Brand Central Station

I used to be sold on Gateway computers.

For years, I used to buy their top-of-the-line products, make sure I had comprehensive warranty coverage, provide positive feedback to employees whenever possible and vehemently defend the company whenever my computer-savvy friends would disparage them.

In short, I was a cash cow for Gateway.

Then began the ordeal that has been the past fourteen months. Around the first of last year, I made a fairly significant purchase of Gateway products – a big, desktop station and sleek laptop for the office and a Media Center for my wife. The Media Center purchase was critical – the snazzy, all-in-one unit was for my wife’s use. It seemed perfect: easy-to-use, not a lot of parts, wireless and, best of all, you could watch tv on it while you worked.

Almost immediately, I had problems. The delivery of the desktop system was going to take a while but, somehow, no one in billing had been told that so I started receiving charge statements and demand letters for payment before the system had even arrived at my home. Every time I’d get the problem straightened out, some new third-party collection service would get in on the act and foul everything up. We straightened everything out once I had all the equipment and wrote a check to wipe out the balance (on which they continued charging interest for two months until someone in charge managed to rectify the situation).

Shortly after the snags were worked on concerning the purchase, things started to go wrong with the equipment. First, the desktop station failed on me, literally days after loading the last of my 500+ CD collection onto it. A mild set-back, I was disappointed when I was told I would have to install the new hard drive myself.

Soon after that, the Media Center started to have problems. The monitor started to flicker and the speakers made random pops and groans. A quick trip to the Gateway Country Store seemed to solve the problem, though. Gateway’s service policy had come through for me before and did again this time. Their reputation, although bruised in my eyes, was still in tact.

All that was about to change.

I rue the day Gateway decided to close their retail locations. Sure, I understand why – but what most people don’t know is that when the Gateway Country Stores closed, I’m convinced a “stupid” virus must have been released inside the company’s CRM (customer relationship management) system. Coinciding with that was a decision made by both my laptop and the rouge Media Center that they would work together to test the limits of the lemon law in my state.

It’s been nearly a year now and hardly a month goes by when my wife and I haven’t made two or three phone calls to Gateway’s tech support. The people are great: nice, sincere, well-meaning … the same qualities I enjoyed in the employees at the Gateway Country Store. But it’s the little things (along with my computers’ continued misbehavior) that have just about bankrupt my reserve of Gateway Brand Equity.

For example:

1. How can you send a computer in for service and have it arrive back at your home, packed exactly the way you sent it, with no documentation and none of the repairs performed?
2. Why does the automatic receptionist for the tech support line require you to enter the serial number of the equipment you’re calling about and then the live operator have to ask for the same serial number when he/she answers the phone?
3. Why does the company give you three or four reference numbers (e.g. invoice number, account number, serial number, incident report number) but when the tech support person looks up each number, they are unable to find a record of your last call?
4. Why do the tech support people ask for your phone number every time you call in – after you’ve given them the serial number on your computer and they’ve confirmed your account information?
5. Why don’t tech support people call you back when you get disconnected, knowing that if you wind up calling tech support again, you’re likely to get someone completely new and have to start all over again?

The list could go on and on, but I won’t let it. See, I like the people at Gateway and I know it’s not all their fault. The problem is inside. Really inside. Like inside the way they try to meet service customers’ expectations and needs.

And that’s my point.

If you want to build long-term brand equity, you have to remember that what you say (we call it promise making) is only part of the equation. The tough part is meeting the expectations you’ve set (that’s the part we call promise keeping).

That means taking a closer look at every point where customers interact with your brand – from product development to customer support. And don’t just look at your people and how they’re trained. Look at the systems they rely on to meet customer expectations and build brand value.

If you do that, you could raise an entire herd of cash cows of your very own.

Later.

This information is (c) 2005, Brand Central Station, all rights reserved. If you are interested in receiving news and analysis directly from BCS, please log onto our website.

This post is going to sound a bit self-promotional – for that, I apologize.

But I think it’s important business owners and managers seriously re-think the way they’ve been looking for marketing help all of these years. We conducted a poll last year and found that only one in nine businesses regularly used the services of a marketing firm like an ad agency or pr firm. The rest (nearly 90%) picked up the help they needed when they thought they needed it.

The admitted resources used to find this help were not very sophisticated: the Yellow Pages, referrals from friends, etc. And in the unlikely event a company was looking for a more “permanent” relationship, they would often turn to the same purchasing methodology they used for buying raw materials in order to collect information from prospective marketing service providers.

The RFP (Request for Proposal).

Now, I shouldn’t have to tell you how much agencies hate RFP’s. It’s not just the document; it’s what the document stands for that drives us crazy.

RFP’s, typically, ask a number of irrelevant questions with a smattering of intentionally intrusive questions mixed in for good measure. Why clients think they can ask for details concerning everything from executive compensation to old financial statements and tax returns is, quite frankly, beyond me. To compound those intensely personal intrusions with requests for reems of price quotes for printing and production projects for which no “real” specifications exist is nothing other than adding insult to injury.

Why do agencies (especially the privately held ones) get so huffy about these questions?
Because ad agencies and PR agencies are intensely personal business ventures. Criticism of how they are managed is taken as personal criticism of the managers. And, usually, the managers own part (or all) of the company.

