The Extraordinary Experience*

Starbucks to refocus on the experience

This is what Howard Schutz (their CEO) says in a memo sent company-wide a few weeks ago:

"Over the past ten years, in order to achieve the growth, development, and scale necessary to go from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond, we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have lead to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand.

Examples of decisions that helped watering the brand down include:

“flavor locked packaging” causing “The loss of aroma, perhaps the most powerful non-verbal signal we had in our stores.”

Automatic espresso machines “solved a major problem in terms of speed of service and efficiency. At the same time, we overlooked the fact that we would remove much of the romance and theatre.”. Customers can no longer enjoy an “intimate experience with the barista.”

The Stores’ design no longer has the ‘soul of the past’ and looks sterile instead.

Every week, one can read dozens of articles bragging about Starbucks’ financial success, outstanding marketing, sought-after working environment…and so forth. I am glad to see there CEO himself confessing the need to refocus on the consumer’s experience. At $4 or $5 a pop, Starbucks is expected to deliver an outstanding consumer experience on top of a paper cup, or it won’t take 10 years to move from 13,000 to 1,000 stores and below.

Taco Bell/KFC has a lot of work to do towards improving its customers' experience

Ben Mc Connell gives a talk on Citizen Marketers

For those of you who don’t know them yet, Ben Mc Connell and Jackie Huba are speakers, consultants and the authors of Citizen Marketers, when people are the message. I was lucky enough to attend Ben’s presentation of the book this week at the Chicago BMA (Business Marketing Association) chapter. By the way, Ben and Jackie are on a book tour all over the US until May, you will find more info at: http://www.churchofthecustomer.com/blog/2007/01/quick_update_on.html.

I wanted to share with you the key points covered by Ben, before you desert my blog to visit theirs and buy the book!

48 million people create content in the US. Many of them do so through online communities such as My Space, You Tube and so forth. These ‘amateurs’ (they are not journalists or practitioners) constitute ‘the amateur culture’. When the amateur culture meets traditional marketing, amateurs become citizen marketers. The democratisation of the Internet and the rise of broadband have boosted the growth of this group.

Word of mouth generated through these ‘social media’ (where people can talk to one another) has become much more powerful than messages broadcasted on TV, radio or in newspapers.

Furthermore, with so many people creating content, ‘control is now out of control’. This obliges companies to communicate as carefully with citizen marketers as with journalists.

Finally, these social media are ruled by inequality, as only 1% of users engage in creating content. For example, a blog with 100,000 readers might expect to receive contributions from only 1,000 of them. I already feel better about the number of people contributing to mine!

One airport concourse that is worth walking through

As a matter of fact, many airports are a dull and ill-decorated. More importantly, one wastes so much time going through security, connecting between flights, and finding his car in the parking lot. On the top of my list of worst airports is London Heathrow. Commuting between downtown London and Heathrow will take you an hour, regardless if you take a train, bus, taxi, underground, or limo (admittedly, I have yet to experienced this commute in a helicopter, flying saucer or presidential convoy). Going through security might take another hour, under the tight supervision of condescending and rude security staff.

One airport has made tremendous effort in making the traveller's experience extraordinary. Welcome to the Mc Namara terminal at Detroit Metro Airport. Above your head is a electric train that allows you to go from one end of the terminal to the other within no time. Should you stay at the Westin hotel, you may check in and go through security in the hotel lobby; just past the metal detector is the terminal itself! But the most impressive bit is certainly the Northwest Airlines’ Concourse A and Concourse B & C. Lights and sound effects in this tunnel are so impressive that you feel like walking through one (or 2, or 3) more time. A good slide show is available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/sets/72157594144810872/. My advice is to arrive at Mc Namara well before your flight, so that you can enjoy wandering in the terminal.

River West Brands revitalizes dormant brands

RWB is an brand acquisition firm that focuses on reviving dormant brands through a different business model.  One which involves acquiring the rights to the dormant brands. The process involves revitalizing the brand by giving it a modern relevance and recreating a business model adapted to today’s market place. RWB teams up with manufacturers, retailers and designers in order to create a successful strategy. RWB claims to assume most, if not all of the necessary costs and time and gets compensated mostly through royalties. Sometimes, RWB takes an equity stake in the companies it works for. Other services include brand representation and creating brands for manufacturers, retailers and distributors. In a nutshell, RWB is another good example of a firm that could hardly be more involved in delivering ROI, instead of only charging design and ideas.

See also: www.riverwestbrands.com

Ogilvy teams up with Technocrati to build stronger brands

Ogilvy North America will soon offer its clients a means to strengthen their brands through blogs, vlogs, videos, photos, and other citizen media. The Technorati Conversational Marketing System will allow for the syndication of content, online conversations with clients, and facilitate the building of relationships with online communities that are relevant to Ogilvy’s clients. This wide range of strategic tools ultimately enables Ogilvy to build web sites, advertising, and links to blog posts associated with the brands.

