Church of the Customer: Customer evangelism archives
April 23, 2008
Mickey Drexler knows me
Does this dress make my hips look big?
It was a question for which I needed an honest answer this weekend as I shopped at J. Crew. My salesperson complied.
"Yes, it does," she said. She smartly suggested another, more flattering dress instead. Thank you. I appreciated the honest advice.
Long-time readers of the Church probably know I love J. Crew, which continues to impress me with its turnaround from an average retailer into a dynamic store. CEO Mickey Drexler is clearly driven by a fanatical mission to understand what his customers want. He spends part of almost every day visiting stores. He talks with employees asking what is selling and what isn't. He chats up customers for feedback and comments.
Yesterday, a salesperson offered me a chilled bottled water as I entered the dressing room, something usually reserved for higher-end boutiques. My salesperson was highly attentive and she (and her colleagues) gave me great advice on what looked good and what didn't.
One thing Drexler must have learned from his chats with customers is an offer I received shortly after my store visit: a J. Crew personal shopper. I can schedule an appointment before and after the store is closed. Wow. Exactly what I want!
By listening to customers (not just once, but continually), J. Crew has learned that some of us who aren't afraid to part with our cash want someone to help style us and do it on our schedule. No wonder J. Crew is enjoying a 14% increase in revenue (from 2006-2007) while other retailers are floundering or simply closing stores in the face of a recession.
April 07, 2008
How free goes viral
Michele Miller posted this on SWOM. It's so good I wanted to repost it here:
One of the hottest videos on YouTube today is the Free Hug Campaign - one man giving away free hugs and the effect it has on the people around him.
It's a perfect parallel to building a viral campaign for your business.
Watch the video and observe:
- People's resistance to anything free... even if it's a hug
- The breakthrough that happens when one random individual decides to try one
- A tsunami of response once people watch the experience of others
- The fight to defend their right to hug when barriers are erected by "authorities"
If you believe strongly enough in your product or service, give it away for free. In the beginning, no one will believe you. Stick with it long enough, experience breakthrough, and you'll have more business than you know what to do with.
And you'll have a band of merry men (and women) who will be your brand evangelists.
February 14, 2008
Rekindling customer desire
What makes a relationship last?
Researchers who study human couplings will tell you that it's often about adding novelty to the relationship to reignite old sparks.
Arthur Aron, a professor of sociology at Stony Brook University in New York recruited 53 middle-aged couples, asked them baseline questions about the happiness with their relationship, then divided them into three groups. One group was told to spend 90 minutes a week doing familiar social activities. The second group was told to spend 90 minutes a week doing "exciting" things that appealed to husband and wife. The third group, a control group, wasn't assigned any activities.
After 10 weeks, Dr. Aron surveyed the couples again. Those who took part in "exciting" activities reported much greater levels of relationship bliss than those who did the usual stuff (or nothing at all).
If you think about customer loyalty in terms of dating or egads, a marriage, it's easy to do the same thing, every day, with customers. Follow the rule book. Keep things familiar and safe. But then a competitor/suitor with a new, seductive product or idea can trigger brain reward systems like dopamine and lure away someone whom you assumed was committed to you.
The balancing act between maintaining rituals that celebrate the bond and thinking creatively with "exciting" new activities that relight the spark isn't so easy, of course. But on this Valentine's Day, it doesn't hurt to remember.
Whole Foods follow-up
A few weeks ago, I posted about my affair with Mr. F, the Whole Foods flagship store in Austin, Texas.
Last week, April from the Whole Foods' head office called, thanking me for my blogvangelism. Then, her team mailed a nice note, saying the post had circulated throughout the company (hey, y'all) accompanied by a big box of Whole Foods goodies. (Wow. Hey hey, ya'll. Thanks!)
Nice to see that Whole Foods tracks online conversations and responds to evangelists. Contrast that with the issues Mack has been raising about other companies not connecting with their evangelists online.
February 07, 2008
Flickr fans take on Microsoft
Fans of Flickr, Yahoo's photo-sharing service, want Microsoft to leave Flickr alone if the software giant successfully acquires Yahoo.
To accentuate their point, loyal Flickrites created a group, MICROSOFT: KEEP YOUR EVlL GRUBBY HANDS OFF OF OUR FLICKR, which features images portraying their sentiment, like the crying Britney guy above. After a few days, the group had accumulated 2,539 members and 263 images.
