Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?: And Other Provocations, 2006-2012 (20 page)

Principle 1:
Use the Internet to form a queue. If you have a scarce product, you almost certainly know in advance that it’s scarce. Instead of taxing customers by wasting their time, reward the early shoppers by taking orders online. A month before the sale date, for example, tell them it’s coming. If you sell out before the ship date, that’s great, because the next time, people will be even quicker to order when they hear about what you’ve got. (And you can do this in the real world, too—postcards with numbers or even playing cards work just fine.)

A hot band that regularly sells out on the road, for example, could put a VIP serial number inside every CD or T-shirt they sell. People could then use that number to preorder their tickets.

Principle 2:
Give the early adopters a reward. In the case of Apple, I would have made the first 100,000 phones a different color. Then, instead of the buyer being a hero for ten seconds, he gets to be a hero for a year.

Principle 3:
Treat different customers differently. Apple, for example, knows how to contact every single existing customer. Why not offer VIP status to big spenders? Or to those that make a lot of calls? Let them cut the line. It’s not fair? What does fair mean? I can’t think of anything more fair than treating the people who treat you well, better.

Principle 4:
When things happen in real time, you’re way more likely to screw up. One of the giant advantages of the ’Net is that you can fix things before the whole world notices. Try to do your rollout in small sections, so you can fix mistakes before you hurt the very people you’re trying to embrace.

Principle 5:
Give your early adopters a forum to celebrate. A place to brag or demonstrate or show off or share insights and ideas. Amplify the heroes, which is far better than amplifying the pain of standing in line.

Imagine what the Apple and AT&T stores would have been like this weekend if they had been filled with happy customers who had prepaid and preregistered and were just dropping in for three minutes to pick up their (very coveted) phones, walking up the VIP line, past all the others just waiting for a chance to buy one.

Hot restaurants in New York violate all five of these principles on a regular basis. So do sports teams and stores that have lines out front in the middle of winter. What a waste.

Even colleges do it. They pretend they’ve got a meritocracy, but in practice, it’s a high-pressure lottery with enormous financial and stress overhead involved.

Yes, there are times when scarcity is mandated (the TSA at airports, for example, or food rations at an emergency site). I know that there are plenty of ways to deal with this scarcity as well. Ways to treat
your customers (and yes, they are customers) with more respect, to communicate the situation more clearly, and to architect the environment so that people are grateful, not stressed out.

Smart marketers understand that scarcity (intentional or not) is a tool, one that can be used to enhance the story, not detract from it.

Consider this riff from a professionally printed freestanding sign in front of a Peet’s store in San Jose:

“UNLIKE ANY COFFEE YOU’VE EVER TASTED BEFORE.”

Wait. Why the capitals?

“UNLIKE ANY COFFEE YOU’VE EVER TASTED BEFORE.”

“Before” is redundant.

“UNLIKE ANY COFFEE YOU’VE EVER TASTED.”

Too negative. And why is “unlike” a positive trait? I mean, boiled leech guts is also unlike any coffee I’ve ever tasted, but that doesn’t mean I want to drink it. How about:

“THE BEST COFFEE YOU’VE EVER TASTED.”

Well, the thing is, the only coffee that matters is coffee I’ve tasted, right? So we could get shorter still:

“THE BEST COFFEE.”

The problem with that is that it’s nothing but bragging. Of course you think it’s the best coffee. So what? You’re lying. And even if you’re not lying, how do you know it’s the best? Compared to what?

This is where the smart copywriter becomes a marketer.

“BETTER THAN STARBUCKS.”

Well, it’s still bragging. This is the moment when the marketer becomes a smart marketer and realizes that changing the offer or the product is more important than changing the hype.

“FREE TASTE TEST ARE WE BETTER THAN STARBUCKS?”

Invest $20 in espresso in little cups, and maybe, just maybe, your sign will make some magic.

Not powder or chemicals or rubber or steel or silicon or talk or installations or even sugary water.

What marketers sell is hope.

The reason is simple: people need more. We run out. We need it replenished. Hope is almost always in short supply.

The magical thing about selling hope is that it makes everything else work better, every day get better, every project work better, every relationship feel better. If you can actually deliver on the hope you sell, there will be a line out the door.

Hope cures cynicism. Hope increases productivity. Hope needs no justification.

The most common frustration I see, and I see it daily, comes from marketers who can’t figure out why more people won’t buy their products. This frustration particularly afflicts B2B marketers, who ostensibly have rational customers.

Let’s say, for example, that you have a service that can deliver leads for 5% of what it costs to get them via a trade show. Why would any
rational business, particularly one that says it wants qualified leads, spend that money on trade shows and not on you?

I mean, I mean, you can PROVE that your system works. You can guarantee it. You can provide testimonials and real-time evidence. And yet, the person you’re calling on won’t give you money and will spend it on the traditional system, which is a total waste.

You
know
that your car is more aerodynamic. You
know
that your insulation is more effective. You
know
that your insurance has a higher ROI.

You’ve thought about it a lot because it’s your job to think about it. It’s your job to make those charts and tables and graphs and brochures. So you know it.

The problem is that your prospect doesn’t care about any of those things. He cares about his boss or the story you’re telling or the risk or the hassle of making a change. He cares about whom you know and what other people will think when he tells them what he’s done after he buys from you.

The opportunity, then, is not to insist that your customers get more rational, but instead to embrace just how irrational they are. Give them what they need. Help them satisfy their needs at the same time they get the measurable, rational results that your product can give them in the long run.

When there were old-school parking meters in New York, quarters were precious.

