The other day, I mentioned I was going to a convention to sell shirts. The convention was PhenomeCon, a day-long event that featured the usual convention fare, speakers, vendors, etc. My company, Progressive Design Apparel, printed the convention’s shirts and setup as a vendor at the event. Ben, from our art department, created a great design for us to sell on shirts at PhenomeCon. We printed 72 shirts on smoke, aloe, independence red, city green, and lake Anvil T’s.
Ben’s design incorporated various imagery from the paranormal world, angels, skulls, and ghosts. It also had a Ghostbusters quote for a little humor–”Back off man, I’m a scientist.” Instead of normal plastisol, we used discharge and water-based black. For those that don’t know, plastisol is the type of ink most shirts are printed with. It’s a plasitc-based ink and can be a little heavy. Discharge is a chemical reaction that takes the die out of the fabric. The reason you’d do this is twofold, 1) because it adds zero weight to the shirt, and 2) it allows you to add lighter, water-based ink without the dark shirt color bleeding through. The combination of discharge and water-based black gives the shirts a light feel and an extremely soft hand.
Everyone loved Ben’s design, so I boxed up the shirts and headed south to Columbus, Indiana’s Crump Theater, location of PhenomeCon. We knew our audience. Or so we thought. Turns out we got lots of compliments on the shirts there as well. But we didn’t sell very many. Why?
It wasn’t the price; no one tried to haggle. It wasn’t the design; lots of people told us it was cool. It turns out that there was a unique physical characteristic that the majority of the audience shared. And this hampered our sales. In fact, it entirely hamstringed our success.
Lesson learned?
Know your audience.
Don’t just know what your audience likes. Know who they are. Know why they like what they like. Know why they don’t like what they dislike. Knowing who your audience is and not just the perfect item to sell them will make sure you don’t end up like me, with a box of product and a convention of interest.
With a hat tip to Paul Williams, I’d like to remind everyone not to forget reputation.
Brand = Reputation
Image = Reputation
Survival = Reputation
In the sink or swim world we live in, reputation is everything. Sure, you can get by for a little while skating around like an elephant on an April ice sheet, but sooner or later you’ll crash through into the hypothermia-inducing water (i.e. have to go out of business). If not go out of business, you’ll have to run and hide. Or change your name and move to a non-extradition country with lax laws regarding entry.
In order to get repeat business–or even stay in business at all–you’ll have to manage your reputation. And with a bad experience spreading on the Internet faster than a virus in a 90 minute horror movie, you have to regularly stay on top of what’s being said about you–and who’s saying it.
Nobody has the luxury of enough time to constantly monitor their mentions online by going from site to site haphazardly. That’s why you can setup a Google Alert for your name, company, product, or anything. Google with its minions spiders all over the ‘net will let you know when your alert word is mentioned.
Your survival in business and your professional survival is all about your reputation. As Paul points out, many people lose touch with what a “brand” is. What people think of when they hear, “Mac”, “F150″, or “Coach purse” is reputation. I’ve never owned a Mac, F150, or a Coach purse, but because of their reputation I have an opinion of those brands.
Do you monitor your brands, products, or person online?
What products/brands do you want based on reputation only?
What products/brands do you want nothing to do with based on reputation only?
I came across a post today that “Hemingway was challenged to write a story in only six words.” He came up with, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Even alcoholic misogynists can have their brilliance.
If you can whittle your brand, your product, your image, your career, even you down to 6 words, you can get a better grasp on who or what you really are. I’ll give you examples from my life:
Progressive Design Apparel (PDA): Colorful, creative, happy place to work. Promotional Products: Used wisely, best bang for buck. Bella apparel: Soft and cute; everyone agrees 100%. Alo apparel: Bella’s great, moisture-wicking exercise line. UltraClub organic T: Softest organic T, unbeatable price point.
Dri-duck endangered species hat: Soft, organic cotton; adjustable and pre-embellished.
