For example, I have recently heard people talk or read articles about things such as: Return on Inspiration, Return on Innovation, and Return on Impressions. The points these speakers and writers made with the change were good. After all, changing the standard paradigm is a great way to get an audience to think in new ways.

But, I’m afraid. I think changing what R.O.I. stands for is about to jump the shark and become a business cliché. (Forget the fact that I regularly have to explain / spell out what R.O.I. actually means to people.)

But since it’s currently the hip trendy thing to do, I offer the following suggestions:

Return on Iceberg
Extra income for a restaurateur serving cheap salads.

Return on Ichabod
Washington Irving’s royalty check.

Return on Illustrator
Income of a logo designer.

Return on In-N-Out
Animal Style Double-Double. Animal Style Fries Well Done.

Return on IKEA
Acquired from assembling lingonberry flavored furniture.

Return on Iamb
re-TURN

Return on Interrobang
Is it hard to invent punctuation ‽

Return on Iridectomy
Priceless when you have a posterior capsular tear with vitreous loss.

Return on Inflation
Now is the time to BUY GOLD!!! Call for my free brochure!

Return on Infomercial
Ron Popeil’s second house.

Return on Impotence
Call your doctor if it returns more than four hours.

Return on Investment
Oh…wait.

Feel free to add your own in the comments.

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Why did they fail? The answer is simple. They forgot (or failed) to communicate their marketing plan with a very important group in the marketing experience — their employees. (It’s the same reason I get stiffed on free syrups when I use my Starbucks card.)

You can spend gobs of money, time, and attention on marketing to get people in the door — but the promises you’ve made with your marketing have to happen when those people come through the door.

Most of your brand is NOT built through advertising, PR, or any marketing message. The brand is mostly built through mundane daily customer experiences. It’s not sexy, but it’s true.

And the customer experience is almost totally controlled by the operational side of the business. If the marketers need/want to build a brand, they need to share their vision and brand strategy with the parts of the company who actually interact with customers.

This is true all the way from the master overall marketing strategy down to individual marketing initiatives. It’s important on all levels, but it becomes even more important when you’re using new and emerging marketing platforms like Foursquare or other forms of digital media. Innovators and Early Adopters are important groups. You want to make sure that employees are delivering superior customer experiences to people who will heavily influence WOM.

For example — The other day, a local sandwich shop tweeted that I could get 10% off if I mentioned Twitter when I ordered. I went there for lunch and mentioned it to the cashier who didn’t even know what Twitter was.

It comes down to the fact if you’re delivering messages to potential markets, you need to share the content of those messages with ALL the people in your organization. They are the ones who will make it work.

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I don’t know which airport he took the picture of the sign, but I think in certain high tourist density airports (MCO, LAS, JFK, LGA, IAD, DCA, etc) in the main tourist season, it makes perfect sense.

I’ve always found that signs (even the stupid ones) are put up after too many people (even the stupid ones) make the same mistake. The TSA probably has a snow globe problem with tourists (who for the most part are infrequent travelers).

I would venture while thinking about avoiding carry-on liquids, the snow globe souvenir doesn’t cross many minds as the hotel room is frantically being packed. The angry blog post in an alternate reality might read:

This week, I visited {Tourist Attraction} with my family. Coming home, we had packed my daughter’s snow globe souvenir in my carry-on so it wouldn’t get broken by the baggage handlers. Imagine my surprise after we check our luggage, the TSA employee said we couldn’t take it through in our carry-on. I guess I know it does, but who thinks about the liquid inside snow globes? We had to trash it right there at the checkpoint so we could catch our plane. She was heartbroken. How much effort would it take for a simple sign to alert people?

I’ve never experienced heartbreak at security after having to throw away my princess snow globe. But I bet it happens. (I did almost lose a pocketknife once, even though I knew the rules.)

Just because you’re not in the bulls eye target for the message — doesn’t mean the message is not needed.

