Anyone who watched (or know someone who has) American Idol on Wednesday night has probably heard about an audition of a 62 year old man that is known as "The General" who can regularly be seen downtown. Generally, Idol doesn't allow anyone older than 28 in to audition, but they let this guy come in and showcased his audition at the end of Wednesday's show.
He performed his original rap, and Simon's words were "I have a horrible feeling that song's going to be a hit."
He's right... I'm not certain about the "horrible feeling" or that it's going to be a hit, but the latter is true. The original video has gotten over 33,000 views on YouTube yesterday and a total of 19 "Pants on the ground" videos have been posted. In addition, "Pants on the Ground" was a consistent trending topic on Twitter, which highlights the buzz around this episode and how the word has gotten out virally.
American Idol appears to have gotten the buzz it needed after the drama surrounding Paula at the end of last season. They knew that providing a twist; a surprise; the unexpected would grab viewers' attention, which is one reason I feel that The General, while not "contestant status," was invited to audition.
The water cooler talk at the office is that (and I think this may happen) an Atlanta rapper may pick it up and cover it. Needless to say, viewers have a new reason to tune into Idol.
What's interesting to me is that while The General's audition was very unconventional, it was consistent with the Idol brand (namely the practice of putting up "losing" auditions during the first episodes) and at the same time added to it. I'm sure that some marketing genius at American Idol was thinking that... after all look at the amount of editing they gave to "The General's" clips.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Vegas Style Marketing
1-to-1 targeted marketing is the dream of just about any sales and marketing organization. It is highly coveted and extremely difficult to attain to, especially if you have thousands or even millions of customers to serve.
However, there are some industries (or better stated companies within industries) that have come very close to reaching this nirvana. One company and industry that is often cited as a leader in 1-to-1 is Harrah's Casino in Las Vegas (or Harrah's worldwide), but other gaming companies have started to follow suit and are attempting to play catch up. At one of their casinos, a "guest" playing on the casino floor that is starting to lose consistently will at an opportune time be greeting by a casino staff member that will offer the guest show tickets, free dinners at a buffet or restaurant within the casino, or another valued commodity to avert the possibility of the guest having a negative experience (and potentially keep them at that facility). Implementing this 1-on-1 guest rewards program has been very successful for this and other gaming companies both in terms of customer satisfaction and ROI that they are considered models in the world of high-touch database-driven marketing. You may have heard the phrase "Vegas-Style" when referring to CRM database marketing before and this is one of the reasons why.
Given that I've worked at the company that supplied many of these companies with the underlying technology that drives this 1-to-1 CRM success, I am familiar with the keys to success in making an effort like this happen. While the ROI is significant; the effort, energy, and investment required to realize this dream is also extremely significant.
So what are the keys to success? Here are, at a very high level, a few required steps:
1.) Committing to create a single, 360-degree view of the customer: As long as the data that a company uses to drive decisions regarding customer interactions is disintegrated, there is no possibility of being able to market Vegas-style. There must be a single source for customer data that is strictly governed at a high level in the organization and is considered the single source of truth. This is important because whenever a customer interacts with you and this interaction isn't aligned with other interactions they have with your company, then that interaction cannot be factored into your relationship with the customer. In a case where customer data exists in multiple places in your organization, each group that interacts with the customer will have their own version of the truth, and those versions can conflict with one another. In that case, your company can look schizophrenic to your customer, which does not help your brand. Implementing an effective 1-to-1 strategy requires consistency and consistency requires accurate, complete, and well-governed data. In this world, giving data governance the appropriate attention, visibility, and authority is paramount to your success.
2.) Committing to marketing based on data-driven customer insights: The reason that Harrah's dual-active data warehouse understands when to alert the casino staff that a customer service professional is needed on the floor is twofold: First, Harrah's spent time reviewing the behavior of its guests from the casino data and knew with a certain degree of certainty when those "points of frustration" would occur and decided as an organization what the rules of engagement would be. They knew not just intuitively when to make an offer, they reviewed the data and knew exactly when to act. Second, they took the data analysis and decided as an organization what the rules of engagement would be based on insights. These rules were built into the database, along with a certain degree of flexibility to ensure that the personal touch would not be lost. However, the decision to act was decided, vetted, and justified prior to that high roller losing a quarter of a million on the slots and the show ticket giveway action put into effect.
