Stopwatch Marketing Blog

Christina Kerley’s excellent marketing blog has a posting today about Fareed Zakaria’s new book, The Post-American World. Zakaria’s key insight is that the rise of “the Rest,” as he calls them – previously under-developed countries who have embraced free market capitalism and are rising in wealth and power at a rapid rate – presents both challenges and opportunities for Americans, especially American business. If we don’t proactively engage with these rising powers, we miss a big opportunity to ride the next wave of wealth creation and power diffusion. This is something we should embrace, not fear. After all, for the past sixty years or so, it was America’s stated goal and strategy to open up all these countries to free market capitalism!

Building on this, CK points out, that she finds exciting “…a changing world–and a shift to several world powers versus one superpower? I don’t fear it or find it daunting.” With change, CK argues, comes opportunity…for big firms and for marketing consultants to help them understand those changes.

As I commented back to CK, when I read Zakaria’s book last month, I was reminded of some of the passages in the ur-business book of all time, In Search of Excellence, published, I believe, in 1983. Among the things Peters and Waterman, in that book, emphasized, was the need for every business to think globally. I’m paraphrasing from a memory stretching back to the early Eighties, but they had a line that went something like, “For any business, no matter how small and local it is today, if you aren’t thinking about doing at least 25% of your revenue overseas within the next five years, you’re missing a big opportunity…and risking bankruptcy.”

Today, our little, Connecticut-based marketing consultancy (MCAworks) does, indeed, bill nearly 50% of its business with overseas clients. One of them, a Japanese firm, has been a client for seven years and running. We have done business in such rising members of the First World as Malaysia, India, Thailand, Brazil, and Venezuela. These are all the result of an overt strategy of seeking out such global opportunities.

The overriding point for small firms like ours is, I think, that we can neither ignore “the Rest,” nor wait for the business to come to us…one has to aggressively seek and close international business, not as an opportunistic sideline, but as a core strategy. Or risk bankruptcy.

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As has been well-documented and commented-upon, the airlines, led by American have begun charging roughly $15 per bag for checked luggage…a service that was, with very few restrictions or exceptions, free for the first eighty years or so of commercial airline service in the U. S. I’ve had many, ahem, discussions with my friends and family members who, unlike me, rarely travel by air. They are up in arms about the appalling notion that they would have to pay the airlines to check their bags. I have responded that, as both a marketing consultant and a believer in free markets, I am actually all in favor of this trend. As a frequent traveler, I nearly always use carry-on bags. As any first-year economics student would quickly note, that means that I am subsidizing the “free” checking service of which my compatriots are availing themselves. The same analysis, of course, holds for airline food, which I generally avoid and was, until recently, also “free.”

These discussions rapidly became incendiary (rather like discussing religion or politics at Thanksgiving dinner). I was able, however, to quickly diffuse the arguments with the following point: I also, unlike my infrequent-traveling friends have a souped-up pda/smartphone from T-mobile that allows me to send and receive emails, among other features. “Do you think,” said I, “that I should be able to get that email service for ‘free,’ when you don’t ever use it and don’t even have a phone that could use it if you wanted it, or should I have to pay – as I do now – an extra fee to do data on my phone?”

Putting this argument more broadly – and in terms we marketing consultants love to use – this trend to a la carte services will result in multiple opportunities for airlines differentiate themselves and more closely align pricing and services with the value provided.

Finally, in thinking about all this, I had an idea and am wondering if FedEx or UPS are thinking the same thing. First, the cost ($15) is only part of the hassle of carrying bags to the airport, suffering delays while standing in line to check (and now to pay for) them, throwing my back out carrying the twenty pounds of bricks my wife makes me check for her when we go on vacation, etc. So, here’s the big marketing idea: “Ship Ahead from FedEx/UPS.” For roughly the same amount of money, around $15, (rates vary according to things like distance) one can ship a 20 pound package by ground to one’s destination, say, the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta. Most businesspeople work in offices with daily pickups, so it should be easy for them to bring their bag to work a couple of days before their trip and have it waiting at their hotel when they arrive.

