Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?: And Other Provocations, 2006-2012 (11 page)

The answer lies in trial and error and in motivation and in overcoming the fear that makes us avoid the topic in the first place.

And why should a marketer care?

You need to care because if you try to solve the second kind of ignorance with a manual or a PDF or a blog post or even a long infomercial, you’re going to fail. If you discover that users are afraid or resistant to what you’re trying to get them to do, presenting more information is almost always the incorrect response. The effective technique involves peer pressure and support and requires changing the design and inputs of what you’re doing so that this group is more receptive to what’s on offer. For example, Internet penetration isn’t up by a factor of
20 because people read a lot of copies of
Internet for Dummies
. It happened because of what peers said to each other over time, and because the act of getting online is a lot easier than it used to be. And you can help that happen.

There’s been a lot of noise about privacy over the last decade, but what most pundits miss is that most people don’t care about privacy, not at all.

If they did, they wouldn’t have credit cards. Your credit card company knows an insane amount about you.

What people care about is being surprised.

If your credit card company called you up and said, “we’ve been looking over your records and we see that you’ve been having an extramarital affair. We’d like to offer you a free coupon for VD testing,” you’d freak out, and for good reason.

If the local authorities started using what’s on the corner surveillance cameras to sell you a new kind of commuter token, you’d be a little annoyed at that as well.

So far, government and big companies have gotten away with taking virtually all our privacy away by not surprising most of us, at least not in a vivid way. Libertarians are worried (probably with cause) that once the surprises start happening, it’ll be too late.

This leads us to
Ask.com’s
new Eraser service, which promises to not remember stuff about your searching. The problem they face: most people want Google and Yahoo! and Amazon to remember their searches, because it leads to better results and (so far) rarely leads to surprises.

The irony is that the people who most want privacy are almost certainly the worst possible customers for a search engine. These are the folks who are unlikely to click on ads and most likely to visit the dark corners of the ’Net. If I were running a Web property, I’d work hard to attract the people who least want privacy and who want to share their ideas with everyone else.

Make promises, keep them, avoid surprises. That’s what most people (and the profitable people) want.

Every time you interact with a customer, you’re engaging in marketing. Doesn’t matter if you’re instituting a policy, gaining some data, delivering an invoice—it’s a marketing interaction.

So …

When you bother 100 customers to get useful data from two, you just paid a marketing cost.

When you yell at a classroom full of kids because one kid misbehaved, that’s a marketing decision.

When you make 5,000 non-smugglers wait in a steaming customs hall at a resort destination, you may think you’re doing your job and collecting those little white forms, but what you’re really doing is marketing (negatively).

And …

When you bring a little candy (which wasn’t required) with the check (which was), you’re using the transaction as an opportunity to do positive marketing.

Here’s a little thought experiment that will show how your managers are misjudging these interactions: Go ask your front-line people what they’re doing when they’re doing what they think is their jobs. Like when they’re ripping tickets or answering the phone or filling out a form with a customer. How many people say, “I’m using this as an excuse to market to our best customers”?

If you buy my product but don’t read the instructions, that’s not your fault; it’s mine.

If you read a blog post and misinterpret what I said, that’s my choice, not your error.

If you attend my presentation and you’re bored, that’s my failure.

If you are a student in my class and you don’t learn what I’m teaching, I’ve let you down.

It’s really easy to insist that people read the friggin’ manual. It’s really easy to blame the user/student/prospect/customer for not trying hard, for
being too stupid to get it, or for not caring enough to pay attention. Sometimes (often) that might even be a valid complaint. But it’s not helpful.

What’s helpful is to realize that you have a choice when you communicate. You can design your products to be easy to use.

You can write so your audience hears you. You can present in a place and in a way that guarantees that the people who you want to listen will hear you. Most of all, you get to choose who will understand (and who won’t).

I saw a marketing dilemma at the hot new restaurant I went to the other night.

We got there on time at 6:30 and the restaurant was about a third full. We were promptly seated at the worst table in the place, in the back, in the corner, cramped by the kitchen.

We were first-time patrons, having secured a reservation via Open Table. That made us doubly second-class citizens, I guess.

We asked for a better table, pointing to one a few feet away. “Oh, I’m sorry, that one is reserved.”

The chances, of course, that a particular table is reserved are close to zero. What he meant was, “Oh, we have a regular customer who deserves that table more than you.”

Hence the marketing dilemma:
Who should get your best effort?
Should it be the new customer, whom you just might be able to convert into a long-term customer? Or should it be the loyal customer, who is already valuable?

Sorry, but the answer is this:
you can’t have a bad table.

No one wants to settle for the bad table, your worst salesperson, your second-rate items. Not the new customers and not the loyal ones.

Which means you need to figure out how to improve your lesser offerings. Maybe the table in the worst location comes with a special menu or a special wine list or even a visit from the chef. Maybe the worst table, for some people, becomes the best table because of the way you treat people when they sit there.

Treat different people differently. But don’t treat anyone worse.

You probably get feedback from customers. Sometimes you even get letters.

Occasionally (unfortunately), it’s negative.

Two weeks ago, I left my car at an expensive parking garage in midtown New York. When I got back four hours later, I discovered that they had left the engine running the entire time. That, combined with the $30 fee and the nasty attitude of the attendant, led me to write a letter to the management company.

The response: it was my fault. When I dropped off the car, I should have taught the attendant how to turn off my Prius.

