Church of the Customer: Companies behaving badly archives
March 03, 2008
Out of Vocus
My friend Virginia will be on the forthcoming SXSW panel "10 Easy Ways To Piss Off A Blogger" and asked for an example to use during the discussion. Instead, I'll blog about one.
I've had many anger-inducing run-ins with a company called Vocus, a software firm that sells access to its database of journalists and media outlets so companies can pitch them.
Vocus first came into focus last year with the release of a white paper called "Five Golden Rules for Blogger Relations." Rule number one in the Vocus paper: "Don't spam bloggers." In a classic PR blunder, Vocus spammed bloggers to tell them about the paper that instructed them not to spam bloggers.
Undaunted, Vocus powered on in its spam-like ways by adding the contact information of bloggers to its system. A few months ago, without warning, I've been spammed regularly by Vocus clients like the Virginia Tourism Board and Eight O'Clock Coffee, telling me about some wonderful new campaign. I will use this space to say to the Virginia Tourism Board and Eight O'Clock Coffee: Please, get a clue.
Once you're in the Vocus system, it gets Kafka-esque. Bloggers can unsubscribe from Vocus PR spam, but from the spamming client only. Other Vocus clients can, and will, spam you because you are still in their main database. This takes "captive audience" to a new level and seems like a possible violation of CAN-Spam laws.
Four times in four months I used the contact info on the Vocus website (info@vocus.com) to ask for full removal. No reply to any email. Finally, I called Vocus' main number and asked to speak with someone. Julie returned my call 30 minutes later and promised to remove my name from their system. It seemed like a good time to ask Julie about Vocus' practices:
- How do bloggers get added to the database? Vocus monitors top blogs in certain categories then adds their contact information to the database. Without permission, I asked? Yes, she said. Most bloggers are OK with that, she said. How does she know if they don't ask first?
- Why couldn't I opt out entirely? We're working on that, she said, and promised to investigate why no one responded to my four emails.
Julie also said a client could have copied my email address from the system and might continue to send me emails. Lovely.
Hey Vocus clients, such as Scottrade, People's Energy, and Southwest Airlines: You should know that Vocus has simply tacked an old-world model of media relations onto the new-world model of blogging. Vocus doesn't get it. I'm hoping that you do and you'll tell Vocus to clean up their act.
UPDATE(3/11/08): Just got an email from the Director of PR for the Virginia Tourism Board who apologized and said she was also contacting Vocus to make sure my info is removed from their system. Nice to see they are listening to comments about them in the blogosphere : )
February 04, 2008
Selling word of mouth
Watch out for taxi drivers in London. They may be doing double-duty as secret salespeople.
The company that sells ads on the outside of the car hopes to sell what happens inside, by paying cabbies to secretly talk up products.
Monetizing person-to-person conversations is simply another form of spam, lacking merit, value or ethics.
January 03, 2008
Is a shoplifter a customer?
Here's a stupid rule Whole Foods could eliminate in 2008: Automatic firing for touching a customer.
Here's why: Store employee on break gives chase to shoplifter. Catches shoplifter. Store manager orders employee to release shoplifter, who then gets away.
Employee is fired for violating the "never touch a customer" rule.
(Thanks, Bill!)
November 29, 2007
The worst product in the world
Taser.
Its reason for being is simple: When citizens don't immediately cooperate or follow instructions, police officers or people in authority positions simply shock them into submission with a searing jolt of electricity.
Even pregnant women who are clearly in distress.
November 28, 2007
It's still the customer experience
One of the world's best word-of-mouth and customer evangelism success stories, Starbucks is launching its first national advertising campaign. [See the spots here.]
Why advertise? Because store visits are down 1% from same time last year. The stock price is falling. You could say that Starbucks is officially middle-aged. It's no longer the exciting whippersnapper.
Is that because Starbucks has finally reached a saturation point? Or is it more complicated, the result of a series of decisions that has compromised its roots of authenticity?
I believe it's the latter. To save money, Starbucks has:
- Switched from hand-pulled espresso shots to automatic espresso machines.
- Eliminated the aroma of ground fresh coffee in stores in lieu of "flavor locked packaging."
- Streamlined store designs; today, they lack the customized funky cool of yore.
Starbucks wants to please Wall Street, so it's chasing the P/E carrot by opening stores at breakneck speed. To exploit new revenue sources, Starbucks has:
- Delved into movie producing.
- Launched a record label.
- Started selling shelf space for book promotions.
With this new-revenue recipe, coffee is the appetizer to the big pie of entertainment. Eureka: store visitors are captive audiences. Turn up the Marketing Machine. When you start dreaming of monetizing seats or places in line, you change the nature of what you once delivered.
Will a brand-building TV ad campaign make people visit stores more often? Probably not. Some think the ads might drive people into competitors' stores.
Starbucks is a beloved brand because of the quality of the store experience. Period. End of story. Slurp! It took years for McDonald's to re-learn that.
November 21, 2007
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
It was a year ago that the Webby Awards recognized pop star Prince as "a visionary who recognized early on that the Web would completely change how we experience music." Now the Purple One has decided that citizen marketers are members of the axis of evil.
