Am I being too sensitive and critical here? Maybe you can help me with this nagging feeling I'm having, because I'm willing to listen. You see, I have a problem with NBC's coverage of the Olympics. My problem? All I see are old white guys.
Kay, Kelly, and I all enjoy when the Olympics roll around. We become enrapt with the athletes' stories...the inevitable thrill of victories and agonies of defeat...the rise of those previously unknown and the ongoing sagas of winners returning from four years ago. For two weeks, we live in front of the TV.
I don't want to dwell on the fact that we live 2 1/2 hours south of Vancouver and will never see an event live. It's sort of like watching the Super Bowl on tape delay AFTER you already know the score. That, of course, is irritating beyond belief.
But the issue that really bothers me is the fact that NBC can't seem to find anyone other than old white guys to host the broadcasts and announce the events. We've had hours and hours of Al Michaels, Bob Costas, Brian Williams, Jimmy Roberts, Cris Collinsworth, Al Trautwig, Dick Button, Bill Patrick, Scott Hamilton, and so on and so on.
To be sure, every one of these people is very good at what they do. I have no argument there. And yes, they do slip in an occasional Mary Carillo story, but let's face it folks, the gray-haired white guys are getting the lion's share of on-camera time. I'm bothered by and I AM an old white guy.
If I were a marketing gunslinger, I might suggest to NBC they should bring in more diversity to their broadcasts. Oh wait, I AM a marketing gunslinger.
Hey NBC, are you aware your audience is a little more colorful than white? And there are a few more women out there watching the Olympics, too. And aren't you covering athletes of all races, color, ethnicity, religions, and political viewpoints, as well as other various differences. I'll bet SOME of them even put their toilet paper roll with the paper coming from UNDER. Weird, but probably true!
Why do I find this important. Because an important component of marketing is matching your message and your branding proposition to your market. And, IMNSHO, NBC is basically thumbing their noses at non-white non-males.
So, do you agree or disagree with me? I'm willing to hear the arguments. Please comment below.
My wife, Kay, and I have a Valentine's Day tradition. Well, actually, it's MY tradition. Kay gets the benefit, which is very okay.
Early in our marriage I decided it would be romantic to give her a rose for every Valentine's Day we've been together. This year marked our 24th, so I needed to get her two dozen red roses. (Admittedly, 24 years ago, I didn't think this far ahead."
Seems simple enough, right? Well, no. You see I also give our daughter, Kelly, one single rose, as part of the tradition. So I really needed 25 roses - 24 for Kay and one for Kelly.
I went to the 1-800-Flowers website to get my roses. I could order six roses, twelve roses, and 24 roses, but I couldn't find a way to order 25 roses. So I sent a query to customer service. The next day I received the following response:
Thank you for contacting us.
We appreciate your inquiry. In order to better assist you, please be so
kind to contact us at 800-230-3082. One of our representatives will
gladly assist you placing your order. We look forward to serving your
gifting needs in the near future.
If you have any other questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us at the address listed below.
Sincerely,
Mynor Sosa
Sales and Service Specialist custservice@1800flowers.com
Cool, they can help me! I called the number Mynor gave me. A helpful operator came on the line and my conversation went something like this:
Operator: How may I help you today?
Me: I'd like to order 25 red roses for Valentine's Day.
Operator: I'm sorry, sir, we don't sell roses in that quantity.
Me: But I received an email from Mynor saying you could help me.
Operator: No, I'm sorry, sir, we don't sell 25 roses.
Me: May I speak to a supervisor?
Supervisor: How may I help you?
Me: I'd like to order 25 red roses.
Supervisor: I'm sorry, sir, but we don't have that quantity for sale.
Me: Why not? That's how many I want.
Supervisor: We can only sell what you see on the website.
Me: Well, how about we do it this way? I'd like to order 24 red roses. Can I do that?
Supervisor: Yes, of course, you can.
Me: Okay, I want to order 24 red roses. And then I would like to order one more red rose and you just put it in the box with the other 24.
Supervisor: We can't do that.
All right, you know how this ended. I did NOT order any roses from 1-800-Flowers. I DID get my 25 roses for Kay and Kelly. And I now get to rant about the lack of intelligence on 1-800-Flowers part.
This is an example of what I call "Post Office Regulations in an Internet World." Why create stupid hurdles and rules that irritate customers? I don't care whether this is inconvenient for YOU to have someone go get one single rose and stick it in a box with 24 others. I'm happy to pay for that odd order. But then your rules weren't designed to make it easy for me, were they?