The selling point is that they will be able to deliver an authentic, personal message across the internet by reaching influential communities and bloggers. While the whole offer sounds really exciting to me, it (once again) sheds light on the ethical debate surrounding viral marketing. Thing about promoting brands ‘authentically’ by infiltrating conversations between influential bloggers? I’d better to go and check my voicemail; these guys from Ogilvy must have called me by now…

Pros, Cons and Tips in conducting market research in SecondLife

SecondLife is an Internet-based virtual world developed by Linden Lab that seems to be taking the market research industry by storm. In the past year, the community grew from 100,000 to 2.8 million members.

Two market research firms Market Truths and Reperes, already have Second Life offices. In addition, Market Tools and Social Research Foundation are now teaming up to conduct online focus groups in the online virtual world.

Pros

Unlike other Internet-based games such as World of Warcraft, Second Life is an economy (based on the Linden Dollar). In a recent interview, François Abiven, Reperes’ CEO  emphasizes the relevance of this economy for brands (many of them already opended stores in Second Life), hence the relevance of conducting research.

Data can be downloaded from the online environment, saving plenty of time and costs in transcription.

Incentives in second life are paid in Linden Dollars, a much cheaper currency than the US Dollars that have to be paid to real life focus groups participants. The cost for a 2 hours group in the US these days can be up to $200 per respondent! And this is for easy to reach, laundry soap users

In SecondLife, Fieldwork can be conducted on an ongoing basis, as the researcher does not really ever leave the field. This allows checking out the validity of the findings with members of the community at any time, even while the report is being written. 

Cons

The respondent’s dual identity (one real and one virtual) is a methodological challenge for the researcher. Indeed, respondents may have several identities with a same community, or across multiple communities (Caterall and Maclaran, 2001)

The profile of the respondent is unknown beyond his (probable) age and gender.

Caterall and Maclaran (2001) bring to light limitations in

The lack of paralinguistic cues,

The lack of control of the moderator over the interview

Less spontaneity in respondent’s reactions

Top tip: the virtual community must be accepted for what it is, rather than trying fitting traditional research methods to the virtual world.

References:

See also the findings of an exploratory study from Reperes on how SecondLife is perceived by its residenthttp://www.reperes-secondlife.com/image/SL_perceived_residents.pdf

And an interview of F. Abiven (in French): http://marketingisdead.blogspirit.com/archive/2006/12/11/un-institut-d’etudes-sur…-second-life.html

Caterall, M. and Maclaran, P. (2001) Researching consumers in virtual odyssey, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, Vol. 1 (3), pp. 228-237.

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Fahrenheit 212 takes responsibility for its clients' bottom line

Fahrenheit 212 is an innovation agency founded by advertising veterans. Their philosophy is called Idea Led Innovation.  This philosophy involves finding new ideas and coming up with new products using the client’s existing assets (for example: a production plant).  Step 1: They fully immerse themselves in the client’s problems, its market environment and assets. Also at this stage an agreement is made with the client about how the agency should be rewarded.  Generally, a significant share of Fahrenheit 212’s earnings is based on its results. Step 2: The agency comes up with ideas that could be deployed quickly. Step 3: The ideas are selected and the feasibility and costs are assessed. Step 4: Fahrenheit 212 helps with the graphic and industrial design.  Most importantly, it then assists its clients with building a marketing strategy and a sales pitch for the new product. In a nutshell, Fahrenheit 212 is a compromise between a traditional innovation agency, a branding agency and a marketing consultancy, with a fee structure inspired by the Payment By Result model. It looks like these guys have a clear competitive advantage...

The key characteristics of lovemarks

This is a cool deck that brings to light the key characteristics of lovemarks . Thanks to Brand Autopsy. Enjoy...

Perfume brands deliver an extraordinary experience by creating bespoke perfumes.

Perfume brands work hard to build an identity, add value and create a branded experience in general (They’d better have a good story to tell as there is usually not much inside the little bottle). Now a few brands are going the extra mile by delivering extraordinary experiences and building one to one relationship with their clients.

Thierry Mugler has created four workshops, which are led by industry experts and allow the delegates to learn how a perfume is created.  They also allow the delegates to learn the language, emotions and secrets associated with the product.

Guerlain offers to create a bespoke perfume through several one to one appointments with the client.  Thus, allowing for the creation of an elaborate and unique ‘jus’ to suit her personality. Interestingly, these one to one sessions don’t only focus on the sense of smell, but involve having clients choose among pictures and fabrics that best describe their personality. Creating the perfume takes from 6 months to one year. I trust the perfume could be created in a few days or weeks, but simulated shortage helps with building exclusivity and justifying the price tag: 30,000 Euros (about $35,000) for 3 litres.