Marketing Begins At Home

Goodbye Defraggler

Today I deleted defraggler from my PC. Why, you ask?

I downloaded a new free version today. First, it is MUCH slower than the last version. So clearly they have crippled this version to encourage people to pay.

Second, it took over my browser search engine choices. Sorry, but that has NOTHING to do with maintenance of the hard disks on my machine.

Third, Piriform have lost my trust. What else have you done to my PC that I don't know about yet???? Such a silly thing, because bad news is much easier to write about than good news. And all the good stuff I would have said about Piriform before today went right out the window.

Now I just feel that the company is untrustworthy and I won't download anything by them again. Pretty bad reaction from a simple piece of freeware.

My broken Kindle, still my friend

My Kindle broke yesterday. So not a good day. I sent an email first thing this morning, and got a phone call about 2 hours later. Lovely man with a soft Irish accent. Brilliant customer service. Asked a couple of questions, quickly got to the point where he decided to send out a replacement. Then asked a couple more questions and decided to give me a refund on my Kindle cover, which might have contributed to the problem I am having now. So a new Kindle will be on its way shortly, and I get to return the old one.

So I could be upset that I don't get to take my Kindle away for the easter weekend. But my complaint was handled so well that I don't mind. I am reassured. I know what to do when it arrives. I think that switching my content over will be straight forward.

Fantastic. Just what a brand that is invested in my long term future should do. They know I spend money with them. They know I have become very loyal to Amazon. And I feel it is the right choice. Bet Apple iPad owners don't feel this good when they speak to Apple.

My Kindle, my friend

Now if you go back far enough you will see a post where I dispute the effect of electronic books/pads on bookstores that Seth Godin prophesied. I still stand by that post, but I have now had a Kindle for 5 months and it has altered my behaviour.

I have over 70 books on my Kindle and have used about 15% of the space available. I have paid for most of them, although there are a few freebies in the mix. And it has become my primary reading device.

I like it because it can go with me anywhere and I can read on trains, planes, buses, and so on. I particularly like the screen quality. Still not quite used to a single page rather than two facing pages, but will eventually adapt.

And it has changed my purchase behaviour, partly because I don't need to find much more storage in my flat for books. I can store many more on my Kindle or my computer. And this is particularly true for books I might only read once.

The good news for publishers. I have bought a bunch of stuff that I already had in print because it was more convenient to re read in this form. The bad news is that I am still pretty upset about their pricing polices and want to do everything I can to return purchasing power to Amazon. Too many books are priced too high by the publishers.

20% VAT on electronic books is pretty nasty too. After all, what difference does the media make. Either make all books VAT rated or make them 0 rated. Don't discriminate by media, Mr Cameron.

So while my Kindle is my friend, I'm not sure its a friend for life.

Managing both inventory AND customer expectations

Recently I have spent a lot of time and effort hunting down a particular Samsung home cinema component. I've tried online, I've tried a variety of stores, I've even tried phoning Samsung themselves. When I get home I will have a shiny new toy to play with, but it was insanely difficult to get.

It seems that Samsung has run its inventory right down in the UK in anticipation of new product announcements and new stock. That is a pretty good trick if you can do it. But they have also decided to keep an embargo on what is coming and when.

There are a whole bunch of complex but boring reasons why I really wanted this specific component, and there isn't really a direct competitor. Now I am wondering if what I bought is going to be replaced by something better and cheaper in four weeks. So instead of being truly excited, I already have some buyer's remorse.

Buying any technology product runs some risk of obsolescence. But I will be really mad at Samsung if I have paid a premium for an end of line product. And given that there is already a Samsung laptop, Samsung monitor, Samsung large screen LCD screen and now a Samsung home cinema already in my small flat, and that I am about go to and buy a second laptop and second LCD screen, I may or may not stay a Samsung loyalist in the next two months. But all my fears could be groundles. More inventory of the same component ae just on a boat and taking a while to arrive. I sure hope so. But if that is truly the case, why not just say so. "We under forecast demand. The product was more popular than we dared hope. And we will have more inventory on XX date."