The true value of data analysis is on the front end strategy development side of the marketing process. While it is valuable to analyze "what happened?" once a campaign has completed, it's value is not nearly as significant as the value of predicting "what should happen and how should we drive behavior based on our insights about the customer?" In fact, "what happened?" gains a lot more value when the strategy itself is based on rock solid data-driven insights. This creates a feedback loop where future campaigns can be refined and strengthened based on validated or perhaps invalidated insights and assumptions.
3.) Committing to align your organization around the roadmap: The "Vegas Style database," once the insights were analyzed, the customer data completely consolidated, and the rules of engagement decided upon, defined the going forward marching orders for interacting with the customer. This is not only key to developing consistent communication with the customer but it is paramount to strengthening the company's brand. A brand, being a "promise of value," is built over time when the customer's experience with you consistently matches up with their expectations of you. When these expectations are high and they are consistently met, then your value to them and their loyalty to you grows. To achieve this, everyone on the organization needs to be working from the same playbook, the same customer data, and the same M.O. - it's why the West Coast Offense won the San Francisco 49'ers four Super Bowls in the 80's and is why Harrah's consistently "wow's" it's visitors with it's guest service.
At the end of the day, 1-to-1 marketing is not technology-driven, even though it is technology-enabled. It is a strategic decision that requires investment in organizational alignment and cultural focus in addition to the technology. It is worth the effort, however, as people in the gaming industry will attest.
However, there are some industries (or better stated companies within industries) that have come very close to reaching this nirvana. One company and industry that is often cited as a leader in 1-to-1 is Harrah's Casino in Las Vegas (or Harrah's worldwide), but other gaming companies have started to follow suit and are attempting to play catch up. At one of their casinos, a "guest" playing on the casino floor that is starting to lose consistently will at an opportune time be greeting by a casino staff member that will offer the guest show tickets, free dinners at a buffet or restaurant within the casino, or another valued commodity to avert the possibility of the guest having a negative experience (and potentially keep them at that facility). Implementing this 1-on-1 guest rewards program has been very successful for this and other gaming companies both in terms of customer satisfaction and ROI that they are considered models in the world of high-touch database-driven marketing. You may have heard the phrase "Vegas-Style" when referring to CRM database marketing before and this is one of the reasons why.
Given that I've worked at the company that supplied many of these companies with the underlying technology that drives this 1-to-1 CRM success, I am familiar with the keys to success in making an effort like this happen. While the ROI is significant; the effort, energy, and investment required to realize this dream is also extremely significant.
So what are the keys to success? Here are, at a very high level, a few required steps:
1.) Committing to create a single, 360-degree view of the customer: As long as the data that a company uses to drive decisions regarding customer interactions is disintegrated, there is no possibility of being able to market Vegas-style. There must be a single source for customer data that is strictly governed at a high level in the organization and is considered the single source of truth. This is important because whenever a customer interacts with you and this interaction isn't aligned with other interactions they have with your company, then that interaction cannot be factored into your relationship with the customer. In a case where customer data exists in multiple places in your organization, each group that interacts with the customer will have their own version of the truth, and those versions can conflict with one another. In that case, your company can look schizophrenic to your customer, which does not help your brand. Implementing an effective 1-to-1 strategy requires consistency and consistency requires accurate, complete, and well-governed data. In this world, giving data governance the appropriate attention, visibility, and authority is paramount to your success.
2.) Committing to marketing based on data-driven customer insights: The reason that Harrah's dual-active data warehouse understands when to alert the casino staff that a customer service professional is needed on the floor is twofold: First, Harrah's spent time reviewing the behavior of its guests from the casino data and knew with a certain degree of certainty when those "points of frustration" would occur and decided as an organization what the rules of engagement would be. They knew not just intuitively when to make an offer, they reviewed the data and knew exactly when to act. Second, they took the data analysis and decided as an organization what the rules of engagement would be based on insights. These rules were built into the database, along with a certain degree of flexibility to ensure that the personal touch would not be lost. However, the decision to act was decided, vetted, and justified prior to that high roller losing a quarter of a million on the slots and the show ticket giveway action put into effect.
