Loyalty, the Holy Grail of Marketing:
A cross-industry look at the challenges and rewards of driving customer loyalty

(We will be tweeting live throughout this event May 13, 2010 at 3:30 p.m. ET at twitter.com/cmgpartners. Follow us to receive real time updates of the conversation.)

“Marketing is about being customer-centric and the first step in driving loyalty is creating attachment,” said Rich Beatty, founding partners of CMG Partners, opening the Loyalty Lab Client Summit panel discussion on April 8, 2010 and setting the tone for the conversation. He went on to explain that “Driving attachment impacts behavior, which drives financial results.”

These two statements lead to the same conclusion … customer loyalty drives financial results. With customer loyalty tied directly to performance of your bottom-line, marketing leaders cannot ignore this critical piece of the marketing puzzle. Read more »

This is the sixth in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.

Whether developing new products or looking to increase loyalty, having a continuous stream of customer insight that draws on many different sources is important. This feed needs to be constant and plentiful. Technology is making it easier to find new ways to gather and make use of customer insight with limited resources.

Customer research and voice of the customer programs like councils and feedback meetings are the more traditional ones many marketers employ.  Marketing organizations should not forget the many simple everyday ways to accomplish this via tools like email, google alerts, RSS feeds, Twitter or talking with the services or sales representatives. The important thing is to make it an integral part of your day / week.

What can happen if you are not watching/listening?

Many should not forget the Motrin campaign that had so much twitter backlash over a weekend after the launch of a new “hip” mommy ad that the parent campaign pulled the ad. Don’t let this happen to you! Ensure your insight and listening post are capturing as much feedback as possible.

An example of a company doing this well is Dell with their IdeaStorm.com, where users generate ideas for new features or often irritating sales and marketing practices or service policies. The community can then vote on them which helps Dell focus and prioritize.

[Repost from http://alanhart.wordpress.com]

They say step number one is admitting you have a problem.  Brand stewards have big questions stirring in their heads sometimes:  “where are people talking about us?”, “how big of a bang am I getting on this program?”, “am I actually generating the level of buzz I need to create awareness for my brand?”.  So, of course, consultants like us love to try and answer that question.  In an article we wrote on product launch, we give our take on the old saying “it’s a mixture of art and science”:

The tools used in the product launch process, such as market sizing and market research methodologies, alpha and beta frameworks, launch checklists, etc., are “the science”,  whereas, deciding on which tools to apply and how to apply them, is “the art”. 

Well, when it comes to the science of monitoring web presence and social media impact, I must admit my addiction to Trendrr.  I haven’t been using it long, but so far I’ve found it incredibly useful for gauging the play certain terms, brands, companies, and people are having on the web.  For any given topic, you can get everything from the number of matching Twitter posts per hour to the number of Google searches conducted.  The best part is you can create your own data sets which will be captured and synthesized for you.  This is particularly useful if the term(s) you’re searching for are too obscure or not mainstream enough for Google trends.  You can also easily compare sets of data by using the Trendrr sketchpad, a spiffy feature that allows you to mashup multiple data sources into one easy-to-read graph.

Of course, measuring online brand reputation is not all about quantity .  Quality, tone, passion, and other factors can be just as important as prominence.  For a great list of free social media monitoring tools, I’d recommend starting with Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim’s 8 Essential Free Social Media Monitoring Tools.

So, while measuring and assessing brand reputation on the web can be an all-consuming exercise, simple free tools like Trendrr can be a great place to start!

This is the third in a series of blog postings that includes highlights from a conversation we had with Peter Shankman on the ever increasing influence of social media and its affects on how companies and brands manage public relations.

“Social media, pardon my French, is the ability to f!ck things up with a much larger audience in a much shorter amount of time.”  Peter Shankman’s blunt but very true statement isn’t meant to scare companies off from social media, but to warn them that they need to understand the ramifications upfront.  Much like in grade school when you were asked to read all of the instructions before proceeding, companies must do the same and do their homework before diving into social media.

Peter advises companies, “To be very aware of what you’re doing and be very aware of how it’s affecting people. Understand that everything you do has an immediate reaction in the social media world.  It’s not simply about hoping for the best.”

We would also argue that social media isn’t for everyone although many companies are looking to learn more about how to possibly leverage this new channel.  If you’ve done your homework and are going to proceed developing a campaign, make sure it’s unique; don’t just repurpose creative from another media channel.  Quality should be prioritized above all else; don’t worry about creating something to make it viral.  If it’s good (or if it’s bad), it will likely become popular.

But Peter warned that, “If we do not learn from history we are doomed to repeat it.  People are not learning from these things and repeating it.”  He cited the GM case from a few years ago that many seem to have forgotten: GM made an open call to customers to make personalized videos of what they thought about their cars, hoping to get cool material they could use to bolster their brand.  Unfortunately, the videos that received the most attention were the ones ridiculing GM for producing poor quality vehicles.

Many companies recognize that social media remains unchartered territory that they need to better understand if they are to keep up with the pace of change taking place.  Our advice is to do your homework, develop campaigns that are sincere, and be prepared to revise what you’ve done because it’s sure to generate feedback.

This is the second in a series of blog postings that includes highlights from a conversation we had with Peter Shankman on the ever increasing influence of social media and its affects on how companies and brands manage public relations.  To read our first posting, click on this link: Did social media kill the PR star?