It began this September, when Prince said he would sue YouTube, eBay and other sites for encouraging copyright violations with his music. That means everyday people who lip-synch his songs or use them as background music are going to get served. Even babies shaking their booties to "Let's Go Crazy" drives Prince nuts.
But then it got crazier. Prince's lawyers recently sent cease and desist letters to Prince fan sites, demanding they remove all photographs, images, lyrics, album covers and anything linked to Prince's likeness. Even photos of Prince-inspired tattoos and license plates were off-limits, they said.
But the age of the citizen marketer does not mean blind obedience. Fan sites banded together to form a protest site: PrinceFansUnited.com, or PFU. Yes, Prince fans formed a site to protest Prince. Strange, certainly. But they argue, correctly, that the Prince-inspired content they create is within the laws regarding freedom of speech and fair use. They want Prince to reconsider his position. If not, they say, they'll defend their position in court.
If that wasn't enough, things took a turn for the weirder on Nov. 8 when Prince sent the protesters a song called "PFUnk" (MP3 here). In it, Prince calls fans "punks" and "turncoats." Sample lyric: "The only reason u say my name Is 2 get ur 15 secs of fame." (Lyrics here). Either way, there's a lot of FU going on.
To top all of that off like a purple cherry, the objects of his derision say "PFUnk" is one of Prince's best songs in years.
We're usually not surprised when overly lawyered companies attack against fans who freely promote and market their products. The mechanics of message management have largely withered away, which frightens those accustomed to dictating relationships.
But this is the "visionary" Prince, whose "New Power Generation" band seemed an apt metaphor for a seismic shift in the creation of and influence of music.
When Prince waged a public battle with his record label years ago over who owned his music, it was a fight of musician vs. big, money-hungry corporation that would capture most of his earnings. Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and etched "slave" onto the side of his face as protest. Rock on! Fight the power!
But now it's big rock star vs. the new, new power generation, the 1 Percenter fans who have the power to influence multiple layers of other fans.
Who knows if all of this is an evil-genius plan to manufacture controversy or simply a sign of a middle-aged man turning fuddy-duddy. No matter the outcome, it seems that Prince has become what he once despised.
October 30, 2007
Fakers are bad for business
People hate fakers when it comes to buying stuff. In fact, more than half of the people asked for a recent survey said they avoid buying from a company if they even suspect a paid professional is secretly behind the review of a typical, everyday person.
This comes from PR firm Burson-Marsteller and its new study about "e-fluentials," people who are more likely to share their opinions and experiences with others because they typically speak with 50% more people than the average person every day. About 30% of the survey's respondents said fake reviews are a big problem, compared with 20% in 2001. That rise in concern largely mirrors the findings of a recent Nielsen study.
To keep momentum building for user-generated content sites, at least two things should happen pretty quickly:
- Opinion sites must dramatically improve vetting systems for reviewers. Amazon set the standard a few years ago with its Real Name functionality. It's time for the biggies like Yelp, Trip Advisor, and CitySearch to step up.
- Companies of any size, in any industry, must understand that giving yourself glowing reviews using fake names (or hiring or encouraging others to create fake reviews) is not only unethical but bad for business. The amateur Internet detectives always find out. Of course, they're not shy about sharing their findings.
October 10, 2007
Please hammer, don't hurt 'em
Following up on fun with Comcast:
Mona Shaw, a 75-year-old granny in Virginia, got so fed up waiting for Comcast to change her phone service that she smashed up a few items in her local Comcast office with a hammer, all the while shouting, "Have I got your attention now?!"
Let's hope.
And 16 months later, Brian's infamous "sleeping Comcast technician" video is still going strong. It's now been viewed more than 1 million times. Google "Comcast" and the video still shows up on the first page of results.
For most companies, these would be iconic stories that would illustrate how bad word of mouth eventually devastated them.
But Comcast isn't like most companies.
September 06, 2007
The Marie Digby head-fake
With a few million views of her homemade music videos on YouTube apparently leading to a rash of TV appearances and a song being featured in a high-profile MTV show, musician Marie Digby seems to be the latest break-out amateur star discovered by the grassroots.
But in another example of how shortcuts on the road to authenticity eventually lead to a cliff, the WSJ tells us in a page-one story that Digby's do-it-yourself music videos were part of her record company's carefully crafted plan to feign amateur status. It's the amateurs who often benefit the most from grassroots-driven word of mouth in our social-media world.
Digby never disclosed her record label affiliation as she worked her way through the world of social media, an important consideration for many music lovers in the search for Artists Who Matter. Digby's MySpace page checkbox for "record label" was blank until the Journal started asking questions (now it says "major" for "record label.") At a recent gig in Los Angeles attended by her own record company executives, Digby said of her YouTube videos, "I just turned on my little iMovie, and here I am!" Nifty-presto!
The fuller story was that her record label, Hollywood Records, had signed her 18 months ago, gave her a Mac, consulted with her on what songs to videotape and even created a studio-level recording of "Umbrella" to post to iTunes.