The true value of data analysis is on the front end strategy development side of the marketing process. While it is valuable to analyze "what happened?" once a campaign has completed, it's value is not nearly as significant as the value of predicting "what should happen and how should we drive behavior based on our insights about the customer?" In fact, "what happened?" gains a lot more value when the strategy itself is based on rock solid data-driven insights. This creates a feedback loop where future campaigns can be refined and strengthened based on validated or perhaps invalidated insights and assumptions.
3.) Committing to align your organization around the roadmap: The "Vegas Style database," once the insights were analyzed, the customer data completely consolidated, and the rules of engagement decided upon, defined the going forward marching orders for interacting with the customer. This is not only key to developing consistent communication with the customer but it is paramount to strengthening the company's brand. A brand, being a "promise of value," is built over time when the customer's experience with you consistently matches up with their expectations of you. When these expectations are high and they are consistently met, then your value to them and their loyalty to you grows. To achieve this, everyone on the organization needs to be working from the same playbook, the same customer data, and the same M.O. - it's why the West Coast Offense won the San Francisco 49'ers four Super Bowls in the 80's and is why Harrah's consistently "wow's" it's visitors with it's guest service.
At the end of the day, 1-to-1 marketing is not technology-driven, even though it is technology-enabled. It is a strategic decision that requires investment in organizational alignment and cultural focus in addition to the technology. It is worth the effort, however, as people in the gaming industry will attest.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
"So much cooler online"
The other day, I saw a tweet come across my feed that made me laugh out loud. It stated:
"I still hate Comcast, but @ComcastMarc_NE makes me hate them less. Good customer service guy." (from @617patrick)
This tweet illustrates that importance of authenticity and ensuring that the interactions that you have online and in social networking as a company align with the reality of your brand. Comcast has been very successful with using social networking, and specifically Twitter, to improve their customer service.
A banner at Dreamforce evangelized their success story with social media, claiming a 46% increase in their net promoter score as a result of using SalesForce for Twitter to engage with their consumers. They have a team of customer service reps (like @ComcastMarc_NE) that strictly look for complaints on Twitter (which I can imagine based on the staffing in this organization and my own personal experience that there are many) and start conversations in the attempt to resolve their cable, internet, or phone issues.
However, as we can see (and a lot of us that use Comcast can attest), the offline interactions many of us have with Comcast haven't changed much. They are giving us one image online with their "Twitter Ninja" team and another one with the contracted technician that visits our home and does very little to meet our expectations. Are they like the guy in the Brad Paisley song "Online" who works at the Pizza Pit, drives an old jalopy, and lives with his parents yet portrays himself as a hot model from Malibu with extraordinary tastes?
At the end of the day, being successful with marketing in social media requires authenticity, and is not a highly-effective image management mechanism. Customers today are very savvy and can tell, and in many cases will call us out if we are "so much cooler online." News does travel fast in the social networking world. The good news is, if we are authentic online and offline, serve our followers, customers, and fans well, and deliver on our brand promise in every channel it will do wonders for our brand. Good news also travels fast.
"I still hate Comcast, but @ComcastMarc_NE makes me hate them less. Good customer service guy." (from @617patrick)
This tweet illustrates that importance of authenticity and ensuring that the interactions that you have online and in social networking as a company align with the reality of your brand. Comcast has been very successful with using social networking, and specifically Twitter, to improve their customer service.
A banner at Dreamforce evangelized their success story with social media, claiming a 46% increase in their net promoter score as a result of using SalesForce for Twitter to engage with their consumers. They have a team of customer service reps (like @ComcastMarc_NE) that strictly look for complaints on Twitter (which I can imagine based on the staffing in this organization and my own personal experience that there are many) and start conversations in the attempt to resolve their cable, internet, or phone issues.
However, as we can see (and a lot of us that use Comcast can attest), the offline interactions many of us have with Comcast haven't changed much. They are giving us one image online with their "Twitter Ninja" team and another one with the contracted technician that visits our home and does very little to meet our expectations. Are they like the guy in the Brad Paisley song "Online" who works at the Pizza Pit, drives an old jalopy, and lives with his parents yet portrays himself as a hot model from Malibu with extraordinary tastes?
