Turning ideas into reality, that’s the hard part.
Blogs, new media, wi-fi, email and cell phones, have changed an idea’s life span.
Before the info age, an idea was power and if you had it, you held onto to it. Then charged dearly when you let it out.
But now ideas must be acted on, or they’re blown away with other dust motes.
Gazillions of ideas sleep on notepads or in notebooks, waiting for someone to act. The hard part is turning an idea into something. And it’s usually not the idea thinker that’s going to make something happen. It’s a doer with vision.
This is why ideas are now free. Because there are so many of them, coming from so many bright people.
The world will always need ideas. But there’s a bigger need for people to apply them.
Don’t Worry So Much About Uniqueness
An idea’s uniqueness isn’t everything. I’ve heard a few people over the years worry that others might have the same ideas.
Here’s a fundamental truth.
Share the same idea with different people - and they’ll implement it differently. Always. Every time.
Yes, marketing messages and features can be similar. But doing something better always wins over first-but-poorly-done.
So, it’s not always about getting there first. It’s about doing it great. Remember the wars between:
- Pepsi vs. Coke
- FedEx vs. UPS
- Toyota vs. all U.S. automakers
One of them was second to market, but still made a viable, and arguably more successful business than the pioneer.
Just Do It
I forgot who said it before Nike (Anthony Robbins?, Tom Peters?, Aristotle?) but it’s true all the same.
Trying things and failing quickly just means you’ve eliminated one way not to succeed. And that brings you closer to success. Witness Edison’s 100s of attempts at the electric light before getting it to work.
The same is true about implementing ideas for better service.
What have you implemented lately?
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Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: change, ideas, improvements
November 29th, 2007
Exercise increases strength, flexibility and creativity.
I’m exercising here, a marketing exercise for a situation and client that I won’t be working for.
Interestingly, in the exercise I’d used Word of Mouth and Web 2.0 to market a business. Your challenge, should you accept it, would be to consider how you might use these tactics to get new business for your business.
Sound like a stretch? Sure, but you’re up for it.
Situation
The restaurant is on the Ile Saint Louis in Paris. Like most high-end Parisian restaurants, it gets business the traditional way. It courts tyrannical food critics for reviews.
My wife and I were there when a food critic (she) and a wine critic (he) arrived.
It was clear these were powerful people. The owner came out, fussed over them, and then personally served them.
She, the owner, was dressed elegantly in black.
All her wait staff jumped to hand full platters and instantly whisk away empty ones. With each dish the owner spent several minutes explaining it to the critics.
Everything was going beautifully.
Until the wine critic asked about the wine.
Then it all went wrong.
The wine critic asked the owner to rate this particular wine on a scale. He moved his hands asking the owner where she felt the wine belonged on his imaginary scale.
The owner froze. She was bent at the waist, in mid pour, leaning over the table. Her brain must have vanished. The muscle’s on her face smoothed. Her expression dissolved, her body fossilized.
The wine critic’s questions became emphatic.
The owner thought this was the perfect wine for this meal, for these influential critics. What happened? It’d all gone wrong and now she was locked in rigor mortis.
She didn’t throw down the bottle and run from the room sobbing. But she wanted to, you could tell.
Finally, the owner, after what must have seemed like the Spanish Inquisition, stood upright, placed the bottle on the table, and without saying a word, dissolved into the kitchen. She wasn’t seen again that evening.
The wine critic made sneering faces to his partner, the food critic, as the owner made her silent exit.
This was cruel, fascinating, more than reality TV. It was a cheetah bringing down an antelope. We couldn’t stop watching. It was worth the price of the over priced meal.
However, it got me thinking about the owner, the pain, the personal humiliation she must have felt. And how she could break free from reviewer tyranny.
The Challenge
How could she find a way of attracting guests to her restaurant without having to rely on critics’ reviews?
This was the marketing exercise. Here’s what I came up with.
If It Was My Restaurant
I’d first recognize that my restaurant could survive in the large Parisian market on more than repeat diners.