Sorry, Mr Osborne, We're NOT all in this together

Recently the British political classes have been trying to persuade us that they are fit to lead us next year and beyond. Most recently, George Osborne repeated numerous times during his speech that we are all in this together. Well,sorry, Mr Osborne.

I'm a pretty classic, middle class, typical swing voter. Well, I think so, anyway. I don't belong to a political party. I have voted differently in different elections. We're NOT all in this together.

Why isn't this phrase going to resonate with me or with many in my position?

I don't have lots of borrowing, so don't feel part of a phenomenon where it is OK to remortage and spend every time your house price has gone up, and where it is OK to max out multiple credit cards and just pay the minimum off each month.

I'm not one of the people who benefited from city bonuses during the boom. I just suffered from inflated house prices because my chosen area has lots of big shots with more money than sense driving up the prices.

My pension is mostly the money purchase type not the final salary type, so it got hammered when the market collapsed. So much so, it is probably a good thing I don't have to retire at 65 and both parties are considering raising the age when my mediocre government pension starts to pay off. I doubt that I will ever be able to retire and still have a decent standard of living.

My savings are also not growing because all the banks are busy recapitalising at my expense, widening their margins by not paying savers a decent return. There isn't much incentive to keep your money in the bank. Nor is there much option where else to put it because I don't have time to earn a living and watch the market for short term volatility gains. Nor does property seem particularly attractive. Nor do bonds.

In short, a plague on all your houses. Look at Canada for a model of how to run the country's finances and how to regulate their banking system. A good start would be to make sure that the future profits that the banks and the bankers make are taxed as windfalls when they are excessive. Then come back and tell us we're all in this together.

Apple built brand values by building people

This weekend I met up with two old friends who I hadn't seen for years. In fact, it had been so long there were two teenage children who hadn't even been born the last time we met up. Ooops. 

What we all agreed was that very quickly we picked up where we had left off many years ago and carried on the conversation, almost as though it was a week ago. Lots of things had changed but the personalities hadn't, nor the buzz and excitement of exploring new things.

As you can imagine there was lots of talk about mutual friends, where they were now, who we had kept in touch with. Between us, we were still in touch between us with a broad number of people who had worked at Apple in the UK or Europe while we were there. The people were literally spread all over the globe and ranged from previous bosses and senior managers to people who had been just starting their careers at the time. Many have taken their skills, learning and values to a range of different companies, but there did seem to be a thread that for many, their time at Apple was extremely special, and they tended to stay in touch with a broad range of colleagues.

When we worked there, Apple was in constant turmoil and struggling to find a sustainable market for its products. Lots of change, both people and strategies, tons of uncertainty and reorganisation, just as many companies are experiencing today in the aftermath of the credit crisis. But although we understood the challenges, we approached them with tons of positive energy and enthusiasm and felt able to generate solutions, get them implemented and make a difference.

What our old friends and I agreed was that Apple, in addition to building great products, also built great people and that their values and beliefs were a great foundation for the rest of our working lives. The question is, what are you doing to make sure that your company has the strength of values, shared passion, and skills and are passing it on to everyone in your business? Are your people making a difference to help your organisation cope with the turmoil in the market?

Visitors are second class at Port Solent Marina

As a keen sailor I have had occasion to go to Port Solent Marina twice this season. It is a huge marina with a lock that you go through, a number of restaurants, a cinema and housing all surrounding the floating "boat park".

There are some good things that Port Solent do. They charge for fuel at cost, having correctly decided it is a service that they make relatively little money out of. So better to have some goodwill from customers. As a yachtsman I use relatively little fuel, but I am sure the power boat customers appreciate the gesture and understand that Port Solent's pricing power means they won't get the same prices as the supermarkets.

I also was very glad on the second visit to be told that we were going to be moored away from the restaurants. On a nice sunny Saturday evening the noise makes it difficult to concentrate or sleep if you aren't actively in one of the bars or restaurants.

Sadly we then got to experience what it is like to be second class citizens. When we went to use the toilets, berthholders are directed to one way where they get...

"very high quality unisex wet-room style 'bathrooms' being constructed with individual facilities for berth-holders."