At the end of the day, being successful with marketing in social media requires authenticity, and is not a highly-effective image management mechanism. Customers today are very savvy and can tell, and in many cases will call us out if we are "so much cooler online." News does travel fast in the social networking world. The good news is, if we are authentic online and offline, serve our followers, customers, and fans well, and deliver on our brand promise in every channel it will do wonders for our brand. Good news also travels fast.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Salesforce Chatter
Attending Dreamforce 2009, as with every one of Salesforce.com's conferences you know that an exciting game-changing announcement is in the works. This year provided one that I believe could be monumental.
Chatter.
"Chatter" is Salesforce's new "Facebook for the enterprise." It essentially takes the "feed, follow, and profile" features and best practices of Facebook and Twitter, and applies them to the CRM cloud model that is currently in place. What it creates is an tool where anything that is worked within Salesforce.com or communicates with Salesforce.com can "talk" to you through a live feed that is similar to the one that you see when you log into Facebook and view the news feed.
In Mark Benioff's keynote, he made this statement that I believe is the core reason why this may really take off (especially in younger companies but is not limited to). He asked "Why is it that I know when one of my 5,000 Facebook 'friends' have gone to a certain movie but I don't know when my VP of Sales has visited a key client?" The point is this: social networking has greatly enhanced our abilities to organize our social lives and disseminate information in our personal lives, so why can't we have these same abilities in our businesses? Why can't the same automatic notification I get when a picture of me from a party has been tagged come when a creative brief that I'm collaborating on has just had a key revision?
In business today, I have to either be proactive, I have to get alerted through my dedicated communications system (Outlook or IM... all disparate) or someone has to take the initiative to push the information I need out to me. In social networking, I get all of my information socially from the feed. Essentially, "Chatter" is their attempt to bring this metaphor and this "integration of people, applications, and data" into a single collaboration engine that is familiar to those of us that use tools like Facebook, which statistically is most, if not all of us.
Time will tell whether this bet will pay off... and if business will indeed transform based on this new metaphor. However, considering that SalesForce.com's initial inspiration for SaaS was Amazon.com (another highly successful consumer web application), they may be on to something.
According to the folks I talked to at Dreamforce, expect Chatter to hit your Cloud in Summer '10. However, their Safe Harbor statements indicate that we shouldn't put all our chips on this quite yet, but it will be exciting to see what it brings to the table when it is generally available.
Chatter.
"Chatter" is Salesforce's new "Facebook for the enterprise." It essentially takes the "feed, follow, and profile" features and best practices of Facebook and Twitter, and applies them to the CRM cloud model that is currently in place. What it creates is an tool where anything that is worked within Salesforce.com or communicates with Salesforce.com can "talk" to you through a live feed that is similar to the one that you see when you log into Facebook and view the news feed.
In Mark Benioff's keynote, he made this statement that I believe is the core reason why this may really take off (especially in younger companies but is not limited to). He asked "Why is it that I know when one of my 5,000 Facebook 'friends' have gone to a certain movie but I don't know when my VP of Sales has visited a key client?" The point is this: social networking has greatly enhanced our abilities to organize our social lives and disseminate information in our personal lives, so why can't we have these same abilities in our businesses? Why can't the same automatic notification I get when a picture of me from a party has been tagged come when a creative brief that I'm collaborating on has just had a key revision?
In business today, I have to either be proactive, I have to get alerted through my dedicated communications system (Outlook or IM... all disparate) or someone has to take the initiative to push the information I need out to me. In social networking, I get all of my information socially from the feed. Essentially, "Chatter" is their attempt to bring this metaphor and this "integration of people, applications, and data" into a single collaboration engine that is familiar to those of us that use tools like Facebook, which statistically is most, if not all of us.
Time will tell whether this bet will pay off... and if business will indeed transform based on this new metaphor. However, considering that SalesForce.com's initial inspiration for SaaS was Amazon.com (another highly successful consumer web application), they may be on to something.
