If your job wasn’t to market your company anymore but to market a Super Hero instead, what would you change? What would you do differently? Try for a minute as a thought exercise to put yourself in the shoes of a Super Hero marketer.
Pick one, Batman, Ironman, Superman, Wonder-women or Wolverine, which ever you like, you are now their marketing manager. What does the super hero want out of this? (What is their goal?) Who’s your target? How can you get to them? How do you tell people about a Super Hero?
This shouldn’t be that difficult; after all it is a Super Hero right? The storey’s already “sticky” all you have to do is encourage it, right?
If all businesses were like this then we wouldn’t need to market them to the extent we do today. If the story’s good enough it will spread won’t it? Thus saving money on advertising. One could come to a conclusion that maybe you shouldn’t be focusing your efforts on marketing so much but on transforming your business into a Super Hero.
Sasktel, one of our local telecommunication companies introduced a new feature they called ebill. I’m sure you already took a stab at what “ebill” is, an online way to look at your monthly statements thus saving postage, paper and the company money in the long term. Great idea right?
It was a great idea until two months down the road my ebill account had been deactivated. Deactivated? Why? What reasoning did they go through to come to the conclusion that after 35 days of access to this online account they would need to deactivate it?
The first time I gave them the benefit of the doubt, maybe it was a security issue. I called and asked for them to reactivate my ebill account, they did and when I checked, it said “Expires in 35 days”. WHY? This defies all logic. Researching further I found that I need an “activation” code to activate my account, an activation code? I just got off the phone with the help desk guy and he didn’t think to tip me off about this activation code I’m going to need? I know it’s not his fault, someone has made a process that defies all logic.
I really would like to understand why they deactivate accounts after 35 days because as of now they give me no option but to assume that this protocol defies simple human logic. So I guess we’ll just add another one to Seth’s list.
Seth Godin talked about things that are broken a few years back that you must watch to understand why these things happen in our world. If anyone finds the answer to this ebill conundrum please do share, I don’t want to have to call Sasktel every 36 days to reactivate my ebill account.
We have all heard about “the breakfast of champions”, Wheaties for most, but for some like my friend @rayderge prefer a Redbull and a cigarette. Regardless it is difficult to pin point what a breakfast “of” champions would consist of so I say try a breakfast with champions. (I couldn’t call this post “Breakfast with Champions” because in my opinion I think it is far too cliche and has probably has been done before, Fight Club for Business, now that sounds much better)
Where you live there are many budding young businesses and business people out there doing the same old week in and week out. So focused on the business they forget what is going on in the community and the businesses around them. In today’s market collaboration is so prevalent it is amazing that this kind of thing has not spread more, but like they say “Fight Club wasn’t built in a day”.
I propose to you to start a breakfast Fight Club for Business. Once a week get together for breakfast and talk about what matters to your company. It doesn’t all have to be serious but it’ll give you a chance to understand what other businesses around your city are doing. All right, this isn’t Toastmasters or Kinsmen club, this is different and there some rules so listen up:
Rule 1. Don’t talk about Fight Club for Business unless the person you wish to talk to can benefit from what you are about to tell them.
Rule 2. To join the Fight Club for Business you must sign up for a presentation on your own company.
Rule 3. Presentations must not be completely serious and should be around the 10 minute range
Rule 4. If you are caught stealing ideas or trying to sell too much or if you’re just flat out annoying, the group reserves the right to kick you out.
It will be interesting to see this come to fruition and I’ll be sure to update on the one we’re starting in Regina. Please let me know if you have done this before or any feedback on the idea, I would love to hear from you.
No company in their right mind would ever admit to it but the fact of the matter is offering less(bad) service can be quite a cost saving and yes this is a strategy, surprisingly a very good one.
It’s frustrating at times to find help in a store that prides itself on no service. Have you ever tried to call Super Store with a question or problem? You can’t there is no number. Ever asked a Wal-Mart employee a detailed question about a non-stick frying pan? You may luck out but the odds are the person can’t help you.
The reality is these large corporations understand that service costs money and after performing a cost-benefit analysis on service they determined it was not worth it. Customers would rather have lower prices rather than paying from someone to help them while shopping. Is that what we really want? Would we all pay a little extra for better service? There’s the catch.
Would you still shop at Wal-Mart if the prices were increased by five to ten percent but it included good service? Maybe, but I would be willing to bet that the majority of us do not need great service, it is a small minority of people that actually do need it on a regular basis.
Why is this a great strategy? If you can attain the lowest selling price, history tells us you will sell a lot of products so you don’t need a value added strategy, the lowest price is the value. So who’s complaining? There will always be companies that have the lowest prices and with it will come poor service; it’s to be expected. At the same time you will always find a niche clientele that is willing to pay more for value added service.
You are free to go to the more expensive stores, you now know why you pay more, expect great service. As well you can still frequent the stores with the lowest price, but please save us all some time and don’t complain about service.
on 