Repeat diners would, at best, eat there four to five times a year. This means the large majority of our diners would be one timers, in and probably never back again. In other words, they’d be tourists. And if I’m paying rent on the Ile Saint Louis I’m getting an extremely healthy number of tourists year round.
I wouldn’t drop quality because of this insight. My goal is still to remain a four-star restaurant. But to get diners differently.
Word of Mouth
Tactic - Free Introductory Meals:
There are a large number of hotels on the Ile Saint Louis, and nearby on Ile de la Cite, and in the Latin Quarter.
Each of those hotels recommend restaurants to their guests. However, most hotel front desk staff can’t afford to eat at expensive restaurants, or never tried.
I’d offer free meal tokens to all hotel desk staff.
The token would entitle them to one full dinner on a traditionally slow night (Tuesday’s?). They’d have to pick up their wine but the meal would be free. Anything on the menu.
I’d want tokens used on slow nights for two reasons. First, it would make the restaurant look busy when others were empty. Potential diners walking by would see a busy restaurant and figure it was good and give it a try. Second, I wouldn’t want tokens filling my restaurant on busy nights, taking tables away from paying diners.
My wait staff and I would treat those hotel staff as if they were the most important food critics. Because they are, they have the same power. They’d recommend our restaurant over the hundreds of others in the area. Their word of mouth is powerful to tourists looking for a place to eat. We’d become their first recommendation.
Web 2.0
I’d also seek out bloggers writing about food and restaurants in Paris. I’d invite them to try us out, and then write about the experience.
This is similar to traditional food critics. However, by adding influential bloggers to the list of intentional reviewers I’d have more chances for good reviews. And I’d increase the content on the Internet. Either way, having more critics helps reduce the power when there’s only a few.
Summary
Now I don’t know how this will help you sell more service contracts.
I do know that by exercising your marketing brain power, you’ll eventually come up with some tactic that you can use.
And, who knows, maybe it’ll get you those rave reviews you’ve been longing for.
Bon Appetite
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: marketing, web 2.0, word of mouth
November 21st, 2007
It rains a lot here.
Everyone has an umbrella. They lose or break them and buy another one. They give theirs to a friend and buy another one. Umbrella demand is high in Seattle.
There’s a tremendous opportunity that’s not being met here. Free umbrellas for advertising.
A few hotels and office buildings provide umbrellas as a courtesy but not with the intent to advertise. They’re using innocuous business umbrellas, which are lost among the others.
As a matter of fact, all umbrellas could be free if enough branded umbrellas were produced.
Don’t laugh yet, there’s something here.
Here’s how it can work:
A business gives away branded umbrellas whenever a customer comes into their building, or hands them out during the normal course of business.
For free, no charge, no obligation to bring them back.
In fact you don’t want customers to return the umbrellas. You want customers to take them home, use them in their neighborhoods, at the supermarket, give them to their friends.
Now your branded message is being seen more often and in more locations than you could afford to advertise in.
Think how low the cost per ad impression would be in this model. Probably much better than impressions from advertising on the sides of buses or some billboards.
Don’t forget to make sure all your employees get their umbrellas too. They add to the total number of impressions.
Here are a few details for free umbrellas to work:
Good Quality
Free umbrellas must be good quality so people will keep and use them, and people don’t like throwing away something of quality.
Remarkable Color/Design
Umbrella design must stand out, they must be remarkable in color, design or both - imagine a day-glo pink, leopard-spotted umbrella in a sea of black umbrellas.
Limited Number of Takers
Not everyone will want to use a free remarkable umbrella. But for those that do, the scarcity raises visibility against the rest.
Those choosing your free remarkable umbrellas will take it as a fashion statement, or just because they prefer staying dry over being like everyone else.
Lots of Ad Space
Place your logo on the handle butt for visibility in umbrella stands. Place ad copy on the top covering to be read while it’s open, and text up the handle.
Why aren’t umbrellas free now?
Traditional business thinking.
Its logic is about selling umbrella features and benefits to its distribution channels. Our umbrella is better than that umbrella, or its cheaper.
Umbrella advertising could be the next big thing. And you can tell everyone that you read about it here.
Hope it keeps raining.
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Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: change, marketing, selling
November 15th, 2007