Thinking about business travel in this light opens up several opportunities. For instance, most companies will be willing allow their traveling employees to put this on their T & E, so FedEx could enter into cooperative marketing arrangements with corporate travel departments, travel agencies, websites like Travelocity, etc. They could also enter into joint-promotion efforts with the airlines themselves. Imagine, competitive companies cooperating to provide greater service to their customers. As the practices and technology improves over time, one could even imagine the shippers (FedEx and UPS) cooperating with the rental car companies. Part of my Gold Service with Hertz, for instance could include (with two days lead-time) arriving at O’Hare and finding my “Ship Ahead” luggage conveniently loaded in the trunk of my rental car. I wonder if anyone at FedEx, Hertz, Avis, or UPS is thinking about this as a new product / service opportunity.

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I recently suffered through a complete computer crash (while presenting to a client), requiring Dell to FedEx some parts and dispatch their local technician to replace my laptop’s motherboard, display, etc. This is the second time in four months this has happened. Dell’s premier-level customer service center (that is, the one I pay extra $$$ for) behaved atrociously, as usual, requiring me to re-phone several times, losing or “forgetting about,” or failing to follow-up on, my service calls more than once. I’ve posted blogs on Dell’s horrible service before, so I won’t belabor that issue here. If you follow Dell, you know that they give considerable lip service to the idea that they understand they’ve had some customer service lapses in the past and are working hard to address them. Michael Dell, himself, has publicly taken responsibility for assuring that some fixes get executed.

But, I do want to make two points about how these ongoing, truly lousy service lapses are affecting Dell’s business:

First, it cannot possibly be profitable for Dell to have their people on the phone with me for hours (I am not exaggerating here) and to have TWICE FedExed parts to Connecticut and paid a third-party service technician to visit my office, spending a couple of hours rebuilding my laptop. So, on the specific transaction – my purchase of this new laptop last September – Dell must be losing money.

Second, Dell is asking me to tolerate an awful lot. They have probably lost me (and my little consultancy) as customers FOR LIFE. No matter how well the thing works now (I’m typing on it to compose this post) I feel burnt by the service experience. This, of course, is Marketing 101: No amount of outstanding advertising, distribution, PR, etc. can overcome poor product quality and/or lousy service experiences. Moreover, I simply don’t have the TIME to deal with Dell’s lousy service over and over. My stopwatch doesn’t tick that slowly.

For a very good discussion of consumers’ “tolerance levels” see Drew McLellan’s recent post on this very issue.

Now, for the more positive part of this post:

The local, third party technician allowed as how he thought Dell was completely wrong in their estimation of the problem. He thinks it’s simply a matter of too much heat and recommended that I get a chill mat. For those of you who don’t know, a chill mat is a computer accessory about the size of a place mat that contains two fans and sits beneath your laptop. It ensures that the laptop “runs cool” so it performs better and faster day-to-day and doesn’t overheat, thereby crashing at the precise moment you are making your brilliant strategic summary points to your boss. The chill mats also serve the purpose of keep the desk or table from absorbing a bunch of heat.

Here’s a picture of the one I quickly purchased:

Full disclosure: I pointed out to the local technician that I have a client who makes chill mats, namely Targus. He said – again, I am not exaggerating – that Targus’s are the best and the ones he uses and recommends. Targus markets a whole range of computer accessories. Check them out.

So, two more, final, marketing lessons:

First, a company (in this case, Targus) can build a whole business around accessories to the base product built by some other company. Targus has a nice business in mice, power adapters, backpacks, etc. This strategy can, of course, be applied to tons of other businesses: I have a client, for instance, who builds cup holders for cars.

Second, marketers should diligently communicate directly to such third party gatekeepers and thought leaders, such as those local technicians that Dell so frequently sends out to do repairs. They can important recommenders and, occasionally, channels of distribution to lay people. Like me.