The group fears what Microsoft might do to their beloved site, so members launched a petition drive and are making plans to migrate to competitors' sites if their fears are realized.
At this point, there's not much Microsoft can do except listen closely, but it could have a swat team of empathetic community managers standing by if and when the acquisition goes through. Reaching out to existing Yahoo communities would be key to a smooth integration of company assets.
If Microsoft plays it right, this could be an ideal opportunity for Microsoft to win over an evangelistic, and vocal, group of fans that Yahoo has successfully nurtured via Flickr, Groups, and Answers.
February 06, 2008
How to correct an evangelist
Maybe you're lucky enough to have customer evangelists who are passionate and spread the word about you.
But perhaps the way they describe you to others in person, or on their blog, isn't how you would say it personally, or how your company says it. It isn't factually wrong, but it's not exactly how you would say it.
Would you:
a) Correct your customer evangelist publicly, such as leaving a comment on their blog?
b) Thank them in an email for the mention, and then correct them?
c) Thank them on their blog, or in an email, and say nothing about their somewhat flawed description?
d) Do or say nothing?
The correct answer, as I see it, is C.
- No matter what, thank the customer for her referral and/or passion.
- If the customer has old or incorrect information, you could ask if they're interested in an update on what's new. Better yet, invite her to join a special program for evangelists; access to an inner circle can be golden.
- If the customer's information is technically correct but incomplete, or uses her own words and not yours, get over it. A word-smithing scold is old.
January 29, 2008
Why it's best not to predict
Will Tom Brady's ankle affect the outcome of the Super Bowl?
The answer is: It's impossible to know. Too many other variables are at play. It may be fun to talk about, but it's not very productive.
That's essentially the upshot in this talked-about Fast Company piece, which aims to slay "The Tipping Point" as a mythological dragon of marketing. Viral marketing, especially. Creating a societal trend is the Holy Grail of viral marketing, from which golden riches are promised to freely flow.
The reality, of course, is that devising a program to go "viral" is like an amateur daytrading in the stock market. There are too many variables, many of them unknowable or immeasurable, so you takes your chances. The odds in Vegas are probably better.
What causes reverberations across the cultural landscape could be tipped by a few influential people, but probably not. Predicting culture is impossible. There are just too many variables. The outcome, according to the more convincing Black Swan theory, is usually unexpected. Even random.
What's not said in the FC piece is that only about 1 percent of the world's marketers need worry about the ramifications of widespread cultural influence.
Therefore, the work that matters most requires the patience and tenacity of an old-fashioned farmer: building and maintaining a strong reputation for service, making products that matter, continually investing in people, technology and operations and creating a community for your customer evangelists.
Those are the seeds of word of mouth, which is not at all like viral marketing.
January 10, 2008
Attraction method #1
The other week, my friend Christine stopped in to HomeMade Pizza. It's a 20-store Chicago pizzeria that makes gourmet pizzas but you bake them at home.
While paying, Christine filled out the store's (optional) customer contact card. The next day, this email arrived in Christine's inbox:
Hi,
My name's Mike and I'm the Manager at HomeMade Pizza Company in Evanston. I just wanted to thank you for choosing HomeMade. The way we figure it, there are a whole lot of places you could've tried for dinner, so we really appreciate the fact that you went with us.
And if you get a chance, we want to hear what you thought. Do you have any questions or comments about your HomeMade experience? Any rants or raves? Whatever it is, let me know. Feel free to give me a call here at the store, or e-mail us at [note: I'll save them from the spambots].
Thanks a lot for trying HomeMade. I hope to see you again soon!
Unlike most emails from companies to customers, Mike wasn't selling or promoting. He was attracting. He was following the first tenet of evangelism: customer plus-delta. Gather customer feedback. It's anti-selling, which makes it magnetic.
Christine sent a quick note back to Mike, saying she loved the pizza and the store experience. The next day, another email arrived, this time from a HomeMade vice president.
Hey Christine -- I just wanted to thank you for your nice email to Mike! Bottom line is, we're really glad you finally had a chance to stop in and, of course, I'm even happier your guys enjoyed everything -- fantastic! Glad you're planning on coming in again, too -- we'll be looking for you soon.
And keep in touch -- if you ever have any questions/comments/suggestions, we'd love to hear them -- we want to make sure we're keeping you happy.
Thanks again for the great feedback Christine, we really appreciate it!
Best -- Shane
Two emails from busy company people with a lot of responsibility who didn't hide behind a cloak of corporate invisibility.