Being visitors we were directed to...

 "separate facilities for visitors and those crews involved in large events."

The quotes come from the proud marketing folk at Premier Marinas who trumpet the new facilities for berth holders.

These turned out to be portacabins parked in the parking lot. They were tired facilities with poor lighting, inadequate space in the unisex showers to get changed, and an air of neglect. I know where I am going to spend my money in future, and it isn't likely to be at Port Solent until they have upgraded the facilities for visiting yachtsman. There are too many other options in Portsmouth. Sadly, this marina's loos are anything but premier. And that's not good for their brand or reputation.

Why British Airways will never be my favourite airline

To British Airways from a consistently disgruntled customer over many years.

1. Your customer service email responses do not have an email address you can reply to. If I took the time and trouble to write to you, I want to engage in a dialogue. I know it costs you money. But if you answered my questions right first time then we wouldn't need to go back and forth. Putting barriers in my way only makes me more upset. And more upset won't make me feel better about you.

2. You designed a new state of the art terminal at Heathrow where a significant proportion of the flights do not have a jetway attached. So now we have to go back to the 60s and ride around in airport buses. This not only adds to the journey and slows me down, but makes me feel even more like cattle than the rest of the journey. And lets not talk about security lines, check in hassles, baggage reclaim hassles, etc that are still going on every day. Oh, and you screwed up the public transit to all the terminals by the way in which the Heathrow Express/Connect services were designed. Instead of a nice circle between three terminals we now have an abortion of a changeover at T1,2,3. Great.

3. I feel like a third class citizen when I use free miles to travel, with worse seating allocations. Pay attention here - I used your service enough to get enough miles to travel somewhere. Apart from the fact it isn't free because I have to pay significant charges to USE the air miles, please pay attention to the fact that I should be your MOST favoured customer, not some piece of trash that fills up your empty seats.

4. In all the years I have flown you I have been upgraded once. Its not your policy to upgrade people unless it is for your operational convenience. Well guess what? I fly Star Alliance instead. They understand that upgrades are appreciated by their customers and rewarded with loyalty. I like being able to buy exit row seating for a small extra charge in economy. Made my flight to Australia last year much more comfortable.

5. Your cabin baggage space is a joke. Why do you want to have the smallest bins in the air? Expecially when they are using real estate that you cannot cram any more seats into? And why do you insist on putting stuff like oxygen and crew apparatus near the emergency exits when that is the space that is most needed by passengers for their stuff so as to keep the emergency exits clear?

About the only think I really like about BA is the website. Clean, easy to navigate, fast. Good online checkin.  Perhaps your web team should go sort out the baggage problem at T5? Redesign your customer services? Speed up your security checkin?

A brand that is paying attention

A little while ago, I wrote two posts on my experiences flying the A380 on Singapore Airlines. What impressed the heck out of me was that the airline clearly do monitor the brand very closely in cyberspace and took the time to respond and write a comment on the blog.

http://marketingevangelist.typepad.co.uk/my_weblog/2008/12/great-customer-service-at-singapore-airlines.html has the original article and the comment.

I was impressed with Singapore Airlines before. But now I really think they get brand management in the Web 2.0 era. What are you doing to monitor your brand in cyberspace?

Chocolate Messenger gives the wrong message

I thought it would be nice to send my Dad some chocolates for Christmas. After all, what do you get a man of 89 who gets most everything he needs in his very nice retirement residence? So I placed an order on the CHRISTMAS page of Chocolate Messenger. Even added a nice Christmas message as the site suggested.

By the time the tax and delivery charges were added, they were pretty expensive chocolates. So I was really upset to discover that my CHRISTMAS gift had been delivered on the 5th November. Do they not know when the holidays are?

Worse still, they haven't bothered to answer any of my emails. If you are going to have an online presence you better do it right. And all I wanted was for them to say OOPS! We're sorry. We have changed our procedures so we won't do that again. Perhaps the offer of delivering another box to my dad on the right day at a discount, or even free of charge?

Good thing he really liked them. Shame that Chocolate Messenger has NO chance of a repeat order.

Is your recruitment a branding disaster?

