Give and ye shall receive (it's guaranteed)

Visa Europe reckons we'll be spending nearly £14,000 per second this Christmas Eve - and it might be even more than that based on the disruption the snow has caused to peoples plans.

All that money ringing through the tills just so that we can give.

For the most part that's giving without any expectations of getting something back; buying presents for the kids or close family and friends. However for others you may give simply because you previously got given - returning the favour year on year.

What if though, rather than giving gifts as a selfless act, you instead gave gifts specifically for what you could get back. What if you knew before hand that buying a certain gift for a certain person would guarantee an even better gift in return.

Would you be more tempted to buy them a gift?

Well hopefully this isn't a scenario you'll experience this year at Christmas, but it's certainly one you might be experience in the near future - as a consumer.

Recently reported by AdAge, the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas is giving away access to specific services and amenities to customers they feel have influence. As Palms' chief marketing officer, Jason Gastwirth puts it "allow[ing] high-ranking influencers to experience Palms' impressive set of amenities in hopes that these influencers will want to communicate their positive experience to their followers."

In essence, "giving" not in return for what they have already been given. Nor even "giving" based on what they think a customer may be able to give back. Instead they are "giving" so that a customer will tell others about it, increasing everyone's value.

This is no longer a "Random Act of Kindness" so beloved of loyalty marketing - this is a highly engineered act of bribery, sugar coated as a gift.

Whether you feel this is right or wrong though - this will surely work, and the reason for this is all to do with the customers clout.

More specifically, this is the customers Klout score as measured based on their online social activity. Described by Klout as :-

The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.

With the Klout score a brand can be more assured that a member has the capability to make some noise - they just to give them the reason to do so. (Or in the case of a customer service issue, even more reason to get it resolved well)

While it is easy to be cynical about this, it does add another dimension to loyalty programme design. Traditionally programmes have been very insular, rewarding individual customers for their individual behaviour, but only after they have demonstrated it.

Some have become a little smarter, looking at an individual customers behaviours and rewarding them based on predictions on their future behaviour - many frequent flyer programmes for example will now "fast track" new members who appear to look like top tier members.

It's a natural extension then to begin rewarding customers based not only on their predicted ability to be advocates, but also based on their actual capability. This is fine line between "rewarding the behaviours you seek" and blatant bribery, but used well, I think this becomes a key tool within an overall loyalty offering.

Maybe the saying in loyalty should now be:-

[Before you] give, [checkout their ability to give] and ye shall [be guaranteed] to receive.

Not quite the Christmas Spirit, but possibly a more prosperous New Year.

Merry Christmas. ;o)

Did the Grinch steal Christmas (TV)?

I miss the Christmas movie.

As a child, when we only had three TV channels, no VHS and single screen cinemas, the Christmas movie was for many people the first time the movie had been seen.

We'd cherish the Radio Times to see what was on and then plan ahead to watch all the great movies.

How times have changed.

I now have IPTV on 3 different boxes, I can choose to watch a film on demand through BT, Sony or LoveFilm. Invariably I've already seen it at our 10 screen cinema, purchased it on DVD or loaded it onto my iPad.

I watch more films, but they don't have the same special magic they used to. I still buy the Radio Times, but that's largely because it's the Christmas thing to do - I have an EPG on my TV and TV Guide on my iPad.

The Grinch didn't really steal Christmas TV - instead it was our desire to have everything now at the touch of a button, and the medias desire to supply it.

I'm not saying any of this is a bad thing. We've essentially traded the Christmas Movie that was created through scarcity for the everyday convenience of entertainment on demand.

What's interesting though is how this plethora of choice for something we really wanted and valued can actually result in us valuing it less.

Seth Godin discussed this in a recent blog entitled The inevitable decline due to clutter where he discussed the trend within digital to just keep giving consumers more of everything - more messages, more offers - because essentially it's free. However he points out that:-

Once you overload the user, you train them not to pay attention. More clutter isn't free. In fact, more clutter is a permanent shift, a desensitization to all the information, not just the last bit.

We saw exactly this effect in some research we carried out a couple of years back. When looking at communications within retail, there was a increase in relationship strength as communications increased - suggesting that building a dialogue with customers is a positive thing to do.

However this quickly turned into a decrease as these communications became too frequent. Customers were tuning out of the communications as they got overloaded and at the same time, were tuning out of the brand.

If you want to keep customers coming back, want to keep them interested, then you need to keep things special.