One day, I was walking down the street and a guy came up to me and said, “Do you have a dollar for four quarters?” He held out his hand with four quarters in it.

Curious, I engaged with him. I took out a dollar bill and took the four quarters.

Then he turned to me and said, “Can you spare a quarter?”

What a fascinating interaction.

First, he engaged me. A fair trade, one that perhaps even benefited me, not him.

Now, we have a relationship. Now, he knows I have a quarter (in my hand, even). So his next request is much more difficult to turn down. If he had just walked up to me and said, “Can you spare a quarter?” he would have been invisible.

Too often, we close the sale before we even open it.

Interact first, sell second.

Drug companies have coined an initialism for the marketing they do that bypasses doctors: DTC. Direct to consumer. Think of those happy-face ads you see in
Reader’s Digest
and other magazines, or the erectile dysfunction ads you see during the Super Bowl.

What drug companies are totally unprepared for, and what your organization may be unprepared for, is DFC: direct
from
consumer.

If someone takes your medicine and gets sick, do you want to hear from them, or would you rather have them blog about it or make a video?

Most drug company marketers instantly say, “we want to hear from them!”

Really?

When your airline or hotel has a passenger or guest who is so angry he could spit, do you want to hear from him or do you want him to make a long PowerPoint presentation that spreads around the whole Web? Really?

And when your cable company or chiropractic clinic or consulting firm has a disappointed client, what about you? Really?

I think the actions of almost all marketers say, “we’d rather you were happy, but if you can’t be happy, please go away.”

If you really want me to call you, then put your toll-free number in giant type on the label. (If you run a free service, Google style, I think it’s okay to settle for an easy-to-use and responsive Web presence.) Answer the call on the first ring. No phone tree. And give me instant sympathy, maybe a little empathy, too. Don’t blame me or evade. Give me a refund. And say “sorry” and “thank you.”

“Oh,” the powerful marketers say, “we could never do that.” Two
reasons, apparently. First, they say, because it would encourage people to pretend they were angry in order to take advantage. And second, they say, because it would be too expensive.

Compared to what?

Back when every consumer was alone, you could ignore the few angry ones and use the money you saved to run more ads. But now? Now in the DFC era, do you really have any choice?

Angry phone calls are your friend. They’re your friend because the alternative is angry tweets and angry blog posts.

Most PR firms do publicity, not PR.

Publicity is the act of getting ink. Publicity is getting unpaid media to pay attention, write you up, point to you, run a picture, make a commotion. Sometimes publicity is helpful, and good publicity is always good for your ego.

But it’s not PR.

PR is the strategic crafting of your story. It’s the focused examination of your interactions and tactics and products and pricing that, when combined, determine what and how people talk about you.

Regis McKenna was great at PR. Yes, he got Steve Jobs and the Mac on the cover of more than 30 magazines in the year it launched. That was just publicity. The real insight was crafting the story of the Mac (and yes, the story of Steve Jobs).

If you send out a boring press release, your publicity effort will probably fail, but your PR already has failed.

A publicity firm will tell you stories of how they got a client ink. A PR firm will talk about storytelling and being remarkable and spreading the word. They might even suggest that you don’t bother getting ink or issuing press releases.

In my experience, a few people have a publicity problem, but almost everyone has a PR problem. You need to solve that one first. And you probably won’t accomplish that if you hire a publicity firm and don’t even give them the freedom and access they need to work with you on your story.

It’s both, and that’s the problem.

Some marketers are scientists. They test and measure. They do the math. They understand the impact of that spend in that market at that time with that message. They can understand the analytics and find the truth.

This sort of marketing works when it works, but it usually doesn’t. That’s because we’re dealing with humans, the wild card in the system.

The other marketers are artists. They inspire and challenge and connect. These marketers are starting from scratch, creating movements, telling jokes, and surprising people. Scientists aren’t good at that.

The problem is caused by two things:

1. Outsiders are confused.
   Which are we? When we’re artists sometimes and scientists other times, we often seem like charlatans, because we’re associating scientific results with artistic endeavors.
   
2. We’re confused
   . If you don’t know whether you’re doing a science project or an art project, you’ll probably emphasize the wrong elements. If you go to school to study marketing, and the blowhard professor acts like she’s teaching you science, you’ll waste a lot of time trying to apply taxonomy and hypotheses to something that is essentially a gut decision. And vice versa.
   

We need hats. The hat of the scientist and the hat of the artist. You can wear only one hat at a time, which is why I didn’t suggest that we need gloves.

Figure out what sort of marketing you’re going to do today and go do that.

The people in the marketing department tell a story that spreads.

The folks in sales overcome the natural resistance to saying yes.

If you don’t pay the sales force (because you go direct, or you go free),
then who is going to do that for you? The only answer that occurs to me is, “your users/fans/customers.”

This means that a critical element of any strategy that ditches the sales force is to figure out how you will empower and encourage your customers to take their place. Easier said than done.

In order for an idea to spread, someone has to do the spreading.

In the dark ages (ten years ago), the only way to spread your idea on a large scale was to do it yourself. With lots and lots of ads.

Today, marketers get all sweaty thinking about how this happens
magically
, virally, for free. If it were only that easy.

What’s interesting to me is that different products and ideas are spread by different groups of people.
There isn’t just one professional association of idea spreaders, with everyone else being passive.

If your authentic little Welsh restaurant gets hot, it’s going to be because the chowhounds, the folks who love to talk about the next great place, are buzzing about it. On the other hand, if your blog gets a lot of traffic, it might just be because a few of the digerati are going on about it, spreading the idea.