Nor did they sell. Not one offer. Or one promotion. Or one tout of greatness.
Total attraction.
December 06, 2007
The 4 types of community
You're thinking about creating or extending your customer or member community because it's central to increased word of mouth and evangelism, but community is a broad term.
What type of community, exactly, do you want to create? Here's four ways to think about it.
Clique
Your community could be small, like a clique. Its value is that members know another, look like one another, dress like one another. (To some, that could be its horror.) But a clique enjoys trendsetting and tweaking the noses of convention, just like fashion. Comfort comes from the raft of differentiation on an ocean of familiarity. The value of a clique is dependent upon its exclusivity, but its devotion can be fickle, just like in high school. Like: A Small World.
Network
Your community could be big and resemble a distribution system, like a network. Members pass along data or connections to one another like a fire brigade. Your goal is to catch the tailwinds of the network effect, whereby the value of the community is proportional to the increasing size of its membership. The network can be big, but there's little to no emotional tax for decoupling. Like LinkedIn.
Cult
Your community could be of medium size and resemble a cult. Its value is a strong belief system not fulfilled through mainstream channels. A charismatic leader has codified the belief system into rituals that people love and believe in. It may not be huge, but its devotion meter is off the scale. Like: Maker's Mark Ambassadors.
Nation
Your community could resemble a nation. The community owns its destiny. Their destiny is yours. The driving force is egalitarianism; everyone is on equal footing, with a few representatives minding the points of direction. The sense of pride, even sovereignty, is palpable. As is the devotion, which many would view as a mythological life-and-death struggle. Like: Netroots Nation.
No matter its type, your community is influenced by the forces of growth and devotion. It's hard to inspire growth, but easy to measure it and control it.
It's difficult to measure the invisible cement of devotion. But as the Facebook Beacon program has shown, it's easy to undermine it.
(Thanks to Ray Bard for the four quadrants graph.)
November 30, 2007
A religious devotion to an unlabeled beer
What does a cult brand look like? Well, here's one example.
A religious order of silent monks in Belgium creates a cult beer. It's called Westvleteren. You must make an appointment to buy it. To make an appointment, you call the monks' Beer Phone. Yes, it's called the Beer Phone. The monks may talk while on the Beer Phone. You may buy only two cases at a time. The beer is sold once per month. The monks do not advertise, nor do they label the bottles. They make 60,000 cases per year; that's 5,000 cases per month, or 120,000 bottles. Texas Stadium probably sells 120,000 units of beer every Sunday. Tales abound of people driving 16 hours across parts of Europe for a beer run. Some experts call it the best in the world. The monks believe, truly, that they "sell beer to live, and not vice versa."
Besides being what people describe as an excellent beer, Westvleteren has developed into a cult brand based on its rituals. All of the items mentioned above are ritualistic. Make an appointment. Call the Beer Phone. Two-case limit. No label. A regular release schedule. A unifying belief system. However they're defined and practiced, rituals embody culture. They are symbolic expressions of a company's values.
For organizations not religiously grounded as Trappist monks, rituals can be simple, like consistently observing dates in company history or paying public homage to goals attained. More elaborate rituals may involve meeting or surpassing milestones focused on quality. No matter what, corner-cutting is heresy.
A cult brand like Westvleteren is created by people religiously devoted to their craft. The monks in Belgium are serious about their business, but they do not obsess over maximizing profit or monetizing eyeballs. They do not do brand extension. They embrace scarcity as a necessary component of quality, thereby ensuring future value. Just as the Wii is a cult hit because it is an excellent product that's not easy to buy, so too with an unlabeled beer that's been religiously produced for 170 years.
After all, cult is the root of culture. It is culture that creates a cult brand.
Update: Another benefit of living in Austin: cool people like blogger and beerologist John Moore, who generously gave me a Westvleteren from his personal collection. How's it taste? As John says, first I must chill it to 55 degrees Fahrenheit...
October 22, 2007
Football widows no more
My Pittsburgh Steelers may have the most women fans in the NFL, but it's our division rivals, the Baltimore Ravens, who have the better play to embrace them.
At the beginning of the 2007 season, the Ravens launched a woman-only fan club called Purple. Free to join, Purple already has 3,500 members who get inside information about the team, special offers for a new line of women's team apparel and jewelry, a monthly newsletter, and invitations to special annual events.
For super-fans, Purple offers a $250 VIP level called the Lavender Ladies; they get special access at training camp, private autograph sessions with players and naturally, access to limited-edition merchandise.
