Equity for Punks
While the supermarket shelves are bulging with new product lines brand loyalty is shrinking faster than an MP’s expense account.
The markets have moved beyond mature to overcapacity. Choice might still be king but increasingly it's confusion that rules.
Unless of course your offering equity for punks.
Stuff that Sticks
Archive for November 2009
The economic storm clouds, whilst thinning, don’t look likely to disappear anytime soon. But frown not. Despair, Inc. may have the solution… more despair. What Despair Inc. products lack in wit the site’s attention to detail and Jack Dee humour make up for.
At sometime or other most of us have experienced customer service that isn’t. By turning this common and widely shared experience on its head, ‘Customer Disservice ‘we’re not satisfied until you’re not satisfied’, Despair Inc. are inviting us to share in the joke.
Using humour to define who is in and who is out.
The germ at the heart of most viral marketing, humour allows brands to instantly share common experiences, beliefs and unspoken values. Defining who is in and who is out. Done well it leaves customers with a positive experience, one which ultimately translates into increased sales.*
Despite the fact that Despair Inc. run the risk of being a one trick pony they will probably thrive whatever the economic climate thanks to those companies that are happy to peddle hand me down marketing clichés that have long since reached there sell by date.
While shoddy branding and the marketing this produces hang over customers and companies like a dark cloud for sticky brands like Despair Inc. it’s proof that every cloud really does have a silver lining.
*65% of U.S. consumers report a digital experience changing their perception about a brand (either positively or negatively) and 97% of that group report that the same experience ultimately influenced whether or not they went on to purchase a product from that brand. (Garrick Schmitt, Razorfish)
Small children with fingers trapped and sometimes amputated. On the branding emotive scale that’s about as close as you can get to a perfect 10. Maclaren’s reaction has been to recall one million pushchairs… or strollers if you are American. And if you are not American they haven’t recalled them at all.
No such thing as bad publicity?
In the time of Michael Fish what happened over there would have gone largely unnoticed over here. In the time of twitter squalls have a habit of turning into full blown tornados in no time at all.
If Maclaren have judged their customers well the bad weather should remain isolated with some scattered showers. And if their customers decide that the decision was based on greed? Getting your fingers caught in the corporate till – Ouch!
But I suspect that there are other bigger brands at play here, namely Brand UK and Brand USA, and the squall will remain just that and all will be fine, at least at this side of the pond.
In their book ‘The Breakthrough Zone’ the authors Mac Andrews and Roy Langmaid offer a salutary piece of advice to all marketing, brand and PR managers. ‘If a customer is pissed don’t resist or they will persist.’
The Breakthrough Zone
In other words if someone has a bone to pick it’s probably a really good idea to listen – a message that has no doubt been taken to heart by United Airlines. Other brands caught on the hop include File Makers Bento which interestingly no longer has any star rating on the Apple site.
For better or worse customers now have a voice, somewhat bigger than Brian Blessed’s, and are intent on using it. In today’s digital landscape Messer’s Langmaid and Andrews advice has about it an added sense of urgency. That little drip if left unchecked can all too quickly turn into a virtual torrent. Ignore a disgruntled customer and before you know it your brand can end up looking like a public urinal.
Live streaming content. Mmm! Nasty.