Posts Tagged ‘transparency’
What have we been saying? In today’s advertising and marketing, TRUTH SELLS. Here’s one more great example. Domino’s profits have just reached an all-time industry mark due to their radically transparent “Oh Yes We Did” campaign about their pizza being, to put it lightly, less-than-the-best.
Domino’s ran commercials and print ads admitting its old pizza sucked. It then introduced a new recipe by showing it to its staunchest critics. It continued the transparency theme by encouraging customers to alert Domino’s when the pizzas they ordered were not up to par. With today’s instant media exposure thanks to Flips, G4 iPhones and good old fashioned video cameras, you can imagine how many Domino’s Pizza haters uploaded their less-than-par pizzas to YouTube.
Russell Weiner, Domino’s CEO at the time the campaign launched, said he was pretty scared but still willing to risk the company’s reputation. “You’re a 50-year-old pizza company with 5,000 stores out there, these guys first tell you to go on air and say your pizza sucks, and then go out there and show how crappy it’s made,” he said. You wonder if Russell Weiner would have taken such a risk if he were not planning on leaving soon after the campaign launched. But after all, whatever happened with the campaign – and the company – would be his legacy, too. Lucky for everyone, it was working well enough that incoming CEO, Patrick Doyle, continued to support the effort with equal gusto.
How does one of a million “New and Improved” campaigns that today’s consumers are numb to have such dramatic success? By shocking people with its honesty and transparency that exposed Domino’s humility and possibility of failure. Patrick Doyle admitted that, if they fail at this endeavor, it could most likely be the end of Domino’s. Year-to-date, same store sales just exceeded 12%. That’s a new record in the pizza business.
Look at your company. Are you even capable of being transparent? If so, are you willing to market your company as flawed, but humble and honest? Most business owners reading this think we’re crazy. But remember, people don’t trust most advertisements. If you can’t get your message past this initially huge roadblock, maybe you’re wasting your money advertising. If, on the other hand, you’re willing to offer your customers some radical transparency, you’ve at least got a shot at breaking through that tough core of consumer mistrust. And when consumers trust you, they become your advocates.
Are you willing to at least think about what it would take? It might not be as scary as it sounds. It’s the way things are going, and getting there first while doing it right could mean an awfully big increase in market share. Something to ponder, eh?
What’s the best way to win advocates for your brand? TRUST. What’s the best way to win trust? Be helpful. What’s the best way to be helpful? Give consumers useful information they wouldn’t expect to get free. Information that will save them time, save them money, make them smarter, make them happier, make them feel better about themselves – and you.
Since its inception, the Nordstrom brand has centered around being helpful, right? Like a phone call telling you they remembered you were looking for shoes to go with the suit you bought last month, and they just got the perfect pair in. Or how about the American Express openforum.com, a free website with tons of information that claims huge success in helping business owners succeed. Oh, and its content contributors are donating their brains and talent at no charge to American Express.
It’s easy to talk about big brands like these, but how about the success some smaller brands are enjoying due to their helpfulness? Like Kellogg Garden Products, with a website full of gardening tips from soil calculators to fun kid gardening activities. Their website Analytics show a huge percentage of visitors time being spent on the pages they’ve built simply to be helpful, and their brand recognition confirms this.
Big or small, these brands understand they must give in order to receive. Paying it forward may end up being the most successful marketing mantra for the 21st Century. The question is, is your brand ready?
This is a great list of 12 short tips on Social Media from Shane Gibson, international speaker and author of several books on Social Media, including his latest, Sociable. For some of us, it’s “the basics”, but it never hurts to be reminded of them.
- Keep giving and contributing more than the competition. Pay back will be huge.
- Every tweet, blog entry, comment and status update will be saved forever and is permanently part of your brand.
- Before permission to market comes permission to connect. There’s a lot of trust building in between.
- Make it easy for people to find you. While you’re out looking for business there is an entire market looking for you.
- It’s not about B2B or B2C it’s about person to person marketing in social media.
- Use the back links function in Google to see who is linking to your competitors. Reach out to those connectors.
- Go wide with social media then build strong deep networks by going deep with the phone, Skype, webinars or in-person.
- Twitter search and tools like Twellow.com can dampen the noise down from millions on voices to the exact ones you’re targeting.