"Purple allows women to feel like they're part of something other than just tickets to the game, tailgating, the standard norm that's offered to them on a daily basis," says Gabrielle Dow, a Ravens marketing director.
Sure, the Steelers and other teams host popular Football 101 events for women which teach them the X's and O's of the game, but the Ravens have seen the light: loyalty, word of mouth and evangelism naturally expand when fans have a community to join.
The most passionate of the passionate want to meet others like themselves. Then they'll have an outlet to share their crazy love with others who get it, whether it's a crazy love for football, scrapbooking or t-shirts.
So c'mon Steelers, we can't let the Ravens beat us on this field! I would join a women-only Pittsburgh fan club in a second, and I have the perfect name for it:
October 01, 2007
The 5th P is Participation
This weekend, Tim told us about Crushpad, a month-old company that is democratizing the wine-making process.
From their site description:
Crushpad is a San Francisco winery where you are the wine maker. Crushpad provides grapes from the West Coast's top vineyards, an industry-acclaimed wine making team and a state-of-the-art winery 100% focused on making wine in small lots. You choose your level of involvement and we do the rest. No matter where you live, you can now make your own "cult" wine.
With most wineries experiencing double-digit growth, wine is a growth industry. To be successful, Crushpad only needs to attract a small percentage of wine afficianados and do-it-yourselfers who love the idea of learning the many mysteries of winemaking, whether it's helping harvest grapes, or meeting fellow amateur oenophiles.
Clearly, Crushpad recognizes that participation is a cultural trend. It is removing a curtain that's always separated the winemaking process from the masses. With a choose-your-own level of participation, Crushpad has engineered word of mouth directly into the company's DNA. It doesn't get much better than that.
If they manage the operations well, they will have engineered easy-to-spread evangelism into the process, too.
I love this idea. I hope Crushpad is a hit.
August 27, 2007
The grassroots Wispa campaign
The British candy bar Wispa will be revived this fall thanks to the petitions of 14,000 people across dozens of different Facebook user groups.
Manufacturer Cadbury Schweppes said it was the first time "that the power of the Internet played such an intrinsic role in the return of a Cadbury brand."
If this is truly a grassroots, nostalgia-driven effort (Cadbury insists it is), then the company has a unique opportunity to parlay that revival interest into strong customer ownership: hand over levels of brand management to a dedicated Facebook community.
Give 'em a voice and a vote on decisions. It would immediately propel thousands of evangelists to the top rung of the loyalty ladder. It would be an excellent R&D vehicle for learning how to apply the work of a community across other brands.
After all, 14,000 Wispa fans have already proven their votes can make noteworthy things happen.
(Thanks, Peter!)
August 09, 2007
On becoming a fan
Geno created this nifty "Cycle of a Fan" graphic by mashing up our loyalty ladder with a diagram from David Armano. I like it.
Participation is the power source to any energy created by fans. Participation is crucial to the cycle of fandom.
I'm not sure how I would draw it, but participation could be a circle that encompasses everything inside Geno's diagram, with key activities identified that engage fans at every point.
June 29, 2007
iLoyalty
Today, thousands of people around the U.S. are lined up at stores to get the first Apple iPhones, which are available at both Apple and AT&T stores.
Yet, from anecdotal reports on Flickr and Technorati, it appears that most of the lines are at Apple stores, not AT&T stores.
Which raises this question: Why would someone camp out overnight in front of an Apple store (even in the rain) when they could probably walk right in, or at least wait in a shorter line, to buy an iPhone at a nearby AT&T store?
Because of many things having to do with the care and feeding of a brand with cultish devotion, iLoyalty is never rational.
April 26, 2007
Fiber is in the details
A simple, yet illustrative example of how not to engage a blogging customer evangelist.
Feb. 1: Jeremy professes his love of, yes, Metamucil, on his blog.
Feb. 1: P&G's Metamucil brand manager comments on his blog post, asking to connect. Jeremy emails brand manager back.
Feb. 14: Brand manager emails Jeremy that his brand team loves the blog and offers Jeremy samples of new flavor of Metamucil. Jeremy is ecstatic. He sends the brand manager his mailing address.
April 14 (two months later): Jeremy outlines situation to-date. No samples. No further emails from P&G. Emails to brand manager bounce.
Nice approach by P&G, but the follow-up is pretty crappy, if you will totally forgive the pun.