I have spent the last four months in a recruitment dance with an American company that has European headquarters in Paris. They still haven't hired for the role that we were discussing, and that's OK. Recruiting the right person is important, but running the process badly is very bad for the brand. Sadly, they revealed their real brand values during the interview process. And because they claimed that culture was the reason for not making an offer, I'm happy to tell you what I learned about their culture during the process.

First, their culture is very slow moving. Four months to go from first contact to deciding I wasn't the right candidate.

Second, their culture is very rude. They needed to be chased endlessly by the recruiter working the assignment to get them to move on to the next stage.

Third, the role had two bosses, and they didn't seem to be playing nicely together. One was in Paris and one was in the USA. They clearly wanted an intermediary between them but weren't prepared to agree on a candidate that could do this job. So far they have taken 14 months and still no candidate in sight.

In the end, I'm glad they didn't make an offer. The job was pretty cool, it was well within my capabilities, I would have loved living in Paris. But their real culture and real brand values didn't fit mine.

like.no.other

Finally bought a new digital SLR yesterday. It happens to be a Sony A200. I'm actually shocked I did buy Sony, because I was going to get a Nikon but...read the reviews, did some research, and the Sony seemed like the right buy for me.

Registered online, pretty painless. Then oops. Got my first email from Sony today. It was a nice email, if content free really. BUT they personalised it as Dear Mr./Ms. Davies. Such a silly thing to do. I told them my title in the registration and they STILL got it wrong.

Will I return the camera because of it? No. But the product experience gave them a great halo that the marketing communications department ruined by inappropriate personalisation. My trust in their communications is much lower. And that's a shame, because on the basis of a couple of hours playing with the camera, it represents the Sony brand well.

A Tale of two sailing suppliers - part 2

Previously I wrote about a bad experience - today is a much happier tale. Our aged rubber dingy for our yacht was not staying inflated. I happened to come across an ad for Suffolk Sailing. Curious name, because in fact what they do is marine safety. Their main business is servicing liferafts and other safety gear. They also run Sea Survival courses where you spend a day trying to get into a liferaft in a pool with all your heavy sailing gear on.

With some nervousness we transported said aging dingy to their premises on an industrial estate not far from where we keep our boat. We were assured that they could look at it. I phoned about a week later, they said they had done a couple of bits of repairs, were testing that it still stayed inflated, and would be ready tomorrow. How much? was my question, but the nice man didn't know. He said, not much. Well, that made me a little nervous.

Let me tell you, here is a company that deserves all the customers that they can look after. Cost was less than £54. That included inspecting the dingy, replacing a crappy patch that I did with a proper one from them, replacing two valves that were leaking, and making sure that everything stayed properly inflated. Lots of people wouldn't get out of bed for that price.

Suffolk Sailing. Need a liferaft, rental or buy? Need marine safety equipment serviced? Cheerful, honest advice? They are gems. I couldn't recommend them more highly. www.suffolk-sailing.co.uk

How are you perceived?

Part of being a politician is being in the public eye. British politicians have been fighting to keep their expenses claims private recently. What most people will remember is that they went to court to keep information private. Part of that information was the address of their second home. Unfortunately that is not what people will remember.

Instead they will remember that MPs were forced kicking and screaming to reveal information about how they spend their allowances. Allowances are important to them and they do incur real expenses in going back and forth to their constituencies.

Now, however, the perception is that a number of MPs are desparately trying to cover up the fact that they were slack with their claims and perhaps claimed marginal or inappropriate expenses. Why would they risk their careers over such relatively small amounts of money? What does it say about the integrity of these people that they are spending our tax money in court to protect their secrets?

Are you tired of being consulted?

I heard Gordon Brown yesterday talking about a new consultation on ways to fund elderly care. This appears to involve a compulsory new age insurance scheme (careful, don't call it a tax) to pay for the looming gap in caring for people who are living longer.

Allegedly there are no fixed ideas about how the scheme will work. So there will be forums for listening. Bottom line here, we have to fund our dotage somehow. The choices are either for people to save privately, the government to divert existing revenues, or raise new ones. The problem for the UK government is that people are not saving enough privately. That's because their taxes and cost of living are high enough that early in their careers people are in debt and don't get into the habit of saving.

