Building a lasting relationship in the fickle web world

I confess. I was as fickle as the next girl. I went for the ones who were dark, handsome and mysterious. Those plain, clean cut, honest ones bored me to tears. I wanted a challenge. I craved the thrill. I was obsessed with finding the next best thing www could offer.

Like so many surfers, I eventually became disillusioned. Sure, the websites looked good on the surface – damn good – but they had no substance. Get past the pretty face and there was nothing to build a relationship on. We broke up. I never saw them again.

In the flash of the web world, it’s easy to dismiss sites that deliver interesting content, relevant information and an engaging user experience. Hey, if they don’t have a pretty face, why bother looking beneath the surface?

As in the real world, though, pretty will only get you so far. Websites that deliver a lasting experience that the user finds valuable will stand a better chance at building a long-term relationship with your customer.

Creating these online relationships is not much different that creating relationships in the real world.

1. Provide interesting, relevant content. Users want to hang out with sites that interest them and provide them with information they can use. Update your content on a regular basis. Keep it fresh and new.
2. Engage your users. Users want to feel important, like their thoughts, feelings and opinions count. Build avenues for them to express themselves. Blogs, forums, surveys and polls allow users to be heard and feel valued.
3. Become a resource. Users want to be with you, but there are a lot of other websites competing for their attention. Rather than fight it, welcome their curiosity by providing interesting links, articles, and viral content for them to visit. They'll keep coming bakc to you.
4. Make users feel special. Users want to feel valued so provide them with special discounts, give them VIP access to news, web casts or other relevant information, and allow them to customize their web experience. Remind them that you love them all the time.

Take a good, hard look at your website. Is it relationship material?

Mind your manners, Miss Twitterer.

Don’t eat with your elbows on the table.

Use your napkin!

What do you say to Mrs. Johnson for the lovely gift, Joey? Joey!

Hey, no cutting in line!

Most kids are beat over the head with reminders about their manners on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis. Yet, with age does not always come courtesy. Case in point, the car that refused to get in the long line waiting to turn right and chose, instead, to scoot up the left side and demand to be let in at the front of the line.

Hey! No cutting in line!

Most business professionals maintain a modicum of manners in their normal business dealings. Receptionists ask you to “hold please” or politely request “may I take a message?” Salespeople know to show up on time for business appointments. Bosses can usually expect employees not to whisper or pass notes in meetings… usually.

Yes, Miss Manners is still a powerful force in the business world except, it seems, in the world of social media. Business professionals who wouldn’t dream of sharing their opinions about Obama, Roe v. Wade or the war in Afghanistan over lunch with a client have no qualms about blogging or Twittering those same opinions to the world. Social Media can be a powerful way to build your business, but not if potential customers are turned off at their first experience with you.

Minding your manners when interacting in the social media world is not much different than in the real world, as Rohit Bhargava points out in his article “10 Ways to Improve Your Social Media Kharma.” Maximizing your social media impact just requires remembering a few things mom taught you.

Always tell the truth.

Make sure to say “thank you.”

Don’t talk behind people’s backs.

And for heaven’s sake, no blogging at the dinner table! Were you raised in a barn?

Calling Bullsh*t on Black Friday

Leather jackets for $25!

Complete drill set for $14.99!

Two for one hoodies!

599 doorbusters storewide!

The TV has been screaming deals out for two weeks now. At this point, who can keep track? Old Navy has the 3 for 1 turtlenecks, right? Or were they opening at three? Or was it one? I have to get to Sears by 4:00am for $5.00 cardigans. Or was it 5:00am for $4.00 neckties?

In the blur of Black Friday doorbuster deals, any good marketer has to wonder if the message is getting through. After all, there are only so many crazy consumers willing to forsake sleeping in on a day off from work for the fabulous Black Friday savings at the mall. Diamond necklaces for $49.99 just might not be worthy of a 5:00am wake up call. Exactly what type of diamonds are those anyway?

There’s a fair amount of bull… um, baloney… in Black Friday advertising. Sure, some doorbusters are worthy of their name, but others… well, you have to wonder what a $25 leather jacket is really made of.

The marketers at Jetson, a Florida-based electronics and appliance retailer, seem to be wondering the same thing. So, they decided to call out some of this year’s questionable doorbuster deals in a TV campaign that calls Bullsh*t on Black Friday.

Launched last week, the original spots got pulled because the use of an announcer saying “Bull” with a “bleep” after it was a little too risqué for wholesome, Floridian audiences. The revised version is just as good.

Enjoy watching (unless you are already out there checking out those Whatchamacallit TV deals).

Ahoy! Blue Ocean ahead!

About a year ago I finished “Blue Ocean Strategy,” an interesting book penned by two esteemed academics. Unlike other marketing books full of frothy creative ideas, “Blue Ocean Strategy contends that success can be achieved through a proven systematic approach. This approach doesn’t focus on besting your competition; rather it makes your competition irrelevant. When you create your own Blue Ocean, you sail it alone on the way to success like you’ve never imagined.

The book was enlightening and, I thought, wholly achievable. After all, they outline the system for creating a blue ocean. With a little creative thinking (an abundant resource at RWA), we could create our own blue ocean. One year later, we’re still sharing the seas with our competition.

