Jun17

Lemar Scott’s First Guest Post

Posted on by
Lemar Scott’s First Guest Post

Hi! I am an intern at Lois Geller Marketing Group and it is my second week here. Lois asked me to do a guest post on her blog so I sought the advice of our Creative Director, His most regal majesty- Mike. He suggested that since I have little experience and only a small (but rapidly growing) knowledge base, I might consider writing about something that I know.
So here goes….

I signed up as a “Guess List” member along with a group of other shoppers who agreed to receive texts about special offers and new products.

Today, I got a text and what a mess!

It was too long; way too long to hold anyone’s attention. The main point was on page two. Page Two! Texting operates on an entirely different level than direct mail copy which is fine if it’s long, even very long. How do I know this? Well, there’s common sense, of course, but I’m a near-addicted texter. Just ask my friends.

So I decided to tell you about Mobile Marketing: My Experience.
Messages to-on-the-go mobile devices can wield a lot of marketing power, assuming they’re messages that people want to read. Most texters are like me, average Joes with smart phones, tablets, navigation systems, e-readers, and MP3s. We’re not known for long attention spans and We wrt lk ths (we write like this).

So, using common sense, I developed The Intern’s Short List of four points for effective commercial text messages:
1) Texts under 160 characters. For one thing, 160 is the max set by phone companies. And readers like messages that are that quick, at-a-glance easy and right-to-the-point. Plus, we don’t want to pay for several pages of texts just to get to your promotion! We’re big fans of direct marketing … and we’re looking forward to location based real-time marketing.

2) Wandering off topic is annoying. It’s OK to be inspired by an approaching holiday or current event, but a lot of marketing texters seem to get carried away. Readers can get uninterested and even disoriented trying to follow their thoughts.

3) Texts should look interesting, don’t you think? Consider the differences between these two versions of the same message:
a) Come in tonight for an exclusive release party at eight.
b) Come in TONIGHT for an *exclusive* release party @ 8!!!
You know that b) is texter-style, right?

4) And I do wish they wouldn’t harass us! Prospects are wary of deals because it seems that every other offer is not real. Unless we specifically ask for more, I suggest that texts be limited to perhaps four or five a month. We like to see message inboxes filled with texts from buddies — not businesses!
So please comment and tell me about your mobile marketing ideas. I beg you!

Your friend,
Lemar Scott: The Intern

Leave a Comment | 4 Comments
Jun3

Marketing: Five lessons from my recent American Airlines misery

Posted on by
Marketing: Five lessons from my recent American Airlines misery

Last week’s post (and subsequent Tweets) elicited responses from some nice people at American Airlines, one of whom is a VP at American Eagle.

They refunded our airfares (we never did get to our final destination) and, all in all, were very pleasant in resolving a lot of my concerns. It took them a while.

Lesson 1: Handle complainers fairly and promptly and you’ll probably get them back as customers, happier customers.

Along the way, a lot of my blog and Twitter friends tweeted and emailed about their AA problems. I hope the airline, at least for its own sake, does its best to help them out. If I owned AA, I’d get helpful people online and on the phone immediately.

The problems I heard about (as well as my own problems) rarely had anything to do with bad weather or mechanical problems. We’re all grownups and we know that stuff happens. The problem is always the way a company handles customers’ issues. It’s a lot like the bigger problem politicians always seem to create after they’re caught doing something stupid. The inevitable dissembling, outright lying and tap dancing for the media – the spin – cause more problems than the original offense.

Lesson 2: Tell the truth.

I was talking to a west coast friend last night. His name is Dwain and he’s an online whiz. He suggested that maybe American Airlines shouldn’t even be involved in social media. They’re not dedicating enough resources to it. He might be right; as near as I can tell, AA has two people working on Twitter and, apparently, neither works on weekends. Again, if I owned the company, I’d have more people, with some company clout, ready, able and, most of all, willing to help customers solve their problems.

Lesson 3: Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.
Above all, don’t do what AT&T does – threaten customers who have problems. I found this unbelievably ham-handed and so will you: econsultancy.com

Lesson 4: They’re your customers for crying out loud. Treat them badly and they’ll tell two friends who’ll each tell two friends, and sooner or later one or more of them will eventually tell the whole world … which they can do just by typing a few words and hitting “Post”.

On my AA debacle-trip, I was traveling with a friend. Neither of us racks up hundreds of thousands of miles in the air every year but we do fly a lot, perhaps 40 flights a year between us. Nobody in the Chicago airport the night the debacle went down, seemed to understand that we, and probably a lot of our fellow passengers, represented significant business – and that’s not counting all the people we influence.