It’s a strange dichotomy, but agency principals usually have every earthly possession tied up in their agency. They’re letting everything (and we mean everything) hang out there for the love of the business and on faith that their clients aren’t going to let them down. When someone comes along and starts to question the salaries, perks and benefits afforded an agency owner to help dull the throbbing pain in their gut associated with the risk, it cuts like a knife.

And to question in such a cavalier method as through a generally inane and thoughtless document as an RFP, the pain is all the greater. The mere thought that the RFP responses would be shared with a number of people on a committee – or, worse yet, screened by a support or clerical person – creates a real loathing of the document that results in the worst possible reaction on the part of the agency’s management:

They lie.

Questions are asked that don’t really deserve a response. So they don’t get a real response. RFP’s typically receive vague, meaningless answers that are sometimes so untruthful they’re funny. Besides malicious intent, there are some perfectly legitimate reasons for this:

1. Many agencies attempt to create “boilerplate” answers for most RFP’s in order to cut down on the extraordinary amount of time required to answer them;
2. Many agencies delegate the RFP to lower-level people who either don’t really know the answers or can’t get superiors to provide the insight required to answer questions correctly;
3. Many RFP questions are so poorly worded that they get the answers they deserve – whether those answers are what the client really needs to know (or not);
4. Several agencies are under the impression that not all RFP answers are actually read. As a result, not every RFP question is actually answered.

What clients need to do is find a better way to find the service providers they need. That’s where we come in (and this is where things get a bit promotional).

In the past month, we’ve been working with a number of clients to find everything from public relations and advertising agencies to marketing research specialists and audio production studios. The secret (we’ve found) is to work with the client to determine exactly what their requirements are and how they expect things to work out with the new service provider.

We then structure a rubric for performing a due diligence process on a number of qualified prospects. Much of the information we gather can be culled from sources like Agencyfinder.com or similar services specializing in research, production, printing, etc. (A side note: Business Partnering, Intl. – the parent company of Agencyfinder – is a BCS client.)

At no point is there an “RFP”. If we have questions we boil them down to no more than five and then ask for some correspondence from the prospective service provider to provide an explanation of their position, methodology, resources or credentials. We also call and check on references, speaking directly to people who have worked with the service provider.

Once the preliminary research is completed, we call and talk to each candidate company on our client’s behalf to confirm our findings. Following a credentials review, a short list of prospects is presented to the client for final evaluation and selection.

The whole process is direct, professional and – believe it or not – faster than the “traditional” method involving RFP’s. And, as a side benefit, both client and service provider come into the relationship enthused, informed and ready to do business.

It’s a gratifying experience. That’s why plan on continuing to help clients and service providers make connections.

(c)2005, Brand Central Station – all rights reserved. To learn more about BCS, please visit our website.

Here’s the latest scoop from Site-9 on the fake e-mail campaign Ogilvy PR launched for American Express Blue. According to what Bjoern at Site-9 was told, the e-mail campaign was a “personal initiative” of a single employee.

Yeah, right. Whatever. If that were the case, it seems to me this would have been addressed much faster and with a much greater degree of transparency.

Ogilvy apologizes for fake eMails

Basic PR advice worth printing out and handing to a client.

From Fast Company

Bad News Bearers

An interesting thought starter from Dana VanDen Heuvel. Should we continue to monitor website “stickiness” as a metric of any value when determining the success or failure of our online marketing efforts?

Site Stickiness is Dead

According to the Church of the Customer folks, the original brand evangelists, the Trekkies, are off on another mission to save a series beset with bad ratings and an overacting cast.

Long live Star Trek.

Saving Star Trek

For those of you who belong to various networking groups (like Friendster, SoFlow, LinkedIn, Tribe, etc.), you may find yourself closer to a “friend” than you expect the next time you take a trip thanks to the Jambo Network.

This article is from The Artful Manager blog and an interesting read.

Midway between cool and creepy

This one looks like a must read.

Gari Cruze, the blogger at AdBlather, pimps Mark Silveira’s new book on long copy advertising.

Long, and strong, and ready to get the readin’ on

AdRants reports on the next round in the broughaha surrounding the Nazi-esque parody of A&F by a San Francisco-based artist. Can Abercrombie & Fitch find a way to turn this situation around into a “win” for them? Who knows?

We’ll keep watching.

Abercrombie Legal Slap Down Gets Company More Unwanted Press

I was in New York last week and thought “The Big Apple” was pretty good – but apparently not.

New York City seeks to trademark new slogans

Steve Hall and AdRants have cracked the code and figured out who’s behind the latest, disgusting viral promotion. Rocker Bryan Adams is promoting his new album Who Ordered Room Service with an Internet spot featuring a yacking waiter. (“Yack” is slang for vomit, by the way.)

So let’s see, we have cat decapitation, exploding terrorists and now puking waiters as leading viral ad campaigns in the past twelve months.

Score: Tacky: 3 – Creative: 0

All comments (c) 2005, Brand Central Station – all rights reserved. For more information about BCS, please visit our website.

The gang over at AdPulp know how to lure in the bored ad guy … run a blog entry about the introduction of Nike’s new, black golf ball. Great stunt. Cool ball.

Then again, if I can’t see a white ball in the long, green grass, what chance do I have finding the black one at the bottom of the lake? Guess I’ll stick with drinking beer.

All comments (c) 2005, Brand Central Station – all rights reserved. For more information about BCS, please visit our website.