Jeremy sums it up: "I mean, it's freakin' Metamucil! What company wouldn't want to stoke the fire of someone talking about that product? If you're a company and you can't take advantage of that, then you've got a problem. It's not like it's an iPhone."
UPDATE (4/28/07): Jeremy reports that he just received an apology letter from P&G for the delay inside a big ol' box of Metamucil. That was fast : )
April 20, 2007
Save the Cookie
Todd points us to "Save the Cookie," a campaign by Midwest Airlines to energize its base to help fend off a hostile takeover by AirTran.
Shareholder votes in takeover situations are usually not in the best interests of shareholders, not customers, so Midwest is hoping to bolster its case by asking its evangelists to voice their disapproval of the takeover. Save the Cookie has several tools, including an online petition, to get involved.
I wonder, though, if the campaign results would be stronger if they hadn't created the site completely in Flash and used pop-up windows, which don't work on my Mac.
March 31, 2007
Hiring a community evangelist
Customer communities need stewards. They need a strong-willed, yet highly approachable and friendly manager who will boldly represent the pervading will of the community to his bosses at the sponsoring organization, then handle the often-difficult chores of explaining the rationale for business decisions made several levels up the food chain.
It's a tough job. But LinkedIn couldn't have made a better choice by hiring our friend Mario Sundar to be the "community/customer evangelist" for the social network. Watch the video to hear Mario briefly talk about his new role.
Congrats from both of us, Mario!
Bonus reading: Jeremiah Owyang lists the seven traits a community evangelist should have along with profiles of others in this role.
January 19, 2007
Now in paperback
A paperback (and revised) version of Creating Customer Evangelists has just been released. We added a good deal of new facts, figures and new company examples that arrived after the book's publication in 2002.
The best part is that the paperback, with that new-book smell, is just $10 on Amazon.
January 08, 2007
Playing Macworld bingo
It's no surprise to anyone that Mac evangelists are among the most creative and skilled content creators in the world.
But here's a new level: John Siracusa has come up with Macworld Bingo, to play along as Steve Jobs gives his keynote address at the Mac-lover confab on Tuesday. The obvious question is: Will people yell out "bingo!" if they fill up a row or column? Will Jobs surprise everyone by whipping out his own bingo card?
Pitchers of beer sold separately.
December 27, 2006
Customer evangelism is profitable
Amy Barrett of Businessweek took a deep look at customer loyalty from the vantage point of customer evangelism and ended up with a great piece: "True Believers: Passionate customers can transform your company."
She kicks off her story by examining Karmaloop, a clothing maker with a business model not unlike that of Threadless, and unearthed some tantalizing data:
Karmaloop has an 8,000-strong army of customers who proselytize the brand and get discounts or cash when they, or someone they've referred, make a purchase. Members of this "street team," called reps, also upload images, photos, or artwork to Karmaloop's site to make company stickers or banners other reps can download. "The reps are evangelists for our site," says [founder Greg] Selkoe. And they're doing their job: Fewer than 1% of Karmaloop's customers are reps, but their purchases and those they inspire account for 15% of sales.
Karmaloop has its own One Percenters, and they account for 15% of sales. For a $4 million company, that's an astounding $600,000 in contributed revenue. I would love to know the company's estimate of the cost of sales for that $600k. (If anyone from Karmaloop cares to jump in, we'd love to hear from you.)
For all of you customer-community evangelists, those are great numbers to show your boss(es).
Bonus: As a sidebar to Amy's story, Businessweek reporter Jeffrey Gangemi compiled a list of customer loyalty do's and don'ts from a list of experts (although I'm not sure how one guy got in there).
December 15, 2006
Amateur ads for Southwest
Southwest Airlines has launched a contest that invites citizens to create their own "wanna get away?" ad.
The payoff is having the ads added to the company's national ad campaigns, plus a vacation for four.
A solid move on Southwest's part because it dovetails with the growing interest in citizen-created media and uses a blueprint the company has used for dozens of previous ads: People who suddenly find themselves in awkward situations that are laced with humor.
Southwest's contest is bound to receive a solid number of entries because the company has invested years in creating customer evangelists who identify with the company's sense of humor.
November 30, 2006
Special CD sale
We have a few extra copies of the 6-CD audiobook version of "Creating Customer Evangelists" available for $16.95. (Our sale special is here.)
That's better than the deal Amazon offers on the audiobook, but we'll only offer it for a little while until our supply runs out.
