Close to Perfection….

I’m delighted to report an exceptional customer experience!

I’ve been an admirer and Bose customer for some years. We have a Bose system at home as our main audio system, and I’ve used Bose X headsets when flying small planes.

I also have, and use constantly, a Bose Quietcomfort2 noise reduction headset. I got it because I travel with American Airlines a lot, and they loan them out in Business Class on international trips. After trying it out, I decided that the $299 was worth springing for. Especially as I had just misplaced my second set of noise reduction in ear phones by leaving them behind on a flight – at $150 apiece. I’m much less likely to leave the Bose as they are a regular sized headset – something I had seen as a disadvantage to that point!

I’ll digress at this point – such a rarity for me, I know – and emphasize that I’ve always had some personal struggles with Bose’s premium pricing. I should explain that as a Yorkshireman (an old boss if mine once explained it this way ‘ This guy is a Yorkshireman. You know about Yorkshiremen? They are just like a Scotsman, but with the generosity knocked out of them.’) I feel I have a reputation to maintain. So getting to the point of purchase for Bose products involves some heartsearching for me.

So I settle in to my seat on the way to Miami, pull the earpieces apart and hear a ping. The right slide had broken. I could still use them, but they needed a fix. I called Bose when I returned and got Eric (long hold, the only sub par part of the experience).

Eric gets my details, finds me as a customer and asks me if I’ve had them more than a year. I hum and haw, unsure how long I’ve really had them, and ask for a repair. ‘No repairs’, says Eric, ‘but we will replace them.’

He finds my registration details, and lo, it turns out I’ve had them for 2 1/2 years. So I tense myself for the bill. ‘No charge replacement’ says Eric ‘and the replacement has a reinforced headband.’ ‘So I’m not the only one with the problem?’ ‘No’, says Eric.

So in one fell swoop, Bose are frank about a product shortcoming, replace it for free and all through a customer service rep who is both human and exceeds my expectations.

I’m starting to think that these premium products are very good value.

Well done Eric and Bose!

Tags: Brand, Customer Experience, Service

Advertising in the 21st Century

I was listening – well sort off, I tuned it out mostly – to more gnashing of teeth and wailing from the media industry about how we viewers were avoiding their ads. The latest “ruse” they have employed is to get actors to speak about products as part of the script….

Jay Rosen talks in ‘People Formerly Known as the Audience‘ about the shift in power and that once control is ceded to ‘the masses’ it cannot be regained. I guess the power of the many, enabled by communication, over the few.

This, and a few other teasers, got me thinking – a rare and dangerous thing – about advertising. The regular stuff, the ads that we see on TV all the time. Turns out, I’m not as unique as I was hoping – many of us watch ads that are appealing, and will even seek them out. This was reinforced by a friend (a senior at USC) who has just passed his driving test. After getting over his shock that I not only knew about YouTube, but could show him fun stuff there, he showed me the new VW ads. ‘Unpimp Your Auto‘ is a series of three (search for tags pimp, auto and VW) ads that his generation are seeking out. Yup, that is that they go online and watch them, show them to friends, talk about them. Now THAT’s an advert.

Ditto for the Apple Mac ads are interesting in and of themselves. But the spoofs (for all of them search for tag truenuff) ALSO build credibility for the Mac too. Apple could pay for such ads, but this way they garner huge credibility on the back of someone else’s dollar. That’s RoI!

Now to some of the challenges. Talk a look at Cubicle Wars. Do it now, then read on.

What was the product? I had to go back and look twice. Compelling, funny and a great piece of work – but I can’t remember the product even now. All I can recall is that it’s a report writer. So compelling ads are not enough – there needs to be some good hook.

Also, in the Mac spoof noted above, the company Truenuff included a link along with all the spoof ads. Only problem is, that the link generates an error 404. Whoops. Even a link to the main domain didn’t work. Today, there is a redirect to a blog on Myspace.

So what’s my point? That good, innovative, compelling ads can be produced and we, the customer, will actively seek them out. Smart marketers will will stop trying to force advertising upon us and learn to have us seek it!

Oh, and execution (especially around the whole user (customer) experience) is still all!

Great customer experiences to us all.

Tags: Advertising, Media, WOM

{advertising, Brand, customers, media}

[composed and posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Media, WOM

Misrepresentation of the worst kind?

I was in Salt Lake City this week, walking back from dinner I spotted a car with ‘Salt Lake City Water’ on the side. So what you say? It was the tagline underneath that got me:

 

‘Partial Zero Emission Vehicle’

 

How on earth did someone manage to come up with such a misleading, disingenuous statement? Do you have more examples – I’d love to hear them.

Truth in Word of Mouth advertising

Jon Fine in his July 10 article in BusinessWeek raises the issue of truth in advertising – the first article I have seen in a premium publication on the tropic.
He cites Ted Murphy and his company PayPerPost as examples of what, in my view, is the worst type of schilling. Bloggers sign up to the program and then include a reference (with a minimum # of words – the current list varies from 10 words to the majority needing 40-50) to one of the products in the opportunity list, in return for an amount usually around $5.
So what’s my beef? Nothing IF and only IF every blogger declares clearly and simply that this was a paid piece. In essence this is no different to running an advert -f rom Google or elsewhere – in a blog. The difference is that we can identify an advert and judge it accordingly.
My issue stems from the fact that these PPP ‘opportunities’ could (will) be included in a blog as though it is the author’s view, recommendation, or opinion – presumably in the hope that they appear as genuine view of the author. There is no requirement for having used the product or service, no advice on how to include an opportunity ethically (at least that I could find) on the PPP website.
Andy Sernovitz spoke eloquently on this topic at the recent WOMBAT conference in San Francisco. He compared the dangers of the type of WOM encouraged by PPP and the problem of spam in email. We now routinely discard all unrequested advertising in email (or at least I do, no matter if it is legitimate or not), primarily because the medium is forever tainted by porn, drug related email, etc etc.
The WOMMA states “ethical word of mouth marketers need to stand up for doing the right thing. We need to demonstrate how the good guys operate — before we are all tarnished by the bad actors.
Email marketers failed to take a stand against spammers until it was too late to restore their reputations. WOMMA members will act quickly to make sure that honest marketers get credit for doing the right things — and that unethical players are put out of business.”
If we are to avoid this situation in our profession we must act. So what can YOU do?
1 Subscribe to (that means live it, have your vendors and partners live it too) the WOMMA Code of Ethics.
2 Call or email Andy and let him know you are supporting the code of ethics
3 Complain to organizations (and, of course, boycott them!) who do not work ethically and truthfully.

Tags: WOM Ethics Marketing