finished reading it. Firstly, it is an excellent book and worth reading – you can read plenty of other reviews of the book elsewhere. This post is not intended as a comprehensive review, but I was impressed with the “warts and all” approach – I had feared a sugar-coated, hero worship. Indeed, despite being a multi-device Apple user, I came away more persuaded than ever that Jobs was a flawed genius – his first “crash and burn” out of the company in the mid/late 1980s shows his character issues, and it seems remarkable that he managed to build successful companies given his raw interpersonal skills.

Back to market research!

page 54 (late 1970s experience): “He appreciated the user-friendliness of Atari’s insert-quarter-avoid-Klingons games” This two step approach -quick, simple, intuitive – made a big impact on him.

How is this research? It is learning through observing and then interpreting for another purpose. A form of qualitative, ethnographic research, it is messier and less direct, but it is still research. The misunderstanding comes because some people are inclined to equate market research only with surveys, or asking people what they want. There is a time and a place for this type of research, but I think Jobs’ point was that for the type of inventive product that he was interested in, direct, survey type questioning would not work. He may not have called what he did “market research” but within the marketing profession, ethnographic, anthropologically-informed methods are not significant in their use and influence, especially in early stage product and service development, and anything innovative or disruptive.

Further examples from the Jobs biography:

page 70: (1976, while displaying the Apple 1 at a show in New Jersey) “Jobs walked the floor to inspect the competition.” This is a classic,informal and often under-valued form of market research. What is everyone else doing, and how can I learn from it? Not simply to copy, but to change things up so that I stand out and connect with my target.

page 78: (1977, of Mike Markkula’s “The Apple Marketing Philosophy” which Jobs embraced. Principle 1 of 3 was “empathy” and the contention that “we will truly understand (the customers’) needs better than any other company.”

page 96: on competitive intelligence and market research (and buying technology to get ahead) – in 1979, in discussions with Xerox and the PARC research, Jobs offered to let Xerox invest $1 million in Apple, (pre IPO – they were worth $17.6m a year later), if they would “open the kimono at PARC.” He knew they had ground breaking technology in the mouse and GUI but needed to know more about how it was achieved so that he could re-incorporate it in the Apple design.

page 127 & 129: Inspired by the look of CuisineArt kitchen appliances and the Braun products of Dieter Ram, from wandering retail stores, Jobs hired Harmut Esslinger (p132) who had designed for Sony TVs. Jobs persuaded Esslinger to move from Germany to California and lead Apple’s “Designed in California” approach. Again, the market research was not survey or focus group, but based on observation, interpretation and adaptation for a new purpose.

This longer post has deliberately highlighted some specific examples of often overlooked types of market research – even the apparent “geniuses” do not operate in a vacuum. I encourage you to think more broadly about the menu of market research options and not dismiss a whole avenue of work based on some over-generalized claims about a small number of people. You do need to do market research – but you need to choose the right approaches for the right tasks.

As a marketing professional I am a fervent believer in the importance and power of brand names. Yet I have also found myself, at an instinctive level, being somewhat dismissive of job titles – the words that describe a role, and, in turn, the person in the role. Why dismissive? Well, I figured that many titles were static, formal window-dressing, and that people in organizations could decode what was really meant. Lately, I have changed my mind on this. Brands should stand for something and be clear in their communication to their audiences. It is easy, but lazy to label people with generic, commoditized job titles. But then this risks mis-understanding, or places a higher burden on the audience to decode. So, perhaps everyone should write their own job title, or at least a description – tagline if you like – of what they do that is important and different. This could be difficult, controversial and even risky. But it would force people to think about what they really do. What would this mean for me? My official job title is “Instructor” or worse, “Lecturer.” I dislike both of these terms. They are cold, mechanical and imply one-way communication. Whenever I am talking to someone and explaining what I do, I find myself saying, “but I don’t lecture….instead I do xyz.”  What is this “xyz?” What should be on my business card?

My conclusion: NICC.

N = Navigator   I = Interpretor  C = Coach   C = Cheerleader.

