New Year's Resolutions for Marketers

Last year, we offered a list of suggested resolutions for corporations. This year, we'd like marketers to use these resolutions to gain more loyal fans for the brands they promote. Better yet, perhaps they would less frequently disappoint the customers they already have!

• Our membership program will be valuable to our customers, and allow for easy participation (i.e. no card to carry in already overstuffed wallets).

• Forays into social networking will be driven by a plan with measurable goals, and will be managed as a serious offshoot of our overall, integrated marketing plan.

• Our Facebook presence will reflect the personality of our brand, and provide important information that lets our “friends” feel like insiders, and presents valuable deals that lure repeat visitors to our page and attracts new customers.

• We will strive to engage our fans with our brands and products, and create opportunities for them to interact as a community, share experiences, and generate buzz.

• Managing negative feedback will be part of our transparent communication with our customers. We will view it as a positive opportunity.

If you missed last year’s blog on resolutions for corporations, click here:
http://habaconsulting.blogspot.com/2009/12/new-years-resolutions-for-corporations.html

How To Be A Bad Boss

It’s hard to verbalize all the attributes that make someone in management a good boss. But, after many years of experience in the workplace, I do have some firm ideas about what makes a bad boss. If you want your employees to despise you, here are some sure-fire ingredients for leadership failure:

• Be close-minded and keep doing things the way they’ve always been done. Ridicule anyone who makes suggestions for positive change.
• Publicly and repeatedly claim the success of your team as your own, with no mention of the efforts of your employees.
• Ensure that people that work for you that do a good job stay in their position for years and years. Allowing them to be promoted up and out would disrupt your operation.
• Be sure that you give more credence to ideas that come from highly paid consultants than those generated by your experienced team.
• Don’t trust anyone (however experienced they may be) to do their job without incessant needling, pushing, and questioning from you. It’s your job to keep them on their toes.
• Being remote and inaccessible suits your position of importance. If an employee comes to you for help, push the challenge back into their court and make it clear that you’ll be disappointed if they can’t work it out.
• You are the idea guy/gal, so be sure you not only tell your team what to do, but exactly how to do it.
• Minimize risk by squelching creativity. You can’t afford to make a mistake and look foolish.
• Make sure any training you authorize doesn’t interfere with real work.
• Business is serious – discourage levity in your workplace.
• Push on relentlessly from challenge to challenge. There’s no time to celebrate when there is so much still to accomplish.
• “Rank Hath Its Privileges”, which include vendor-purchased or hosted trips, gifts, and fancy dinners you have earned.
• Instill a little fear in your team members. It’s good motivation.
• Always balance the occasional compliment with a well-chosen criticism.
• Enlighten your subordinates only on a “need to know” basis. Explaining context and strategy to them is a waste of time.
• NEVER admit that you’ve made a mistake.

There’s so much material for this subject! Chime in, and contribute your own bad boss experience.

Make It Work

On Lifetime TV’s hit show “Project Runway”, Tim Gunn is co-host, consultant, and mentor for the fashion designer competitors. His grace, honesty and gentle humor make the show something special. “Make It Work” is Tim’s well-known directive to contestants when he is concerned that they have designed themselves into a corner. That phrase, “Make It Work”, can be well-applied in a corporate environment.

When faced with an important assignment on the job, conditions are never perfect. Challenges are ever-present, and come in various unwelcome packages. You may have an unreasonable deadline, insufficient funding, the wrong skill-set, changing requirements, conflicting priorities, and/or a lack of management support. In spite of everything – you are responsible to Make It Work. That requires fluid, creative thinking and guts.

First, discard any unrealistic, preconceived notions about the best way to accomplish your goal. That might have been the easiest and fastest route, but is not necessarily the best. Start back at the beginning, thinking about exactly what you are trying to accomplish and, for the moment, divorce the end from the means. There is always more than one way to get something done.

Brainstorm with others. Talk about your end goal and review the tools you have at hand. Look at the situation from all perspectives and kick around some “crazy” ideas. Keep your solution simple and straightforward. Assuming that the stakes are high, invest more of your own time and energy to make up for a lack of other resources. Use the specific strengths of individual team members to contribute an organic uniqueness to your solution (i.e. technical ability, artistic flair, writing skills, hole-poking, and humor).

Once you have an idea for your approach, float it past your target audience to test their reaction. Make adjustments. Dummy up a draft of the final product and see how you feel about it. Let the creativity of your team flow, and don’t be afraid to do something a little unorthodox or even wacky – it will be more memorable.

Overcome obstacles, trust in your instincts, your team, and feedback from your audience, and Make It Work. Tim Gunn would approve.

Lessons from Kindle

I’ve only had an Amazon Kindle eReader for about 3 months, but I have already experienced multiple examples of Kindle Customer Service that were really impressive. Here are the lessons customer service providers can glean from Kindle’s practices:

TIMELY & TARGETED COMMUNICATION: Before Kindle released its new generation Kindle, it announced that pre-sales were available. I ordered mine through a link made available on Facebook. On the release date, the new Kindle was shipped to me overnight at no additional cost.

MAKE PRODUCTS EASY TO USE: The Kindle is very user-friendly. Start-up was amazingly simple, and I downloaded books and started reading immediately.

PARTICIPATE IN SOCIAL MEDIA: I “Like” Kindle on Facebook, and have received many useful tips and recommendations by monitoring their page.

APOLOGIZE FOR ISSUES & MAKE IT RIGHT: I use my Kindle a lot to play word games like Scrabble, and (to my dismay) the letters started to wear off the keyboard. I called Kindle Customer Service, and the first thing they did was to apologize. Then they arranged to send me a new Kindle via overnight delivery.

GREAT PRODUCTS HAVE GREAT SOLUTIONS: My replacement Kindle came with simple instructions for re-loading content I had already purchased. I was up and running within minutes.

MAKE LOGISTICAL ISSUES YOURS; NOT YOUR CUSTOMER’S: I needed to return my defective Kindle within 30 days, in order to avoid being charged for the replacement. Kindle made it easy. I used the new packaging to pack up the old Kindle, and printed a prepaid mailing label provided via a link in an email from Kindle.

USE TECHNOLOGY TO SMOOTH THE WAY: Just as I was wondering how to “wipe” my old Kindle before sending it back…it turned itself on, activated its wireless communication, and displayed a progress bar indicating that content was being deleted. When done, it turned itself back off – ready to be sealed up and shipped. That was a “Wow”.

The only thing that would have made the exchange with Kindle more perfect was to be reassured that they have resolved the issue with the letters on the keyboard, so that I know I won’t have the same problem with the replacement. But, time will tell.

Kindle has a new loyal customer in me, and I’ll be providing a referral to Santa for additional purchases. HO, HO, HO!