Archive for March, 2006

Community, Marketing Strategy, User-Generated Content

Sam Decker Home Depot, Mastercard, Chevy, Others Engage Customers for Advertising Creative

March 30th, 2006 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

The Detroit Free Press features an article highlighting several companies what are engaging customers to create, vote or modify their ads. Examples:

Some might suggest this is Companies or Advertisers are asking us to do this out of laziness. That's one perspective. The way to respond to this is not to respond to their campaign. But, there are a slice of people out there who would enjoy engaging with these brands. I don't think this strategy is born out of laziness. In fact, it is probably more work for the company and agency to create a campaign to solicit and sort through campaigns. Rather, I think this is a step towards an admission that marketing-generated-content is less effective than consumer-generated-content. (more…)

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Customer Centricity, Word of Mouth

Sam Decker Carnival of the Capitalists: Word of Mouth & Customer Centricity

March 27th, 2006 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

I’m hosting Carnival of the Capitalists on Decker Marketing blog. Since there were some great posts on word of mouth, customer centricity, blogs, eCommerce and change leadership, I’ll paste them here as well:

Customer Centricity

Open Up or Shut Up, Part 1
Always On Network suggests that CEOs, marketing executives, and PR professionals who don’t have the courage to deploy new open media tools will be left behind.

Rules of Engagement: Or Are We Still Dating? (MarketBlog)
Commentary on the New York Times rules of engagement article and tapping into the customer zeitgeist.

Always Recommend the Right Products (Sam Decker [me])
Thoughts on truly building the health of your business by incorporating custom-centric values.

Failure of the Last Mile (Ramit Sethi)
Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You to Be Rich blog features a prolific post about something we have all experienced as customers, and should pay attention to as marketers. Related to this, you can read my post on The Word of Mouth Company — spend more upstream and you spend less downstream.

The Customer-Centricity Dilemma (Chris Lawer)
Chris Lawer confronts the flaws in customer centricity and poses ways to perfect and use customer centricity effectively.

More on Customer Centricity (Brian McManus)
Brian McManus itemizes what it takes to create a customer centric enterprise.

Buyer-centric vs. customer-centric: Missing the point (Chris Lawer)
Author Chris Lawer explores the distinction between buyer centric and customer centric states of mind.

Are There Limits to Customer-Centricity? (Graham A. Jarvis)
Author Graham A. Jarvis discusses the motives and processes behind customer centricity. He also asks the question how are you going to become customer-centric?

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Marketing Strategy, Ratings & Reviews

Brant Barton Report from SXSW Interactive “Convergence in Advertising” Panel

March 25th, 2006 by Brant Barton Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer

Last week, I participated in a panel discussion at the SXSW Interactive conference held annually here in Austin. The title of the panel was “Convergence in Advertising”, and I was joined by executives from companies in the educational media, advergaming, and social media fields.

In turn, each panelist discussed the growing importance of consumer-created content and the impact of this content on traditional advertising practices, client relationships, and consumers’ brand perceptions.

My presentation focused specifically on customer reviews (surprise!) and on the opportunities available to leading brands as a result of the proliferation of consumer-created content and the many platforms that now exist to support content creation and distribution.

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Customer Centricity

Sam Decker A Story of Customer Centricity: Discovering Your Customers’ Perspective

March 24th, 2006 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Of course you want your Website, and your company, to be the best it can be. But from whose perspective? Your perspective (internally focused) or your customers’ perspective?

The transformation from corporate-focused to customer-centric is not an easy one. Even the most client-minded individuals have trouble effecting cultural change in a large organization – or a even a small one. But it is possible, with perseverance and a little imagination.

For the last few weeks we’ve been presenting at a 10-city AdTech:IMPACT tour across the country – Brett (CEO), Brant (VP of Services) and myself. Jim Sterne was the keynote at each of these events and I caught up with him during lunch where he told me a fantastic story about how two companies became customer centric through a unique experience.

I asked Jim to write up the story for our blog. This is a long read, but worth it!:

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Books, Marketing Strategy

Sam Decker Always Recommend the Right Products

March 10th, 2006 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Glen Urban is an MIT professor focused on understanding, building, and maintaining trust on the Web. In his latest book, Don’t Just Relate – Advocate!, Urban makes a valuable claim about being a responsible advisor to your customers:

“Your company might choose to embrace advocacy by becoming a faithful representative of your customers’ interests. Under this approach, you provide customers and prospects with open, honest, and complete information. You give them advice so they can find the best products, even if those products are not your company’s products?”

