Category: Business and Marketing

‘Pay your bill or die’: Verizon Wireless excels at customer intimacy

On By quriosityIn Business and Marketing2 Comments

The Times-Reporter of new Philadelphia, Ohio, reports that police searching for a potential suicide victim were thwarted by a Verizon Wireless operator who refused to turn on the customer’s cell phone so the p0lice could use a nearby cell tower to locate the victim.

The man was behind on his bill, the rep informed police, and the police would have to make a payment on the bill or the signal would not be connected. (See “Unconscious Carroll man found after 11-hour search,” by Nancy Schaar)

This kind of intransigence makes me think that Verizon Wireless has been unsuccessful at implementing a key practice in good customer relations: Empower your people to do the right thing for the customer.

Perhaps my experience with Verizon Wireless is not typical, but twice in the last ten years I have had to write letters to company executives and lodge complaints with the state consumer protection agency simply to get Verizon Wireless to do the right thing for me as the customer. In both cases, I was in the right but customer service reps and even supervisors were evidently trained and incentivized to stonewall. (One of these incidents occurred when the company was still called Bell Atlantic.)

The Times-Reporter article describes the interaction between Sheriff Dale Williams and the Verizon Wireless operator:

Williams said he attempted to use the man’s cell phone signal to locate him, but the man was behind on his phone bill and the Verizon operator refused to connect the signal unless the sheriff’s department agreed to pay the overdue bill. After some disagreement, Williams agreed to pay $20 on the phone bill in order to find the man. But deputies discovered the man just as Williams was preparing to make arrangements for the payment….

“I was more concerned for the person’s life,” Williams said. “It would have been nice if Verizon would have turned on his phone for five or 10 minutes, just long enough to try and find the guy. But they would only turn it on if we agreed to pay $20 of the unpaid bill. Ridiculous.”

AB — 23 May 2009

Behind Tropicana’s failed re-brand

On By quriosityIn Business and Marketing, Creativity2 Comments

Natalie Zmuda, writing for Advertising Age, says that Tropicana’s full-reverse on its new branding for its Pure Premium orange juice line was surprisingly quick. “Beverage experts were hard pressed to think of another major brand that had pulled the plug on such a sweeping redesign as swiftly as Tropicana,” she writes. (See “Tropicana Line’s Sales Plunge 20% Post-Rebranding,” April 2, 2009.)

Her article gives some of the sales figures behind the reversal: “After its package redesign, sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line plummeted 20% between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22, costing the brand tens of millions of dollars.”

At a press conference in January 2009 by Pepsico (owner of the Tropicana brand), Peter Arnell, CEO of Arnell Group, the branding agency that executed the redesign, explained his rationale (See Ad Age’s video of the press conference here):

We thought it would be very important to take this brand and bring it or evolve it into a more current or modern state … Historically, we always show the outside of the orange. What was fascinating was that we had never shown the product called the juice. There was a strong drive to bring a big messaging onto the carton where the biggest single billboarding was.

I think it was in the billboarding where Arnell failed. The instant I saw the two carton designs side-by-side, my first thought was, ‘The new one looks like a store brand.’:

Really, which one of these designs does a better job of billboarding? On the new carton, every color has been drained out (except the cute new squeeze-cap, which Pepsico will be retaining), and the new font looks almost generic.

It makes me wonder what kind of testing Arnell did with this new design. I would think one important part of the process would be to stock a supply of the new package design in an actual grocery-store cooler or shelf to see how well it stands out against the competition.

For a good example of on-the-shelf billboarding, take a look at this cereal aisle:

specialkht-001

See how Special K stands out on the shelf? The packaging does it.

In one of our ILO Institute reports (“Best Practices for CPG Design Teams”), we commented on the contribution packaging can make toward getting the attention of shoppers in the store (we used this same photo in the report):

As an example of simple visual differentiation through packaging, we note that Special K achieves high visibility on the retail shelf with standard package sizes using one simple graphic technique – making sure that on the front of every package is a big red “K” with a mostly white background. This emphasizes Kellogg’s offering by placing a distinct swath of giant “Ks” across the cereal aisle.

We also used the following example from spice company McMillan:

mcmillanshelf

In our report, we commented:

 

McMillan’s shelf dispensing system achieves strong visual emphasis for its spice products. In the case of the display shown here, McMillan’s has even gotten the retailer to agree to alter its shelving configuration to accommodate the dispensing system.

This emphasizes the importance of including on the product design team members who are knowledgeable about the retail destination of a new product and the restrictions likely to be encountered in the store.

One positive aspect of the Tropicana re-branding debacle is that we analysts now have another negative case study to refer to!

AB — 3 April 2009

 

Doodling is good for thinkers

On By quriosityIn Business and Marketing, Creativity, Innovation, ThinkingLeave a comment

I just saw an interesting study (mentioned in Wired — see “A Sketchy Brain Booster: Doodling”) published in Applied Cognitive Psychology concluding that doodling actually aids in concentration.