There! Feeling better, feeling proud, and communicating clearly about what I do as we march into 2012.

I am involved in several situations at the moment where I see the disconnect between strategy and implementation of the intended strategy. Firstly, let me say that “strategy” is one of the most over-used, abused, diluted words in business. It seems that every job title is framed as “strategic” and many people are happier to “strategize” than to actually make things happen. There is no doubt that strategy is important, but tactics and the simple hard work, effort, sweat and hours of implementing the agreed upon strategy should not be overlooked or under appreciated. What I see is a culture of meetings, e-mails and pushing around of data and responsibility – putting off the apparently hard work of getting things done. Elapse time on projects becomes far greater than actual time required, and procrastination and inefficiency lose the day. So, hear is a shout out for those that “do” – those that are pro-active, get away from their laptops and from meetings and do some of the less glamorous work that actually makes a difference, and makes strategy itself meaningful as implementation steps are taken. So, before you go back to e-mails and meetings – think about what part of your day involved tangible progress on making something happen.

Marketers still struggle as they seek to Better Measure Social Media Success reports eMarketer. Despite marketers focus on engagement goals, measures are still on topline numbers – the ROI challenge has not gone away. The desire for easy metrics remains elusive. Required: thoughtful design of multi-tier metrics that link to meaningful goals.

I got to spend some time browsing Radian6 reports recently. This was in an organization with multiple units looking at different campaigns and goals. I was excited to see the possibilities. However, it was also sobering to see that in practice, the easy reporting remains with topline numbers: mentions, follows, reposts etc. The rich work on sentiment, influence and engagement is resource intensive – skilled people are needed to do the interpretation of the monitoring. They can then use these insights to design responses and pro-active campaigns. This means allocating significant human resources to match the software licence commitment. There is still a long way to go for most organizations to make the most of social media. Expect pressure to come on budgets as Finance VPs press marketers to give more account of ROI on existing investment, and as Marketing VPs press for more funding to hire people to make sense of and take action on the data being gathered. This is not easy or new – I wrote on the topic in Aug 2009 and Jeremiah Owyang wrote a very good post Dec 2010. A teaser graphic from his post shows below – hopefully, this tempts you to read the whole article. In conclusion, this is not a new topic and it is not going away. However, there is some good guidance and you do not have to re-invent the wheel. However, marketers need to provide leadership within their organizations, to educate peers and to make the case for increased investment in people to allow for a meaningful program that connects to an ROI plan that makes sense at multiple levels of goals and measurement. If you have read this far then consider also reading the latest post on metrics from Avinash Kaushik. I don’t read many blog posts that are long-form. But I do read posts by Avinash in full, despite their length. He challenges the nonsense of measuring the wrong things and provides some very real food for thought on how you should design your measurement program. It is not easy, but it is important.

Wow: 1971 must have been quite the year to be in Vancouver.

Greenpeace was founded right here in Vancouver in September 1971. Happy Birthday! More on you, below.

But first, back  to 1971. MEC was also founded that year in Vancouver – see my earlier post. 

I followed-up with a search to find various riots and protests, Led Zep, Gay Rights as the metro population topped one million.

I had a chuckle watching Greenpeace’s low key, online video celebration: “40 years of victories.” Not too dramatic or intense – wry humour that caused the viewer to think about the effects resulting from their campaigns. Marketing efforts should trigger a change in attitude and behaviour. To do this, they first have to get noticed. Greenpeace has mastered guerilla marketing – making  a big impact on a small budget. They did this increasingly well offline, but in digital, and especially social media, they have found their voice and medium. They get that social media is word-of-mouth on steroids, and provides the potential to enable communities of passionate fans to take action. Enjoy the ad.

I’ve been following the Google + versus Facebook developments this summer. The fast rise of G+ users has been much reported, and there is a lot of observation and speculation in many much followed sites – Mashable is a good place to read a collection of reposted views with some commentary.  Why do I like Google+? It is the simple and transparent way in which I can put a contact in one or more circles – just as I would in an offline world. A colleague at work who I know runs – I also add them to my running circle.

