Andy Sernovitz's Damn, I Wish I'd Thought of That!

More about the Heinz commercial contest

Last week I wrote about the Heinz create-a-commercial contest.

I talked about how a good, fun contest is a great way to get people to watch your commercials for free.  It doesn't matter if the consumer-created commercials are good or bad.  It's about all those people who sit there watching them for fun. (Yes, people will watch your commercials for fun.)

I had no idea how big it was.

The videos created for the contest had 5.2 million views.  That's amazing.

In traditional advertising terms, let's say that the project cost $50,000 (which I doubt). That means they got TV advertising for less than a $10 CPM.

But these aren't regular TV spots that we ignore. These are YouTube videos that we choose to watch.  It's intentional, we're engaged, and we watch a bunch of them.  Seriously high-quality marketing.

If you can do it for ketchup, you can do it for anything.

See the Heinz Top This TV Challenge

YouTube videos

Wasn't expecting that ...

Bonus happy points to Verizon and UPS for two great customer service moments in the same day.

#1) I called Verizon to ask if I would have to pay roaming in Puerto Rico. I got a decent answer.  Then ...much to my surprise... the operator called me back to clarify what she told me and make sure I understood.  I was floored.

#2) UPS missed a pickup, I called to complain, and asked for a supervisor.  They told me a supervisor would "call me within an hour."  Didn't believe them.  The supervisor, Mike, called me right back, as promised, took care of the problem, and followed up with 2 more messages to make sure everything was ok.

I wish I got their names so I could thank them properly.  I was so surprised by the good service that I forgot to ask. 

To all businesses, everywhere:  Do your people have the authority and initiative to make people happy?

Genuine heartstrings - and a reason to come back

There is no charity quite like Donors Choose.

The concept is simple. Real teachers list projects that they need money for.  You pick the teacher, pick the project, and pay for it. It's far more satisfying than sending money to a big anonymous fund.

But the home run moment is when you get a big package in the mail at the end of the semester ... full of snapshots and thank-you notes directly from the kids you helped.

There are plenty of good causes out there -- but this one gives an extraordinary reason for people to talk about them.

Lesson: Non-profits aren't except from the need to be remarkable.  Is your next fundraiser worth talking about?

Definitely check it out and give.

Turning your customers into advocates

Coffee Cup Software has an amazing page on their site where you can ask 100 real customer what they think about their products.  We're talking about the ability to email real customers, and get those people's unfiltered feelings about the company. 

It's such a fantastic demonstration of trust and confidence in their products.

Check this out, then copy it!  Your customers will be glad to recommend you ... and they'll appreciate the public recognition.

(Thanks to Sean Cheyney for the tip.)

Funny = Money

Being remarkable pays off. 

Check out this hysterical listing on eBay for a pack of $10 Pokemon cards that sold for $142.51.  Why? Because the description was so fun, real, and entertaining that people wanted to help the seller. 

The page has 179,000 visitors, 101 comments, 800+ people tracking the auction, and 53 bids.

Most important: This one silly listing is sending huge numbers of visitors to the seller's other auctions.

Thanks to Jeremy Epstein for the tip.

See the original post here

LOT OF POKEMON CARDS THAT MY KIDS TRIED TO SNEAK BY ME

I'm selling a bunch of Pokemon cards.  Why?  Because my kids sneaked them into my shopping cart while at the grocery store and I ended up buying them because I didn't notice they were there until we got home.  How could I have possibly not noticed they were in my cart, you ask?  Let me explain.

You haven’t lived until you’ve gone grocery shopping with six kids in tow. I would rather swim, covered in bait, through the English Channel, be a contestant on Fear Factor when they’re having pig brains for lunch, or do fourth grade math than to take my six kids to the grocery store. Because I absolutely detest grocery shopping, I tend to put it off as long as possible. There comes a time, however, when you’re peering into your fridge and thinking, ‘Hmmm, what can I make with ketchup, Italian dressing, and half an onion,’ that you decide you cannot avoid going to the grocery store any longer. Before beginning this most treacherous mission, I gather all the kids together and give them “The Lecture“.