Well, I'm tired of being consulted where there really is little chance that my opinions will be heard or will change anything. If you really want new ideas, fine. If all you want to do is sell the thing you have decided upon, don't call it a consultation.

Also recently there is a proposal to change the title of some Financial Services Advisors to sales people if all they do is sell one company's products. Good idea. Gordon, why not call your consultations something more honest? Sales meetings?

The service called you

We have been thinking about completely renovating our flat in London. Most recently we asked a young architect and her partner if they would be willing to work with us. Because there is a connection we were pretty informal about the engagement. What they presented were three variations on a theme, all of which had some very interesting ideas.

If you feel a "but" coming, well here it is. We had agreed a price for the work, but the invoice ended up one third more than we expected. It turns out they charged us for the presentation of the work. They also charged us VAT. The invoice also included a 1.5% per day interest charge for late payment. Taking a look at the invoice, it didn't include the right details for a VAT invoice in the UK. We were offended by the usurious terms for late payment; the fact that they didn't include the right VAT registration details was perhaps inexperience, but seemed pretty basic. The financial issue was that they didn't understand that paying VAT that we could not reclaim made a huge difference to the bill. 

Sadly, the experience with the invoice left us with uncertainty about whether this very nice couple could in fact deliver work that was the right quality and could keep to a budget. The invoice triggered all kinds of doubts that had nothing to do with their professional qualifications, their design skills, their empathy with what we were trying to do. It is so easy to devalue your brand, and very hard to recover the position.

STOP PRESS - good news. I sent an email, they responded very positively, we cleared up a misunderstanidng, and got a solution that both of us could live with. So did they recover 100%? No, but they did achieve a successful outcome and the best they could hope for under the circumstances.

Which brand gets burned by Olympic flame protests?

The last two days have seen protests in both the UK and France during the ceremonial passage of the Olympic Flame. But whose brand will get most affected?

The one the protesters hope for is the China brand. Will it be badly enough affected by negative publicity to change the way in which the world views the Beijing Olympics? Does any of this rub off on current sponsors of the Beijing Olympics.

But there are other brands at stake here as well. There's the London 2012 Olympics and the impact on potential sponsors. Right now there are just two of eight possible sponsors signed up with clothing and homeware, sportswear, airline, automotive, telecoms, and oil and gas still available. The two committed sponsors are EDF and Lloyds TSB.   

There's the British and French national brands which may be affected by their ability. Locally, the British police haven't come off too well. The friendly bobby reputation isn't helped by TV pictures of yellowjackets throwing people to the ground.

And what about the personal brand of Gordon Brown? Will his reputation for dithering be bolstered by his attitude towards Beijing? He greeted the torch in Fortress Downing Street, but refused to actually touch the torch, as pointed out by the TV commentary.

What does the Olympic flame stand for now? But haven't the protesters neglected history? The symbolic and memorable protests were the ones at the games by the participants. Jesse Owens walking away with a fistful of golds in the Aryan nation; black power salutes by American athletes in 1968. Who remembers that the torch relay was first instituted ahead of the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin by Hitler to bolster the links between Germany and Ancient Greece?

Trust and Baggage Handling

A post entitled "No One Trusts Bloggers" led me to think about how trust needs to be built over time.

I subscribe to technologyevangelist.com and, because I read the contents regularly, I have built trust in the author. I subscribe to Time, The Economist, The Week and MarketingSherpa. Now, none of these are perfect, and I don't always agree. I understand where they are coming from, and what the likely slant that they might take. Time gives me a great snapshot of mainstream opinion in America, while the Economist gives a better European slant.

Both trust and understanding are built over time. There isn't a short cut. And when trust is broken, as with Heathrow's T5, it will take a long time to overcome. One of the core promises for T5 was better baggage handling. In the long term that will probably be true. But the passengers who are inconvenienced by being separated from their bags and those whose flights are cancelled won't care. And I will do my utmost to avoid T5 and BA until they have proved they have it under control.