What will be interesting to see over the coming months is people’s willingness to run FB and G+ in parallel. Will some people keep both for different purposes? Will the switching costs be a deterrent, or will the opportunity to “start over” be appealing for some?

One of the big advantages that FB has currently is the number and ease of ways in which people can publish to FB at the click of a button. G+ still needs to overcome this – for example, Hootsuite is chomping at the bit to be able to add G+ publishing functionality – indeed, it is the most requested new G+ feature in Google’s own user forums. Here’s hoping! Meanwhile, jump in and play and compare: G+ and FB, for both personal and brand use. Experiment and take a point of view!

Some of you will have noticed that I’ve been playing with paper.li – a simple, free tool that allows aggregation and daily publishing, newspaper style, of the content from those that you follow. But it shows them in longer form than the tweets, “unpacking” from the bit.ly and other links, including video and photos. This makes it quicker and easier to get an overview of content in a usable way without opening links from Twitter directly. I’m hooked. I’ve been looking for examples of organizations using it well. I like what Visit Florida is doing. They showcase their members and partners by following their tweets. It might become problematic if there is a high volume of following, but, so far, this seems like a positive development.

By June 20th (Mon afternoon), Tourism BC did not have any overt reference to the riots on its home page – but had created a separate micro site, http://thisisourvancouver.com/

I’m not sure what to make of this initiative – there are already popular blogs and community sites about what makes Vancouver special, such as http://vancouverisawesome.com/ So, if the new “apology” site is to have much of a life then the community of users will need to shape it into something more long-term that is different from what already exists. Meanwhile, for the rest of the world looking in, read on, below the screenshot…….

So, what about potential visitors considering whether to book and come to Vancouver, or possibly to cancel their summer plans? Over-turned police cars burning in the street…..people might be understandably unsure. So, where do travellers go to get an update on information and advice that they can trust? To the #1 travel website community that they probably used in their initial planning – TripAdvisor. Now, I’m not sure if Tourism  BC and Vancouver Tourism have ignored this by accident, or if they have their finger on the pulse and realize that when the community supports itself then it is better to let members speak, authentically, rather than to jump in with official and formal messaging. Check out the Trip Advisor general questions about Vancouver (June 20th).  One of the two most active question threads are from a potential visitor from Baltimore concerned to know if she should change her plans because of the June 15th riot. See screenshot below, and read on……

Lots of positive comments including from non-Vancouverites, although, unfortunately, it goes a bit sideways on a “hockey is violent” rant.  The second thread is set up by a Vancouverite, but clearly has positive influence on some potential American travellers who read it. Individual operators can sometimes feel the need to jump in and respond quickly to all posts in Trip Advisor, BUT….IF….you have an active, concerned community that is also informed, then you can monitor and stand back.

The shocking, violent, destructive aftermath of the Game 7 loss on June 15th has been sen and heard around the world. Quite the contrast to the first 6 games where large crowds partied happily – and of course the Olympics. If anyone can remember the pre-Olympic criticism of Vancouver was that it was a “no fun city.” Threats of an end to the summer fireworks and other festivals as sponsorship dwindled fuelled a real debate about what sort of city we want. Not a closed down, stay at home, watch on your TV city (see Boston) – but a vibrant, livable, social happening city. After a year of vibrancy and energy Wednesday night saw this vision challenged.

Citizens are rightfully concerned. Those in tourism will be squirming at the thought of the damage done to reputation. We still have to wait and see if visitors cancel planned trips. But, as a minimum, I would expect to see bold statements in the media – and yes, in social media – from a range of people.

Who have we heard from? Mayor Gregor Robertson. Tick. Active in all channels including Twitter on night of troubles.

The Vancouver Canucks or NHL – not yet.

Tourism BC – not yet.

Tourism Vancouver – public apology. See below. Good marks for intent and speed. Saying SORRY – acknowledging wrong-doing is a start.