After a year of having launched Help a Reporter Out (HARO), founder Peter Shankman recounts his most important lesson learned, “You need to build up a credibility bank because as we all know something will eventually go wrong.  What you want to be able to do is fix whatever the problem is the second it happens by taking some of that credibility that you’ve built up by answering your own emails and responding to issues, and using that as currency.”

This sounds much like what companies have always done with the difference now being that when the PR alarm goes off, your customers and other constituents have greater expectations around seeing issues addressed and resolved in real time.  Social media has made it critical for companies not only to proactively build credibility but also to effectively react to signs of smoke that can quickly turn into PR six alarm fires.

This presents both opportunities and threats, if not managed appropriately.  Consider Amazon.  A few days before Domino’s Pizza made headlines last week, Amazon was caught off guard when numerous books of gay and lesbian themes suddenly disappeared from its website.  Rather than address the issue immediately Amazon chose not to speak for a few days and paid the price.  Within 24 hours, the top Twitter trend topic was “amazonfail” and both news media and bloggers were criticizing Amazon’s lack of accountability to assume responsibility and take action, even after a hacker had claimed responsibility for the snafu by tampering with ratings for the books in question.

Domino’s on the other hand took a more proactive approach that seems to have shielded it from as much damage to its brand.  Within 48 hours Domino’s posted an apology video by its CEO outlining steps they were taking to ensure this didn’t happen again.

The reactive measures taken by Domino’s closely align with the advice Peter shared on what companies should do when something goes wrong.  It’s about admitting to the mistake and asking for forgiveness, “Hey, something went wrong but you guys trust me.  I’ve steered you right in the past; just stick around and I’ll make it right.”

And while this appears to be nothing more than good old-fashioned customer service, companies need to apply a holistic approach in order to properly addressing such issues, not just pinning them on one area such as customer service.  For Amazon, it’s not just about IT and for Domino’s it’s not just about food safety.  The entire organization has to be prepared to deal with the unexpected fire if it is to overcome customer concerns and rebuild trust and credibility.

Learn from the past and be proactive in building credibility in order to be prepared to reactively tackle unexpected PR fires.

This is the fourth in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.

The transparency and accountability of brands is increasing as new uses of the Internet drive the democratization of voice — shifting knowledge and control from marketers to consumers. This trend is forcing marketers to adopt non-traditional methods of brand management to ensure the brand is consistent not only in communications but through all customer touch points. As one CMO put it, “everything we do communicates.”

If you believe that the true definition of a brand lies with the perceptions of consumers not with the marketing leaders, then the extreme brand management practice would be for consumers to drive the expression of the brand. Well maybe not, but this is exactly what the maker of Skittles has done (knowingly or unknowingly).

In March, Skittles re-launched their website, which used social media tools for content: Twitter for “Chatter”, Facebook for “Friends”, Wikipedia for “product information” and YouTube for “Media”. This was heralded by some and refuted as a circus trick by others (see a previous post for my take).  Unfortunately, I have not been able to find information on the performance of the campaign.

This example, whether good or bad, does provide a new theory for brand managers and bring to reality the old phrase “a brand is what others say about you, not what you say about yourself.” How will you begin to renew your brand management practices to align with consumer voice?

Mirror post at alanhart.wordpress.com

Thanks to my trusty Twitter feed, I recently discovered that Forbes just launched what they’re calling the “CMO Network.” Forbes describes it as a “must-read, go-to spot for the latest marketing, advertising and media news, trends, insights and analysis.” 

From what I’ve seen so far, the name doesn’t do it justice.  Other so-called “CMO” sites tend to be too academic, but Forbes’ CMO Network looks like a great go-to destination for marketers of all levels looking for relevant info and insights.  I do have to admit that the website delivery is a little painful, but I’ll overlook that for now and hope they work out the kinks over time. 

And of course, I had to see if they’re on Twitter.  For all you tweet-a-holics (myself included), it’s @ForbesCMO.

I wonder if the execs at Mars Snackfoods woke up with a hangover this morning.  No doubt they were up late last night, either celebrating a bit of genius or wondering what they allowed to happen yesterday at Skittles.

If you haven’t been to the new skittles.com, you have to see it for yourself.  Instead of a traditional site with information created by the company, Skittles.com aggregates content from consumer-generated sites across the web – Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc.  You navigate to the various sites through a widget-like box that floats on the page.

Like the site or not, everyone was talking about the new Skittles.com yesterday.  Twitter was chirping with mentions of Skittles and you can be certain the blogs were buzzing (see stats below as published in the Wall Street Journal).  It became clear early on that two camps were forming – one heralding Skittle’s move as “groundbreaking” and the other calling it “the worst thing to ever happen to social media branding”.

My opinion?  The success or stupidity of Skittles move depends on what their end game is.  There is no denying that this marketing stunt got the attention of a lot of people. But the attention came largely from the social media elite, not from Skittles core customers.  As soon as this buzz dies out, they will likely forget about the Skittles brand as quickly as they were attracted to it.

If Skittles was looking for a PR stunt to drive short term traffic, they found a winner.  If this was meant to kick off a long-term marketing campaign, I think Skittles was way off the mark.  Blogger Ceonyc got it right when he said “If it’s just about the “numbers” than that’s something, but anyone can get numbers up. It doesn’t mean they made people care about the brand and if they didn’t do that, then they failed.”

Join the conversation and let us know what you think.  One colleague has already done so on his blog.