Hey, 1-800-Flowers! You know that operator and supervisor who said no to me? Here's something you might want remember: THEY are overhead. I am profit. In marketing, everything walks the talk.
This whole thing reminded me of the restaurant scene in Five Easy Pieces. If you haven't scene Jack Nicholson go ballistic, you're going to love it:
Steve Jobs introduced Apple's new iPad last week to the collective yawns of the media, bloggers, and technology pundits.
Apparently, having a 9.7" diagonal multi-touch screen, neatly packaged in a 1.5 pound, 0.5 inch thick case didn't do the trick. Neither did the ability to email, access the Internet, watch HD movies, save all your photos, listen to all your music, read a gazillion books, use all your current iPhone apps (plus 140,000 others), hold all your contacts, check out the world on Google Earth and Maps, read the New York Times, and... do it all for roughly the same price as the Amazon Kindle DX.
So why the yawns?
Actually, the reason is simple and also exposes the one weakness of a great marketing secret that Steve Jobs has used for years.
I call it the Expected Surprise.
Every year, Mac-enthusiasts and media waited breathlessly for Steve to take the stage and announce Apple's newest toys. They sat patiently enrapt while Steve dutifully stepped through demos of the updates, upgrades, and enhancements to current products. They clapped and applauded at all the right times. But after all the expected announcements, what they were really waiting for was the phrase Steve made famous:
"And one more thing."
That's what they wanted. That's what made tickets to these events so important. "And one more thing" was the surprise announcement. But point in fact, it wasn't a surprise. Everybody knew an announcement of some magnitude was coming. For weeks, sometimes months (and in the case of the iPad - years) Mac enthusiasts speculated, guessed, and sleuthed what the next "insanely great" Apple product would be.
Some people figured out there was going to be an iPod, but they didn't know exactly what the iPod would be, so they guessed. And when Steve showed the first one and most of the subsequent upgrades, they were surprised. They guessed wrong. Apple's version was always BETTER than what anybody guessed.
How many people predicted the iPhone? Many predicted Apple had A phone, but didn't guess what it exactly was. And when Steve showed the first one, they were surprised.
The annual January Steve show has become a huge part of the Apple brand, or even better, their mystique. We've sort of KNOWN Steve had something very way cool up his sleeve, but we were never able to actually predict what it would do, be, and most important, what it would look like. Steve and Apple had ingrained in us an anticipation for the Expected Surprise.
But this year, Steve didn't surprise us (unless you count the low price of the iPad). Apple experts, trade magazines, writers, and followers, simply had had so much time over the last couple of years to dream and design what they thought the Apple tablet would be that they actually figured most of it out (unless you count the low cost). Hence, when Steve finally introduced the iPad, everybody looked at each other with a "is that all it is?" look.
This doesn't mean the iPad isn't an insanely great product. I, for one, think it's an unbelievable package of applications and am already drooling over when I can get one.
The Expected Surprise is a marketing strategy you can use, too. Think about Disney World. They use it. Every day, 70% of the people who enter the Magic Kingdom or one of the other parks, is a repeat visitor. They're coming back over and over, not only to repeat and/or share a valued experience, but to uncover the Expected Surprise. What new thing will they see, ride, discover, or experience? They don't know what it will be, they just know it will be something.
Steve may not have surprised everyone this time and critics may be yawning. But, personally, I think Steve may be playing us a bit. Like a good magician, he may be diverting our attention. I predict the iPad will be a huge success. I also predict Steve will come back with something very way cool...something nobody predicted.
Since I always want to ride on the coattails of my successful friends, I called Bob and interviewed him about his new book. He shared some awesome tips for salespeople, marketers, and general business people alike. You can listen to my interview or download the MP3 files below.
And be sure to go to Bob's website for his new book and download his first chapter for free by clicking this link: Go-Givers Sell More.
Left-click to listen now. Right-click to download:
Hey, Steve Miller, better known as "Kelly's Dad,"
back once again talking with you about marketing, and coming up with hopefully
some good marketing tips and ideas and strategies that are going to help you be
more successful. This particular blog this week is actually a result of last
week's blog. There were two things that happened from last week's blog.
The
first one was that I talked about Umpqua Bank and how they took over bank, my
old bank of many years. It was closed down by the FDIC and I talked about how
impressed I was when I did some research into them to find out how different
they try to be as a bank, you know. That's very cool and as a marketer, I
appreciate that very much.