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From the Advertising Age Adages blog…

The note said:
“When you look at the most recognized brands throughout the world, such as Coke or Apple, for instance, one of the things they all focus on is the consistency of their branding … Why is this consistency so important? The more consistent a brand becomes, the more prominent and recognizable it is with the consumer.”
Adages is now preparing a return memo to inform GM that Coke is, in fact, shorthand for Coca-Cola.

I’m one of the world’s most ardent advocates for brand consistency. But I also know the heart of the brand resides with the consumers, not the company. If people buying your cars are calling them Chevys, you call them Chevys.

Jetpacks thinks the memo is a stunt. He may be right. But if it’s real, GM has more pressing brand issues to deal with rather than trying to retrain 100 years of consumer behavior. And if it is a stunt, it’s a dumb one.

Corporate is charging staffers 25 cents for each time they use the word Chevy. I wonder who pays everytime chevy.com redirects to the main site?

And what happens if Chevy Chase walks into GM headquarters? Something like this?

UPDATE: Chevy clarifies their “poorly worded memo”

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The chicken sandwich purveyors have been promoting a microsite, www.getspicychicken.com. The microsite allows you to find a local restaurant and then choose a reserved time to come in for a free sandwich this week (the official launch date of the new sandwich to the general public is next Monday, June 7)

After reserving your time, the site allows you to share and invite others to join you through email, Facebook, and Twitter. (I discovered the giveaway through one of the people I follow on Twitter)

And while microsites and social media sharing is pretty standard marketing fare, it’s the little things that made the difference.

The staggered reservation system is a smart idea to maintain pacing and supply to avoid a free chicken disaster like that “other” chicken place had. After making the reservation, I got an email “from” the actual manager of the Chick-fil-a location. While it was obviously an automated bot, it felt a little more personal. I also received reminder emails about my scheduled lunch time.

Stop there and it would be a good case study for a product introduction giveaway. But the actual experience of going to the restaurant was what really impressed me with Chick-fil-a.

UPDATE: The following may be unique only to this location. Apparently, this (smart) franchisee did some of this added stuff instead of it being corporate direction. Reports from other locations don’t match up. Caveat lector.
When I walked in, there was an employee whose dedicated job was greeting and checking in the “Spicy VIPs”. (Remember, for all intents and purposes, Chick-fil-a is a counter service fast food place.) He seated me in a special cordoned-off section of the restaurant reserved for the spicy chicken folks. The tables in this area had been decorated and covered with tablecloths. Another employee came over and asked me what I wanted to drink and what toppings I wanted on the sandwich. The employee delivered the food on a plate (no cardboard boxes or paper wrappers) and then went after the napkins and condiments I needed. Managers were making rounds talking with the group and gathering feedback about the sandwich. At the end, I was asked to fill out a short survey about the sandwich.

When I consider some of the other restaurant openings / new product introductions I’ve been invited to, it’s easy to see the thought and care that was put into this launch. I have walked in other places where the employee behind the counter didn’t even know about a new product test. And if they did, it was slapped together and thrown on a tray.

You could actually see this being effective for this Chick-fil-a location as the “normal customers” kept looking over into our section to see what was going on and asking how they could get involved.

This is how you develop positive buzz and generate WOM. When you deliver an average product and experience to the early parts of the adoption curve, those users are not likely to talk about a typical encounter. But when you make it just slightly more interesting and make absolutely sure those people have a good experience, they’ll share it.

As I’ve said many times, the customer experience one of the most important (and overlooked) part of marketing.

btw — the spicy chicken sandwich is very good with a nice heat kick. It’s spicy without that bitter chemical heat that many places use for heat.

Related posts:

1. We’re the only ones
2. Changing Words – Changing Brands
3. the part of marketing that marketing people forget

After ABC heavily promoted it as the television event of the decade, the final episode of LOST on Sunday night was seen by about 13.6 million viewers. To put that in perspective, the final episode of Mr. Belvedere in 1990 had 13.8 million viewers.

While I suppose it would be an interesting treatise to compare/contrast the relationships of Jack / Locke / Sawyer to Belvedere / George / Wesley, that’s not the point.