So Hollywood did what Hollywood does: it airbrushed out parts of reality to create a better illusion, and Digby played along. The grassroots bought it, just as it did for another nubile amateur-out-of-nowhere, Lonelygirl15. Like that young and sweet-faced ingenue, Digby had plenty of professional, behind-the-scenes help.
But if Lonelygirl15 taught us anything (she was quite the precocious type) it's that once the facade of amateur status is broken, a significant portion of the grassroots crowd feels duped. Buzz built on trust dissipates.
When it was announced this summer that Lonelygirl15 was killed off -- she was sacrificed by a cult for her blood... yeah, happens every day around here! -- the world yawned and scratched itself.
Young singer-songwriter Marie Digby is, after all, a real person but launching a promising career (or product, or company) with such careless consideration for authenticity demonstrates remarkably poor judgment about the nature of word of mouth.
Update: Buzz built on trust dissipates because disappointed or even angry buzz can be toxic. There's plenty of the latter spreading hours after the Journal's story appeared. A few of the comments now on Digby's YouTube profile page:
- "It was a lousy thing to do to her true fans."
- "Thanks for selling us out to the corporate machine and lying about who you actually are."
- "The very *reason* so many of us liked her was *because* we thought she wasn't a fabrication of corporate marketers."
- "Building your career on a lie, instead of trusting your own talents and abilities enough to let them do the talking, it won't pay, not in the long run."
Digby has talent and her evangelists are trying to neutralize the naysayers, creating a classic showdown in the theater we cover. Too early to tell if all of this will harm or help her career. After all, publicity built on controversy requires the context of purposeful intent; Marie Digby isn't Madonna, Marilyn Manson or even Mark Cuban, intent on changing the game.
The real point here is that as Bob Dylan once sang, "To live outside the law, you must be honest."
August 14, 2007
Control is (still) out of control
When everyone is a publisher, a broadcaster or a community organizer, the remaining few who cling to withering models of control and censorship may as well put themselves on the endangered species list.
That's why when they suddenly appear, we stop and stare as if they've just been run over on a busy downtown street.
Like the wreck created by this producer of technology events. It threatened to ban journalists and bloggers from their events if they hosted their own post-event party or gathering.
All because David Berlind at ZDNet wanted to host his own after-party with computers and wifi (and free food and drinks) so company exhibitors and journalists could meet, talk and get more info for their stories, including photos and video. All, basically, that would promote the event.
After the company issued its threat, Berlind retorted with a scathing blog post calling on tech journalists to boycott future events. A competitor, ShowStoppers, recognized the opportunity and issued an open invitation for Berlind to organize any gathering he would like after their events. Touche.
As Berlind says, "With the blogosphere and the Net operating on a need for speed basis, [ShowStoppers founder Steve Leon] understands how perfectly complementary a physical social networking event... would be to his events."
Then there's the story of a little-known organization called Morality in Media, a conservative religious group that the New York Times says has been hired by the U.S. government to harvest and review complaints about "obscene matter" on the Internets for possible prosecution. A congressional earmark funds the group's existence, another one of those head-shaking government funding stories.
Other than collect names (and money), Morality in Media has had zero effect. How could it? With over a billion world citizens online, message control or content evaluations imposed by the government, big corporations or just about anyone else has never been weaker. Like ShowStoppers, the blogs and video-sharing sites merely scoot around anything that bows to censorship pressure.
Control has been redirected to the people, no matter how wrong or dangerous that seems to the remaining few.
(Hat tip to Darin Velin for telling us about David Berlind.)
July 31, 2007
A different kind of pigskin
The National Football League takes in over $7 billion per year. I admit, I contribute to that astounding number. I'm a big football fan (go Steelers!)
But the league's wheels seem to be coming off. One of its stars stands accused of despicable crimes of to-the-death dog-fighting. Some of its players are routinely in and out of jail. It refuses to acknowledge a link between players' concussions and their frequent mid-life dementia. It can't be bothered to pay adequate pensions for retired players. This season, it will limit the amount of time web media outlets can show game highlights to 45-seconds. The league has gotten so big and powerful that perhaps it's incapable of recognizing the boundaries of arrogance.
But the latest kicker, if you will, is this: The league is placing advertising space on the backs of photojournalists who cover the game. This season, photographers for local and national media will be required to sport red vests emblazoned with logos of Reebok and Canon.
Local media outlets, the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the National Press Photography Association are outraged. It's easy to see why. It amounts to unwanted shilling.
The photojournalists are not employees of the NFL. Why should they be made to follow the NFL's field-level marketing machine? It creates unwanted conflicts of interest between journalism and advertising.
The NFL says the vests will make it easier for security to identify credentialed photographers on the sidelines. Fine. Take off the logos.
I fear this multi-billion dollar organization is destroying the game I love with a greed-driven mania to monetize every square inch of its reach. Even Advertising Age magazine calls the logoed vest idea "ridiculous."
If you feel the same and want to send a message to the NFL, go here.