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Why has the U. S. economy so stubbornly refused to fall off a cliff into a serious recession? After all, we have not yet even entered a mild recession, just a slowdown. The anxiety of pundits to declare a repeat of Seventies Stagflation is nearing unseemly levels. The parallels are certainly there: Increasing general inflation, a weakening dollar, layoffs in some major industries (housing, especially), and, most visibly, rapid increases in oil prices.

The commonly accepted reasons for why this combination has yet to deliver a true recession are that A) the economy is less dependent overall on oil these days, B) our economy is broadly much more resilient and adaptable than in the Seventies thanks to deregulation and a host of other reforms instituted in response to that very stagflation, C) the inflation has yet to hit truly scary levels, D) exports are surging, and E) it is only one sector that is really hurting, housing.

As one who is old enough to have wasted countless hours sitting in gas lines during the Seventies, let me offer as a key difference between the current economy and that of the Seventies exactly that: There are no gas lines this time. I recall that the U. S. (with Federal government-imposed price controls) had gas lines in the Seventies while Europe (with no price controls) had none. Gas at $4.20 per gallon is infinitely better than NO GAS at $2.50. “NO GAS,” by the way, is what the sign said for months at my local Amoco station in those long-ago days. (Amoco doesn’t exist anymore, having been taken out when oil dropped to $10, a reflection of the natural cyclicality of commodities markets…but I digress.)

The key point – and the key difference between now and the Seventies – is that no one is wasting hours (yes, hours) per day simply sipping a soft drink in the gas line that is snaking around three blocks of their neighborhood. This is a combination of items A) and B) in my earlier paragraph. To emphasize the point: when government doesn’t step in to try to “solve the problem,” or “help out suffering consumers,” or “achieve energy independence,” or some such excuse for legislative and judicial meddling, perhaps, just perhaps, individual businesses and consumers simply find a way to adapt to higher prices without tipping the economy into a full-blown recession. Put another way, perhaps, just perhaps, what really caused the recessions of the Seventies was NOT high gas prices, but our government’s response to them: price controls, leading to horrible shortages, wasting billions of person-hours in gas lines. How many of Safeway’s and Wal-Mart’s and GM’s trucks were simply idling in lines, generating carbon emissions, rather than revenue?

In addition to the direct cost of the wasted person-hours multiplied across millions of businesses there was, of course, the psychological impact of consumers wasting hours in gas lines. Consumers who are time-pressed because they spent two hours at the local Exxon station have neither the time nor the optimism to head out to the mall and start shopping. Instead, they might well go home, turn on the TV, and watch some pundit declare that high gas prices (not gas lines) have driven the economy into a ditch.

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This weekend’s Blogger Social in New York was surprisingly fun and productive. I suppose I should clarify my use of words like “surprisingly,” “fun,” and “productive:”

Like so many things I find myself doing in the course of my consulting practice, I felt, on heading in to NYC Friday evening, that attendance at the Social was a duty, or a chore, not an enjoyment. Something I “owe” to Drew McLellan, Lori Magno, and Gavin Heaton for past favors. Something like entertaining a client at her favorite revue in Vegas, when I would rather be watching baseball on TV or at my son’s lacrosse game. So, with my expectations firmly lowered, I arrived at the party and, (surprise!) had a very good time. Among the revelations – most of the bloggers were exceedingly fun and interesting people with which to converse…and drink. As I’ve whined about before in this blog, I came to blogging late in life and under the strict tutelage of Mark Fortier. I am always, therefore, engaging in discussions about blogging with a nagging – and potentially debilitating – suspicion that I am out-gunned, that everyone else in the conversation has years of blogging behind them, that they are creative geniuses at commercializing their blogs, and they consider me an insufferable rookie.

Quite the contrary, I found the conversation stimulating, the contacts valuable, the ideas useful, the drinks enjoyable, and the food, er, passable. I hope we do, indeed, turn this into an annual event and that I will have more time – and experience – to making it a success each year.