For many companies, the marketing strategy is staid and straightforward. The bottom-line goal is to align products on the showroom floor to potential customers. For the most part, it’s that simple. If you have products that need to be sold, figure out a way to build intrigue, value, and emotional connections around your brand.
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Ratings & Reviews, Word of Mouth, eCommerce

Brett Hurt Mobile Location-Influenced Shopping and Word of Mouth

March 9th, 2006 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO

This article by Bambi Francisco reminded me of a keynote presentation by Jeff Bezos that I was fortunate enough to attend last year. Jeff keynoted Shop.org’s first Multichannel Executive Symposium, co-hosted with McKinsey & Company. As a Shop.org Board member, I was proud that Jeff accepted our invitation to present, and this year’s event (being held next week in San Francisco) will be even better.

As a brief one-minute comment while answering an attendee’s question, Jeff talked about the future of always-connected camera phones. When camera phones offer 3.5-megapixel resolution, he said, the world of physical shopping becomes very interesting. This is because 3.5-megapixel resolution enables you to accurately read a product barcode right off the box.
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Ratings & Reviews, eCommerce

Brett Hurt Closing the Tactile Gap Between Offline and Online

March 8th, 2006 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO

I was in LA on Tuesday visiting one of our new clients, an online shoe retailer. After meeting their President, COO, and team for the first time in person, this machine caught my eye. So, I asked their COO if I could try it out. This particular foot scanner is made by 3DFoot.com. I took off my shoes, positioned my feet on the scanner, and it quickly created a 3D model. Now I could go shopping online for shoes that had all been prescanned for fit. I have been surprised to see 3DFoot.com recommend a size 15 in some shoes, a 14 in others, and even a 13 in some. I could virtually try on shoes all day, with just a few clicks. Click here if you want to check out my 3d foot scan, but please turn off your smell-o-vision feature first. This makes tremendous sense, and it works. I have to admit that I have never bought a shoe online. I don't want to deal with returning a shoe that doesn't fit right. The non-tactile experience of shopping for shoes online stops me from converting. (more…)

Word of Mouth

Brant Barton Adesso Albums Walks the Talk

March 8th, 2006 by Brant Barton Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer

In recent weeks, I’ve been helping my better half, Andrea, wrap up the planning of our May wedding. Before I go any further, I have to thank her for letting me off so easy for so long!

This week, I finally got around to completing a long overdue task. Andrea asked me to order an instant photo guest book. Don’t know what that is? Neither did I until this week. Wedding guests snap a photo with a Polaroid instant camera and insert the photo along with their names and best wishes into the guest book. It’s a great concept that turns the otherwise staid guest book into a lively and entertaining facebook.
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New at Bazaarvoice

Brett Hurt Buzz and ad:tech 1MPACT

March 7th, 2006 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO

As you may know, I serve on the Board of Advisors with Jim Sterne and Bryan Eisenberg for the ad:tech 1MPACT single-day Internet marketing conference that just wrapped up its 3rd (of 10) city tour in LA today. I was pleased to see the completeness of Cliff Kurtzman’s notes of my talk in Seattle, where ad:tech 1MPACT kicked off last Tuesday.

Cliff is a fellow Texan and online business entrepreneur with over a decade of online experience. One of his current ventures is MyCityRocks. I am flattered that Cliff took this kind of interest in my presentation, and I enjoyed giving it.

Ratings & Reviews, Search & SEO, eCommerce

Brant Barton What Are You Searching For?

March 1st, 2006 by Brant Barton Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer

According to a recent survey by MoreVisibility.com, many marketers are less than satisfied with the results of their search marketing programs. A top concern is the lack of consensus on how to measure impact and ROI, and only 46% of those engaged in SEM are happy with their results.

Fortunately, ROI measurement tools and methodologies continue to improve, alongside advancements in more general purpose online measurement and analytics solutions. Even so, marketers will continue to struggle to use search engine marketing and optimization to attract the right customers.
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