Myself: Forever student; sometimes funny; always honest.
How would you tell your story or the story of your product in 6 words? I’ll do a few more to get your wheels turning:
GM: Crumbling giant, epitome of corporate incompetence.
Starbucks: Grew too fast, lost reality grasp. Windows Vista: Over delayed, under functional, software bust. iPhone: Hyped marketing; new AT&T contracts frustrate.
Global warming: People pretend to care; do nothing. Chinese Democracy: Axl’s unfinished masterpiece? Axl’s big joke? 2007 New England Patriots: 18 and 1, perfect season choke.
On my drive into work this morning, I saw row of yellow signs on the side of the road. “Why are we here?” “Does God exist” “Come in for answers.” So I have to wonder: what happens when you promise more than you can deliver?
Religion permeates nearly every culture that has existed in the past 5,000 years. How can that be? Faith, by definition, requires no proof to believe in something. So if you go into the church, I have no doubts they’ll tell you about God. But how do you sell God? How do you say, here’s a story, believe it or else?
Is it just because everyone else believes? Is church just peer pressure?
I’ll give you story and you tell me if it’s as believable as the God story:
A man who lives in the arctic loves kids. Once a year, he brings them toys he has his helpers make. He flies in a sleigh pulled by some herbivores and goes to each house to make his deliveries. Oh yeah, and he does it all in one night.
Why don’t most people believe that story? Probably because it takes a little more proof to pull off. For God to exist, there’s only one thing to believe: there is a god. For Santa to exist, you have to believe that reindeer fly and he visits every house in the world while leaving behind presents. You’ve never seen God and you’ve never seen Santa. Yet God is much more believable. We tell kids there’s more to the world than what you can see. Air, bacteria, wind; things we know exist without being able to see with a naked eye. Yet you can’t prove either God or Santa exist. So why is selling God so much easier?
I’m not saying I don’t believe there’s a God. I would just like to know what about God is so easy to sell. And please, atheists don’t shy away; I’d particularly like to hear from you as I don’t know any atheists. I’d love to go into that church for answers, but somehow I think asking a church about believing in God is a bit biased; kind of like asking a hungry tiger if his porterhouse tastes good.
Quite frequently, people have bad experiences as a customer and reach out to a company looking for help. So many times, as I’m sure you’ve experienced, you’ll end up on the line at a customer service center in Bangladesh with a nice guy named, Phil. Phil will listen to your problem and offer advice in broken English. I actually use the name “Phil” as an inside joke to myself, but I have experience with emailing a “guy” named “Phil” who seems to work 24/7 and always signs his name followed by a “T” and a double digit number. For example, an email will say,
“Your request have been forwarded. Thank you, Phil. T38”
Unfortunately, the “Phil”s of the world aren’t always able to solve problems. This leads to many blogging about their experience or performing an “executive email carpet bomb.” Surprisingly enough, some CEOs and high-level executives are reading blogs. They must have been smart enough to setup a Google Alert with their company’s name.
Even more surprising, some of these higher ups, are even responding to blogs. I had Chris Baggott, from Compendium Blogware, comment here. And I was recently reading a post where Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh commented. Though, I’ve not bought from Zappos (I’ve tried buying footwear online and so far it hasn’t worked out), I have heard from many people that Zappos’ customer service is excellent. (One of my workers’ brothers actually works there—I believe they have a location near Louisville, Kentucky.) So when Tony Hsieh from Zappos or Chris Baggott from Compendium or any big time business person comments on blogs it adds a more personal face to the company.