What’s the point of a letter like that? Why bother taking the time? It’s not even worth the stamp. Does the writer expect me to say, “Oh, great point! Sorry to have bothered you. I’m an idiot! In fact, I’m so stupid, I’ll go out of my way to park there again next time.”

It’s pretty simple. The only productive response to a critical letter or piece of feedback from a customer is, “You’re right. …”

You’re right, I can see that you are annoyed.

You’re right, that is frustrating.

You’re right, with the expectations you had, it’s totally understandable to feel the way you do.

You’re right, and we’re really sorry that you feel that way.

Every one of these statements is true; each one is something you are willing to put into writing. It validates the writer, thanks him for sharing the frustration, and gives you a foundation for an actual dialogue.

But isn’t this pandering? I don’t think so. The writer
is
right. He
is
frustrated. His opinion is his opinion, and if you don’t value it, you’re shutting down something useful.

How about, “You’re right, it’s reasonable to expect that we would have turned off your Prius. We’ll post a note for all our attendants so they pay better attention in the future.” A note like this makes the customer happy and it makes your garage work better.

Someone wrote to me last week, complaining that the handwritten inscription in a book I had signed for his colleague wasn’t warm enough.
I responded that he was right to be frustrated, and that if his expectations had been so high, I should have either lowered them or exceeded them. Of course he was right: with expectations like that, it’s not surprising that he was disappointed.

Arguing with a customer who takes the time to write to you does two things: it keeps them from ever writing again, and it costs you (at least) one customer. Perhaps that’s your goal. Just take a moment before you launch an unhappy former customer into the world.

Here’s the #1 most overlooked secret of marketing, of growing your organization, of building trust and creating for the long haul. Actually, it has two parts:

Show up on time.
It doesn’t cost anything to keep your promises when it comes to time. Show up for the meeting when the meeting starts. Have the dry cleaning ready when you promise. Ship on time. Return that phone call. Finish the renovation ahead of schedule.

Boy, that’s simple. Apparently, it’s also incredibly difficult.

If you want to build trust, you need to be trustworthy. The simplest test of trustworthiness for most people is whether or not you keep your promises, and the first promises you make are about time.

Cherish my time.
The second part is closely related. It has to do with respect. You respect my time when you don’t waste it. When you don’t spam me. When you worry about the 100 cars backed up on the road and figure out how to get us moving more quickly. You respect me when you value my time more highly than your own.

If you want someone to think you’re selfish, just ask for a minute of their time and then waste it or use it for your own ends. Or automate the process so three minutes of your time wastes three minutes of time for the 1,000 or 1 million people on your list.

In a society where so many people have enough, few people have time to spare. When you waste it (by breaking a promise and being late) or abuse it (by viewing your time as worth more than mine), we respond by distrusting you, ignoring you, and eventually moving on.

People and brands and organizations that stand for something benefit as a result. Standing for something helps you build trust, makes it easier to manage expectations, and aids in daily decision making. Standing for something also makes it more fun to do your gig, because you’re on a mission, doing something that matters. Of course, there’s a cost. You can’t get something for nothing.

It’s frustrating to watch marketers, politicians, and individuals fall into the obvious trap of trying to stand for something at the same time they try to please everyone or do everything.

You can’t be the low-price, high-value, wide-selection, convenient, green, all-in-one corner market. Sorry.

You also can’t be the high-ethics CEO who just this one time lets an accounting fraud slide. “Because it’s urgent.”

You can’t be the big-government-fighting, low-taxes-for-everyone, high-services-for-everyone, safety-net, pro-science, faith-based, anti-deficit candidate, either.

You can’t be the work-smart, life-in-balance, available-at-all-hours, high-output, do-what-you’re-told employee.

To really stand for something, you must make difficult decisions, mostly about what you don’t do. We don’t ship products like that, we don’t stand for employees like that (“you’re fired”), we don’t fix problems like that.

It’s so hard to stand up, to not compromise, to give up an account or lose a vote or not tell a journalist what she wants to hear.

But those are the only moments where standing for something actually counts, the only times that people will actually come to believe that you do in fact actually stand for something.

If you have to change your story because your audience is different (oh, I’m on national TV today!) (oh, this big customer wants me to cut some key corners), you’re going to get caught. That’s because the audience is now unknown to you, everything is public sooner or later, and if you want to build a brand for the ages, you need to stand for something today and tomorrow and every day.

If it acts like a duck (all the time), it’s a duck. Doesn’t matter if the duck thinks it’s a dog; it’s still a duck as far as the rest of us are concerned.

Authenticity, for me, is doing what you promise, not “being who you are.”

That’s because “being” is too amorphous and we are notoriously bad at judging that. Internal vision is always blurry. Doing, on the other hand, is an act that can be seen by all.

As the Internet and a connected culture place a higher premium on authenticity (because if you’re inconsistent, you’re going to get caught), it’s easy to confuse authentic behavior with an existential crisis. Are you really good enough, kind enough, generous enough, and brave enough to be authentically a hero or leader?

Mother Teresa was filled with self-doubt. But she was an authentic saint, because she always acted like one.

You could spend your time wondering if what you say you are is really you. Or you could just act like that all the time. That’s good enough, thanks. Save the angst for later.

We no longer care what you say.

We care a great deal about what you do.

If you charge for hand raking but use a leaf blower when the client isn’t home;

If you sneak into an exercise class because you were on the wait list and it isn’t fair ’cause you never get a bike;

If you snicker behind the boss’s back;

If you don’t pay attention in meetings;