• Change the experience - Mix things up a little. Email is great and it's cheap, but finding other ways to communicate, even if it's just an occasional quality DM piece can really cut through.
• Keep it relevant - It's better to send nothing than to send something irrelevant. If a customer consistently finds nothing of value in your communications they will simply cease to value them.
• Facilitate, don't just communicate - As the clutter increases, people shut down the overload and start to look internally to friends for opinion. Be part of that conversation.

A great example of someone doing this currently is Coca-Cola. They have always "owned" Christmas, having Santa Claus in their advertising since the 1930's, but there is always a risk that people become "desensitised" to it.

This year however they have had their Coca Cola Truck touring Europe and this has managed to do all three things.

It has changed the experience, bringing the advertising to life. It has kept it relevant, doing something we'd expect from Coke at a time of year when we want it. Most importantly though, it has facilitated the conversation, with friends snapping pictures of the truck locally and posting them to Facebook (here's one a friend of mine took)

Having driven past it on the motorway, there is something almost magical about seeing it in real life - even if it is just a truck. I may have been even more excited than my kids - but it's nice that some things are still special.

Grinch image by Mykl Roventine (Flickr)

Social CRM - evolution or revolution?

CRM is going Social. But isn't Social CRM just CRM done across social networks?

[pause] [wait for the flames]

The answer if you listen to the promoters of S-CRM is (quite vehemently) no, Social CRM is not a channel. It is not about using social networks to execute standard CRM practices.

In fact, in an interesting blog post by Wim Rampen, he makes some really excellent points about why Social CRM is simply not a channel extension of CRM - another way to speak customers - and instead has many unique properties that make it a more interactive, two way dialogue.

Whilst I get all of that - and largely agree, I guess my problem isn't with the Social aspect of S-CRM, it's with the CRM aspect.

If marketing started out as a way of focusing on the benefit the product provided, rather than on the product itself (so called Marketing Myopia) then CRM was a step forward again, focusing instead on the customer that was receiving the benefit and not just on the benefit itself. All customers weren't equal and so knowing which product to sell, what benefits to highlight, at what quantity and at what price became the mantra.

The buzz words were all about personalisation or 1 to 1 marketing - delivering the right message, to the right person, at the right time.

If only we could anticipate what you wanted to buy and nip in there quickly enough on a channel you were likely to read then we'd make a sale. You'd be happy as you got something you wanted and we'd be happy as we had sold it to you.

I think times are moving on though and if the focus on the product rather than the benefit was essentially Marketing Myopia - a blinkered view of the business a company was in - then focusing on the customer is potentially another blinkered view - almost a Social Myopia - in that it assumes that customers fit into a single neat box. There may be many different boxes, but each customer fits into each box.

This however is just not true and Will makes a very good point in his blog when he says:-

If there is one thing we (should) learn from emergent on-line communities it is that people join these communities to perform a certain job. This can be a social job, functional job or emotional jobs, mostly formed around a shared interest. It is these jobs & interests that bond the people in a community.

What this suggests (and it seems obvious really) is that it is not just about a customer segment, but almost customer personalities - or customer communities as Will defines them.

The problem with this thinking though is that if you begin to segment customers not just by social-demographic measures or exhibited behaviours but instead by community, a customer no longer fits into a neat box. I may be part of many communities - whether they're based around a passion like football, an interest like gardening or a function like my job. Even more complicated, these communities or personalities may vary by time.

My needs when doing the weekly shopping with a large shopping trolley are very different to when I'm walking the aisles on a Saturday evening with a basket - browsing DVDs, wine and ready cooked meals. I'm the same customer, reading the same newspaper, watching the same TV programmes - but I have different needs, desires and approach.

This is obviously difficult to have a view of in the physical world - but in the online world it is much easier to have a view of a persons different personalities or communities, and to interact with these at the appropriate time.

Will makes another interesting observation in a related blog when he says:-

Social Customer Relationship Management is not about managing the relationships with your Customers, it is (increasingly) about managing the knowledge-flows through the relationships of your Customers. And yes, you as a company maybe part of this eco-system of your Customers’ relationships. But please, don’t put yourself at the center of it.

I agree with this and it is why I think Social CRM is not really the right phrase - it isn't really Customer Relationship Marketing - in the traditional sense of trying to build a direct, single relationship with the customer and may be better phrased Customer Context Marketing - building numerous relationships centred around the relevant communities or personalities for a customer and being part of the conversation, not trying to own the conversation.