Sure. LOST is probably an odd choice to be using as an example of the decline of the TV event as this last season had lost its sizzle. In addition, it was difficult for the masses to be real fans of the show because it took effort to follow it. And as it turns out, the core fans were victims of a long con by Damon Lindelof , Carlton Cuse and JJ Abrams.

If you haven’t done so already, you need to rethink the concept of audience and what numbers really mean. (but not these numbers 4-8-15-16-23-42)

The audience is smaller, but that audience has been distilled down to a more pure verson of a targeted market. It’s not just about measuring eyeballs. It’s about measuring engagement.

You have to look beyond the actual show to see value. There was a massive amount of social media buzz surrounding the show. (before, during, and after) The finale overtook both the U.S. and international trending topics on Twitter Sunday night. In the week leading up the finale, it dominated entertainment outlets (both online and traditional). No recent TV show has had as much discussion and speculation as this one in recent history. 

Even with light audience numbers, advertisers paid a premium price for placements in the finale. And those advertisers paid special attention to their creative placements. Verizon sponsored messages from the show’s fans. I thought Target had some great ads that were really tuned to the media buy. (My favorites were the smoke and keyboard ones.)

Overall, the LOST finale was a good example of a mass media outlet being used to reach a niche audience. If big media is to survive, it’s something that will have to happen more.

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1. mass media will never win on the web
2. Wasted Golden Opportunities
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They hire snake oil social media gurus or they rely on advice from an agency (who only has 13 facebook fans and 81 twitter followers — mostly their employees and spammers) to sell them things that are common sense.

A few weekends ago, I enjoyed the perfect social media incident. Nashville’s Noshville Deli placed these Facebook updates in their followers’ streams on a lazy rainy Sunday morning.

And that’s all there is to it. You’ve placed your brand in the online lifestream of your customers. Just interact with them (and sell) based on what’s happening with their lives.

The secret to all marketing (not just social media) is pretty simple: It’s not about what you have to sell. It’s about what people want to buy.

It’s not rocket science. (unless you’re selling rockets)

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At several times in my career, I was in charge of the marketing for local small businesses. In each job, I would get a call (sometimes a visit) each year from a member of the local middle or high school yearbook staff. The exchange would normally go something like this:

Me: Hello
Them: (mumble) Wanna buy a yearbook ad?
Me: No
Them: Bye

Aside from the fact that yearbook ads are not marketing (they’re donations), I may have entertained the idea of buying “an ad” if the kid had prepared SOME sort of sales presentation that focused on my marketing needs. You know, something like: the ad will be seen by parents who are your customers, people will see these ads in 20 years, etc.  Anything in additon to just asking.

These days I hear lots of salespeople say, “I asked them if they wanted to buy _____ and they said no.”  

If your sales pitch is just asking, you’re missing alot of potential sales.
(There’s also the problem of salespeople who just talk to the customer and never ASK for the sale — but that’s another post)

If you’re just asking people to buy, then you’re not a salesperson. You’re a beggar. It’s a small distinction, but an important one.

Most of this problem (and most sales problems) can be traced back to the salesperson’s motivation. Are they wanting to make a sale or are they trying to solve the customer’s problem?

People just trying to make a sale do make a few (the yearbook always has ads in it) — but problem solvers are always successful salespeople.

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1. Salespeople types
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But at the end of each year that I have blogged, I have done a list of top / favorite posts from the previous year. You can peruse previous years here: [2005] [2006] [2007] [2008]

I basically do the year end list for two reasons:

1. Me. I enjoy going back in the archives and rediscovering posts I had forgotten. Doing the year end list also helps me organize each year’s good stuff from my not-so-good stuff
2. You. New readers that joined later in the year may not have waded back through the archives. Or regulars may have missed one of these.

The criteria for the list? Some got lots of traffic or lots of commentary. And some are just ones that I really like.