I read many prominent national bloggers on the Daily Fix and Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist; and for the star-struck bloggers like myself, reading a comment by a CEO is like being in the same room as one. I don’t have any of them giving me advice or meeting me for a drink, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless. While Slash, Willie Mays, or Sean Connery would be awesome to meet, I’d actually rather meet a successful business person like Warren Buffett or the aforementioned CEOs. I’ll never have the talent of Slash, Willie Mays, or Sean Connery, but who knows, I could be a successful business person someday. And if any successful business people have advice, I’d be more than happy to listen to the corporate rock stars speak. I probably just have to be a majority shareholder in their company to get noticed…
Maybe firing them is a bit extreme, but today I read an article that said make your marketing budget work by cutting it in half. Before I even got to the suggestion of why a company would do that I already knew why that was a good idea. What happens when you halve your budget? You have less to work with, of course. When you have less to work with, you have to work smarter and more efficiently. All of sudden, you see less money going out and more money coming in. You adapted; and it was a success.
According to Plato, necessity is the mother of invention. I strongly believe he’s right. From a biology standpoint, when something needs to be done it either gets done or you die off. It’s the same in the business world. Sometimes you need to get off the ground, spread your wings, and quit being a dinosaur. Whether that’s cleaning house or rethinking your entire image, a big change in results requires a big change in action.
Write that down, it’s important:
“A big change in results requires a big change in action.”
In a story that surprised me, I just read that not all adopters of the ill-fated HD-DVD technology will spend eternity on a couch next to a stuffy man smoking a pipe and flaunting his contrasting elbow patches while they try to get at the root of abandonment issues caused by Toshiba pulling the plug after a short-lived, much-hyped battle with Sony over the next generation of home video. Despite it being 30 years full of bombs since the Walkman was introduced, Sony was bound to have another hit someday. Unfortunately for Toshiba and HD-DVD purchasers, Sony won with Blu-ray technology. So what’s an early adopter to do? Take a leap ala the stock brokers in the 1930’s?
Well, some will learn their lesson—though most won’t. However, if they bought their HD-DVD player from Best Buy, they’ll be able to get $50 on a gift card to soothe the pain of those who bought before the guillotine dropped. Granted $50 isn’t the $200 or $400 these people spent to get the player, it is a very smart move by Best Buy. Through credit card purchases, RewardZone records, or any other data trail they can sort through Best Buy will mail out $50 gift cards. Circuit City is extending its return policy to 90 days also (refund will be in the form of store credit). Certainly this isn’t as big. It tends to help those few who used their Christmas cash to buy HD-DVD, and it handsomely helps them big time. Though the early adopters are left holding the bag—and to be completely fair, they knew it was a risk of being an early adopter.
Best Buy and Circuit City are certainly trying to clean up their image a little and I think it’s a great PR move. I was actually strongly considering both purchasing an HD-DVD player as a gift and one for myself this holiday season. (Although the best prices I could consistently find were on Amazon.) I ended up doing something else for the gift and getting a steal on an upconvert DVD player for myself. It’ll last me until I get a Blu-ray player. I just hope prices will plummet in the next 6-18 months as more are bought (economies of scale—not demand).
A lot of people hate Best Buy and Circuit City, but like I said, I think this is a good move for corporate image. Does anyone see this as a bad thing? Any shareholders out there like to comment? Any HD-DVD buyers getting in on a refund?
In what has become something of a classic, The Simpsons’ episode entitled “Lisa’s First Word” (Season 4, Episode 10) features a clown bed that Homer builds for Bart because Lisa needs the crib and Bart loves Krusty the Clown. Unfortunately, Homer’s creation is more Pennywise than Bozo. What follows is Bart spending the night in the creepy clown bed envisioning the evil clown coming to life. The next day we find young Bart in the living room holding himself in the fetal position and repeating, “Can’t sleep; clown’ll eat me.”
It turns out that such a response isn’t all that far from the truth. Scientific research has actually concluded that kids don’t like clowns. Some suggest that the era we live in with televisions and Elmo-on-demand has made clowns outdated as an entertainment source. From my own childhood experience, I didn’t particularly dislike clowns (though I didn’t like them either), but scariest movie was Poltergeist. And it was known around my house as “the clowny movie.” If you don’t remember the scene, I’ve got it for you here.