Whatever it's called however, it's clear that you can't simply apply existing CRM techniques in a social context. This would be similar to brands which simply "mobilised" their websites to create a mobile site - only to find it wasn't relevant to customers in the mobile context.

In the social space, context is king - it's not just the right message at the right time, but more the right message in the right context. Interestingly, a Forrester report designated 2010 as the era of Social Context based on the evolution of the Social Web with the author of the report quoted as saying:-

"The community will take charge and that's going to happen whether or not marketers or brands participate."

I think it's fair to say this also applies to the evolution of CRM - and communities and social context need to be at the heart of it. As the quote suggests, the community will take charge and if the interaction is not relevant and in context, it will be ignored.

Dangerous Marketing (you should do)

I remember as a child someone once telling me that you could flatten a coin under a train wheel. Being the ever curious sort, me and my friend tried it out - running down the platform to place the coins on the rail, watching as the train passed over, grabbing our newly squashed coins with glee and then running back up to get on the train.

In hindsight it probably wasn't the wisest thing to do - we could have missed the train trying to retrieve them!

However kids of today are increasingly insulated - being ferried from place to place, never just exploring and finding out how the world works, and a new book has just been released that is looking to challenge this. Entitled Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do), it apparently covers my coin flattening experience as well as other things like licking a 9V battery or throwing a stone.

I'm not planning to discuss the rights or wrongs of this, however what is interesting is the reaction to it. Many "commentators" have derided the book asking questions such as "Have they never raised children?" Yet after self-publishing the book due to initial rejections from publishers they sold 5,000 copies in the first month.

What I like about this book - and I have a copy on order - is precisely the fact that it isn't "safe" - the book itself would seem to be about taking calculated risks.

It's too easy to try and please all of the people all of the time, however most of the time this creates safe, predictable, less engaging solutions. Sometimes we need to do things which are controversial, which push the boundaries and which may ultimately offend the few but will then really engage the many.

Seth Godin made an interesting point in one of his latest blogs when he talked about a small number of customers being ungrateful, abusing your service and complaining saying "Firing the customers you can't possibly please gives you the bandwidth and resources to coddle the ones that truly deserve your attention and repay you with referrals, applause and loyalty."

Ultimately it is probably easier to not recruit certain customers than fire them later - either way sometimes taking some calculated risks rather than a safe strategy of pleasing all could allow you to focus attention - and resources - on those most likely to reciprocate.

Snow? When all about you is white – where is the purple cow?

For those that don't know, we've had snow in the UK - and not just a dusting, we've had inches of snow – and inevitably it has made the country grind to a halt with schools closing and roads un-passable. Now we're told that local authorities are running out of grit and salt for keeping the roads clear. We're simply not used to having severe weather in Britain – everything is normally middle of the road – not too hot, not too wet, not too cold, not too windy.

Now generally we're quite happy with middle of the road – it's normal, it's unsurprising, it's comfortable. When the weather does change though we get excited about it – we like things that are out of the ordinary. When we get snow, the TV news seems to dedicate 90% of their time to it and if it's hot for just a few days the newspapers are full of headlines like "Britain Sizzles in Heat Wave". However, give it a week and everyone is fed up – the snow becomes an inconvenience and we just want things back to normal. When it's too hot we dream of a little cloud just to cool things down a bit and maybe some rain to save the lawn.

Things that are out of the ordinary catch our attention but can then very quickly become everyday and passé – we become comfortable with them and don't even notice they are there.

Marketing guru and blogger Seth Godin discusses this subject in his new book Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. He describes a situation where when driving through France they saw field upon field of picturesque cows grazing by the roadside – saying it was like something out of story book. Now ignoring the obvious question this raises about the UK dairy industry and where the heck did all our cows go, he then writes that within 20 minutes this once fascinating scene became common – boring even. You've seen one cow you've seen one hundred – however what would have been interesting he states would have been a Purple Cow.

Now you can almost picture this – driving along seeing field upon field of brown cows and then suddenly a Purple Cow appears – that would capture your attention – it may even make you stop what you're doing. Seth describes this as the new marketing "P". Previously marketers were dealing with Product, Price, Place, Promotion (and a host of other P related words for 5 Ps, 7 Ps, etc.) but he argues that the Purple Cow "P" represents something "Remarkable" – going on to argue that Remarkable Marketing is the art of building things worth noticing into your product or service. He says "Something remarkable is worth talking about. Worth noticing. Exceptional. Interesting. New. It's a Purple Cow. Boring stuff is invisible. It's a brown cow."