According to the folks I talked to at Dreamforce, expect Chatter to hit your Cloud in Summer '10. However, their Safe Harbor statements indicate that we shouldn't put all our chips on this quite yet, but it will be exciting to see what it brings to the table when it is generally available.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Unconventional
It's been a while since I've posted here, especially with my attention being focused on the political season as it is. I do have an observation from the last couple of weeks:
Notice the unconventionalness of the decisions made by each of the candidates... partly I believe to shore up some of their perceived weaknesses as well as to energize their ticket. Obama, relatively inexperienced in National politics and running as an anti-establishment "change" candidate picks a 65 year old Washington insider who is the epitome of the Democratic establishment. John McCain, the experienced one running for President, counters by picking a very young, first-year, relatively unknown Governor for his running mate. Interesting.
On the technology side, I am enjoying the video tributes that both of the parties are using in their conventions. The multimedia flair is adding a little to the polish of the conventions.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Startup evaluation
Having worked in an entrepreneurial environment in the past, and wanting to return to the innovative, creative, and fast-paced high-tech startup world, I have been giving some thoughts to how to evaluate opportunities that will present themselves in this space. This thought came about from talking to colleagues who have worked at or are currently involved in new ventures and the wisdom gleamed both from my as well as their experience. There is a lot of new venture activity in the analytical BI and CRM space where I am positioned, especially with SaaS analytics companies and new DWA vendors.
The issue is not in finding companies, but more so in picking a winner... In my venture evaluation, these are the criteria that I believe would be the most valuable (feel free to debate):
1. Venture funding partners... Who in the venture capital market has bought into their business plan and are supporting them with capital and leadership? What are the reputation of these firms and the companies that they fund?
2. Leadership team... What is the experience and reputation of the executives and founders of the company? Have they succeeded before (like Brett Hurt of Bazaarvoice who founded CoreMetrics)? What is their experience in the space (such as Foster Henshaw of Dataupia, who founded Netezza which is now public, profitable, and has revenues of over $150M/year)? What type of people are they to work for? What type of corporate cultures do they incubate?
3. The technology... Is the technology differentiated in a real and relevant way? Is the value proposition compelling?
4. Customers (tie with technology)... Who from a customer standpoint has bought into the venture's value proposition and put "skin in the game" to invest in it for themselves? What has their success been with the technology?
Obviously, all of these are relevant and important. In addition, the order of consideration does depend on the amount of risk you want to take... for example, customers may be #1 if you're more risk averse... and leadership team before venture capital if you're more of a risk taker. I have seen some interesting ventures in the market (a couple I listed above) and it'll be exciting to see what their future may be...
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Mass Blast no more... but how?
Talking to a number of folks in the CRM and digital interactive marketing spaces over the past months and weeks, the ancedotal truth that the old "mass blast" form of marketing is either on its way out into extinction or may already be there. I think that there may be a place for it in some way (TV, radio, print advertising that is) but it is no where near the force that it once was in the brand managers' world.
That's the bad news... the good news is that with all of the digital media outlets that we have today, there is a plethora of data out there for marketers to mine and gain insights into segmented or even one-to-one marketing. The better news is that there are technologies out there today that allow companies to store and harness that information (data warehouse appliances, analytical toolsets in SaaS delivery, user friendly BI tools, plug-in application delivery mechanisms to user connection points, etc.), so in a sense a company can actually know you and market to you individually if they wanted to.
But there's some bad news about that... This can (and does) creep people out. Like, in a "1984" kind of way (the George Orwell book, not the Macintosh ad)... or think about how the billboards were talking to Tom Cruise's character in the movie "Minority Report." Technically, something along those lines could be possible with the data and delivery mechanisms... the problem is that it is (or can be) a major invasion of a person's privacy if permission to market has not been given. In a harmless way, people like me are clearing spam out of their inboxes because of all of the marketing aimed at us based on some action or actions we have taken online... in a less harmless way, people start to feel uncomfortable and start bailing from good services that they once trusted.
The key for a marketer in this world, I believe, is gaining permission to market to a consumer... to engage in a dialogue with them that feels more like a "pull" than a "push." In a sense, consumers that trust companies they do business with and engage them on their terms ("market to me on my terms") will become raving fans and will be more loyal. The trick is how to obtain permission... because we have the tools and the technology.
Now, we need to earn the trust.... and not betray it.
Food for thought.
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