June 05, 2007
Anatomy of the new customer complaint meme
Delivering shoddy service or selling defective products happens, but there's nowhere to hide from unhappy customers who use social media to highlight a problem you've created and refuse to address.
If the story pings its way across enough blogs, the traditional media quickly notice and happily amplify the story.
The latest example is that of CompUSA customer and blogger Terry Heaton who bought a digital camera from a store's liquidation sale only to find out at home that it was empty box. Let's recount the series of events:
June 2: Terry posts on his blog the response he got from the CEO's office about his empty box problem. A CompUSA exec tells Terry that he should have inspected the box before taking it home and all sales are final. Never mind that Terry was a longtime CompUSA customer and had spent $3,500 that day at the liquidation sale.
June 3: The Lost Remote blog writes about Terry's story. 211 people comment.
June 4: The story is posted to Digg where it's digg'd 2,607 times with 210 comments and rises to the number 2 story in the Digg Business section.
June 4: The story hits the front page of BoingBoing.
June 4: CNET.com mentions the story in their video show "The Queue."
June 4: Over 50 blogs write about Terry's story.
June 5: Terry finally gets a call from CompUSA apologizing for the situation and promising a $300 gift certificate from the store.
June 5: Terry's story is on the front page of FoxNews.com, with the caption "Image problem."
Image problem on the outside and a marketing education problem on the inside. Other than the soft-headed explanation that Terry should have the checked the box before he left the store, this story illustrates why companies need to be word-of-mouth and social-media smart if they're going to avoid PR problems like this.
Hat tip to Steve Safran of Lost Remote for the heads up.
February 14, 2007
Apple's attack dogs, pt. 256
Mike points us to a story in Des Moines in which Apple has sent a cease-and-desist order to a local bar demanding it stop using the name iPod Mondays, an event designed for iPod evangelists to gather and share their playlists.
ipod Mondays had been an event for a few years, and the bar owner said he'd received the blessings of a number of Apple employees.
Arguments over trademark ownership and enforcement can last longer than a bad opera, yet scores of ad-hoc, citizen-created communities have established reliable precedent that using a company's well-known trademark (tivocommunity.com and mini2.com are two easy examples who have tens of thousands of visitors) does not necessarily harm or dilute a trademark.
February 07, 2007
Visual doublespeak?
If you visit SkyWest Airlines' website, you'll see a boast that it was the "#1 on-time mainland airline." Only problem is, that was three years ago, for 2004.
Today, the Department of Transportation said SkyWest was the worst-performing airline for being on time during December 2006. Remarkably, of the five most-delayed flights, four were late 100% of the time.
1. SkyWest Airlines flight 4047 from Aspen, CO to Salt Lake City – late 100% of the time
2. SkyWest Airlines flight 4055 from Dallas/Fort Worth to Salt Lake City – late 100% of the time
3. SkyWest Airlines flight 4022 from Salt Lake City to Steamboat Springs, CO – late 100% of the time
4. SkyWest Airlines flight 4053 from New Orleans to Salt Lake City – late 100% of the time
5. SkyWest Airlines flight 5800 from Aspen, CO to Chicago O’Hare – late 94.44% of the time
A three-year-old award for timeliness doesn't mean much when the principal says today you've been the most tardy kid in the class.
February 05, 2007
How to create bad PR
Send a blogger and activist a snide cease-and-desist letter. That'll get attention.
That's what the National Pork Board did recently when it sent an Ohio mother, blogger and breastfeeding activist a cease-and-desist letter because she was selling t-shirts on CafePress.com with the slogan "The Other White Milk."
The Board demanded that Jennifer Laycock dismantle her store because her slogan infringed on its own slogan of "Pork: the other white meat." Her online store was set up as a fundraiser for a local breast milk bank. But that wasn't simply enough for the Pork Board; it snidely accused her of promoting breastfeeding as something "beyond infant consumption." Any sane person can tell clearly from her site that she's not. Besides, parody laws are meant to protect free speech.
So Jennifer asked her readers to spread the word about the letter, and they did. More than 300 (mostly supportive) readers reported they'd sent her story to local news outlets, Oprah, The Today Show and others. Many said they sent angry emails to the Pork Board and its law firm. Several exposed the Board's apparent hypocrisy in going after Jennifer by finding plenty of other long-lived t-shirt parodies of "the other white meat" on CafePress.
The Pork Board apparently hasn't paid attention to its peer group, the California Milk Processor Board. Its "Got Milk?" campaign has been parodied and copied everywhere, and the Milk Processor Board simply does nothing.
When parodies of your slogan propagate, it's a sign that it has struck a nerve in popular culture. A parody may mock your original intentions, but it's also a reflection of your influence. Better to smile and and take it. Parodies are ephemeral.
Jennifer reports that whithering criticism directed at the Pork Board eventually caused its CEO to apologize for the letter with a promise to work toward a resolution. Smart move. No one at the Pork Board wants to be called swine.
[Thanks to Shawn Pearson for the heads-up on the story.]
