Gripes and Grins

Awesome example of bad email marketing

I typically use this blog to share and highlight instances where big brands fail to meet their brand promises. Sometimes I applaud bigger brands that are doing a good job -- Microsoft and Starbucks are recent examples.  Sometimes, I post about startups that are trying to do something new or better.  On a rare occasion, I dump on a small outfit doing something cuddy.  This is one of those situations.

I get a lot of email.  My email addresses are bought, sold, rented to all kinds of business consultants and solution providers.  I get 300-400 emails per day, maybe 1-in-5 is from a fellow employee, partner or vendor. As the math indicates, I receive a lot of marketing emails.  In addition, I send out a lot of  marketing email messages to parents registered with SmartyCard.  Establishing my cred here, I've been handling outbound email marketing for consumer Internet companies for more than a decade. 

Basic marketing tip for you: When you're trying to get someone's business via email marketing, don't insult them or antagonize them.  I know this seems intuitive, but you'd be surprised what kind of stuff rolls into my inbox.  Take the email below for example.  

 

Comcast: Were you trying to scare my wife?

Readers of my blog have seen me post mysterious charges on my Comcast bill, charges that were later disappeared.  I've documented outages and summarized Comcast explanations of outages as well.  It's no secret that I have a love-hate relationship with Comcast.  Generally, I love their marketing, hate their service, feel sorry for their support and I'm annoyed by their "social media" monkeys that respond to any tweet or post mentioning Comcast. 

In my most recent post about Comcast, I confessed that I didn't even care about the minor service fee increases because my services have been relatively stable this year. 

But, I'm back to hating Comcast this morning.  I live in suburban Mountain View CA.  I arrived home last night and my wife was clearly spooked.  My wife was home with our children yesterday when a creepy cable guy knocked on the door.  My wife opened the door, and a guy wearing a Comcast shirt with a clip board explained that he was there to check on our Comcast services. 

Now, having started my marketing career in "field research" for Nabisco, I can tell you that there is a right way and wrong way to find out how your customers are feeling about your products and services.  

Here are some non-threatening methods:

1. Approach people in a public marketplace, ask if they're a customer, inquire about customer satisfaction and take notes.

2. Use a phone.  Presumably, as a Triple Play customer, Comcast has my phone number.  Comcast didn't call me.  No one calls that number -- I pick it up once a month to see if there is a dial-tone. 

3. Send survey in the mail.

4. Send a survey in email. 

5. Using one of the channels above, contact and arrange for an in-person interview.

6. Offer an honorarium. Note: this is a good way to get more profiling info.

Instead of using one of these methods, this guy with no ID except a shirt, a dangling badge and clipboard shows up and starts asking about our services.  Now, even using this method, there's still a way to execute the door-to-door customer inquiry without scaring the crap out of people. 

1. Be polite, ask if you can have a few moments of someone's time and explain the customer research objective.

2. Provide some sort of indication that you are familiar with the services being provides to each customer -- a list of customers providing names and service class (Triple Play vs. basic) is a good start.

3. Provide reassurances that you're asking questions to improve service and understand customer concerns.

Sadly, Comcast didn't execute very well.  In fact, they scared my wife, because they new nothing about our service package, our family name, how long we'd been with Comcast, nor did they explain their research objective.  Basically, Comcast sent a surly guy in a tshirt to my house to audit our services, and, in the process, scare the crap out of my wife.  I'm sure that my divorced and widowed neighbors didn't even answer their doors.  Instead, they probably looked out their windows and saw a creepy guy in a Comcast tshirt --> that's a net-negative brand impression. 

Comcast: I'm so very close to putting $1K into AppleTV and PS3 with Netflix so that I never have to deal with your sloppy business practices again. Someone in corporate please grow a brain and stop scaring the crap out of people with these customer audits.  

 

Why TV Elsewhere is so much more interesting

The point of this post and the clip is not to say that Americans are dumb.  I mean, that would be a little cliche right?  Well, this over-priveleged-asshole is drooling over English TV again after finding this clip on smirking chimp. Why? Because the content is so rich and focused.  Seriously, when I was traveling to the UK a lot in 06 and 07, this is the kind of TV that I would watch in the middle of the night because I couldn't sleep. 

Forget the super-stimulating business and political content in the clip. I recognize that not everyone graduated PoliSci and went to work in high-tech or business for that matter. Forget the awesomeness of a clip where UK bankers are referring to Goldman Sachs as "scum". Think about TV as a medium for creativity, entertainment and innovation. Think of Endemol -- the Dutch/British lab that creates reality TV franchises frequently imported by dim-witted Hollywood execs. Think of the amazing UK television series creating commercial successes (the office) and influencing whole generations of American productions (The Young Ones). TV in the UK reminds me of what could be here in the US, but is not, because TV (the business of TV) is racing to the bottom rung of intelligence (along with the brand marketers supporting bad programming).

