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Can a Bad Brand Experience Ruin a Great Product? Can a Not-Great Product Erode a Brand? Probably. And Yes.

I have a dilemma. And I have a good article for you to read. The dilemma and the article hit me at just about the same time,  and I realized that they are both related to the same issue: products and brands, and the intertwining of the two.

First, the article. It's called "Gap Lacked Momentum, So Rightly Cut TV", and it appeared in Ad Age this week.  As you may have read, Gap, Inc. announced that it was cutting TV advertising.  Rather than viewing this move as a sign of gloom and doom, J.C. Larreche, the author of the article (and a  book he shamelessly plugs) believes that the move to cut marketing spend is a good one. Why throw good money after bad? If Gap has fundamental issues with product offering, the instinct to "over market" will lead to what Larreche refers to as "a vicious circle of mediocrity".  Having spent my fair share of years in apparel retailing, I have witnessed this first hand. "This season's product is missing the mark, so if we just spend more on marketing, we'll get it to sell...."  If the product is not right, you're only hurting your brand by turning on the marketing faucet.  If you've got things humming on the product and consumers are engaged, then the marketing spend will be more efficient, and brand momentum will grow.  All good things.

So now, for my dilemma (and I swear these two things really are related).  About 14 years ago, my husband (who was not yet my husband) and I stumbled across a small, charming winery in the Paso Robles area of California. After being totally seduced by their deep, rich red wines, we signed up for their "wine society", a fancy way of saying they get to charge my credit card and ship us two boxes of wine every year.  I even started giving wine society memberships as gifts to my parents, sister and friends.  So now, the winery gets to charge my credit card a lot.  For 14 years, I've spent about $1000 a year with this winery.  I am sure they had no idea of my lifetime value when I walked in the door, but I suspect I've exceeded whatever their expectation might have been.

Every year, for the last four years they have screwed up my shipments. My parents might receive two shipments instead of one.  My sister might not get anything even though my credit card was charged.  My credit card expired last year and instead of reaching out politely to get the new expiration date, I got an abrupt voice mail from a woman saying "your credit card was declined, we need to talk to you."  Nice.   

Last week was (almost, maybe) the last straw.  I received my credit card statement, and once again, things were a mess. The winery charged me for four wine shipments instead of the three that they should have. I have no idea if one of my gift recipients received two shipments, or if they just thought I wouldn't notice. I called. Delightfully, "Rebbecca" answered, the same woman who, the prior year seemed to think I had a credit problem. Funny how I remembered her, but she didn't remember me.  I calmly explained the problem. "I've been charged four times for what should be three shipments".  The answer, in a deadpan tone (I am not making this up):  "I show you were charged three times."   There was a long pause.  Finally, I stated that I was getting frustrated. That I had had numerous foul ups with every shipment for the last four years, and not once, not once has the winery apologized.   The answer (in a deadpan tone again): " We have a really bad software system". 

OK, so I won't bore you with the rest of the conversation, which didn't get much better (though they did finally credit me for the erroneous charge when I became insistent. Bravo, Rebbecca.).  But here's how this experience and the article all tie together: The winery's product is great. Fabulous wine. I love it.  But the brand experience is a joke.  While Gap sees that weakness in the product offering is erosive to the brand, why doesn't the winery see that a weak brand experience is erosive to the product?  It's all intertwined, co-dependent, whatever you want to call it.  And weakness on either side of the equation will hurt your business.

So my dilemma is....should I cancel my wine society membership? Surely there are plenty of other wineries that can make good wine and not mess up on the rest of the formula. Advice welcome here.  As good as the wine is, I'm having trouble separating the product from the experience.   

 

Feel Like You're Losing Your Mind? Yes, it Really Could Be Your E-Commerce Job

The other day I was flipping through the Atlantic Monthly.  Actually all I ever do with magazines anymore is flip through them. I never actually read them.

The cover story, titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" caught my attention.  It's worth a read. That is, if you have the attention span for a six page article. 