“The Lecture“ goes like this…

Keep reading ...

Personal attention = great word of mouth

Here's a great story from Suzie Robinson of Atria PR. She's also president-elect of the Dallas PRSA chapter, who hosted me for a big lunch keynote last week.

Suzie shares a story about an online music company that is obsessive about customer service - Sweetwater:

One of my husband's co-workers suggested this company and now my husband won't buy anywhere else.  He's assigned a personal customer service representative who makes us feel like we're the only customer he's ever had, and he would be personally crushed if we're not 100% satisfied.  His name is Steve, and he calls immediately after we place an order to check on us.  He then calls if there may be any delay.  He calls when the items are shipped.  He calls the day the order is delivered, and then he calls two weeks after to make sure we're happy with our item(s). 

Steve also tracked down a specific item that my husband had been looking for a long time (some USB microphone that records vocals and instruments), told him the company would be able to distribute it in a few months.  He asked if once they received it in, could he charge the credit card and ship it right away.  And, wow, he did.  In fact, my husband's original credit card had been stolen, so the number they had on file was no longer valid.  Steve called the house, said "Hey Shaun, it's Steve, and we got your microphone/recorder in and I really want to ship it.  Do you suppose you have a new credit card that we need to update our files?"  My husband gave him the new credit card and we had the product in two days.  And, of course, another call from Steve. 

Oh, and they always send a few pieces of "sweet" candy with every order. So, please tell a friend about Sweetwater, and tell Steve the Robinsons say hey.

Lesson:  Nice guys do win.

Trevor, the Mento's Intern

Tell Trevor to jump in a lake.

Right now you can go to MentosIntern.com and see Trevor. You can give him a task. You can make him do stupid things.  And he will do it, live and on the web.

Fun, fun, funny.  Mento's knows how to cultivate and participate in a consumer fad better than most. 

It's a great stunt, but what makes it all the better is that they get all the viral best practices right:  Videos are sharable on YouTube, there is a blog, MySpace and Facebook profiles, tell-a-friend forms, etc.  They invested in a clever site ... and then made sure that anyone who wants to participate can do it wherever, however they want.

When the crazy Mentos/Diet Coke fad hit, Mentos jumped in and started supporting and promoting it.  Coke hesitated.  Mentos got a ton of publicity and brand promotion, virtually for free.

The lesson:  When real consumers are having fun with you, join in.

More: ChiefMarketer Magazine

How can we show you our appreciation? Just ask.

AccuQuote has a really interesting blog. They sell life insurance. (Read it here.)

Lesson 1: Any company can blog well. It's not what you sell, it's what you say.  If you are interested in your stuff then your customers will be, too.

Sean Cheyney, their VP of Marketing, was a guest speaker in the class I teach.  He shared an fantastic story of customer feedback and customer appreciation. 

He posted the following question to the blog:

How can we show you our appreciation?

Posted Mar 12th 2007 11:06AM by Sean Cheyney

There are many companies that you could choose to do business with for your life insurance needs, but let's say you chose AccuQuote. As a customer of ours, we would like to do something special to show you our appreciation. However, we're not quite sure of the best way to do that. So, we thought we'd ask you the following question:

 

"As a consumer, what would you want service companies, like AccuQuote, to do in order to show you their appreciation?"

There were 314 comments to this post.  That's amazing.

It's also valuable.  It would have taken $100,000 in focus groups to get half that feedback, and the answers wouldn't have been as useful or honest.  (This is a great demonstration of the ROI of blogging.)  On top of that, people love to be asked their opinion. Lots of warm feelings!

Read the full post and comments here.

Lesson 2: Forget the focus groups and surveys. Want to know what people want? Just ask. 

Welcome Back, Sucrets

We all have childhood memories of those metal Sucrets boxes.  Our treasured collections, mom's sewing supplies, a home for pet bugs.

Those boxes were the essence of priceless, 75-year-old brand.  Irreplaceable.

So, inevitably, some moron (or committee) decided to switch to cheap-o plastic boxes. What an efficient want to kill word of mouth and brand loyalty!