I had begun to question whether blue oceans existed anymore when I came across an article in the New York Times this week entitled “Using Marijuana Stores to Market Food.”

It appears that the Attorney General’s decision to end the Bush administration’s practice of frequency raiding marijuana dispensaries has spawned a most unexpected result – the emergence of a blue ocean. We can also credit the AG with a whole new crop of business innovators aptly dubbed “ganjapreneurs.”

One such ganjapreneur is Hapa Sushi, a Colorado sushi restaurant chain. Recognizing the obvious connection between getting high and getting the munchies, Hapa Sushi is tapping the newly liberated marijuana market with ads touting the restaurants’ proximity to dispensaries around town. So residents can now grab a baggy to roll and a California roll all in the same trip.

It’s maybe not quite what the authors had in mind, but it’s a hell of a blue ocean.

Sail on, Hapa Sushi. Sail on.

American consumers are anything but normal.

After a decade of wondering, marketers will finally get a close-up look at today’s consumers when the decennial Census is released next year. Maybe it’s not as great a mystery as the balloon boy, though. Preliminary data has leaked out and the results are… well… predictably abnormal.

Abnormal is bad news for advertisers looking to reach the average consumer. If you are one of these, don’t despair. You are not alone. Many businesses have invested their advertising budgets in reaching that middle-of-the-road consumer, married, two kids, average house, average job, vacations once a year and buys toothpaste on a regular basis. The good news is they still buy toothpaste. The bad news is they are no longer anywhere near the middle of the road.

Ad Age’s sneak peak of the 2010 Census data reveals that the average American has been replaced by a multidimensional individual who is difficult to define under any one category.

What does your average American look like now?

Chances are he is not married with two kids. He’s more likely to have no children or be single. In fact, the census now has 14 choices Americans can select from to define their household including multigenerational and blended families.

He is likely to be a minority. While white, non-Hispanics constitute 80 percent of people 65 and older, this percentage drops to 54 among Americans 18 and younger.

He lives in the South or the West or is thinking of moving there. Over the past decade, 85 percent of the nation’s population growth has occurred in the South and West.

Marketers looking for middle America will have to start looking elsewhere. Your average consumer is nowhere to be found. Perhaps this is a good thing. Who wants to be average anyway?

Getting your plastic shoe in the door

The RWA conference room looks like a bomb hit it. Empty cans of spray mount and pieces of foam board litter the floor. A glue gun drips metallic drops of gold wax while raffia strands coil amid crumpled up tissue paper and glue dots gone bad. A cardboard box overflows with naked Ken dolls.

Um, what was that last part?

Admittedly 50 naked Ken dolls is a rather unusual item to have in a conference room (even in a creative agency like RWA), but there is a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why we have so many commando Kens in the house. We needed their clothes.

Several months ago we were approached by a company looking to catch the attention of CEOs. Their service, a method of outsourcing CFO functions, provided many great benefits to CEOs looking for better financial reporting and forecasting. However, the company had been unsuccessful getting its message past company gatekeepers and into the hands of the CEOs it wanted to talk to. Letters and phone calls weren’t getting any response. They needed something so innovative, CEOs would have to pay attention.

Their problem is not unique. Lots of companies (including RWA) know exactly who their target is and where to find them. They have names, numbers and vital statistics. They know that their target needs their company and they know how their product or service would help them and why. If they could just get a chance to talk to their target, they know they could land a new customer. But, they are getting nowhere with letters, phone calls and e-mails. They are at a crossroads. They can give up or they can try something so different, so crazy, so completely unexpected, the target will notice whether they like it or not.

Which leads us back to the 50 naked Ken dolls.

For this client, the unexpected is a garment box containing a three piece suit complete with tie and dress shoes. The suit, of course, is empty. The message simply asks “Is your CFO an empty suit?” and suggests calling if the company needs someone who can better fill it.

Will it work? The packages go out this week so we don’t know yet. How would you respond if you got an empty suit in the mail? Would you pick up the phone and call? I would. I’d want to know what happened to Ken. Wouldn’t you?

Collateral materials for the online world

Nothing ignites the spark in a creative’s eye more than a fat, juicy collateral project. Visions of pages of empty design space dance in their heads. In a daze, they head for their paper samples, dusting off the never-used books marked “mill item.” Finally, they think. This is what I’ve been dreaming of. This is why I became a designer.

Then reality sets in. Not many clients understand the need to spend $53,000 on a brochure when they can invest in the new C63 Mercedes AMG Sport Sedan instead. The design of a lifetime is doomed to existence only on a desktop, never in print.

Luckily, print isn’t all that in the electronic world. Today you can still produce your collateral piece and the client can get a new ride too thanks to new, virtual brochures. These virtual brochures give designers and clients a way to bring their collateral pieces to life with all the functionality of a printed piece.

More interactive than a PDF and less costly than a website, virtual books and brochures allow a customer to flip through your collateral materials as though they were holding them in hand. The electronic format also allows for music and narration. South Florida voice artist Bob Harper lends his considerable talent to virtual brochures for real estate companies, law firms and even haunted houses.

And, the investment is usually a lot less scary than print.