Black on the Edge of Customer Service

Those of you who know me personally, know I love rage-comic Lewis Black. Those of you who read this blog frequently know that I also love good customer service. So what a treat I got this week when I received the current issue of Fast Company in which they recognize good customer service with their Customer First awards. On the cover was Lewis Black, steam coming out of his ears, with the headline "Is This Your Customer." For me, this is right up there with their issue titled "The Boss from Hell" that featured Mr. Burns on the cover.

And to top it off, this wasn't just Lewis Black "modeling" and setting the tone for the issue with a cover photo. There's actually a great article where "Our customer-service curmudgeon suffers for all of us--but not in silence." It's an insightful read that offers a raw take on the state of service today.

Now take a step back and think about the impact of this cover design. (Actually, you could do this with any of Fast Company's cover designs.) Instead of doing the average BS about "The Customer Service Issue" with some sort of warm and fuzzy customer interaction photo they took it to the edge with the winning concept of the pissed-off customer. But the edge wasn't far enough so they scooted out a bit more and took it from being a generic pissed-off customer to one of America's most notorious pissed-off customers.

So, go to the edge and then move out a couple more inches just to make sure you're far enough!

Take this yet another step back and you can apply the concept of going to the edge to anything from business to backgammon. You can even apply it to the stage persona adopted by Lewis Black. Which would you rather hear? Another comic with a meandering story about airline service gone awry or a jolting rant from a man who appears to be on the verge of an aneurysm? Black even mentions as much in the interview. He recalls studying classical theatre and only discovering comedy because friends told him he was funny when he was pissed off. And the pissed-off thing seems to be working well for Black (regular Daily Show commentaries, three movies coming out, best-selling book, albums, etc.).

So, go to the edge if for no other reason than, to quote a Texas politician, there's nothing in the middle of the road except yellow lines and dead armadillos.

Do You Blog for Your Business?

You should. I could list of all the reasons but instead I'll further propagate the blogosphere by sending you to a great post by Janine Popick, President/CEO and founder of Vertical Response (my email service provider of choice) where she sums up the 5 Reasons on Why You Should Blog for Your Business. Hers is also a great example of a business blog. Great tone. Valuable content. And it's relevant to her customers and her business. Plus she does something uber smart: she links her email newletters to her blog posts.

To elaborate a little further, there is also a nasty misconception that blogging is a tactic for B2C marketers only. Sadly this lie was born of B2B marketers who have been slow to adopt the new technologies that Web 2.0 has brought us. Now to be fair, some of these tools, such as RSS, aren't exactly ready for B2B primetime. But others, like blogging, are.

So check out Janine's post and start blogging for your business today.

The Little [BLANK] Book of [BLANK]

Want a short cut to titling/writing a book? Come up with a color and a subject of interest and you're halfway there (provided it's a specialty you know something about). Let's play ...

Color - Green; Subject - Landscaping =
The Little Green Book of Landscaping

Color - Orange; Subject - Spreadsheets =
The Little Orange Book of Spreadsheets

Color - Puce; Subject - Pool Skimming =The Little Puce Book of Pool Skimming

Laugh but these formulaic titles are everywhere. If you want a digestible diatribe on a particular subject (especially aspects of business) you can easily run to your bookseller or Amazon and pick up The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Black Book of Connections (same author), and The Little Blue Book of Advertising.

There's probably more. I know there are across topics. Wanna learn golf? Check out Harvey Pennick's Little Red Book. If you're feeling broad you can read the colorless but comprehensive Little Book of Food or The Little Book That Beats the Market.

Now these titles sound may sound dorky but the formula must be a successful one to merit the kind of play it's getting. Take it apart, though, and it's pretty simple to see why titles like this work:

'Little' implies that it's small and as few people read books anymore you may need to telegraph to the unidoctrinated that this book won't hurt you. Toss the color in and it sounds almost fun. Like a children's book (I think subconsciously this construction draws strength in it's motivational tie in with The Little Engine That Could). So we've communicated twice already that it's easy and we've added a dash of fun. 'Book of' is just the exposition leading up to your closer - the subject of interest. Not the most exciting part of all but if I need to step up my selling game, a title like this preceeding the subject helps the medicine go down.

When you look at it this way, it's kind of brilliant. This title formula is just a step above the lowballing and wildly popular Dummies and Idiots series (and I'm not turning my nose up - I just got the Idiot's Guide to Wine).

The Point? One of these books makes a respectable case for "thinking inside the box." Careful now. I'm not saying stifle creativity but rather there are tested formulas out there that are tried and true. You don't always have to reinvent the wheel. Save your wheelsmith-ery for when it's time to change the game entirely. And chances are that will be simply taking one of these tried and true methods and turning it on it's side.

Is That Crap Under My Windshield Wiper or Guerrilla Marketing?

Or is it all in the eye of the beholder?

I had a philosophical discussion with a co-worker today about a Chinese restaurant menu that got shoved under everyone's windshield wipers in the parking lot. I cited it as a prime example of guerrilla marketing gone wrong. I made my case by saying that the effort was untargeted (I, for example, hate Chinese food; therefore this offer is irrelevant to me). I could understand flyering someplace close by but this restaurant was hardly that. Plus they flyered an office with a huge dining center that is widely known to have decent food at unbeatable prices. Flyering any other lot in town would have been a better use your excess flyers.

I cite targeting as being a key distinction because that is what makes a marketing tactic like flyering unique and gives it the scrappy, strategic guerrilla-like quality. I was at a conference and a vendor flyered all of the attendees a rooms one morning with a special announcement. That's great. Across the hall? No flyers because the vendor only targeted their audience with this relevant message. In my mind there was nothing targeted about this menu thing. It didn't have proximity going for it (as I mentioned this place is across town). It wasn't appealing based on who was parking in the lot (we have a cafeteria). All they had left were people who like Chinese food. I think you could target better.

But I believe it was Tevye that said, "On the other hand ..." (Actually, it was my colleague Larry Miller who wished to remain anonymous. I shall refer to him as Chuck moving forward.)

Chuck said: Untargeted? Come now. Chinese food is a pretty ubiquitous food category. Why not carpet bomb parking lots of big employers? Plus employees of large offices have been known to keep menus on file for days when they feel like changing it up. And as direct marketing tells us, when you scale a program like this, only a handful need to convert to break even on the promotion (unless you print your menus on heavy, embossed stock and hire a Ph.D. to do your flyering).

So am I right or is Chuck? Dunno. I'm just a marketer. I say that not as a cop out but in my almighty deference to trackable results. Could be this menu thing sends the restaurant through the roof. But to quote a book I just began, "you can't manage what you don't measure." So in the end, flyer or don't flyer. You don't know for sure until you try it but you've got to track it so the next time the promo gets put on the table you have some results to make a more educated guess. NOTE: I didn't suggest that you'd know for sure but that experience gives you some intelligence to make a more educated guess the next time. Happy marketing.

FREE MARKETING ADVICE:
Incidentally, if the Chinese restaurant was my client and was hell bent on flyering with their menus here's what I'd do ... Print off some mailing labels with a special offer/call to action: "Bring this menu in for a 10% discount on your meal." That would be a simple, low-cost way to track your efforts and give you some insight into what's working. But we want them to keep their menus! Great, hook them up with a new one when they redeem the offer. Or just let them take it back with them. (And so what if they reuse it? It's still business that resulted from the sale.) But we want to flyer several different targets! How do we know which is which? Get different colored labels and color-code your targets. At the end of the day, you can track almost anything. And you should.

I love that ... "You can't manage what you don't measure."