So, last night, as I watched a bit of the biggest loser, I wretched a little bit at Jillian's tired act and the awkward product placements. And, honestly, this show deserves my support for the good that it might do in inspiring obese Americans to get healthy...but the execution is just so poor that it is getting really hard to watch. How bad is American TV if I have 800 Comcast digital channels, including 50 HD channels, and TV can only hold my attention for an hour on Thursday night (NBC) and Sunday Night (A&E)? Literally, TV was so bad last night that I couldn't stay awake.

As I crawled into bed and reached for a book, my wife looked up at Jay Leno and said, "really, Jay has Ewen McGregor on and he is asking about accents and fried Mars bars?". Yeah, really. TV is that bad. I'm going out tonight.

Diggerslist: Cause Marketing at Work

Diggerslist "launched" earlier this week. Disclosure: the founders are my brothers-in-law. In truth, if you look at the site (think eBay for construction), you'll see that DiggersList has been around for awhile.  Most people are savvy enough to know that you don't get regional listings from contractors overnight... I know my contractor isn't exactly an earlier adopter.  But I digress. 

You may look a the video below and scratch your head and think -- wow, corny vids and a DIY knock-off are so 2006.  These guys have a sense of humor about themselves.  What you're seeing in the video is reinforcing two key DiggersList customer beneifts, albeit the latter benefit is a very subtle reference. And, the cause marketing tactic is very engaging - holds my attention enough to communicate two key user benefits.  Here they are the meta-points:

1. The really interesting thing about DiggersList is that it works for both professional contractors and DIY'ers like yours truly.  In my garage, I've got random piles of tiles, un-opened buckets of paint, and more outdoor irrigation PVC than most Mexican drug lords.  I'm going to use DiggersList to clean out the garage, and buy a secret kegerator to fill the new space in my garage. I find this beneficial.

2. DiggersList is a green business.  The tshirts were the subtle indicator in the video.  But, if you're walking around Santa Monica or Los Angeles right now, you'll see posters on dozens of construction sites noting that the scrap materials are going to be recycled through DiggersList.  And, I love any business that is making money out of a byproduct.  That's good value for the buyer, great margin for the seller, good for the environment.

When you think about all of the marketing drek out there, this low-budget "help a neighbor" web video promotional effort is genuine and engaging.  I know from all of my years of marketing that whatever the format, your marketing has to genuine and engaging. 

Now, I'm not saying DiggersList is going to be huge.  And, I know for sure that venture capitalists aren't going to bet on DiggersList this quarter.  But, that's not DiggersList fault.  Most VCs are having trouble keeping their existing investments afloat and nobody wants to make a capital call to their limited partners this Holiday season.  And, because TechCrunch50 Winner Red Beacon (Angie's List for DIY) is tangential to DiggersList, most VCs will shy away from DiggersList because they won't see the obvious business differences.  But I don't think having VC dollars is as important as it once was.

I view DiggersList as another great idea that is going to make a lot of money outside of the traditional venture startup model.  There's a lot of these startups happening right now.  Entrepreneurs are choosing to take money from high-net-worth individual investors with domain expertise in lieu of venture funding right now.  DiggersList is one of them. And, in some ways, I'm green with envy. 

Why crowd sourcing ads will work for SmartyCard

I just sent the email below to Chris Breshears of Phase One Accelerators and Adrienne Allen, VP of Creative, SmartyCard.  I've been struggling with how to communicate why I haven't felt good about our nascent parent marketing efforts at SmartyCard.  Some of this rambling screed is tainted with my own growing discontent with the metrics-driven creative determinations so prevalent in advertising today.  But, outside of that, I'm being brutally honest about our initial shortcomings and what is driving me to crowdsource ad creative for our next round of parent-focused creatives.  Would love any comments.

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First, I want to thank Chris for jumping into the good fight and responding to my madmen request by

1. not laughing at my pathetic emergency budget and
2. replying summarily “sounds like a dream gig”
   

Second, I want to thank Adrienne for forcing me to talk through this — you’re a real creative pro.

Chris, a dream this will not be, but it sure as hell is going to be fun.  We look forward to your arrival next week, but in the meantime, Adrienne has her kick-ass team working in a new, inspired direction.  And, I’m soliciting inputs from the customer.