Kudos to Drew, Gavin, Lori, and CK for all their hard work in putting it together.

Among the very useful bloggers whom I met and with whom I hope to maintain relationships were Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing, Vahe Habesian of Marketing Charts, and Kaitlyn Richards Wilkins of Catch Up Girl. It was particularly rewarding to get to know Toby, since AnnaMaria, months ago, had specifically warned me off the Diva Marketing blog, assuring me that my Y chromosomes were simply not appropriate.

For supposedly world-weary, hard-bitten, bottom-line, red-State MBA’s such as myself, I can only say that I not only had fun, I picked some good contacts and some good ideas for commercializing the things we are doing on our blog. That makes the Social worthwhile and worth repeating.

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I’m a big fan of OpenTable… most of the time.  According to its website, OpenTable is “the world’s most popular website for making restaurant reservations online… as it provides a fast, efficient way to find available tables that meet desired criteria for cuisine, price and location at a specified time.”  

Most of the time, OpenTable works like a charm for those of us who need to make last minute or special occasion restaurant reservations and don’t want to spend time hunting around for various restaurants’ names, locations, phone numbers, and availability.  We’re impatient  - since we want to “check-off” this task efficiently, we love that we can check/make/change reservations online with a few keystrokes.

OpenTable and its network of restaurants periodically lets me down due to some restaurants’ call-to-confirm policy.  I can understand that holiday seating (e.g., New Year’s, Easter, etc.) require that you put down a credit card and call-to-confirm your reservation the day before the event… but I can’t understand why some of OpenTable’s participating restaurants actually call me to confirm an “everyday” dining occasion. 

Given that I inititiated the reservation online, OpenTable should understand that I might want to continue the relationship with the restaurant online.  Similar to some airlines, OpenTable should give me an option that allows me to choose how any confirmation follow-ups should be made (e.g., email, text, or phone call).  I imagine that I’m not alone in hoping to avoid the “doctor’s office” routine of 1) listening to a restaurant’s voicemail message asking me to call back to confirm a reservation, and 2) having to actually call back the restaurant.  The main reason I use OpenTable is to avoid making a call in the first place!  Let’s hope OpenTable is open to some ideas on making the reservation and confirmation system even more efficient for both restaurant customers and restaurant employees.

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A practical-yet-pleasurable business book I’m also recommending these days is The Exceptional Presenter, by Timothy J. Koegel.  First, this book meets my plane ride test - it’s something you can quickly read on a plane ride and put into practice immediately. Second, Koegel uses catchy mnemonics - for example, he notes that exceptional presenters should be Organized, Passionate, Engaging, and Natural, and to be an exceptional presenter, one needs to Understand your audience and Practice.   

The book also helps the reader break down the presentation’s development and practice (yes, daily practice makes perfect as my former piano teacher said!)  into bite-sized chunks.    

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Our book:  Dan’s book:

Our photo: Dan’s photo: 

There really are other great books out there besides Stopwatch Marketing. In particular, there is Dan Roam’s The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures.

The basic premise of Dan’s book is truly marvelous, as it says on the book jacket: “Used properly, a simple drawing on a humble napkin is more powerful than Excel or PowerPoint. It can help us crystallize ideas, think outside the box, and communicate in a way that other people simply ‘get.’”

I met Dan at the 800CEO conference in December – back when both of our books were in the final stages of editing and production – and I have to admit that, at first, my reaction was, “What’s the big deal? Everyone scratches out a flowchart, or a sketch, or schematic, or something to outline their ideas and sell them to others before investing tons of time and money in actually doing the work, don’t they?” One of Dan’s central insights is that NO, they don’t! As he puts it in the book, no scientist (or consultant, I would add) would think of actually starting up a project without first doing a handwritten, easy-to-follow schematic. But – and here’s the real insight – lots of people are uncomfortable with that approach, feel they “can’t really draw,” or that scribbling & sketching is somehow unprofessional…or at least not thorough.