January 12, 2007
Not-so-secret shopper
Paul McEnany discovers a hot mess at a department store, and documents quite a lot of it with his cellphone camera.
Here's the thing: 156 million Americans use high-speed cellphone networks that allow them to take pictures like this and post them immediately to a blog where, naturally, they can spread.
Pew estimates that 41 percent of American cellphone owners use their phones as content creation tools. That translates into about 64 million people in the U.S. alone who have the potential to be not-so-secret shoppers.
Update: In the comments, Paul asks: How should Kohl's (the department store in question) respond? It's one thing to thank a customer for pointing out sloppy work, which Kohl's did, but should the company do anything else?
If Kohl's had an organized customer community, or at least a blog, it could write an effective mea culpa. Something self-deprecating, with a pledge to keep their stores a bit more neat and tidy.
If Kohl's was feeling really ambitious, it would embrace the future of cellphone-toting, not-so-secret shoppers and encourage them to report stores that are hot messes.
So long as Kohl's admits it's not perfect and it occasionally resembles Britney Spears on a bad night, it can score points by talking and behaving less like a corporation and more like a company of people.
January 08, 2007
Who says ED ads are tacky?
This still from a TV ad shows a lighthouse as a very anatomically correct metaphor for the benefits of a drug that treats erectile dysfunction.
Subtle!
January 03, 2007
General Bob ships out
CEO Bob Nardelli is out at Home Depot.
During his six-year stint as CEO, the company's stock price rose a total of about 1 percent. That's what you get for decimating a great company's entrepreneurial, problem-solving culture and replacing it with a militaristic, just-follow-orders culture.
Businessweek tried to prop Nardelli up in a fawning cover story last year, despite its rather keen observation that Nardelli had never won over employees and probably never would. In the Nardelli world, correlations like happy employees equal happy customers was too touchy-feely. Inspiration wasn't measurable or militarily precise, even though Nardelli never served in the armed forces. His vision of military precision was largely out of synch with what most on-the-ground soldiers actually experience: a lot of improvising in the face of unforeseen circumstances. Executives can talk about military-like precision until their heads explode, but it doesn't mean jack to employees who are treated like mindless grunts. Unhappy employees are guaranteed to create unhappy customers.
Indeed, Nardelli was done in by ridding the company of a huge roster of veteran full-timers and replacing them with battalions of part timers -- all in the name of saving money, but the company certainly didn't save money with Nardelli's royal pay package: estimated to be $330 million over six years. Nardelli's royal compensation attracted the ire of institutional investor-activists like Ralph Whitworth, who'd spent the last six months campaigning against Nardelli, saying Nardelli's baron-like paychecks and emphasis on new businesses was killing the company's core operations.
Arthur Blank was probably thinking he got a good deal by snagging Nardelli from GE when Jeffrey Immelt beat him out for GE's top job. So while Immelt melds GE into a more customer-focused organization by adopting measurements like Fred Reichheld's very customer-evangelism focused Net Promoter system, Nardelli was busy being the Donald Rumsfeld of retail.
Don't cry for Nardelli, though. He's getting $210 million to leave behind the mess he created.
December 18, 2006
Moods can be viruses
I broke my glasses last week. Poof, one arm snapped off. Since I was on the road, I had to wear glasses that featured an ugly torniquet of clear tape for a few days. Yech.
Back home, I called the store where I bought my glasses to order a replacement arm.
A replacement would take a few days, a clerk told me. Was there anything she could do to help in the meantime, I asked. No problem, she said with confidence. She could take the arm of a sample pair and put it on my broken pair to use for the weekend. Excellent! She was my hero.
I drove to the store. My hero clerk was there. A different clerk asked with an accusatory air why I didn't have a back-up pair of glasses. The mood inside the store grew dark, and now my hero clerk had a choice to make: Quietly assume command of the situation and continue to be my hero, or follow the lead of her compatriot and pile blame on me for my problem. It's the same, split-second choice millions of employees make every day. What's the more beneficial decision: supporting my compatriots whom I see every day, or the lone customer with the problem?
Moods are viruses, and my hero clerk was quickly infected: "It is against our policy to loan you this sample arm, and we will only do this this one time," she said. On her own, the hero-clerk's intuition was to go beyond the norm. But the dark matter of mood was too much. It often is.
December 01, 2006
Weighty Marketing Matters '06
It's time for our second annual Weighty Marketing Matters, where we weigh the total amount of unwanted, unsolicited catalogs our household receives during the holiday season.
You may recall from last year's slothfest that we took in 14 pounds of catalogs between Nov. 21 and Dec. 22, 2005.
This year, the weigh-in started off with a thud on Nov. 20. In less than two weeks, the spam scale has topped a fatuous 19 pounds, shattering last year's benchmark. Nineteen pounds of pure marketing fat.
Early multiple offenders include Crate & Barrel, J. Crew, Pottery Barn, Nordstrom and Harry & David, all of whom have sent three catalogs each. So far.
We'll do a final weigh-in on Dec. 22. That is, if the tally is less than 50 pounds. That's as high as the scale goes.