Well, congratulations to Sucrets for getting your groove back - and your metal boxes.  I'm a customer again for the first time in years, and I expect that I'm not the only one.

Lesson 1: Your brand isn't necessarily your product. It's the product experience. Don't mess it up.

Lesson 2: Old brands are part of our culture. They are also worth big cash. You can never hope for a deeper connection than that. If you're lucky enough to own a classic, don't let your 23-year-old brand manager screw up a 75-year old tradition. You can ruin an 75-year brand in one year, but it doesn't work the other way.

Contest: Free Wine for Great WOM

The cool folks at Purple Wine sent me 12 bottles of Avalon and Capolan.  Good stuff!

So I'm having a fancy and sophisticated contest: Free Wine for Great Word of Mouth.

What to do:

1. Send me stories of great word of mouth. Use this form or comment on this post.
2. I will pick my favorites and send you a free bottle of wine.
3. I'll blog about you and tell everyone how great you are.
4. Maybe you blog about me too?

Clue: I like stories about fun, honest, free, real word of mouth.  Big fancy corporate stuff is less interesting.

Disclaimer: This is just for fun. No money is changing hands. I'm the sole judge and will be totally arbitrary about it. If I can't send you wine, because you're under 21 or some other legal reason, I'll send you something else instead. Contest ends when the wine is gone.

Purple Wine: Simplified brands = word of mouth

Purple Wine Company has a really great, really simple concept to help spread word of mouth about their wines: One brand = One flavor. 

They have six wines, each with it's own brand and flavor. For example: Capolan = Merlot, Avalon = Cabernet Savingon, and Mark West = Pinot.

Think of it this way ... You find a wine you like, you try to tell a friend about it, and all you need to remember that it's "Capolan."  Try that with a Beringer wine, that has 7 Tiers, 4 Types, and 8 Varietals.

Here's Susan Durbrow from Purple Wine explaining the concept:

 

For wine, one of the big challenges is finding the one guy at a distributor or retailer who will get excited about the brand. Simplicity makes it easier to recommend.

Lesson: If you want people to talk about you, you need to make it easy. 

A repeatable, simple name is one of the best ways to get the conversation started.  (To all you brand marketers out there who are obsessed with line extensions, how is someone supposed to tell a friend about the 23rd variant of Tide? A new size bottle is not a new brand.)

P.S. Here's how I met Susan through word of mouth:  Susan's boss recommends my book. She reads about the great folks at PrintingForLess.com.  PFL's Nick Runyon drops me a note to thank me, and introduces me to Susan. We talk on the phone, then meet at the Silicon Valley AMA meeting where I was speaking.  Small world? No - word of mouth is everywhere, you just need to be out there to make it happen.  (Bonus: Susan is reading the book on a plane, where she recommends it to John Fontana, CEO of Hot Stuff Pizza.)

"I had a new sense about treating people well."

Laugh a little: 7-Eleven becomes Kwik-E-Mart

In a really clever promotion for the new Simpsons movie, 7-Eleven is turning 12 stores around the country into the fictional Kwik-E-Mart from the TV show.  Even better, national manufacturers are creating real versions of the fictional products from the show (Malt-o-Meal is creating Krusty-Os), and Slurpees are becoming Sqwishees.

Here's why this is so great: It's funny. 

For 15 years, the Simpsons have been mocking 7-Eleven and their managers.  They could have gotten their shorts in a bundle, like the embarrassing response from the National Restaurant Association to Nationwide's SuperBowl ads featuring Kevin Federline as a lowly burger flipper.

Instead, 7-Eleven joined in the fun, had a good laugh with the rest of America, and is getting a ton of positive vibes and great word of mouth.

So, marketers ... chill out and have a delicious Slushee.

Source: Full story from Yahoo News/AP

Elementeo, My Dear Watson

You never know where word of mouth comes from. 

You never know which random person is going to talk to another, or which path leads to your next opportunity.

Example:  I read a blog post somewhere (can't remember, probably VentureBeat), about 13-year old Anshul Samar who started a hot company called Elementeo to teach chemistry with playing cards.  It's pretty cool.