So what happens when you find out the beloved corporate image you’ve spent years building scares the very people you’re trying to target? If you haven’t paid attention in the past few decades, one of the largest restaurant—and I use that term loosely—chains uses a clown as its mascot. Ronald McDonald is a legend. And yet, he’s a clown. Should McDonalds lose the clown? Should they ignore the masses, including adults, who don’t like clowns? Mickey D’s doesn’t have clown wallpaper and I haven’t seen a new commercial featuring Ronald in a very long time. Has upper management decided to put Ronald in the closet? With locations all across this great country and beyond, does the use of a clown in corporate image hurt McDonalds at all? I’ve got to guess that’s probably not the case. Most people wouldn’t want to find a mouse in their home, but Chuck E. Cheese is also a corporate icon.
Not too many people are afraid of Romans, so Little Cesar is safe. Colonel Sanders and Wendy are people, so no worries there. Chick-fil-a uses a cow and I’m pretty sure in the history of man no one’s been afraid of an unprovoked cow. The King is pretty creepy and I know of people (myself included) that eat at Burger King less or not at all now that BK has decided to use the creepy king to hock its burgers. Subway has Jared, who isn’t even fictional; Arby’s has recently used an oven mitt, which is pretty harmless; White Castle, Hardees, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, and plenty of others have no personified animal or object in their current use.
I have no doubts kids will want to go someplace based on the character at the door, but are kids (or adults) avoiding altogether some places based on a creepy character? What’s your personal experience?
I have no idea what “Shiny Shiny” is, but I stumbled upon (the original stumbled) their site when tooting around Technorati this morning. (Shameless plug: you can add me to your favorites if you haven’t already.) A post caught my attention, “Txt Spk baby names? Oh dear God in heaven…” The post brought up that some are suggesting people are now starting to name their children with crazy spellings, punctuations, and capitalizations after too much texting.
With a name like Michael, you’d think I’d be staunchly in favor of creative names dripping with individuality. But that’s not actually true. It turns out that people continually misspell and mispronounce Michael. There are also plenty of people that think because my name is Michael that they can automatically shorten it to any of the common shortened versions that other Michaels prefer to go by. People always butcher my last name, but Michael has been a common name for a long time. Not only was it in the Bible, meaning it’s been around for at least two millennia, Michael has been one of the two most popular boys’ names in the U.S. for each of the last 53 years (holding the number 1 spot from 1961-1998). So if people can’t get my name right, I have little hope anything a kid gets named will be spelled and pronounced correctly 80% of the time without making the name particularly unique in spelling or pronunciation.
I think this brings up the question, is it creativity, laziness, or another texting consequence? In my years as a teacher, I had a wide variety of student names (and Michael wasn’t the most common). Those kids were named a long time before texting, so apparently this isn’t a new problem. At best (worst?), it’s a growing problem. Of course, there’s one other option that could be the root of the problem: ignorance. It’s quite feasible that some kids get misspelled names because the parent doesn’t know how to spell the name they are giving to their child.
Even more interesting than “why” is what are the effects of misspelled, unique, creative, original, or uncommon names? All kids are made fun of and I suspect everyone has their name messed up at least once by a teacher. What are the effects on a child’s brand, their personal, corporate image, if you will? I actually read a study within the past year or so that claimed people with names that were hard to pronounce were less likely to be brought in for an interview when seeking employment. It was easier for the hiring manager to bring in someone whose name they could easily pronounce. Do you think a crazy name helps or hurts a person?
And for anyone still confused, it’s Michael just like Jordan and Lombardi just like the trophy. Say it with me, “My-cull Lum-bar-dee.” Once more, real fast, “Mycull Lumbardee.” Not as hard as it looks; now, how do you say yours?
Thomas Edison, one of the greatest inventors of history, had many of his words scribed. One of the most famous was certainly the quote,
“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
I completely agree with the statement that genius begins and ends with hard work. Though it’s quite interesting how prevalent the 1:99 ratio is in the world. Teaching is one percent patience, ninety-nine percent acting. The same can be said about marketing and sales.