August 30, 2006
J. Crew makes it personal again
You might remember when I wrote last year about a clerk from J. Crew. Her name is Natalie, and she'd sent a handwritten note and a gift card following one of my store visits. It amazed me that someone from an $800 million company would take the time to send a personal note to a customer.
She sent another note last week. She remembered that I am a big fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers and wrote that I was probably excited about the approaching NFL season (I am!). She included a $10 gift card.
With turnover at retail stores hovering around 100%, the fact that Natalie still works at J. Crew nearly a year later says a lot. So does her follow-up note.
June 30, 2006
Ikea's positive fanatics
Ikea fanblog Positive Fanatics documents what looks to be a substantial line of people camped out overnight this week waiting for the Schaumburg, Ill. store to celebrate its remodeling.
PF also points us to Ikeahacker, a site dedicated to tinkering with Ikea products. Considering the size of most Ikea stores and the number of products the retailer carries, a hack site is a natural idea.
Update: Kevin Dugan points us toward Ohikea -- a blog dedicated to convincing Ikea to open a store in Ohio. The blog's motto: "IKEA in Ohio. Because we aren't Indiana. Thank god." (Updates earlier update.)
June 27, 2006
Evangelists work for free
Pop quiz: What's the term for a program that pays someone for a referral of a product and service that results in a sale?
The answer is, of course, an "affiliate" program. If you had answered "evangelist" program, you would have received a failing grade. But you didn't because you read this blog.
Methinks the online news service PRWeb is confused. The service recently announced an "Evangelist program" that provides "industry-level Compensation... for promoting and facilitating PRWeb sales to their specific markets." Yes, they capitalized compensation with a Capital C.
Evangelists spread referrals, recommendations and word of mouth freely because they believe in an idea, product, service or brand, not because they receive industry-level compensation.
Just to be clear:
* Affilate program: Amazon Associates. Get paid for referrals.
* Evangelist program: Maker's Mark Ambassadors. Spread buzz freely.
If PRWeb thinks compensation for referrals is the answer, more power to them. Calling it an evangelist program is disingenuous.
June 21, 2006
Tax, title and knitting needles extra
There are knitting evangelists, and then there are evangelists who knit.
Like Lauren Porter, who used 12 miles of yarn during a 10-month project to knit a full-size replica of a Ferrari.
All indications are that Ferrari will not discourage the practice by claiming it doesn't fit into the carmaker's "brand personality."
(Thanks, Shelley!)
June 07, 2006
Customer service land-speed record
I sent a quick product-use question to the general feedback/suggestion email box at Weatherbug this afternoon.
You're thinking: Uh-oh.
I received a helpful (and personal) email response 14 minutes later.
That's probably the fastest response time I've ever experienced from a customer support group, no less one whose installed base is 72 million customers. That's post-worthy.
June 04, 2006
Mark Cuban's dream season
It's worth noting that the lead paragraph of the New York Times' story about the Dallas Mavericks going to the NBA finals was about team owner Mark Cuban.
Mark Cuban's eyes were red and puffy, his cap askew, his goofy grin seemingly permanent. The locker room was steamy, congested and foreign, and Cuban never looked more comfortable, joyous or at home.
His Dallas Mavericks became Western Conference champions Saturday when they at last snuffed out the supernatural resilience of the Phoenix Suns. A fantastically entertaining, six-game conference finals ended with a 102-93 Dallas victory, with Cuban clutching a shiny metal trophy and choking up as he saluted his coach, Avery Johnson. Until that moment, Cuban was known mostly as the N.B.A.'s most irreverent, unconventional and mouthy owner. On Saturday night at the US Airways Center, he could claim something more. The team he rooted for, then bought, is going to the N.B.A. finals for the first time in its 26-year history.
The case study we were able to assemble for "Creating Customer Evangelists" about Cuban and his intense drive and focus to rebuild the Mavericks and its fan base has consistently been the one for which we receive the most comments. It's little wonder to us; he is charismatic and powerfully smart.
We couldn't be happier for him and the team.
May 31, 2006
On becoming a company evangelist
Betsy Weber, the chief evangelist for software toolmaker TechSmith, has five solid tips for being an official company evangelist and helping create other evangelists just like yourself.
1. Be a power listener.
Listen as much as you talk (if not more). Then, bring those conversations with customers into your company so the user's voice is heard. Keep the conversations going. Relate the feedback you hear to product teams, be the voice of the customer, and fight for what they want at your company.