The article, “What Does Doodling Do?” by Jackie Andrade of the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth, UK, found that participants in an experiment could better remember a list of names read to them if they were performing a simultaneous task that simulated doodling.

What might be the underlying mechanism at work here? Andrade suggests two possibilities:

1. “that doodling simply helps to stabilize arousal at an optimal level, keeping people awake or reducing the high levels of autonomic arousal often associated with boredom”

or

2. “that doodling aids concentration by reducing daydreaming”

Both are interesting ideas and make me think of two current interests I have:

1. Idea mapping, sometimes called Mind Mapping (as propounded by educational consultant Tony Buzan). I have been employing this visual approach for several years now in note-taking, public speaking, writing, consulting, and group processes and have become convinced that drawing and mapping is a memory aid.

2. The language teaching methods of Harry Cotton of the Canadian Institute of English. Dr. Cotton advocates involving body movement to aid retention when learning to speak a foreign language.

AB — 27 February 2009

Idea Mapping — basics and some resources

On By quriosityIn Business and Marketing, Innovation, ThinkingLeave a comment

For several years, I have been using a process called idea mapping as a thinking tool. This is related to Mind Mapping, the brainchild of Tony Buzan. (See this page for some great examples of Mind Maps.)

I would describe idea mapping as a set of visual methods for thinking. I employ idea mapping in many kinds of settings — planning, outlining, note-taking, public speaking, writing, consulting, and leading group process. When working alone, I use unlined drawing paper and colored markers. When working with groups, I use a white board or large sheets of paper with colored markers.

Here are some books I recommend on this topic:

The Mind Map Book: How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain’s Untapped Potential, by Tony and Barry Buzan

Mapping Inner Space: Learning and Teaching Visual Mapping, by Nancy Margulies and Nusa Maal

AB — 27 February 2009

Is media bias making the economy worse?

On By quriosityIn Business and Marketing, Economics, Society and Popular CultureLeave a comment

Recently I raised the very gloomy question whether the whole economy is one big bubble.

This got me thinking about the roles of optimism and pessimism in the ups and downs of the economy. Often I hear people claim (or at least express the fear) that all the pessimistic media coverage about the current economic turmoil is actually making things worse. A cynic might point to this claim as yet more evidence of Bubbleconomics at work.

This article by Faye Mallett of the Galt Global Review raises the question,

Could media be held legally liable if exaggerated reports of the global economic crisis prove to further decrease consumer confidence and actually worsen the situation?

(The date of Mallett’s article is given as January 13, 2008, but I’m pretty sure 2009 is meant, so the article is probably more current than one might think.)

Mallett cites research supposedly demonstrating that the media are biased toward economic pessimism in the current economic crisis. On the other hand, media during the Great Depression “invoked a much more positive and optimistic outlook,” she writes.

I read a certain irony into that: Is it possible that the overly positive press in 1929 blinded people to the reality of how bad things really were?

As a source, Mallett references a report from the Business & Media Institute (BMI), “The Great Media Depression.” BMI’s web site describes the organization as devoted to “analyzing and exposing the anti-free enterprise culture of the media.”

AB — 23 February 2009

Video Highlights Barriers to Innovation

On By quriosityIn Business and Marketing, InnovationLeave a comment

This video about an engineer trying to get management at NASA to pay attention to a new idea highlights organizational barriers to innovation.

The basic objection she meets up with is, ‘That’s just not the way we do things here.’

The acting and editing are not so hot, but I understand that the video has stimulated a lot of interest and discussion at NASA.

AB — 9 February 2009

Can You Bottle Viral Marketing?

On By quriosityIn Business and MarketingLeave a comment

Recently I’ve been writing about “viral marketing” for the book I’m working on. It’s got me thinking about the distinction between the forced viral marketing exemplified by Hotmail, Blue Mountain Arts, and other commercial companies, and the viral phenomena that seem to occur just by virtue of their own compelling natures.

I’m thinking particularly about happenings like these:

  • Mahir Cagri, the Turkish fellow, whose goofy personal home page gained millions of visitors a couple years ago.
  • “All your base are belong to us,” an off-beat phrase that has proliferated around the Internet, derived from a badly translated 1980s Japanese video game.
  • Psycho Ex-Girlfriend, a site developed by a guy who decided to post audio files converted from voicemails left by a crazed woman he broke up with.

I wonder …

What is it about these examples that causes them to rise from obscurity, get broadcast around the Internet, and gain the attention of millions? Is it that they are so funny, goofy, weird, or engaging, that people just can’t resist sharing them?

Whole companies have arisen just for the purpose of creating “viral marketing campaigns” for their clients. Obviously, these campaigns work sometimes. But how often? I’ll bet many companies have spent tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands trying to creat a viral effect — with little or no result. On the other hand, the above examples seem to have “worked” with minimal effort on the part of the originator.

Can you really bottle viral-ness? Or does it have to just “happen”?

AB — originally posted about 2001