Afterwards,
I received a tweet from the vice‑president of marketing... Senior vice‑president
of marketing? I'm not sure. And he asked me if it was OK if they could share
that video with their employees and so they put it on their intranet and all of
the Umpqua employees in all of their stores have been watching this thing.
And
it's really cool because I've been getting lots of nice comments from them and
especially from the employees at the store that is now my local store. They got
a big kick out of seeing one of their customers on the Umpqua intranet. So that
was pretty cool.
The
second thing that came out of this was that if you go back and look at the blog
from last week, you'll see that I received two comments from people and they
start out by saying that... they're very complimentary about the information that
I provide in my blogs and they really like to get that.
However,
they backed it up by saying that they do prefer to receive the information as
copy that it only takes them a couple of minutes to go through and they can get
the tips that I've got and then they can move on. Last week's tip was almost
ten minutes long and they had to wait till the end of the video to receive the
tip.
They
said, "You know, we really prefer to get this." And I thought,
"You know what? They have a very legitimate argument there, see."
But
the flipside is, I received over a dozen emails and separate comments from
people who said, "We loved the video. We love it when you do videos
because they're fun to watch, they're very entertaining, and you tell great
stories." OK?
So,
I'm left with a dilemma, aren't I? Who do I need to listen to? Should I listen
to the people who prefer the video, OK, and don't mind the stories, especially
if they're a little bit longer? Or do I listen to the people who say "No,
I want this in a short verse, OK? Bullet points are even better, OK?"
Here's
the deal ‑ I have to listen to them both. We all have to listen to our
customers.
Remember,
the name of my blog is Two Hat Marketing and the reason why
I call it Two Hat Marketing is because I'm trying to get you to
understand is you don't communicate with your customers and your prospects and
your target market in the way that YOU want to communicate with them. See, that
is the heuristic bias trap that we all fall into.
Now,
if you don't know what I'm talking about when I say "heuristic bias,"
then I recommend you go get my Marketing Stimulus Package. If you already have
it, go back and watch that particular video. If you don't have it, I recommend
you go subscribe to that, it's a heck of a deal.
A
lot of people have subscribed to that and I talk about heuristic bias, which is
a very powerful marketing tool and concept.
And
heuristic bias basically means that we don't see things as they are, we see
things as we are. And then what we tend to do, and especially in this
particular situation, what I'm talking about here, is that we tend to
communicate with people in the way that WE
prefer to be communicated with. Follow what I'm saying? OK?
So,
see, for example, if I preferred to do video, if I preferred to receive video
as the way I like to gather information or receive information, then it would
stand to reason that I would probably just do videos, OK?
Or
if I preferred to receive information in just short, two‑minute or two‑ or
three‑bullet point blurbs, then it would stand to reason that that's probably
how I would communicate with most of my marketplace. And both of those would be
a mistake.
I'm
going to say it again. I'm a broken record. The worst thing you can do is think
like a marketer. We have to take our marketer's hat off; we have to wear our
customer's hat or our prospect's hat. We have to talk to them in the way they
want us to talk to them.
And
so what that means is that if we're going to... Basically a couple of lessons
here. Lesson Number One is that if
we want to do a broad communication, like I'm doing in my blogs, OK, then I
have to vary the format. Because some of you prefer this, the video. Some of
you prefer to read the copy. And some of you actually also prefer to hear, you
prefer audio.
So
you'll notice that what I did this week was I've got the video in here, I've
also got the audio that some of you have downloaded as an MP3, as a podcast,
and you're listening to it as an audio. Some of you wanted to read this, and so
you are reading this because I had it transcribed and included that in there,
and I offered all three formats to you this week.
I'm
not going to do that every single week, but it's an example that we all need to
learn, is don't just communicate the way you want to communicate and be
communicated with. Communicate with the way your customers want to be
communicated with.
And
that leads to Lesson Number Two. When
you start to develop a personal relationship with people, you start making
personal contact with people, whether they are still prospects or they have
become customers, find out how they prefer to get information and then
communicate with them in that way, OK?
Our
job as marketers is to make it as easy for people to do business with us as
possible, all right? And one of the ways that we can do that is by
communicating with them in the way that they prefer to be communicated with.
That's what that's all about.
Now,
do you have comments about that? Do you agree or disagree with that? Well, then
go write down below in the comments section and pop in your comment.
And
again, if you didn't pick up that Marketing Stimulus Package, well, I'm putting
a pitch in for it right now. Heuristics is a huge deal. Go get it right now,
OK?
This
is Steve Miller, better known as "Kelly's Dad," and I'll see you on
the Internet.