No offense intended...of course you can get through six pages. It's just that Nicholas Carr's article will help validate that those feelings  you've been having of impatience and inability to focus may indeed be real, and may indeed be caused by the internet.  If you spend most of your day online like I do, you get accustomed to accessing information at warp speed and skimming through sound-bites of data to get things done.  But then, sadly, you realize that you've lost your ability to take things in at a "non-internet" pace. 

Just like Carr suggests, I too have noticed that it's become harder for me to sit and read a long book, something that I love to do.  I'm so used to being able to cut to the chase that reading through paragraphs to get to the plot seems inefficient. In truth, I now only read full books when I'm on vacation for exactly this reason. 

So, is this bad? Not entirely, according to the article. The brain, it appears, is quite malleable, and adjusts to things like our intake of data and consumption of media. The internet's impact on our brain activity is probably neither good nor bad, it just causes us to behave differently.   

Carr does a great job of comparing the concerns about the internet's impact on our brains to numerous industrial developments throughout history, such as the typewriter and the printing press. Many back then said that the proliferation of written documents and books would negatively impact memory.  It's probably fair to say that the expanded access to written information has had a profoundly positive impact on the human experience, regardless of what it's done to our memories.  After all, do we really need to remember everything if we can look it up in a book?   

The internet may be changing the way people read (or avoid reading), but I think we'd all agree that it's profound impact on our lives has been overwhelmingly positive.  Nonetheless, as marketers we need to be increasingly alert to how our own behavior (and our customers' behavior) is changing as a result of increased internet consumption.  It means communicating with customers in a way consistent with the way they are reading;  abbreviated text messages, mono-syllabic search ads, tickers on the tv screen, pop up ads, interruptive alerts. 

So, in a shameless example of practicing what I preach, if  you find that reading this blog is too lengthy and laborious a task, you can now follow me on Twitter, where you can read my musings about e-commerce in satisfying bites of 140 characters or less.   

E-Commerce Film Review: One Movie That Will Make You Want to Watch the Other

The Seattle International Film Festival is in full swing. Two nights ago, I attended a screening of the film August, a story of two young dot com entrepreneur brothers caught in the throes of the bubble burst in August of 2001.

Obviously the subject matter of the film intrigued me; seeing something you lived through played out by big stars (Josh Harnett plays the leading role) on the screen gives you a feeling that you were part of something important, and then of course there's the hope that you'll gain new insights about it.

The movie failed for me on a number of fronts, mainly because the main character played by Harnett is such a complete creep.  By the time the movie ends and the fictitious company "LandShark" has gone bust, you're actually happy to see misfortune come to this guy. The whole movie is like watching a plane about to crash, but you actually wish it would crash faster.  None of the other characters in the film like this guy, so why should I? He's arrogant, irresponsible and shows no passion or empathy for his family, customers or employees. The only sign that he might have been a decent guy before his success is the brief appearance of a cute ex-girlfriend. Obviously she saw something in him at one point.  And it's obvious by the way Harnett spouts out dated jargon like "cross-channel, cross-platform, click and mortar", etc. that he has no idea what he's saying.

All of that said, there were a few scenes that hit entertainingly close to home and are worth seeing if you're in the mood to reminisce about some of the funnier moments of the bust.  Harnett's character shows up to speak at an industry conference unprepared and despite a completely obvious BS job, gets a standing ovation.  When his father drills him on "what exactly do you do???" and it's clear that there really is no answer, you'll recall plenty of has-been companies with the same issue.  And as the stock plummets, employees huddle around a laptop reading industry gossip about their own doomed fate.  Sound familiar?

The irony here is that back in 2001, the Seattle International Film Festival ran another film about a dot com startup going bust. This one, E-Dreams was a documentary about the rise and fall of Kozmo.com....remember them? Bicycle messengers that delivered videos and ice cream to your door after you ordered it online.  This film was great, and watching August, poor as it was, provided value in that it made me want to see E-Dreams again. Joseph Park, the CEO of Kozmo is clearly in over his head, and watching the unrealistically meteoric rise and sudden fall of his company happen to him and the people around him left me thinking for weeks about the emotions and momentum of that time. Howard Schultz has a cameo role that he'd probably like to forget (Starbucks had a partnership with Kozmo), reminding us of how swept up even the most successful companies became in the .com craze.