Lesson 5: Know you’re customer. Get gate people and phone people to look us up and react accordingly. Treating everyone fairly is a good idea; treating really good customers fairly is a great idea.

How do you think American Airlines and companies like them should handle the complaints they get – given their tiny social media presence? Please let me know, because maybe we can help them and ourselves.

Leave a Comment | 4 Comments
May31

American Airlines is a no-listening zone!

Posted on by
American Airlines is a no-listening zone!

I fly a lot and I understand that planes get delayed, gates get changed and things happen.

But this was ridiculous.

We were booked for a May 27th flight to Calgary from Ft. Lauderdale with a layover in Dallas. The first leg was canceled on May 26th and the wonderful travel agent (Marlin) in Alberta re-booked us through Chicago O’Hare with a three hour and forty minute layover. Quite a feat on a long weekend.

The flight to O’Hare was fine, except an older man collapsed and we were afraid he was going to die. When we got to O’Hare, our flight wasn’t on the Departures Board. We somehow found out that it was an American Eagle plane (small, too small for a 3+ hour flight) and they sent us to a basement gate where we waited for an hour or so before the first of two gate changes with all the relevant gates far apart.

The scene at the last gate, G11, reminded me of the evacuation of Baku in the original Lost Horizons movie, the one with Ronald Coleman. For starters, we shared our waiting area with a lot of nice people trying to get to Atlanta (and they never made it, not that night,anyway.) There were lots of couples with small children, other couples from Europe hoping for a vacation, a woman in a wheelchair … and no word from Johnny M at the desk After we’d waited two hours, a pilot named Tom Hildebrandt showed up. He told me we were taking off, but were waiting for a flight attendant to show up.

We waited until after 11PM, and then they cancelled the flight. Johnny M gave us all vouchers for hotel rooms and food. Our vouchers for a nearby La Quinta were useless because the hotel was already full. Good ol’ Johnny told us to wait for our luggage at Carousel 9, and, like good little sheep, we did, until 12:30 AM when it finally dawned on us that our luggage wasn’t going to show up.

The food vouchers weren’t much use either. All the restaurants were closed. We walked to the airport Hilton and got a room for $230. My companion went back to the airport to see about the lost luggage.

We booked a flight back to Ft. Lauderdale because Johnny M said the next flight to Calgary wasn’t until 7 PM the following day. He seemed annoyed at having to give us information. He rolled his eyes up in his head. Customers seemed to be such a bother. The pilot just left.

The entire time, I was tweeting to my followers (15,000) and getting similar stories back, but no response from @AmericanAir. Our luggage wasn’t with us when we returned to Ft. Lauderdale (not having seen our relatives on the weekend or attended our client meeting on Monday).

Lost Luggage Maria said it would be on the next flight and we’d have to come back to the airport. We did, and it was.

Meanwhile, I kept tweeting, and no word from @American Air, until they asked for my phone number. I direct messaged them the number and they said I’d hear from Customer Service. I haven’t. I have, however, heard from dozens of people on Twitter and Facebook about the awful customer service at American.

Just read about Erik Schonfelfeld, who has 31,000 followers on Twitter and 2 million readers on Techcrunch.com: “I’ve lost count of how many errors American Airlines has now made in this comedy that is my travels. Oh, and @AmericanAir also managed to prove that it is an utterly toothless marketing arm of American which fails when it comes to providing actual customer service.”

How can American Airlines not have people on Social Media? How can they alienate us all and survive? I doubt they will if this keeps up.

Leave a Comment | 7 Comments
May23

A Brand personality trap

Posted on by
A Brand personality trap

Elaine’s Restaurant in New York City is going to close on May 26 (NYP article). It’s been a famous celebrity haunt for ages even though its food was never anything to write home about, and there’s a book out now about it: Last Call at Elaine’s.

Elaine’s is famous for its owner Elaine Kaufman, and she passed away last December.

Her image was of a classic tough lady with a heart of gold. She was also smart and knew exactly how to treat her customers and she remembered small details about their lives. She helped struggling writers, joshed with superstars, and took no guff from anyone. She was even a recurring minor character in Stuart Woods’s Stone Barrington novels.

But when Elaine died, the restaurant started to die too.

I’m always talking about injecting personality into your marketing efforts, I even say that sometimes the company owner can be the spokesperson for the Brand. That doesn’t mean focus the company’s whole personality on one person. That can only work in the short term – as long as the key person is around.

