As I drove back from my interview with Ashraf Garda on the radio show Media@SAFM on Sunday I thought about the conversation that I have got involved in regarding the new Cell C campaign.

The whole thing started with a video posted on YouTube on Wednesday 28^th July. The video was supposed to be a segment of comedian Trevor Noah’s comedy show in which he ripped into all the South African cell phone networks.

The fairy tale was that the Cell C CEO was so concerned on seeing the video that he placed a full page ad of apology to Trevor Noah and all of South Africa, promising better service and within a few hours offered Trevor Noah the job as the CEO (Customer Experience Officer) a kind of independent referee on Cell C customer service called telltrevor . In these few hours they also set up a rather large website development.

For good measure Cell C also changed their logo and announced how they were going to change the standard of cell phone connections with a new network.

The only thing is that it’s all a fantasy.

I had been pulled into the controversy firstly by commenting favourably on the Cell C apology, naively as it turns out. You see I had never expected a major marketing company to pull a stunt you would really only expect from “Honest Joe’s Used Cars.”

I was full of praise that at last a South African corporate had understood a little of Social Media strategy – listening and then responding, swiftly and with gravitas to a complaint. Why Cell C’s Full Page apology was a Marketing Masterstroke.

I was really disappointed when I found out from blogger Marc Forrest, Cell C the Joke is on you that it had all been a stunt. I felt it important to respond and did so here Cell C is Astroturfing, What a Joke

This was picked up by Radio Highveld news and Media@SAFM. And Mandy de Waal wrote a really good article with comments on Daily Maverick

This is a pulling together of my thoughts.

1. The media landscape has changed. Customers are connected and vocal. Dan Gilmour calls them the ‘Former Audience” because they have the power to generate as well as consume content. They are active participants in the branding process.
2. The first step in new marketing is listening. Listening to what the customers are saying and responding with solutions adding to their experience  as well as with honesty and so building relationships based on trust.
3. The second is building an experience for your customer, an experience that they will value and tell their friends about, in other words build brand fans.
4. The principle underlying marketing in an always on and always connected world is that the customers have control. This could be described as a democratisation of marketing because in this world your communication is a discussion not a lecture. Brands can no longer tell customers what they should believe and with enough media spend, shout at them until they believe.
   1. New marketing is really about preparing the environment for the idea (which is what a brand is) to spread. It’s like as a farmer prepares the field creating the right environment for the crops to grow, the marketer must nurture the brand in a partnership with its fans.

So what has Cell C done wrong?

Strategically:

1. If you are going to poke the sleeping bear with a pointed stick you had better have a well thought out plan, because it may wake up.  The core of this is the customer’s experience.
   1. Does Cell C have a demonstrably better network than either Vodacom or MTN?
   2. Does Cell C have demonstrably better customer service?
   3. If not then they have set themselves up for a very bloody nose.
   4. If you want to have a relationship with your customers, the foundation of that relationship is trust.
      1. So is it a good idea to try pulling a stunt and spinning a yarn?
      2. Is it a good idea to pretend that a new independent customer service system had been set up?
      3. Why would I want to tell Trevor instead of Cell C?

Executionally

1. You don’t try to hoodwink your customer, even if you think its funny. Don’t make a fool of him, especially if your intention is to make him a hero.
2. Once you start a relationship with subterfuge it taints the rest of the relationship.
3. Customer service is a company culture thing. Pretending to outsource customer service to a comedian with no record as a consumer champion is bizarre.
4. Is appointing a comedian as your customer experience officer a message to tell everyone that your customer service is a joke.
5. Cell C has launched a new logo – but their TV ads still carry the old logo, that is just sloppy, and a message in itself.

What I would suggest:

1. Cell C get your network working, your outlets working and make sure that your customers are getting a superior experience.
2. Your customers don’t care how good you say you are, they care about their cell phone service
3. Then develope the tools to let your customers tell the rest of us about it. Because they are going to do it anyway.
4. Then go on and invite the rest of us in to join the conversation, using all media.

I am reminded of an article I read in the Huffington Post yesterday, called The dark side of vitaminwater it reveals that Coke’s legal team, who are defending a consumer protection lawsuit claiming that Coke has misled its customers into believing that vitaminwater is healthy, with the argument that “no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitamin water was a healthy beverage.” What twisted logic. Is Cell C under the illusion that they can treat their customers the same way, follow the same kind of strategy and same kind of defence if they get called out.

The fairy tale is just a fairy tale and we now know that. What we also now know for certain, because Trevor told us, is that the Cell C network is terrible.

In the US Domino’s Pizza has come under a lot of flak for their new marketing strategy.