Good news for you: E-Dreams is now available for instant view on Netflix.  Might want to pop some microwave popcorn, take a long lunch and watch it at your desk.  If you have the chance to see August, plan on doing something great with the rest of your day so you won't feel too bad about wasting the time.  It's a bit worth seeing, but more as a compare/contrast to E-Dreams than anything else.  Happy viewing.

   

Summer Reading for E-Commerce Marketers

While you'd never know it from Seattle's grey skies, Summer is here.  If, like me, you're the type that likes to better your career while you kick back with a book, here's one that will fit the bill.

This past weekend, I was doing some work for a client on social media strategies. I had purchased Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff's book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies a while back but had not found time to read it, so this work gave me the long overdue excuse.  Not only did I read it, but I dog-eared just about every page.

While more than enough books and articles been written about social media and social technologies lately, little of it, in my view, has yielded in practical advice and real world case studies. Finally, Li and Bernoff have given us a real resource for navigating this new world.

While I've criticized Forrester in the past for being too "academic", this is an area where a little schooling makes sense.  Far too many companies are leaping into this sandpit without a strategy. The book does a great job of breaking down and distinguishing the types of consumer behavior that drive social media, the types of  social media objectives that companies can develop based on business goals, and the current appropriate social technologies and applications based on those objectives.

While the technologies that enable people to connect and get what they need from one another will continue to evolve and change, the discipline of developing a clear strategy based on who your customers are and what you are trying to accomplish should stand for all time.  As a follower and proponent of social media, I confess I've been frequently confused by how to best use it and measure effectiveness.  I'm sure I'm not alone.  E-commerce companies busy with running their day to day businesses will greatly benefit from the clarity Groundswell will provide.

While Li and Bernoff don't provide all the answers (and who would expect them to at this stage of the evolution?), they do get us all to start asking the right questions and considering the consequences of the potential answers.  What Summer romance novel can do that?

If you still want more after reading the book, you can participate in the Groundswell conversation at www.forrester.com/Groundswell

Now, if Seattle, could just get some sun!

A Sign of The Times: Premium is Out of Fashion, We're "Trading Up" to Cheap

Here's an interesting retail phenomenon: Gas prices are competing with environmental issues and social networking for headline space theses days.  Consumers are cash strapped, but maybe they're willing to pay a premium to be cheap.  Case in point:

My husband travels to California regularly, and Hertz is his preferred car rental company. He typically places a reservation on their website a few days before his trip, usually for the least expensive car available.

Well, guess what Hertz's cheapest car is at the Burbank airport?    The Ford Expedition.  It has to be one of the largest cars they have. Certainly one of the least fuel efficient as well.  Hard to believe that it is actually cheaper to rent a full size SUV than an economy car.

So, we can assume that Hertz is making the car cheap to rent because no one's renting it.  But are people not renting it because a) the refueling charge will be high due to the fact that the the Expedition guzzles gas?  or is it because b) no one wants to be seen driving a car that is environmentally irresponsible?  Maybe both.  My husband says it's "b" (he passed up on the bargain and chose a smaller car to avoid being seen in the land yacht).

While this is a totally anecdotal incident, the irony hit me: At Hertz,  it's now actually cheap to rent something that should be expensive, possibly because the values associated with the expensive car have fallen out of fashion.....and even people who are feeling the impact of a tough economy are willing to "trade up" to a cheaper car.

Will we start seeing aspirational advertising about driving economy cars showing how sexy, smart and sophisticated we are for choosing the Hyundai or Ford Focus?  Will "economy" cars start to cost more than cars less fuel efficient, like they do at Hertz?

Unless premium products are in synch with the premium values of the customer, they won't get very good mileage, in more ways than one.