Update: I should point out that I'm not opposed to catalogs per se, I'm opposed to catalog spam. I receive a few catalogs to which the company has thoughtfully obtained my permission, and those are not included in the final weigh-in.
October 24, 2006
Ticketmaster: clueless or evil?
Ticketmaster, the largest seller of event tickets worldwide, is a consistent spammer. Years ago I bought tickets from its website. Even though I have unsubscribed from the company's email list at least 10 times this year, Ticketmaster still sends me several emails per month.
The first few times I was duped into resubscribing to its emails at the same time I was unsubscribing. Click on "Unsubscribe From ALL" and the user interface AUTOMATICALLY check the boxes for "TicketAlert" and "Special Event-Related Offers," automatically subscribing you to stuff you want to unsubscribe from. A few weeks later, another Ticketmaster email arrives and the process starts all over again.
This is either a case of programming incompetence or unethical marketing. Note that Ticketmaster's Ethics Code doesn't not cover this at all (PDF.)
I have since learned to uncheck the first two boxes when I unsubscribe, but I am STILL getting emails from Ticketmaster. Anyone else having this problem? If so, what can we/should we do about it?
UPDATE (10/27/06): Just received another email, TicketAlert, from Ticketmaster. I'm going to unsubscribe again and use this post to track this saga.
UPDATE (11/03/06): After unsubscribing, I just received a "ticketAlert" email from Ticketmaster. I'm going to unsubscribe again.
UPDATE (11/10/06): And yet another email. Unsubcribing again.
UPDATE (2/12/07): I've stopped receiving the emails. It must have been a few weeks ago that they stopped and I didn't notice. Today I received a very nice email from a Ticketmaster marketing associate asking if I was still receiving the emails and volunteering to look into it if I was. Very cool.
September 09, 2006
McDonald's blog not open for discussion
McDonald's has come under fire for distributing 42 million toy Hummers as the prize in a Happy Meal promotion with GM this summer. Environmentalists were not pleased.
Good thing McDonald's has a "corporate responsibility blog" to discuss such topics. The blog's name is "Open for Discussion," except that it apparently is not.
Matt Fried says he posted a comment on the McDonald's blog criticizing the Hummer promotion and two days later, the comment still hasn't shown up. In fact, there are no comments on the Hummer blog post. Given the negative buzz about the promotion in the blogosphere and mainstream media, it appears McDonald's feels more comfortable in controlling the conversation than engaging in one.
A recent webchat with the same McDonald's blogger supports the premise. A transcript (.doc file) of the chat shows that only positive comments and compliments.
McAstroturfing, anyone?
[Hat tip: Jay Rosen]
UPDATE [9/11/06]: A commenter says that McDonald's has now approved the negative comments on the Hummer post. No response yet from McD's on the comments. Thx Ariel.
August 22, 2006
Going mobile against T-Mobile
A year ago, "Dell Hell" was the rant of an angry Dell customer that eventually spread across the Web. We found out later that "Dell Hell" was a leading indicator of bigger problems at the computer manufacturer, which eventually dedicated $100 million to rebuilding its customer service operation.
Matt Certo from Websolvers captured this pic in his office parking lot today. People on the fringes do fringe work but if I were at T-Mobile, I would consider the effort of this customer vigilante a leading indicator of bigger problems to start working on.
UPDATE: Jim Durbin says T-Mobile has less bad online buzz than the other cellular providers. And a T-Mobile corporate blogger weighs in on a comment to Jim's post.
July 26, 2006
You are your Google results
It's not just the big guys (Comcast, AOL, and Dell) who should worry about angry citizens creating publicity for poor service.
A customer of a plumbing company in Florida is angry about the company's tactics. He complains, but says the company threatened to file a lien on his property if he didn't pay for the service. He files a complaint with the BBB and starts using Craigslist and his blog to warn others about the company.
It's working. The 2nd result of a Google search for the plumbing firm is the customer's buzz campaign.
[Hat tip: Ike Pigott]
July 11, 2006
Coke and the Ego Fog
Fresh from pooh-poohing citizen marketers who remixed Diet Coke and Mentos into Vegas-style geysers, Coca-Cola hops into the social media game. Well, sort of. It's more like Mike Tyson getting into the boxing ring with a chainsaw.
It cooked up a contest called "The Coke Show" for people to film video shorts of "the essence of you" and upload them to Coke.com. Coke execs and ad agency execs from Wieden + Kennedy determine the winners of the contest. Supposedly site visitors can rate the videos, but that function doesn't seem to be working.
I would link directly to the "Coke Show" entries page but the ENTIRE Coca-Cola website is built in Flash, and there is no URL to grab. *Sigh* Coke, we love you. That's why so many of us write about you. But you're like a Hollywood starlet whose brilliant star has faded because you still think it's 1976. And website visitors long ago said Flash interfaces suck.
Our fellow marketing bloggers feel the same way about the Ego Fog that's clouding Coke's judgment on this new campaign.