To recap, I feel a bit ashamed.  I let our first round of Mom-focused creative develop without thinking critically about our customer.  I was lulled by the unquestionable success of our tween marketing, which is really rooted in a natural connection between the SmartyCard art, our tween audience and our brand promise of “fun and rewards”.  

All of the external voices selling us mom media are telling us to think like other brands.  I’ve seen and produced enough drek in my lifetime.  Call it my Don Draper moment (I wish I was drinking an old fashioned now), but the moms at Blogher really spoke to me.  Like my own wife, this “class” of moms are distinguished and funny.  They aren’t the two-dimensional characters that potential partners describe and casually tag with terms like “soccer mom”.  If anything they’re sardonic, self-deprecating GenXers, aptly named because of they are impossible to categorize.  

Last night really spoke to me — my daughter’s school picnic.  A professional soccer player asked me if Chloe could join her clinic, another lamented the lack of alcohol and a third encouraged me to bribe my kids with chocolate.  These moms all highly successful in their own right — just like the moms at Blogher.  And, they are all seeking any reason to make light of their situation — the situation being officially “harried”.  Or, more specifically, exhausted from lack of sleep, self-medicating with wine, stained, permanently fighting off a cold, arm weary from carrying kids and their belongings, and generally being the central hub of the family and home.  These women are super-heroes, sustained by their own sense of humor and the laughs they share with their peers.  Our basic value proposition is strong.  The brand is tight. But, we’re not going to connect until we give moms a laugh.  I’m sure of this.  And, per Adrienne’s thoughts, no careful combination of stock art and graphics is going to work... It’ll all end up like mary-fucking-poppins.

This is why I posted that we’re going to “crowd source” ads.  I posted to the company blog, I tweeted, I posted to our affiliate marketing moms.  That post got retweeted and I’m collecting ideas and feedback to share.  I apologize for not giving you a headsup before doing that.  But, honestly, I’m pretty sure we’re doing the right thing by bringing moms into the creative development process.  I just want every guarantee that we’re connecting with our audience... Avoiding drek at all costs.  

Thanks for your support, thanks for scrambling on this new effort.  Enjoy your weekends.
Aaron

Another great startup

Not every startup I blog about is a gadget, app or site.  Sometimes, it's something as common as beer.  Having grown up across the alley from Humboldt Brewery, I know a thing or two about beer.  Richard Brewer-Hay and his wife are onto something.

I've blogged about Richard Brewer-Hay before.  Close friend.  He is doing one hell of a job over at eBay Ink.  But I envy the guy because his passions have the potential to become a serious business, and that's just not the case for everyone. 

Richard makes beer.  Really good beer.  His standard is an ESB, classic English beer, tastes great whatever the temperature.  IMHO, his best beer in the Milk Stout.  And, I really like his rasberry red too.  And, the belgian style is nice and spicey.  Oh, and the Porter is getting better... shit, he really doesn't make bad beers. 

Recently, one of Richard's Elizabeth Street Brewery beer was entered into the Great American Beer Festival via the 21st Amendment and the "pro-am" category.  This is where brewers make their names.  This is where new brands of beer are born.  In just a few years, Richard's hobby became a passion and its starting to become a brand.  That's a significant leap.  I know, because building new brands is my business.  

Here's a picture of the bar and the cask where Richard's ESB was tapped last night.  BTW, according to the bartender, this was the fastest draining of a cask in the long history of 21st Amendment.  Richard's friends drink hard and fast, so I'm sure that helped.  But the beer was fantastic, I'm sure (I didn't get to see it in person). 

Kudos Richard.  Cheers to you.

Google vs. Microsoft beats re-runs

Like a lot of people in Silicon Valley right now, I'm very interested in the impact of Bing.  Granted, I'm a former employee of Microsoft, and all of my positions and disclaimers are listed in previous blogs here and here. When a friend who actually consults with Microsoft asked me why I find this stuff interesting, the answer was simple, but it might surprise you... I love the familiar plot lines. Tis the season for summer re-runs.

Greater "high tech" hasn't had the drama of colliding giants in years.  Not since Microsoft beat down Netscape (Navigator), Sun (Spark), Oracle (the Nic) and staved off a break-up threat from the DOJ have we seen something so impossible to predict and laden with the potential for drama.  This is a big narrative with all of the classic story devices waiting to unfold.  It's so big, that there are plenty of corners for interesting side stories and personalities to be profiled -- it has the potential to be epic, literally Homeric and sustaining for publishers.  Only this time, we're in a social media landscape where the vast numbers of indie-publishers include polished grads of J-school as well as the new breed of much-followed blogger-hacks that rival old media for audience and mind share. 