Kentucky Fried Chicken does very well now but they had a tough time recovering when their ubiquitous spokesman, Colonel Harland D. Sanders, died in 1980. They eventually brought him back as a pure visual icon. Wendy’s built a great campaign around its founder, the likeable Dave Thomas, but they, too, have had problems finding a focus since Dave passed away in 2002.


(Col Harold Sanders on the left & Dave Thomas on right)

I don’t think a company’s personality should necessarily revolve around real people at all. Capital One was doing okay with its fake Vikings but then they switched to the very real Alec Baldwin and a lot of consumers have a lot of good reasons for not liking Alec Baldwin. Some companies, Hertz for instance, built their campaigns around the very likeable O.J. Simpson who turned out to be, to put it mildly, not a good spokesman.

Fake or long dead real personalities can be fine because they’re completely controllable: Aunt Jemima, L.L. Bean, Ethan Allen, Captain Morgan, etc.

Years ago we worked on Weight Watchers and showed cartoony characters, Brenda and Elaine, who were constantly working on losing weight. They yakked back and forth about exercising like moving their arms in an out against the smorgasbord table. The direct mail was getting a great response when the heads of the company decided that Sarah Ferguson, The Duchess would work better. She bulged up after slimming down, and there were only head shots for a while.

So, a company’s personality can have a spokesperson, but it also has to have a sustainable strategic focus that becomes more of an attitude than anything else. Steve Jobs was ill, and didn’t give his keynote in 2009, and yet the Apple culture, the wonderful products, the iPads we adore…all continue to prosper. Of course we’re always happy when Steve Jobs comes out to present something new too!

Leave a Comment | 1 Comment
Mar23

Is Social Selling right for your small business?

Posted on by
Is Social Selling right for your small business?

Who wants to pay full-price for anything? Not I.

So I “lit up” when social buying sites like Groupon and Living Social started cropping up. They round up deep discount offers from all kinds of businesses and present them to millions of potential customers.

That “millions” is misleading. Groupon, for instance, has about 60 million consumers signed up but that’s nationally. The offers (and the businesses that make them through the social buying sites) are mostly local: restaurants, spas, etc. I received three offers: 50% off Asian Fare at Soo Woo, 60% off at Women’s Film & Art Festival and 70% off Botox (Ouch!).

I’ll give you my e-mail, but not much more!

Consumers start by logging onto a social buying site which, somehow, knows roughly where you are. In my case, that’s Miami. You’re asked to confirm that, then they ask for your email address and age. No big deal. Then up pops up another screen that asks for more information: name, address, etc. This is a little off-putting for some of the people I’ve talked to.

I found the geography a little odd at times. Today’s deal of the day at Groupon is for a business clear across town. If you’ve ever driven in Miami, you know that it might as well be in another country.

Don’t Jump on the bandwagon, yet!

Nonetheless, small businesses seem to find social buying sites to be dream marketing tools. They pay no initial set-up fees and commissions are negotiable.

Groupon handles all of your purchases through their website and they’re very involved in making sure their clients are successful. If you’re not successful then they’re not successful.

Of course there are potential downfalls. If you run, say, a mom and pop ice-cream shop that regularly serves 40 or 50 people a day, what would you do if 500 people showed up?

How can i lose? Profits are slimmer?

And, in a recent survey, 32% of business owners lost money running these types of promotions.

Open bar…we’ll lose our shirts!

I’m not sure how the survey was conducted and I’m never sure how companies calculate “loss”. One of my favorite examples of this problem comes from a friend who ran a bar in a ski area up north. Business was fine in winter when people were skiing but a little slow in the summer and shoulder seasons. So my friend suggested to his partner that they send a letter to all the adults for miles around inviting them to a party with a free open bar from 7 to 9 on a Friday night. “Are you nuts? We’ll lose a fortune,” screamed the partner. My friend ran the math and finally convinced his partner. And they did lose money from 7 to 9. But in the next six hours they had their best night ever! And for the rest of that off-season, they had one profitable night after another. The math worked.

Will I ever make my full price again?

I think that’s the same kind of math that makes the deep discounts on social buying sites a good idea. In a way, it sounds like the Marketing Allowable from Direct Marketing 101, but you have to run your own numbers before you get involved. And you have to consider things like:

- Will discounting your product or service damage the integrity of your prices? Will people just wait for your next coupon and not bother to pay full price?
- What is the potential Lifetime Value (LTV) of customers who come in for special offers?
- Are they “opportunity seekers” and not repeat customers?

You also have to think about your current customers. Will a loyal customer paying the regular price get irritated when newcomers pay half that? Maybe and maybe alienating your current customer base isn’t worth it.