BL Ochman: "Watching big ad agencies trying to master new media is a lot like watching people who are having mid-life crises trying to look hip, cool and young by adopting the toys, tools, and language of youth....It's rather pathetic."
Mack Collier: "This is yet another instance of a big company that's scared to death of letting their customers run with their product in a manner which they didn't intend."
Chris Thilk: "It would be important for Coke -- and all other companies -- to realize the extent to which they are no longer in control of their brand identity. A corporate reputation is no longer defined by the official marketing messages being produced, but by the first page of results of a Google search for that brand name."
Sounds like an intervention, Coke. Snap out of it!
July 09, 2006
Why rebates will die
This story from the St. Paul Pioneer Press illustrates the Kafkaesque journey of Clareen Logan, who'd bought a cellphone online using a rebate offer that locked her into a Verizon Wireless contract.
The problem was that five different companies were involved, creating a shell game of pass-the-buck (until the newspaper asked questions, of course).
In March she had received a notice that her application was denied because the wireless bill wasn't submitted within the proper amount of time. So, as advised, she resubmitted everything, but she never heard back. She called in May and was told the company would have to pull her paperwork from the warehouse, which would take two weeks. That period elapsed, so she called again, and a rude customer service rep told her to now send everything in via fax. Logan finally asked for a supervisor, who was very friendly and assured Logan she'd call back — but she didn't. In June, Logan called again and again, leaving messages, but no one responded until the Watchdog got involved.
Companies that use rebates as a customer attractor incentivize everyone involved to keep redemption rates at their absolute-lowest levels, making rebates as customer-unfriendly as they come. Clareen's journey is one that's surely a familiar story among many, many people. But without the refund check.
(Thanks, Matt!)
July 07, 2006
Here we go again: Paramount stabs fan blog
Just when you thought that movie studios finally understood how to embrace citizen marketer movie fans, it turns out some knuckleheads at Paramount do not.
Last week, the studio asked John Campea, co-author of The Movie Blog, to remove a photo he posted from the forthcoming movie "Transformers." He complied, only to find yesterday that Paramount had dispatched its attack dogs, a DMCA shiv firmly clenched between their broken, smoke-stained teeth, to take down John's entire site. (This free-speech/fair comment assault weapon is used quite frequently.) They didn't like another image on the site, but Paramount neglected to tell John about it.
The irony -- or lack of it -- is that John had been a major evangelist for "Transformers." It's clear from past postings that John's enthusiasm was infecting his readership.
Now John is pissed, his readers are pissed, and Digg'ers are pissed. Boycotts of the movie, Paramount DVDs and theme parks are being discussed. Probably won't be long before the word of mouth jetstream propels this story to new heights.
One commenter on John's blog nailed it: "You can't buy good word of mouth, but you certainly can stop it dead."
Update: John reports a Paramount executive called him to apologize. Good step. The exec said the company will "take steps to make sure something like this never happens again, to either The Movie Blog or any other film site." Better step. John declined to discuss details of the conversation. Oh... not-so-good step. That's unfortuante. Lots of ruckus was raised in a short of amount of time on John's behalf, and he would do well by the community to disclose details of the deletion "accident" (his words) so other companies and bloggers can understand how to approach future situations. (Thanks for the tip, Mack).
July 06, 2006
PayPerPost.com is so....
I realize I'm a bit late to the game on this PayPerPost.com story, which connects advertisers with bloggers who get paid to talk up their products with or without disclosing their payola relationship.
So a week later, there are three points to make about this company and its business model:
1. This company will probably die due to the strong social pressure the community of bloggers has already built up against it.
2. Until item one occurs, anyone who engages with this company or its practices will probably (and should be) outed.
3. The Federal Trade Commission prohibits "deceptive acts or practices." This company's no-disclosure-necessary policy for advertisements on behalf of companies sounds a like a deceptive act or practice. The FTC would do well to summon the company to Washington for a meeting.
Jim Nail and Pete Blackshaw have more thoughts.
July 03, 2006
Calling all call centers
Need more reasons to convince the powers-that-be that investing in your call center is a forward-thinking strategy, not a needlesome expense?
The AOL cancellation debacle captured by customer Vincent Ferrari and the sleeping Comcast technician video as captured by customer Brian Finkelstein are strong evidence. The New York Times puts the two events into perspective:
Before the advent of the Web, an encounter with inept customer service was ours to bear alone, with little recourse or means to warn others. Now, Mr. Ferrari can swiftly post on the Web a digital "documentary" that recorded his dismal experience, and news-sniffing hounds do the rest.
AOL and Comcast executives in charge of customer service may long for the good old days when they had to deal only with a finite number of federal regulators and state attorneys general, not a universe of millions of Web-savvy customers.
Those millions of Web-savvy customers all have their own printing presses (blogs), all have their word-of-mouth networks (Digg and YouTube), all have their own shared experiences of frustration, outrage and desire for equality.
The call center people know this firsthand. Many executives do not.
June 29, 2006
Cutting off Amex
Dear American Express,
I’m cutting you off. Or perhaps I should just cut you up.