I tell my wife, who used to be an editor at Chemical and Engineering News.  She sends it to them.  Voila!  Elementeo is in the June 18 issue of the magazine - with 160,000 chemists reading.

The Lesson:  Try everything, talk to everyone, be really nice all the time. You never know who's talking about you.

Ahhh.... AT&T

Called AT&T to get a phone line fixed.
Got disconnected.
They called right back ... and said "I'm so sorry we got disconnected."

They were proactive, polite, and apologetic.
So meaningful, and so easy to do.

Nicely done, AT&T! Refreshing!

Sun's Blackbox

Sometimes it's the frosting, not the cake.

Word of mouth sometimes comes from doing something substantive and fantastic.  And sometimes if comes from something that may not be core to the product but gets people talking.

Sun delivers their new servers ready-to-run in a shipping container, called Project Blackbox.  Pretty cool, definitely worth talking about.

I don't know much about industrial-scale servers ... but I do know that if they just shipped them like regular computers, nobody would have been talking about it.  Instead, there are a ton of blog posts and a very flattering Fast Company article, and they kept the conversation going with a cool video on YouTube (34,000+ views as of this writing.)

Would Fast Company ever have written about "Sun releases new computer?"

The lesson:  If you're not worth talking about, add some frosting.

Marriott gets it!

So, I'm stuck in the third circle of hell (also known as Dallas-Fort Worth Airport), due to weather delays, along with 10,000 of my closest sweaty angry friends.  11 pm, no flights, no cabs, no hotels. Trying to get to Austin.  Grr.

I call the Marriott service line. They do everything right.

1. They find me a hotel room in Dallas.
2. They waive the cancellation fee for my room in Austin (where I was supposed to be).  Any other chain would have stuck me with the cancellation fee and charged me for the new room.  And the new room was cheaper.

I share a cab with to the hotel with another strandee (a total stranger). We get to the Marriott Courtyard Dallas NW Hwy. at Stemmons/I-35E. It's midnight.

1. They give her a room at my corporate rate, with no reservation.
2. They give us toothpaste, etc.
3. They arrange cabs rides to the airport in the AM.
4. Then Kim, the night desk clerk -- GOES AND FINDS US COOKIES.  I'm pretty sure that they were from her personal lunch. 

Someone at Marriott, please give Kim a raise or a few days of paid vacation.   

Most hotel chains would have stuck me with the cancellation fee, made me may some ripoff last-minute rate, would have stuck my fellow traveler with a worse rate, and generally given us a hard time.

The Lesson:  Extraordinary service get extraordinary word of mouth.  But all my experience with Marriott tells me that extraordinary service is an everyday thing.       

It's not about the mistakes, it's how you handle them

Important lesson: It's not when you screw up, it's how you fix it that counts. We all make mistakes, but a problem solved is one of the best ways to get people talking about you.

(That may actually be more of a sad comment on the state of customer service these days ... that we're so surprised when a company steps up and does the right thing that we run out and tell everyone.)

Enjoy this great example of the best kind of WOM from my friend Nick Hall, about great problem-solving from Nursery Works after they came home from the hospital with a new baby.

I wanted to pass along a great example of how to build effective word of mouth for your company.

We purchased a rocker back in late February with the expectation that we would get it just after we brought Reece home. We received two calls from the retailer that the rocker was delayed and the shipment date went from April to now more like July/August. Obviously we (especially Jenn) were frustrated.

We contacted the manufacturer directly. Turns out it is a small startup based here in LA called Nursery Works . I sent an email to their info@ address. You never know where that is going to go. Within 36 hours I received a call directly from one of the co-founders, Traci Fleming. She felt horrible about the situation but explained that because they had an issue during the manufacturing process of this particular rocker that there were simply none available. To make up for it, she is having one of their current rockers and an ottoman delivered to us for our use until the new rocker is available plus the ottoman for the new rocker and $100 off our next purchase.

I have always felt the best opportunity for great word of mouth marketing is turning a disgruntled customer into a happy customer. There was a reason they were your customer in the first place. Now you have a reason to show them how much you care. How many people do you think we have told already? At least a dozen if not more. How many more dozens will we tell. Probably a dozens upon dozens.