Yeah, I'm hyping it up.  But this is what people want to see/hear/read whether these big fights are new to you or old hat.  And, this time around, the corners of this potentially-great epic story are being explored quickly.  For example, the first time that I know of, we have members of the media wondering aloud -- "what if there were no Google?".  People asked the same thing about Microsoft ten years ago -- rather they fantasized.  At that time I was on the inside of Microsoft -- an individual contributor, merely a pee-on.  My job was to defend the ship with the other soldier ants... it was no fun for me the last time around.  This time around, I know folks on both sides, and no agenda, and I'm planning on watching intently. 

So, my reasons for interest in MSFT v GOOG are really simple: nostalgia, hopes for a great new storyline, the unknown element of Social Media in a dramatically revised media landscape.  I'm really interested in all of that "do no evil" bravado coming out of Google during the IPO, you know Google is due for a humble pie.  

All of that, and TV really sucks this summer.

How to market Social Media... I kid you not, here's a good video on this subject

Every single day, I get bombarded by all kinds of messages, through all types of media channels.  My favorites are focused on how to use social media for marketing purposes.  By favorites I mean I hate these messages.  I wish there was an opt-out list so that I could avoid the "jr. edition" versions of social media 'how to' emails/posts/videos/presentations. 

There's nothing worse than getting a "how to market through Social Media" sponsored newsletter from GoDaddy, or, worse IBM.  I want to respond with PDFs of the PodShow presentations delivered to these companies' execs back in 2006... you know, the presentations explaining the basics of how podcasting and blogs worked... maybe include a copy of my expense reports to prove I was there, along with a request for a newsletter opt out. 

But, I can't do that.  I'm resigned to sift through mountains of basics to find nuggets of true insights from real professionals, my peers.  It's out there -- the good stuff. But, I get soured on the basics and get really pissed that email marketing experts aren't segmenting their audiences, sending basics to the noobs, and sending me the good stuff.  My assumption is that's its too hard to create social media marketing presentations for a broad audience.  But, there's an exception. 

As, I've noted before, Richard Brewer-Hay and I worked together at PodShow/Mevio, and before then at WebTV and Microsoft.  In the interest of full disclosure, we're friends.  I've even seen him with his shirt of... gross, I know.  Richard is a very good presenter on camera.  Watch his interview below... great insights into the specific challenges of creating and launching a corporate blog.  I know this stuff, but it still held my attention, contained some very good info I can apply to www.smartycard.com/blog, and it felt right for any marketing noob.  Kudos to Richard.

Check your Comcast bill, save yourself $40

I'm no fan of Comcast, but I understand their position.  They are a monopolistic multiple system operator.  They provide me and my neighborhood with cable, phone and internet.  In the past I've bitched about their marketing techniques.  And, I've complained about crappy net connectivity and support and noted blog comments from their support that don't even get my name right.  A year can't go by where I don't feel like these guys are trying to get over on me.  The latest case in point? 

If you're a Triple Play customer, check your Comcast bill.  As you can see from mine below (with my wife's name on it, and the account/address stuff crossed out), Comcast slipped a non-descript $40 charge on my May bill.  They did this in April too.  When my wife called to understand the fee (they won't talk to me at this point), we were told that the charge was for a cable modem that we haven't returned.  Aparently, it's the cable modem that we are using right now.. for our Comcast Triple Play service.  We explained that we didn't want to cancel or otherwise change our account.  Surprisingly, we needed to explain the CS reps that we needed a cable modem for our Internet and VOIP phone service to work.  The issue was escalated, probably because Comcast CS reps and managers are cursing my names for previous blogs. 

As you can clearly see, the charge was added back in May.  I can't begin to explain why, but I'm going to have to call them again.  Stay tuned for another assinine explanation from the idiots at Comcast... Comcast: the company proving that AT&T is second-to-last in customer communications.

Note to Fuqua candidates: Can you believe this poor bastard had to work for me?

From time to time I get tasked with interviews and presentations that the CEO just can't do. Today I talked with a really sharp group of MBA students from Fuqua.  I have a high degree of respect for MBA students and graduates.  Usually, I'd make a snide remark about golf handicaps, envious alcohol tolerance or another attractive aspect of a two-year work hiatus.  But not today. 