For admitting that their product sucks, that the pizza base tastes like cardboard and saying sorry and then as a response to what their customers said developing and launching a new recipe. Crazy stuff Dominos, say the critics, you are alienating your loyal customers who presumably love cardboard and you are damaging your brand.

You can read the criticism on eConsultancy and Advertising Age by clicking on the links. While you are there read the comments. and when I tweeted the article today almost all the responses were the same, surprisingly disagreeing with the criticism.

Traditionally you would have either defended the product and shored up the brand or launched the new recipe with a “you always loved the old pizza but we have made it better”type of line.

But actually in today’s market that’s a very risky strategy.

• Domino’s customers all know the Pizza sucks, they buy it for convenient fast delivery.
• Their friends all know it too.
• They are connected to their friends.
• If you lie they will tell their friends that you are a liar.

So this is what domino’s did:

Now’s time for another story. In the late 80′s I was Client Services and Strategy Director for one of the hottest agencies in South Africa. One of clients was the biggest wine and spirits distributor. They had a dog of a wine brand, it had been promoted on the basis of its heritage – it was named after the birthplace of man who had opened a refreshment station at what is now Cape Town for ships bound from Europe to the East Indies in the spice trade.

Only one of the products was doing anything, a sweet wine loved by drunks in the Eastern Cape.

The heritage positioning was so thin that I suggested that we should throw it out and call it what it was “a good everyday drinking wine” the kind of stuff you would drink with your friends, people whom you had no need to impress.

Much to the horror of the Brand Manager but with the support of the senior management, who had decided to give the brand one last shot. So we told the truth about the brand and implemented that positioning, won a Bronze Lion at Cannes and saved the brand.

The foundation of good marketing is not just great advertising its great product and great experiences. What’s the point of trying to tell your customers stuff they already know is bull. Why not show them a little respect, show them that you care, maybe they will give you the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe this campaign will get customers to have a fresh look.

Well done Domino’s – Telling the truth may just be the Killer Strategy.

Photo by cafemama on Flickr

Its a question worth asking and the subject of my chat on the Internet economy on Friday, January 15, 2010.

Brand stewardship/ custodianship has traditionally been a space that has been claimed by the advertising agency, althjough we are seldom in a conversation in digital circles that we don’t hear the view that the “agencies just don’t get it”  so if they dont who does. Are the digital agencies ready to lead the brand?

My fellow “The Beancast” panel member Ana Adejelic wrote about this in Advertising Age and was ridiculed by both agency and digital groups. In her view digital are in exploratory mode and ad agencies focused on exploiting a tried and tested approach, in essence this means digital will shoot the lights out but generally cant be trusted with the whole brand, whereas the ad agency are so locked replicating a “safe” formula that they have forgotten whats good for the brand.

Traditional agencies and marketers are stuck in a marketing model which is hopelessly out of date, it is based on the idea that homogeneous groups of consumers exist which are called target markets, and that loyalty can be built in these groups by repeatedly interrupting them with brand messages until they listen and when they do they will believe what they see and read.

Digital agencies are often built around the concept of search engine marketing and the techniques of SEO. They drive the “direct marketing” concepts of measurability and conversions, turning interaction into sales.

Is either of them right?

The Internet has been alive for years with the view that Advertising is dead, and more and more we are hearing the view that SEO is dead. In the words of Mark Twain in both cases “The report of my death has been grossly exaggerated” although in both these cases there is a whole lot of truth tied up in those reports.

Lets propose a different set of views:

• The Internet is essentially a social creation.
• The Internet is not another marketing medium as little as a discussion around the braai (BBQ) is a marketing medium.
• The internet is not only about analytics and conversions – about OBSERVATION, it needs also to about a UNDERSTANDING of how people behave.
• The real strength of the Internet is that it connects people.
• Brands are created by the experience that customers have.
• Because of the network of connections ideas (good and bad) can spread faster than ever was possible before.
• There is too much information around and customers have too little time.
• People don’t believe advertising, they are starting to not even search in the way they did. They ask their friends. (Real time search)
• If it’s important,information will find me.
• The power in the transaction has shifted, brands are no longer the only source of information.

These thoughts fundamentally change the way we think about brands, branding and marketing.

New marketing is essentially understanding that the game has changed, that the connection created by the internet, however it is accessed, by computer or mobile phone has fundamentally changed the way that society operates in a way that will never be rolled back. Because brands no longer have control of the information that customers can access. Brands will be built in new and different ways. They will use all the traditional tools but in a totally different way. Brands will be built by experiences and interactions.

Modern marketing was only invented in the 60s to understand the use of the most important communications tools of the era. The character of the new tools are fundamentally different. Although paradoxically when we read the early ad men it seems they got it.