• In terms of traffic, comments, tweets, etc, Do as they say, not as they do was the biggest post of the year. Basically, it affirms the fact that ad agency web sites stink.
• I did fewer speaking engagements in 2009 because companies were bringing in fewer speakers or canceling meetings altogether. In fact, I wrote a post suggesting that people cancel their meeting.
• Ah, the economy. Companies not only decided to kill off knowledge picked up from meetings, but also knee-jerked into a fear based marketing strategy during tough economic times.
• But didn’t you know you no longer have to spend money on marketing? Just talk to the kids on that MyFace thing for free! Just watch out for your company’s looming social media disaster.
• After they knee-jerked and destroyed their premium brand, I offered Starbucks some budget conscious marketing ideas
• In November, British Airways flew me to London and I brought back some thoughts about international marketing.
• A short post about the little things.
• Don’t make me hurt you. Stop using these stupid ad and marketing phrases.

In 2010, I hope to write more posts more here and cut back on writing what could be a good post here in 140 characters on Twitter instead. Either way, I’m sure that there will be more posts here in 2010 because my writing time will no longer be solely devoted to Brand Zeitgeist which, after several delays (mostly caused by me), will be published this Spring.

As always, thank you for reading, commenting on, and spreading the ideas that I publish here.

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I’ve often said that it should be a requirement for all high school or college students to travel abroad. I was lucky enough to travel internationally at that point in my life and it helped to make sure I didn’t have a myopic worldview.

Today, I would think anyone in business could easily see the implications of the global economy. And I would hope that anyone who spends anytime online can see the global associations caused by the Internet.

But they really don’t.

Yes. Online connections can be made with anyone in the world. Some of my first heavy commenters when I began this blog back in 2005 were a woman in Canada and a guy in Russia. Even today, when I look at my Google Analytics traffic map or my Twitter followers, it blows me away that people from all over the world are reading my thoughts.

But just as barcamps, tweetups, conferences, and other real world meetups help cement relationships that we build online with fellow countrymen (and women), I think these real world meetings are even more important with the global community.

There’s the old saying that you really don’t understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. People in your same country share your same cultural shoes. You really don’t understand a foreign culture until you’ve lived it for a few days.

And this is especially important in marketing. While participants in the groups that I spoke to at the British Airways event had many questions about doing business internationally — especially about logistics, one other common question was about international marketing. No matter the group you’re marketing to, it’s all about understanding the target group’s values, traditions, and worldviews. You cannot market to a culture that you have never personally experienced.

You also have to understand the current and long-term trends as they apply internationally to be successful in creating a global marketing strategy. One of the most striking quotes from the Face of Opportunity conference came from one of its best speakers, Digby, Lord Jones of Birmingham:

“We (the British) ruled the world in the 19th century, you Americans owned the 20th. This is Asia’s century, and how we all play that will define commercial success for the next 100 years.”

The worldview we have become accustomed to is changing. And when developing a global marketing strategy, you’ll have to throw away all the old ways of thinking and preconceived ideas. An incident during another presentation at the event highlighted this issue. A speaker used the example of the Chevy Nova not selling in Spanish speaking countries because the name supposedly translates into “it doesn’t go”. A member of the audience interrupted and called the story bogus as proven by Snopes and others:

Assuming that Spanish speakers would naturally see the word “nova” as equivalent to the phrase “no va” and think “Hey, this car doesn’t go!” is akin to assuming that English speakers would spurn a dinette set sold under the name Notable because nobody wants a dinette set that doesn’t include a table.

But I think most business people’s knowledge of international marketing only goes as far as the Chevy Nova and other false examples like baby food in Africa. If you’re planning a global marketing strategy, you need to start fresh with thinking approaches to marketing and not rely on old models as the world is a drastically different place than just a few years ago. Of course, as previously mentioned, the best thing you can do to help your marketing is go experience the country you’re planning to expand into.

But here’s the thing. Even if you don’t think you’re a global business, you are. If you’re online, you’re global and you need to think that way.

–Kent Bernhard, Jr. gives a much better a great play-by-play account of the British Airways Chicago-to-London Face of Opportunity events for Portfolio.
–Disclosure: British Airways provided my travel expenses for this trip.

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