In a small way I thought I spotted a Purple Cow today. I received an email from UK clothing brand Next with the title "Snowed In? Shop Men's New Arrivals" and this really peaked my interest – it seemed relevant – it was snowing outside and they knew this and had seemed to have quickly made their communication relevant to me. Unfortunately on opening the email it fell down completely – the content was obviously not themed around the title and I very quickly lost interest. Now I know that typically email campaigns are planned weeks ahead and the content needs to be developed and approved before it can finally arrive in my in-box, however what it showed me was that to really peak someone's interest a communication needs to be relevant and quite often relevance will be time related – what is relevant today (a snow related email) will not be relevant next week when it has all melted (I hope).

Slapping a last minute "Snowed in?" at the front of a standard email isn't relevance – it made me open it I grant you – but it actually disappointed me more as it smacked of "lipstick on a pig" – not that their overall email was that bad, it just wasn't what I was expecting and wasn't relevant.

Standing out from the crowd can be a scary prospect though - it may require risky and new approaches - dare I say... innovation - and in these uncertain times this is something many brands are shying away from. Instead they are going with the tried and tested methods they have used before.

Tom Fishburne picked up on this theme in his blog entry "Blend into the herd" where he said that the first projects to get cut are the speculative ones - the innovative ones - as brands attempt to batten down the hatches. Instead though he points out that forward thinking brands should see this as an opportunity - as all around are trying to blend into the herd the ones which can react the quickest and offer something truly unique have the potential to not only survive but to thrive.

If marketers want to gain attention at a time when people are increasingly overwhelmed with information and are filtering out messages more and more then the message needs to be remarkable – it needs to stand out from the crowd – it needs to make me stop what I'm doing - it needs to be a Purple Cow.

I am not a number - I am a free man (or woman)

Marketing to baby boomers is an interesting issue. Previously brands trying to attract an older audience could simply put an older person in the advert with an attractive pen or carriage clock and watch the customers pile in… well that was probably never true, but more recently the "older" generation has changed – it no longer considers itself "old" – age is just a number.

This really came home to me a couple of weeks ago when I was looking over some work we did for a financial services brand in the US. The brand had successfully communicated what it was about – telling people that it had products and services aimed at an older audience – the problem was its target audience of over 50's didn't consider themselves old and thought it was for someone "older".

This seems to be an increasing problem for brands looking to market to older customers, especially where these brands already have an established older customer base which they need to retain, but want to continue to attract new customers. A brand tackling this head-on is coffee & tea merchant Taylors of Harrogate - the ground coffee market has a skew to over 45's, so how do you make the brand relevant to new customers without alienating the existing customer base.

Taylors have done this with the introduction of new campaign, "The Coffee of Choice" which has a more edgy creative feel than the traditional corporate Taylors of Harrogate site and matches perfectly to their recent above the line creative. A tie up with Classic FM is helping to ensure the message reaches their target audience, but the creative is helping to make the brand stand-out and seem more relevant. This has been combined with a great selection of ground coffees which are packaged by occasion and blend – helping to appeal to both the new coffee consumer and the more established coffee connoisseur.

Nintendo has been targeting this market as well, but unlike Taylors who had an established audience; Nintendo was trying to create a market from the ground-up. Since the launch of the Wii and subsequently the Wii fit, demand has outstripped supply and the console has been propelled to pole position, with sales greater than both the XBOX360 and the PS3. This is largely down to the introduction of the gaming console to new segments – including the over 50's – or as Nintendo puts it "moving into the blue ocean", based on the book Blue Ocean Strategy. The advertising for the Wii isn't aimed at any particular age demographic and instead shows families interacting and playing with the console – something that is attractive to both parents and grandparents. The DS handheld console however has different celebrity endorsements to appeal to specific market segments, using Fern and Holly and Girls Aloud for the hard to reach younger female market and Nicole Kidman, Ronan Keating and Patrick Stewart for the older demographic with Brain Training.

With 80% of the UK's wealth and representing over 50% of the population by 2020, the over 50's are not a niche segment that can be communicated to using a one-size-fits-all approach. In fact, age based demographics are becoming increasingly less relevant – to create relevance a communication really needs to be personalised and to personalise something needs behaviours. Having communications based on how a customer behaves rather than when they were born will always create greater cut-through.

The brands that win here will be the ones that truly know their customers.