2. Get out of the marketing department.
This isn't a marketing job. This isn't to create sales. It's about customer care and customer relationships. Dump the marketing lingo. Be transparent, open and honest. You have to be an extrovert and people person. It's almost a way of life -- you're either suited for it or you're not.
3. Get your whole company onboard.
It takes more than a Chief Evangelist to create customer evangelists. Every area that the customers interact with must be on board with creating customer evangelists. If one department fails to give outstanding service or gives the customer a negative experience the whole company is affected.
4. Open the front door and be accessible.
Give out your direct phone number and real email address. If you hide behind voicemail and an email alias you might miss a great opportunity. Give VIP tours and arrange for customer meet-ups. Customers will appreciate it and it can be a competitive advantage.
5. Have passion.
You must love and believe in the products, and you have to be passionate about the people who use them. If you won't, who will?
(Via the WOMMA blog.)
May 08, 2006
"Where the TV's don't get CNBC"
The fans of investment adviser Kim Snider have grown so fond of her "Bora Bora" metaphor to keep one's emotions out of investing that they wrote a song about it.
Then they sang it during a fan club cruise. Of course they videotaped it and turned it into a music video.
Just goes to show that citizen marketing can happen well beyond the big, consumer-oriented brands.
May 01, 2006
CoffeeCup Software's volunteer sales force
How many times has this happened to you: You're in the market for a new accountant firm, design agency or cleaning supply company... Something.
So you ask your neighbor Bob. He recommends his vendor. You like Bob but don't know him well enough to completely trust his judgment. You'll need references.
So you perform the requisite Googling of Bob's vendor. If you're lucky, the vendor has a website. If you're luckier still, the vendor's website does a good job explaining its work and the people who do it. If you want more information, you'll have to talk to a salesperson.
If you're really lucky, you might stumble across someone like CoffeeCup Software, whose website features 100 referenceable customers from 11 different countries who will answer your questions about the company, its products and support.
That's a company using marketing to help make selling superfluous.
Update: In the comments, CoffeCup CEO Nicholas Longo writes that his company has 6,000 ambassadors representing 88 countries. Pretty good work for a company with 21 employees.
April 26, 2006
Moleskine citizen marketers
I'm a Moleskine evangelist. My buddy Bruce gave me one as a gift a few years back, and I've been a convert since.
It's difficult to explain why. There's not an atom of high-tech about it. It's old-school calm and Italian-craftsman confident. It's an antidote to the increasing level of digital bits that infiltrate our working lives.
Moleskine has a fair share of citizen marketers, too: An impressive fan blog, a Flickr photoset, a Squidoo lens, a MySpace group and a comprehensive Wikipedia entry.
(Via Ben Rowe)
April 19, 2006
All in the coffee family
Pete Blackshaw profiles a neat program at Peet's Coffee that encourages customers to take Polaroids of themselves in stores and post them, with captions, as part of a "family album."
Sounds like a good way to help customers move up the loyalty ladder toward coffee shop "ownership."
April 14, 2006
Creating teacher evangelists
Here's a cool new partnership: Google and Discovery Education have teamed up to embed educational photos and videos directly into Google Earth.
While an educator is using Google Earth to teach students the geography of say, Glacier National Park, she can also now view embedded educational videos or photos about the park, its surrounding topography or natural resources using content from Discovery's vast video library.
As a partnership, Google wins because it helps make Google Earth a more valuable utility, especially for its subscription-based premium and professional versions. Discovery wins because of an inherent bite-size chunk strategy: By repurposing small chunks of content outside of its traditional broadcast channels, Discovery creates a low-risk introduction of content to a wider audience.
Even better, the thousands of teachers who have recently joined the company's Discovery Educator Network can easily share their own video-embedded Google Earth maps with one another.
That's a principal value of creating a homegrown community: if you own content, you can provide your community members a license to remix it and share it with one another.
This is part of a project that Jackie and I have consulted on for Discovery; we helped design the Discovery Educator Network to help foster the already strong evangelism for the company's Unitedstreaming service, which provides videos for teachers to use in the classroom.
The Discovery Educator Network's online community quietly launched about six weeks ago. From its research, Discovery knows that teachers love to teach no matter the audience. But there are few places for teachers to talk about their work. Hence, the online network, affectionately called "the DEN." It's a community for teachers to discuss their work and freely share their own teaching resources, like how to deliver a compelling lesson about the American Civil War.