- Picking a fight publicly stays on record long after the battle is done. Rarely is it worth it.
- Not getting the results you want? Are you asking for help often enough? It’s about community. Reach out.
- Share and give more than you think is practical… then do it again. It will build positive momentum for your brand.
- When partnering with other social media influencers start by making sure your values and principles are aligned.
Catchy headline, eh? And what does it have to do with the gift card photo? Everything.
Here’s a quick example. I just had a small family owned air conditioning and heating company, Fisher Air, come out to my house to service our heater (yes, we still use them sometimes in Southern California). They showed up on time, did a nice job, and charged about $75.
Three days later we get a thank you card in the mail with a really nice, credit card quality, $50.00 gift card for their services. But it wasn’t for us. It was to give to a friend or neighbor. And, they noted in the thank you card, when our friend or neighbor uses it, Fisher will send us another one for $100.
Since I already had a feeling of TRUST with the company, I didn’t see this as a scam. I saw it as a genuine effort for a small business to build quality relationships with their customers. So maybe they’ll give up $150 in labor to retain our business and earn another household’s. But how much word-of-mouth (and mouse) might they get in return? A lot more than $150. And a lot more than a $150 ad in some local circular. But remember, they had to have a QUALITY PRODUCT for me to earn their TRUST. And their product was integrity, honesty, kindness, knowledge, efficiency and, oh yes, a reasonable price.
So, you want to save money advertising? Give your customers a gift they didn’t expect. Don’t be cheap. Make it count.
Lots of agencies are afraid to tell their clients it’s time to leave traditional media. But why do they hesitate? Is it because they think traditional media still offers some form of decent ROI? Or is it because they don’t know what to do with the alternative media that’s basically free? Or how to charge for the intense amount of brain power and time it takes?
I guess, for the first time in many years, I feel sorry for agencies bigger than us. They have more to lose so they have more to be afraid of.
My agency has been privileged to work with many companies that have smaller marketing budgets. I never thought I would look at it that way, but in the long run, it’s been the best thing for us. We’ve learned how to squeeze every last drop of marketing lemonade out of lemons. And, when relatively cost-free social media came along requiring transparency and full disclosure, it was nirvana for us. We embraced it quickly, learning when and where it fit in our client’s media mix.
So here’s the litmus test. Will you make enough money by being helpful? Because that’s the core of social media marketing. And can you market your product or business with full transparency? Are you willing to expose your imperfections in return for consumer trust? Don’t think every company will say yes. We’ve had plenty of clients who have had to admit no, they can’t.
The most important question is not about media expenditure comparisons and mathematical equations ending in GRP’s. It’s about a company’s ability to be fully transparent, honestly helpful, and interested enough in their customers that they will always put them first. (aka Zappos).
If you can say yes to all of the above, you’re most likely able to switch over to social media. Sound ridiculous? I dont think so.
I added it up. I now spend an average of 32 hours a week online, mostly after hours (thus the bloodshot eyes) and mostly in my own self-made school of learning from the social media gurus who kindly share so much great information at no cost. I eat it up. And yet, with almost every blog post I devour or podcast I listen to, I am constantly intimidated by all that I don’t know. Compared to Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, Guy Kawasaki, Mitch Joel, and CC Chapman (just to name a few) I am in social media pre-school.
But that’s OK. Because I still share their greatest power – and so do you. It’s the understanding that truthfulness, transparency and sincerity work. That’s really it. They know it, they preach it, and they’re creating some of the greatest business success stories in history with it.
How we ever went so far away from truth in marketing and advertising, I’ll never know. But with 28 years in the business I have to admit I’ve probably donated to the dark side. In fact, I can clearly recall conversations with clients over the years where transparency was considered too risky and, besides, did we really need to be sincere when we had (insert celebrity name here) doing our next commercial?
No more.
Thanks to too much media, too much razzle-dazzle, and too much abuse of consumer trust, those days are long gone. We’ve come full circle back to a wonderful place that is the nucleus of social media’s marketing power.
So next time you feel overwhelmed by all you’re hearing, reading and seeing about social media, don’t fall into the insecurity trap of “I don’t know code so I’ll never understand Social Media”. Go to your gut. Think of a world that does business by sharing the truth. Use that as your foundation for learning. Everything else will fall into place.