It can also become an issue when businesses don’t treat social site buyers as well as they treat their regulars.

Maybe I’ll go to your cafe this week.

Just the other day, I bought a Groupon for a local restaurant. When I showed the hostess my Groupon, she (and the rest of the staff) made my guest and me feel out of place in every way imaginable. I’m not going back.

For some businesses like salons, spas, restaurants and recreational activities, social buying can be great idea. But what about other businesses like lawyers, accountants, advertising agencies, realtors and other services?

What do you think of this social buying phenomenon? I’d love to hear from you. Please comment below.

Leave a Comment | 8 Comments
Mar21

I Tweet therefore I am.

Posted on by
I Tweet therefore I am.

I went to a Gilda’s Club luncheon yesterday with about 150 other women, only three of whom I knew. We were all there to help Gilda’s Club raise money to support people living with cancer.

It was a lot fun for a good cause but I was mildly distracted by an odd thought that kept recurring throughout the afternoon: This is a lot like Twitter. It hit me just after we got there. Some people had bought whole tables so, of course, we couldn’t sit at them. I joined a table with mostly strangers. It was like Twitter only with Twitter, my computer is the table.

I like to meet lots of people.

Just as with Twitter, I talked to some people I know but mostly I looked forward to meeting the people I’d never met before. On Twitter, I follow new people all the time as long as they aren’t spammers, bots or think frequent cussing is cool. A friend tells me you’re cool on Twitter only if you follow few and have thousands who follow you. With me, it’s the more the merrier. Recently I had a party in my apartment with about 60 people for dinner.

You never know when you’re meeting a prospect.

Occasionally one of those all-business types will ask “Why do you waste your time with all these people if your objective is to build your business?” They’d never understand my real reason so I usually tell them some version of a true story I blogged about a while back – selling a fully loaded Ford Explorer to a blind man: Who would think you could sell a car to a blind man?

The idea of course is that you never really know. It’s why I follow and enjoy people like @aviationartlife. If you build a network of friends, good things just happen. Or not.

Reciprocating and “giving first” works.

I get a kick out of retweeting interesting or useful information so that people can enjoy it or use it, too. And I always thank the people who Retweet my comments. It’s Twitter courtesy.

Marketing is my passion.

Many of my tweets are about my business: marketing, branding, getting measurable results for programs. So when I read a great article in a marketing magazine, I find it online and then provide a link to it. Last week I mentioned a Harvard Business Review article and one of my followers said I was stretching him out of his “comfort zone”. Made me laugh.

People come from Twitter into my “real” world.

I get to know some of my Twitter friends so well that they begin to mail me information about themselves or their companies. Then they call to make an appointment to visit. Joe Blumenfeld of @JoeBees vitamins, and a few weeks ago @theflaggagency ‘s Chuck Flagg dropped by on the way to a cruise.

(Chuck Flagg pictured on the left, Joe Blumenstein on the right.)

So like Gilda’s Club, Twitter can help people do great things. Sometimes it’s that huge protest in Egypt, sometimes it’s as ephemeral as reading celebrity Tweets. Most of all it is a place to begin relationships with lots of people who just might someday become friends for no reason at all, except that they like you! ?

What is your Twitter philosophy?

Leave a Comment | 5 Comments
Mar17

The Power of the Strong List

Posted on by
The Power of the Strong List


(The people are spelling out “Strong”)

I was reading an article the other day about “The Social Network” movie (“How Facebook Really Won the Social Media War…“) and it said something that I’ve been saying for years! There is Power in the List.

The movie was nominated for an Oscar, not because of the genius directing or their brilliant acting, but really for the depiction of how Facebook went from being an idea to a phenomenon that affected 500 million people!

The key to their success was in the power of their list! Being a Direct Marketer I’ve always known the value of having the right list. Remember, the 40-40-20 Rule. 40 percent of the success of a campaign lies in the list! When you have the right audience, you are more likely to be a success.

In “The Social Network” Mark Zuckerberg had to make decisions that were crucial to his success. He knew that in order to make “The Facebook” (It’s then name) a success, he had to get Eduardo Saverin’s (friend and co-founder) email list. His idea was that if he could get the emails of the Pheonix (a prominent social club at Harvard) it would make all the difference. Sending it to his personal list wouldn’t get them very far.

Zuckerberg was smart in that he knew if he got to the “popular” crowd first, the rest would follow their lead.

Are you targeting the right list? If you’re not too sure, then call us at our office 646.723.3231 or email me for some ideas at loisgeller@loisgellermarketinggroup.com.

Leave a Comment | No comment