Don’t Waste Your Customer’s Time

Marketers require empathy for their customers. Having some compassion and respect for your customer’s time is a necessary part of building a brand that is taken seriously by its audience.

Here are two easy ways to undo that work:

Website Surveys

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Here’s a great explanation of the problem with these site surveys, from Neven Mrgn:

As you’re about to take that first bite of your food, the server puts a comment card between you and the plate: PLEASE RATE OUR RESTAURANT

Pointless Emails

From Zach Holman:

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Kill me if I ever work for a company that carpet bombs their customers with shit like this.

Steve Jobs Branding Lecture from 1997

The thing that stuck in my head about his explanation of branding is the notion that the audience has so little room in their memory for your brand, that you had better distill your core values – things that your brand believes and will never stop believing – into a concise message that you apply consistently.

Some of the other rules of advertising he lays out, Apple would go on to break in the next 15 years (or so). The famous “I’m a Mac” campaign was devoted entirely to talking about Apple’s rival, Windows.

Apple’s Advertising Folly

While it’s easy to pick on a company that gets so much right, Fast Company did a great job pointing out the problem with Apple’s ad shown above. The ad opens with the words:

“This is it. This is what matters. The experience of a product.”

The problem is that the ad should open with:

“This is it. This is what matters. The experience of a person.”

Apple should be showing how their products enrich the lives of their users by complimenting their lives. Instead the products are shown as the end, instead of the means.

Liking isn’t Helping

Ad campaign shows that Facebook Likes don’t help. From Bored Panda:

The idea is simple but daring – virtual things don’t count in real life and even a billion “Likes” on Facebook won’t help those facing crisis in their everyday lives. It might win you an iPod if you’re lucky but it won’t stop poverty, homelessness, economical and cultural collapse that are caused by wars and natural disasters. Therefore, the campaign calls for action with its tagline “Be a volunteer. Change a life”.

Read the rest of the article and see two more great variations of this ad campaign at Bored Panda.

Two things I learned from Clark Kokich

This diagram illustrates how marketing works to fight the natural tendency for your brand to drift from being a specialty to being a commodity.

Also, these questions can be used to help spur creative insights:

  • What do customers hate about our category?
  • What are the top 3 things on our ceo’s agenda?
  • What deeper need can we satisfy?