It’s obvious you can’t be a genius without a little inspiration. It’s equally obvious that as a marketer or salesperson, you will only be successful if you’re selling on your client’s schedule, not your own. If you don’t realize it now, you may never, but I’ll reiterate for the rest of you: your customer doesn’t care about your problems, only his or her own. Solve the customer’s problem, solve your problem. That said, if someone isn’t ready to buy make sure they are extremely educated so that in 3 weeks or 6 months when they are ready they come back to you. It’s rare that a person will suck all your knowledge and then buy from someone else. And to treat all customers as though they’re flight risks will ruin your business. Just consider it part of the cost of doing business and give all the information you can to your prospective customers.
On the majority side, almost everything you do needs to be acted out. You can pass on adopting the British accent and you certainly can leave the top hat, cane, and monocle in the closet, but it’s important you be what your customer wants. People always say, “be yourself.” If people wanted to see you scratching yourself and quoting Office Space lines, they’d go to your home, not your place of employment. If you’re a t-shirt and jeans girl who loves baseball but are selling kitchen appliances, you’ve obviously got to go into meetings in professional dress talking about how one appliance is different from the next. Wearing a baseball cap and talking about how the Dodgers can’t hit against lefties on the road this year won’t get you far unless you’re in LA, the Dodgers are in the cellar, and your client is wearing a home-made “Dodgers Suck” shirt.
Many would consider this professionalism; I consider it acting. You treat every client the same, but you handle yourself differently around B2B clients as you do around B2C clients. Does the thought of industrial lubricants make you faint? Are copy machines what you spend your nights dreaming of? Probably not. But your clients should think you love your product that much. Excitement for your product is acting. Most people take a job for any number of reasons that are not because you think your product is the one thing the world could never be without again. Don’t be fake. Fake is not acting, fake is lying. Acting is making your customer think he or she is your only customer. I never tell my customers I’ll get with them after I take care of this other guy. The customer doesn’t need to know who’s in front of them. Just tell them what time to expect what they need and deliver on time.
One of the greatest actors ever is Denzel Washington. In John Q when Denzel’s character’s son, Mikey, is going to die without a heart transplant, you feel the emotion Denzel portrays so well. In reality, Mikey was just a normal kid acting in a movie. Your clients shouldn’t feel like you’re working the commission calculation in your head as you speak to them, even if you are. Your customer wants to feel like they’re the most important person in the world—and they are—for the moment, anyway. For as long as they have a problem, if you act like they are the most important person in the world, they’ll feel like the most important person in the world. Now in truthfulness, you and your family are the most important people in the world, but your family can’t eat if you don’t work. That makes your client—indirectly—the most important person in the world. And let me tell you, if you treat your customers like they’re beneath you, they won’t be your customers for long.
So make sure that even if you’re a slob or a jerk or whatever else, that you put almost all of your marketing and sales effort into acting. Just don’t forget to have patience, because even though you’re the most important person in the world doesn’t mean the world revolves around you.
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I'm Michael Lombardi. I live in Indianapolis and have a Biology degree. What does my degree in biology have to do with marketing? Read my About page to find out...
Quite frequently, people have bad experiences as a customer and reach out to a company looking for help. So many times, as I’m sure you’ve experienced, you’ll end up on the line at a customer service center in Bangladesh with a nice guy named, Phil. Phil will listen to your problem and offer advice in broken English. I actually use the name “Phil” as an inside joke to myself, but I have experience with emailing a “guy” named “Phil” who seems to work 24/7 and always signs his name followed by a “T” and a double digit number. For example, an email will say,
In what has become something of a classic, The Simpsons’ episode entitled “Lisa’s First Word” (Season 4, Episode 10) features a clown bed that Homer builds for Bart because Lisa needs the crib and Bart loves Krusty the Clown. Unfortunately, Homer’s creation is more 