The presentation was pre-determined.  I went through our standard corporate deck.  I did my best to mimic Jangl CEO Michael Cerda, since the deck is really his.  But I built a short series of additional slides because I knew these guys were going to ask me about my career, my experience.  And, because these "candidates" are strongly considering management positions in venture backed startups, rather than try to imitate a Calacanis post, I thought I'd go right into a subjective commentary on winning, losing and failing. 

My points were really simple: First, winners aren't so much defined by the ROI multiple delivered to the investor or the frequency with which one's companies liquidate.  Winning is more about providing an acceptable return (2x- 3x the last valuation) that nudges the fund's rating higher than average AND making sure no blood gets spilled in the process.  This is how positive external perceptions are created and cultivated by everyone involved in the company.   This is the "win" that all of a startups participants  agree upon.  I've got a few of these in my background, but I wish I had more. 

Next, I chose to distinguish losing from failing.  Losing is valuable in startup life, and it happens to everyone.  Market dynamics like recession and overrated technology and infrastructure are very hard to anticipate, much less avoid.  And, sometimes startup defenses like IP and exclusive partnerships are simply overcome by the competition.  As is true for much of my life, baseball is the analogy here. 

In baseball if you make an out 60% of your at bats, you've mastered the game.  In both baseball and startups, losing isn't a thing to be ashamed of.  However, failure is never good.  Failure in baseball is easy to identify -- mental errors, cheating, fighting, etc.    In startups, the universal cause of failure is the fracturing of trust.  When trust is injured, fear, uncertainty and doubt begin to undermine a startup's single advantage over public companies; the nimbleness and work ethos of a team. 

I asked the group to consider that failure in startups is defined when blood is spilled, and the company does something to erode or degrade the collective ethic.  Blood spilled meaning that someone's reputation was impugned.  I gave a few real world examples from my experience, not naming names, but describing huge ethical issues.  It's a hard thing for people to consider when they're thinking about starting a company; specifically, that there is a collective ethic in  startups for which we're all responsible.  But, the group really grokked it.  It was fun and stimulating, I think, for all involved. 

Along with these, I prepped a few more slides: "Things to avoid" and "Survival tips".  Now, I've presented these before, and they're guaranteed crowd pleasers.  But I bring this up here because I have a favorite tip for MBAs: Hire and manage your next boss.  I took a few moments to explain how this works, and described how Matt Oliver and Chris Breshears (Jangl marketing) are two very smart guys, probably smarter than I, and I'm always trying to learn from them as we work together.      

Now, this is closely related to a favorite phrase at Microsoft in the 1990s -- "hire smart, and get out of the way".  Except, I learned at Microsoft that smart people needed to be managed differently.  Smart people are looking for feedback. Confident people want you to get out of the way.  Sometimes smart people aren't confident, and vice-versa.  And, sometimes, smart confident people don't need to be managed at all.  Such as it was for one Richard Brewer-Hay. 

In 1997, I was a lowly service producer and PR underling at WebTV, which was about to be acquired by Microsoft for nearly $500M.  At WebTV during that time, almost everyone had been "vouched for" by one of the founders.  Perlman vouched for me, the marketing team grabbed me out of service production.  But this skinny English kid from Yorkshire showed up one day as Phil Goldman's jack of all trades, and, because I was curious how he got into the party, I started to get to know this guy.   Most intriguing to all was that Phil (RIP buddy), a co founder, would let this kid do anything for him.  Even so, the kid was really under-utilized. 

Richard was so smart and interesting that after knowing him for only a month, I started a conspiracy with others to get him out of software and into marketing, where his BA in English could be put to good use.  Now, what happened after that is really the stuff of a hilarious book -- and Richard has even hinted at writing it.  But to summarize, we've been friends ever since, and we've worked together again and again, most recently at PodShow, where I asked him to take on an untenable position as heading talent acquisition and talent relations.  Now, THAT was a difficult job, and I marveled at his efforts there.  After a year, Richard began managing content programming schedules.  And, after I left PodShow, he took on key parts of my marketing responsibilities.  Richard is a work horse, and he really cares about everyone he befriends, and he is always trying to do the right thing.  He is a true professional.

   

I bring this up because this week, Richard was thrust into a new spotlight when eBay decided to make him their new corporate blogger.  It's an impressive challenge.  Be high-profile, but keep it real.  Be witty, honest and balanced, and connect with different audiences.   Be the conduit between a set of complicated and savvy personalities in a vocal community focused on one company.   Be the new guy in a situation with a lot of history.  Most men would look at the challenge and think, "this is thankless".  But, Richard has some uncanny people skills -- skills that have served him well.  The work at PodShow will serve him well.  And, who knows, I may just end up working for this guy in the future... working for another poor bastard that once worked for me.