Dan’s advice: Get over it! sketching out your ideas is the very best way to clarify them for yourself and, more important SELL them to others…like a boss, for instance, or a potential client.

In the book, of course, Dan follows his own advice. Virtually every page includes one those beautiful little hand-drawn images just like the one used on the book cover:

And, the book is chock-full of easy to remember – and execute – “to do” lists like “The four steps of visual thinking,” “The six ways of seeing,” and my personal favorite, “The SQVID: A practical lesson in applied imagination.” What’s a SQVID? (Simple, Quality, Vision, Individual attributes, and Delta, for change). Imaginatively, he demonstrates this particular principle with a set of drawings of an apple – the Vision part is an apple pie.

Make no mistake, while the book is a lot of fun, it does, indeed have a lot of practical and serious business advice: The Table of Contents for Part III sounds as if it could have been in our book…or one written by a McKinsey or Deloitte & Touche consultant: It includes chapters with titles like “Who are our customers?” “How many are buying?” “Where is our business?” and so forth. Dan’s distinct take on answering these questions is to first address the issue and the presumed answer VISUALLY. The sub-title to the “How many are buying?” chapter is “Pictures that solve a How Much problem.” The fact that people can react to and understand visuals so much easier than they can, for example, spreadsheets is Dan’s central insight and, incidentally, the insight that has driven so much of Apple Computer’s success over the years. I, for one, am old enough to remember what a breakthrough it seemed to be to point and click at a folder on the first Macintosh screen rather than to type in a string of endless text Commands.

The book, to repeat, is both fun and serious. Dan’s consulting practice, which, of course, pre-dates his publishing career, skews to the serious but highlights his emphasis on the VISUAL. The consulting offerings include “Strategic Business Visuals and Presentations,” described as “Compelling business visuals that clarify an idea, tell a story, make a point, incite an insight, and draw a conclusion,” and “Visual Thinking Seminars and Training.”

I assume that Dan’s intent, like ours, was twofold: 1) to codify, document, and publish his unique take on business as a way of publicizing his consulting practice and 2) to get his message across to millions of people who otherwise might never have heard of him or his consulting. It would be nice, of course, if objective number 2 resulted in a best seller. Regarding that objective, I can offer this: Stopwatch Marketing is published by and publicized by the same great team as is The Back of the Napkin. Why is that important? I probably could have browbeat either Dan, the publisher, or the publicist for a free copy by promising to write this review. However, I was so excited with the final product when I saw it near my book in a bookstore in the Los Angeles airport that I did, indeed, pay retail for my own personal copy of The Back of the Napkin, so that I could read, or rather, devour, it right away. It even kept me awake on the red eye.

Herewith, my own back of the napkin summary:

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 ”After all, we’re in this together.”  - Will, Manager of Borders (Costa Mesa, CA)

These words have stuck with me over the past 3 weeks since I visited Will’s store.  Most retailers’ attitudes are “what’s in it for me?”  Discussions focus on what the retailer gains - often at the expense (literally and figuratively) of the marketer.

However, Will has a refreshingly positive attitude of “what’s in it for us?”  When I met Will, I realized that he (and his team) sells books.  And, I mean sells books.  He is creative in approaching people in his store, leveraging his booming voice (he really should be on the radio) to make announcements, and recommending books based on his knowledge and insight into his customers. 

He knows that selling books should be a win-win proposition for both the marketer (in this case, my co-author and I) and the retailer.  As we walked around the first floor of his store, he told me that he appreciated my coming to the store and meeting with him, saying “after all, we’re in this together.” 

These are words to live by and reflect on when starting or strengthening any business relationship - whether it’s internal (sales vs. marketing, marketing vs. R&D) or semi-external (sales/marketing vs. the retailer, agency vs. the brand team).   It reminds me of the old Vidal Sassoon tagline - “if you don’t look good, we don’t look good.”    

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