In six weeks' time, more than 4,000 teachers have joined the community. Over 100 of them have already created their own blogs inside the network. They've already shared about 300 teaching resources, and the rate at which teachers are signing up to attend Discovery-sponsored educational events around the United States is way up. About 20 of Discovery Education's own employees are blogging, too. The DEN is young and new and certainly not perfect, but it's a solid start.
A vibrant community of company and its evangelists is a word of mouth ecosystem, creating an elliptical orbit of buzz that naturally wends its way to other networks. Whether you're selling software or tools for educators, creating a free-minded church inside your own online network is an obvious starting point for your organization's true believers.
Technorati Tags: Google, Google Earth, Discovery, Education, Evangelism, Online communities
April 07, 2006
Burger King's drive-thru executive suite
With the resignation today of Burger King CEO Greg Brenneman (pictured in the AP photo), the fast food company has now chewed up and spit out 11 CEOs in 16 years.
With that much instability in the company's top job, Burger King's culture must have multiple personality syndrome. Employees probably find themselves constantly struggling to develop the necessary patterns and rhythms of culture growth that a CEO reflects and drives.
Indeed, stability is the driver to success, even genius. Researcher Anders Ericsson of the University of Florida (as recounted in Sutton and Pfeffer's book "Hard Facts") has found that at the individual level, "exceptional performance doesn't happen without approximately 10 years of nearly daily, deliberate practice."
Think Tiger Woods here: he had a professional coach at age 4 and was playing golf every day by age 6.
Carried over to the organizational level, Pfeffer and Sutton find that "no matter how gifted (or ordinary) team members are to start out, the more experience they have working together, the better their teams do."
How else better to explain the exceptional and sustained performance and evangelism of companies like Southwest, Whole Foods, Nike and others that focus on culture and (mostly succeed at) long-term executive stability.
Technorati Tags: Burger King, Culture, Southwest, Whole Foods, Nike
March 27, 2006
Hacking: Another expression of love
It seems to be a continuous truism: Create a product that captures the imaginations of people, and surely some of them will hack it.
That's been the case with TiVo, Lego, Netflix (sort of), many video games and a big warehouse of other products.
And it's happening, of course, to satellite radio. In this case, some owners of portable satellite radios are hacking them so that they can transfer their service to their cellphones. Since so many of us are continuously attached to our cellphones, making it the vessel for the satellite radio service we pay for seems perfectly natural. Some fans are offering the satellite radio companies their software hacks for free.
Naturally, the lawyers are opposing it and "pursuing" action.
(Thanks to Hal for the tip.)
March 26, 2006
Evangelist for: Cesar Millan
In January, Jackie wrote about dog behaviorist Cesar Millan as the new season of his show, The Dog Whisperer, debuted.
I'm such a fan, I have to jump in with my own post. What Jackie didn't mention was that both she and I heard about Cesar nearly two years ago from a very evangelistic fan.
We were immediate converts to the Cesar theology of using energy, not words, to influence dog behavior. We've gushed to at least a few hundred people in person about him, his techniques and his theology of behavior. Even more if you count this blog and some presentations we've given about creating evangelists.
With his as-yet unreleased book hovering in Amazon's top 100, his TV show better than ever, and the debut of a Dog Whisperer blog that helps him codify his fan base, Cesar Millan looks poised to become the Julia Child of pet ownership.
Update (4-7-06): Looks like our man Cesar has hit the big time: His book is number one on Amazon.
March 20, 2006
Suzanne Somers and fan clubs
Sometimes, the next course of action is so obvious, so undeniably simple, that customer after customer will tell you. Their unsolicited feedback is a gift.
Suzanne Somers, as quoted by the current edition of Inc., illustrates this:
In our database, we have the names of almost a million people who've purchased at least one thing directly through our website. Add in the people who've bought something from me on HSN and the 10 million people who have bought the books, and you're talking millions of women. They all want to start a fan club, but I don't want to start a fan club. What's the end point of a fan club?
What's the end point of a fan club? After wiping the spewed coffee from my computer monitor, I came up with this answer:
There is no end point of a fan club. It's a church of customer worship. It's a community of validation. It's official recognition of a relationship. It's a relationship network. It's a word-of-mouth ecosystem. It's the test-marketing forum for new ideas, products and strategies from which Somers could learn how to grow her company.
A fan club is an illustrious outcome for any business, organization or institution that's working hard to create ongoing word of mouth and evangelism.