GASP – A Don Draper Moment Missed
GASP have missed a valuable opportunity. Dumb luck gave them a chance for growth but being dumb, they blew it.
For those who haven’t followed, here’s the story. ‘Fattish’ girl is abused in shop, sends letter of complaint, management sides with clerk, abuses further, the abused posts the abuse to the internet, the crowd goes wild!
At first I wondered whether it was a PR stunt, then I watched the 7PM project.
This was their Don Draper moment. Their moment to announce why they’re “firing clients.” Their moment to make their ostentatious, trashbag customers salivate at the chops. But unfortunately, this was the moment we all realised this was no stunt.
What the company delivered was Matt Chidgey, an inarticulate Operations Manager with no clear message nor passion. He had been told to side with the store but hadn’t really worked out a good reason why he should. The result: an embarrassment for him (poor bugger was obviously out of his depth) and a tremendous wasted opportunity for GASP.
Of course there’s no love lost with their current customers. But what they missed was a golden opportunity to grow and position. An opportunity to be the store that has attitude. That rejects customer service clichés and says you’re not welcome to the “undesireables” (a position loved by undesirables.) They didn’t. They still haven’t. And every day they don’t, they’re making it harder to turn around.
Siri, Search and Australia
The Apple iPhone 4S has a thing called Siri. Siri has changed search. Google and Windows phones have something similar, but they’re not as good. (Vested interests). With Siri, we’re one step closer to having a functioning oracle. Ask a question of your phone and receive an answer – an intelligent one.
Ask a Fact:
“How far is it from Melbourne to Sydney?”
Or something more subjective:
“Where’s the best vindaloo on Victoria St?”
“The best plumber in Richmond?” or
“The best Spanish School in Melbourne?”
Of course this functionality isn’t completely here (Australia) yet but it’s not far away.
This style of search works on delivering answers from a range of different databases. For questions related to restaurants, entertainment and local businesses U.S Siri searches sites like Yelp and for facts, Wolfram Alpha. For everything in between there’s speculation that sites like Quora will fill the gaps.
The Australian equivalents are sites like truelocal and eatability amongst a myriad of others but we’re missing a Quora.
What’s Quora?
From their website: “Quora is a continuously improving collection of questions and answers” or put another way a ‘Wikipedia’ of useful and thought out Q & A.
Without an Australian styled Quora or people devoting time to completing an Australian based section ON Quora (it’s started) we’ll never get answers to critical questions like:
“What did Bob Hawke say when we won the America’s cup?”
or answer
“how many cans did David Boon once drink on a flight to the UK?”
So what does this mean for Australian businesses? What are the implications?
Firstly search marketing will change. SEO will need to include a heavy focus on creating listings in review sites and encouraging customers to review to increase rank. Since we don’t know which sites Apple will end up using in their databases yet (do we?) it’d be wise for businesses to hedge their bets across a range of sites.
Secondly we need a Quora. We need an entrepreneur or brand to step up and build an online database of Q & As relating to Australia so that when we ask our phone our questions we’re not returned some offensive, American similarity. An appropriate brand might be Qantas and an obvious campaign would be to enlist the public to help pose and answer our questions.
Like all things digital, this change is happening quickly. Google already report that 25% of mobile search is conducted by voice so to get a head start on the competition Australian businesses need to start acting now.
Mike Lazerow on Future of Social Media
“The future of social media is the core of a massive shift online from a search and intent-based world to a social, people-based world. The last three years were about the consumer side of social platforms, as we watched Facebook, Zynga and Twitter grow exponentially. The next three years will about the enterprise side of social, and how companies engage and grow their businesses by tapping into these massive platforms.
It’s an era where customers, vendors and partners are no longer anonymous segments that you ‘source,’ ‘manage’ and ‘market to.’ They are people. People you connect with. Talk to. Advocate for. Listen to. And if you’re lucky, they sell for you, solve problems for you, defend you, listen to you and build your business for you, one conversation at a time, while you sleep.”
Mike Lazerow – Founder, Chairman and CEO at Buddy Media
Fridge Magnets and Other Unsexy Ideas
Fridge magnets work. Stickers work. Flyers work. But as marketers we never think of them, or if we do, we never suggest them. Small business owners do. And they do because they’re cost effective and get results. For us, they’re just not sexy enough, not new enough not “techy” enough, whatever.
We work in an industry obsessed with creativity and ‘one-upmanship’ which brings out the best and the worst in us. It’s a dangerous place to be where proven solutions aren’t brought to the table due to fears of how you’ll be perceived for bringing them up or how the agency will be perceived for executing them. We are after all here to solve problems. Problems don’t care how sexy their solutions are.
(I had an image of a fridge full of magnets here but took it down cos it was too ugly.)
Digital Strategy: Small Nibbles lead to Bigger Bites
Digital Strategy: Small Nibbles lead to Bigger Bites
HBO get it. When there’s infinite choice, attention span is the issue. Fans want more but they want more on their terms. They want to take a nibble first then decide if they want to take a bigger bite.
To promote the final season of Entourage, HBO have released a series of 1 min juicy interviews with popular characters from the series on Youtube. The micro interviews are short enough to warrant your time and interesting enough to make you want to view a few more. After three or so they’ve got you. You find yourself searching for more Season 8 content and wanting to tell your friends that it’s coming.
This is how the process went for me.
1. Discovery via Twitter feed
2. Watched three micro interviews on Youtube
3. Post on my friend’s Facebook wall that Season 8’s coming with a Youtube link.
4. Google Season 8 Entourage, taken to HBO site that has more in depth extra content.
5. Mental note to stream the half hour special later tonight.
Outcome: I’m aware, I’ve been entertained, I’m informing others and I’m looking forward to the next season.
Roast Duck & The “Yes!” Moment
My friend and I share a strange sense of humour. We can spend hours conjuring up characters with exaggerated personalities that are loosely based around our own perverted beliefs, values and idiosyncrasies. Recently we’ve noticed that sometimes these characters influence our decision making in the real world. Last night for example I was at a Vietnamese restaurant and someone at the table asked, “Should we order some duck?”
My thought process went like this:
Question: Do I want duck?
Visualisation 1: I picture an overweight 19th century aristocrat sitting down to a feast of rich gamy meats.
Visualisation 2: The same man later suffering from gout.
Translation: Wealth, Power, Slight Political Incorrectness
Decision : “Yes!” (…I definitely want to be a part of this)
We laugh uncontrollably about what images sometimes pop into our heads that end up influencing our decision. The “Yes!” (…I definitely want to be a part of this) moment is marketing.
The questions are:
1. How is your brand being envisioned in your target market’s mind?
2. What will it take for your brand to be envisioned as a “Yes! (I definitely want to be a part of this) brand?
