Bell Chat Wins

I just finished a service chat with Dhanesh at Bell and - whatever they have been doing over there - they need to keep doing it. I haven't been treated that well by any company in ages. Informed, articulate, precise, warm, and stayed with me until my problem was solved.

Then, when he asked if there was anything else he could help with and I mentioned my obscure, unrelated logging-in problem he helped me gather the information he thought may help me best and pointed me towards some sites that may help me in dealing with the company whose product I was having difficulty with.

The brand rejuvenation was apparently much more than skin deep. Yes, I love the new website but - I have to admit - I wasn't blown away by the teaser campaign. I was having trouble liking the new logo because I hadn't updated my appreciation of the Bell offering. But tonight? This experience? I actually like the new identity better. I'm surprised at my visceral reaction - I think it's coming as such a shocking contrast to a malingering, torturous problem I've been having with another company. But, yes, Bell apparently has brought a rich understanding of relationship management to their service and I'm delighted.

Suddenly I'm a Bell fan.  

have it your way

Burger King's call to action is "have it your way". Customizing your flame-broiled sandwich has been their differentiator for a generation now.  The new BK campaign and Facebook app - Sacrifice - is an edgy approach to customization, letting participants cull people from their friendlist in exchange for a Whopper coupon. Smart, visible and probably as viral as hell it also aligns so nicely and actively with the brand I just have to admire it. 

Nice work from agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, and fb app writers, refresh partners.

"astroturfing"

I hadn't run into this expression before but "astroturfing" refers to marketing or PR campaigns that try to take on the appearance of a grassroots movement. Definitely perjorative, this emphasizes the importance of transparency and authenticity in communications. Humans may not be so good at logic, but they are excellent at sniffing out a fake, especially with repeated interactions. And then they punish them.

I Power Blogger

Despite being a user of Blogger I had never seen this little piece of branding collateral before. A simple little riff on the "powered by" convention for advertising online software services, this shows a nice alignment between the brand and the grassroots ethos of the blogging community.

Cooling the Meme Forges

One of my enduring interests is the industry of the idea studios - those organizations that span the world of business and art and create many of the brands, symbols, and supporting media. 

It is a strange world and has surprisingly fewer players at the high-end than one might expect. 

WPP (which stands for "Wire and Plastic Products" of all things), Omnicom, Interpublic, 

Publicis, Denstu, and Havas are the Big Six. They span the world of marketing agency, brand consultants and public relations and between them they generate somewhere close to $50billion in annual revenues and employ over 280,000 people. 

While I've been meaning to write about these companies for a while now, what got my attention today was Dentsu warning on missed profit targets. The knock-on effect of the economic crisis is hitting marketing budgets. I'm sure this is just the first of these that I've seen, but I'm confident we'll see more.

Convergence Culture

I’ve had a hugely busy couple of weeks, but in those discretionary moments when I'm not typing furiously into a laptop – usually while waiting for subway trains, streetcars or buses – I have been reading Henry Jenkin’s Convergence Culture. This is a core text for understanding the communications channels, forms, and communities in which brand culture is practiced.

The first two chapters are must-reads for those interested in brand culture. Jenkins opens his book with analyses of Survivor, The Apprentice, and American Idol, looking at the structure of the shows and the participation of their audiences. The engagement of the fan communities were engines for a broader, mass market enthusiasm. Of special interest were the ways the show creators interacted with the audiences, entering into a multidirectional/multimodal conversation played out across many channels and generating a vast knowledge and countless hours of involvement with the entertainment brands, and the sponsor brands as well.

The rest of the book is pure gold, too, but I’m going to massacre his elegant presentations with my summaries so you should probably just read it.

Dell Spot

At the YourSpace conference a few weeks back I learned about Dell’s experience with “the conversation economy”. Nearly three years ago blogger Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine wrote his "Dell Sucks" entry (with apologies to Dell for linking it again - this time it's meant well).

Jarvis had purchased a lemon and received poor customer service which he carefully documented. His post touched a nerve in the Internet population and was so highly referenced and linked by others that, for two years, when you searched "Dell" on Google, it returned the "Dell Sucks" post.

I’m sure they explored all their options first (probably including a number of calls to lawyers, search result gurus, and professional "cleaners”). In the end, though, Dell responded with a rational and focused improvement on customer service, launched the "Studio Dell" community and the "Ideastorm" innovation conversation. Three years after that post, customer satisfaction is up from 58% to 84% and negative blog posts down from 49% to 22%.

Enter Facebook. Dell has created their own "fan" page, called "Dell Spot".

There are only three conversations, with some 40 posts. 37 of those posts are in the conversation "Why Dell sucks".

Consumers who have had poor product and customer service experiences are venting loudly (as they would have any way) and arguments are being advanced in Dell’s defense. The dialogue seems to be resolving in to two camps. One group is portrayed as apologists for “poor customer service” but present a position that "cheap technology is just that: cheap. Pay more and expect more". The other is being portrayed as “whiners who want quality at no cost” but their shoddy customer service experiences cannot so easily be discounted.

All this is happening on the Dell page - it's quite amazing. There is a blast of criticism right there under their ads, but there are also Dell employees, happy Dell customers, and even tech support from other companies making cases quite often consumers are rude and entitled boneheads. Ironically, it was one of Dell's employees' responses that impressed me the least. Post #33 in reply to a good natured jab at Dell was met with the response "it was sony battery...fyi...dont talk with little knowledge duh!! LOL." Fortunately the two involved in the exchange were adept in not engaging in flame wars and resolved things amicably. Still, I would hope that people at my company would not insult a customer, but would rather meet a criticism from someone who is not an enemy – only re-stating headlines about known product problems – with something a little more balanced, and invite the person to join Studio Dell.

This is another example of how companies like Dell, who are playing in the conversation economy, need to invite these dialogues internally as well so their employees become well-informed, rational, articulate brand ambassadors.