Nonetheless, I’m done with your parlor game called Guess Your New Interest Rate! For the third time in 1.5 years, you goosed mine to 29.9%. I have been faithful to your tied-to-the-tracks 14-day payment window. I’m nowhere close to exceeding my credit limit. Lord knows your reason this time. Crooked stamp?
I know I can call your 800 number and negotiate my rate back down. Again. (And that incessant beep going off every 15 seconds…OK, we get it! The conversation is being recorded.) But we're past that, bitches.
Something is causing you to play this game. Wall Street? Revolving debt did drop $1.5 billion in March. Not good for revenues. A Wall Street knife to your throat is scary.
A computer simulation guessing that people like me won't notice our rates have tripled? That might be it. I'll admit it -- you got me for a few months with 29.9%. I didn't notice. Joke's on me, right?
So Amex, I'm cutting you off from your gilded allowance. We've been buddies for 20 years, and your idea of loyalty is to jam a 9mm in my ribs. Quaint like the mob.
As a jilted ex, my name is revenge: a bill paid in full. Every month, no matter how much it hurts. It'll be sweet.
For you fellow Amex'ers, check your rate. The card is a player.
Regards,
Ben McConnell
Cardholder since 1986
Update: Howlin' Hobbit points us toward this Newsweek story about more credit card company shennanigans (practically a category unto its own for the Consumerist). Newsweek quotes the publisher of an industry newsletter, whose comment made me laugh out loud, and I don't mean that in a digital way: "The average American household includes four and a half Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover credit cards, and you do everything you can to be nice so customers will use your card rather than your competitor's."
Update 2: In the comments, Peter Kim of Forrester says the research firm "asks consumers to rate financial services firms annually on 'customer
advocacy.' Credit unions and USAA tend to come out on top. Traditional retail
banks and credit issuers consistently come out near the bottom." Makes sense given that both entities are in business to serve customers first.
What I didn't mention in my post is that I had included a letter with my Amex payment (that paid off the balance). It was a snark-free version of this post. An automated letter arrived from Amex yesterday saying it was bringing my interest rate back down to earth. How long that will that last? We'll see. Not long is my bet.
June 22, 2006
The 5 steps of how a story spreads
Vincent Ferrari recently recorded his encounter with an AOL customer service rep, who annoyingly wouldn't let him cancel his account immediately. (At one point, the AOL rep asked to speak with the father of the 30-year-old Ferrari.)
Ferrari posted the recording on his blog a week ago. From that, a familiar pattern emerges:
1. Bloggers spread a story that has a surprising development (i.e., a Comcast technician falls asleep on a customer's couch, or nude photos of a high school art teacher are found online)
2. The story has plenty of concrete details. Audio, video or photographic evidence are ideal.
3. A tangible form of injustice has occurred (multiple missed appointments, getting fired)
4. As the story reaches a certain threshold of recognition in the blogosphere (a top 5 search term on Technorati), the traditional media react. (Ferrari was interviewed Wednesday by Matt Lauer on The Today Show.)
5. Within a day or two, the traditional network story gets posted to YouTube, and the word of mouth goes nuclear. The non-blogging audience hears the story for the first time, and the original bloggers post updates about the involvement of traditional media.
Update: The Consumerist has details on more media demand for Vincent.
May 14, 2006
Hilton Hotels website needs beauty sleep
Don't try making a Hilton Hotel reservation from the company's website late at night. See below.
Do hotel computers need sleep between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.? If so, what do they dream of?
April 21, 2006
Zyprexa for the phone companies
Insanity (in·san·i·ty):
unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibility
Which leads me to the phone companies.
Here's an update to last week's post about AT&T's practice of leaving unwanted 8-pound phone directories scattered in doorways around the nation...
A chart in Thursday's Journal (subscription req'd) shows that a bit more than a quarter of American households actually use printed yellow/white pages. Usage drops every year.
Yet phone companies continue to leave these unwanted, unrequested paper-based anvils on the doorsteps of some 110 million American households every year. Then 82 million households ignore them or trash them.
That seems to demonstrate a lack of understanding or mental capacity on at least AT&T's part on the dynamics of customer relationships. Considering all of the waste unwanted print directories create, does it seem devoid of civil responsibility?
If so, I can think of one treatment option for this spam-based insanity.
April 20, 2006
Can you hear me now?
Laurent Flores reminds us that a corporate blog is a great way to listen to customers, but it doesn't compensate for your offline listening problems.
April 05, 2006
You are the expectations you set
Mark from SoftwareTime points us toward a note posted in the online technical support forum of Eudora maker Qualcomm:
While some Eudora staff members once did participate to a considerable extent on these forums, the people participating here now, with only the very, very occaisional exception, are not Qualcomm employees...Qualcomm states that the forums were never meant to be supported by Eudora employees - they are for the customers only. ... The Eudora developers unfortunately NEVER reply to bug reports or suggestion submissions.
This seems like the digital equivalent of homemade signs found in stores and restaurants explaining some rather exasperated and angry rules, demonstrating that serving customers is such a chore.