Marketing has always been about making stuff and creating experiences that people want, making it available to them and getting them to talk about it. Branding in the final analysis is what people believe about stuff, what they talk about.

Ad agencies don’t get it and will never get it because the agency model and the way they work does not fit the social interaction model; agencies were invented to solve a different problem and to use one way communications channels. The new boys, digital agencies will battle as the Internet becomes more and more a way to connect ideas and people and less like a catalogue, a searchable database and so the role of the search engine changes dramatically.

Brands are built around storytelling, there is a legend that surrounds every brand, that story was being told by brands about themselves, now the story is being told by customers, about their experiences. Customers who have the ability to connect to anyone, anywhere, now have the capacity to share and collaborate on a scale never before thought possible, to share and spread ideas and stories around the world almost instantaneously.

Although the fundamentals of marketing have not changed, because customers have the approach also needs to. Brands are still important and marketing now becomes more than just a box on the organogram, it becomes the entire business as seen from the point of view of the customer who don’t care where they interact with the brand as its all part of the same experience, an experience they tell their friends about.

The story that becomes the brand.

I see a totally new type of agency, one that understands the new customer that will guide its clients through the process of building the customers total experience and of engagement. An agency that has a fundamental understanding of how people buy, of all the communications channels and how to use them not to attempt to overpower customers into brand loyalty but assist them to spread the idea. The idea that is the brand.

This is part of the vision behind PiKE | The New Marketing Agency

Listen to what we spoke about Podcast Link Here

Is service important for an online store?

Zappos think so, Amazon think so but Kalahari.net don’t. Unfortunately it is the massive difference in service levels I have concurrently received from Zappos and Kalahari that has brought this home to me.

The Zappos story is in a previous post. suffice it to say that I sent the CEO a request for a book (his office is in USA) on a Thursday afternoon, by the following Tuesday first thing I had the book and had had personal and inspiring contact with four Zappos people.

The Kalahari.net story:

• December 3 – order two books from Kalahari.net
• December 16 – books arrive at Kalahari.net order is completed, money leaves credit card.
• December 18 – parcel completes long journey from where ever its packed to the courier. ready for 24hr delivery (although 48hrs of the 24hrs already expired.)
• December 22 call Kalahari  – long distance land line number (not toll free) hang up after 12 minutes, repeat 3 times leave message on system, send email from site no response.
• Finally get through to Kalahari reception, who put me through to agent, says that he will follow up and ensure delivery, admits that they are inundated with calls and just cant handle them
• Just before close of business (4:45pm December 22) contact Kalahari as no one has resolved query. Speak to new call center agent, she calls me back and guarantees delivery by end of today.
• December 22 @ 7:30pm – still no delivery.

Zappos understands that customer service is a culture. To be successful every person in the company has to live it. Its not something you can pass over to a junior call center agent.

• When a parcel takes longer to get down the hall between packaging and dispatch than it takes to get from the USA to SA that’s not living it.
• When a parcel takes from 18/12 to 22/12 to not yet arrive that’s not living it.
• To have a call center running only on long distance office hour phone rates (no shared call, no toll free) and forcing the customer into an expensive queue that’s not living it.
• To have an understaffed call center, with a desperate agent who says he has at least 50 calls waiting thats not living it.

When Amazon.com paid $1.2 Billion for Zappos they did it for the culture, for the service  attitude of the entire  company. Kalahari.net clearly don’t have the attitude so Amazon are not going to buy them but it also leaves the market wide open for an opposing online store in South Africa, maybe  loot.co.za and possibly even exclusive books do you think that they could learn?

Maybe its just a dream, maybe I should just forget dealing with the local incompetence and stay with Amazon.com till further notice.

Photo credit Martin Heigan from Flickr under a CC license.

UPDATE: The parcel arrived via FEDEx at 20:20 – but delivered by an under equipped driver whom I had to talk in for 10 minutes by cell phone, he didn’t have a GPS nor a map and had been driving around furiously hoping to chance onto the street address.

FURTHER UPDATE: Kalahari.net have a presence on twitter but they aren’t listening – see a screenshot from my tweetdeck. Ok I know people must take holidays but this is the busy time and they need to be able to react in fact its fundamental to new marketing that you do.

FURTHER UPDATE: My second order placed on December 12, one of the books has been removed and the order canceled on December 23, out of stock. Obvious comment: That took a while & there is no other supplier?

Amazon has it in stock Crush it

@kalaharinet has contacted me.

Final comment: Said enough about this – Kalahari.net – thinks are really not well with you guys – management issue not a support staff issue.

OK then another final comment: So the second parcel was dispatched 2 working days ago. Not arrived yet.

I created a col on tweetdeck to follow @kalaharinet – only complaints (except @jenty who won a prize.)