Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

The Dr. Needs to Pay a House Call to Hill Country

Yesterday I gorged myself at the new authentic Texas barbecue joint in Manhattan, Hill Country (read a writeup from Urban Daddy for more dirt; thanks to Jay Kolbe of Weber Shandwick for the meal). While I'm not a native of Texas, it's become an adopted home state of mine, and I've learned a few things about the Lone Star State:

1. You can't go three feet out of Dallas or Austin without seeing the Texas flag flying proudly.
2. You're either a Longhorn or an Aggie. There's no middle ground. And your fate's decided from birth (or from your first trip to Texas - it was then I learned I'm a Longhorn).
3. Never, ever eat at Bush's chicken, unless you want a survival story to tell your grandkids some day.
4. Real Dr. Pepper is made with Imperial cane sugar, not corn syrup (it's sometimes referred to as Dublin Dr. Pepper from the Dublin, TX plant where much of it is bottled).

At Hill Country, you head to various stations - meat carving, sides, dessert, and drinks - and fill up your tray as you go. I was excited to see they had Dr. Pepper, thinking they might be this oasis of sugar cane sweetness you just can't find many places, even in Texas. If you want it the real way, your best bet is the Dr. Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute in Waco (the museum even has a MySpace profile) or Sprinkles cupcakes in Dallas (its first location outside of LA).

Sure enough, at Hill Country the woman serving up drinks was totally confused when I asked if the good Dr. had cane sugar in it. You'll find it's served in a can with high fructose corn syrup, just like you can get at the 7-11 a few blocks away. If they can serve brisket on butcher paper and their perfectly sweet and slightly minty iced tea in mason jars, they can go the extra mile to serve the real Dr. Pepper so they'll have customers coming back to drink it at 10, 2, and 4.

Unnecessary Dairy Overlap

Here's a great example of user-generated brand feedback from Left-Handed Toons, via Ad Age:

          

Continental Copes with Predictability

My flight to LA today is delayed nearly two hours for "Mandatory Crew Rest." I'm all for well-rested crews, but couldn't someone have thought to build that into the schedule so a couple hundred people wouldn't have to wake up before dawn to catch their flight?

Evangelists of the World, Unite

At the Web 2.0 Expo this week, one title kept popping up on business cards: Evangelist. All the evangelists I met are from companies that have quite a few evangelists in their own right: Salesforce, Yahoo, LinkedIn. The best moment was when I took a detour to Google's Mountain View headquarters on Wednesday and met an in-house evangelist there. I had to ask him the first question that crossed my mind: "Doesn't everybody love you? How could Google need an evangelist?"

I've met corporate evangelists before. Most of the best I've met never had that title. eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey, my old boss, is the perfect example. He lives the brand. He's so passionate about charts, stats, data - dry stuff, unless you really think about how you use it. Any time I see him present - and I've been to dozens of his speeches by now - I get excited about what he's doing.

As far as I can recall, he's never had evangelist as a title. CEO works pretty well. I've never had the title either, but I like to think that in any organization I've been a part of for at least a year (including businesses as well as others, like the Binghamton University Alumni Association Board, or MediaPost, where I've published columns weekly since June 2004), evangelism has been an important part of the job. Shouldn't everyone see themselves as a chief evangelist?

That's not to downplay the need for dedicated evangelists - those who can look across a massive organization and mine all the great things it's doing and then spread the word about them. Though I haven't talked to many evangelists in depth about their jobs, they should also be empowered to be open about what isn't yet ripe for evangelism and find ways to make that better. I'm curious what happens when they run into those situations, when there's something they find that they wouldn't want to shout from the rooftops - do they have a strong enough voice internally to right the ship?

It's also a funny term linguistically in the sense that calling someone a preacher, imam, proselytizer, or other terms steeped in religious traditions wouldn't quite work. Yet "evangelist" has gone the way of "saint," with its religious undertones stripped from it.

Maybe they shouldn't be though. Working for a company is usually a test of faith, if you're devoted to it. An evangelist is always going to find things that they see as heretical to their corporate gospels. Yet you don't need to live, breathe, and love every page of your gospel - whether it's in a more literal sense, or whether it's a corporate handbook or 10K form - to find truth in it.

If a company does put the title "evangelist" on one person's business card, it better not be placing all the evangelism responsibilities on him or her alone. It takes a full organization of evangelists to succeed - though it never hurts to have one person whose focus day in, day out is to lead the charge.

Seeking Answers from Yahoo Answers

Yahoo Answers has some explaining to do.

Over the past several months, I've asked 13 questions on the site, as at first I was impressed by the community response. My most recent question asked for help in getting a Slingbox to work, since it won't work with the Ambit wireless modem I have with Time Warner Cable (as an aside, please let me know if you've had similar issues and know if it's hopeless or if there's a fix; I'm about ready to send back the Slingbox). This question on the Slingbox, and four others, have recently been removed by Yahoo Answers, apparently for violating its community guidelines.

The other questions included such "offensive" material such as:
* Wondering what others thought of a certain TV show (and a PG show on basic cable, for what it's worth)
* How people value inbound links for SEO, in doing research for a recent column
* Seeking the best vacation guide anyone has seen in Yahoo Travel
* Asking for any insight into a business service, as someone asked me what I thought of it and I hadn't heard of it

Eight other questions remain on the site, for now. Though it's possible they'll be gone too, including one seeking help in changing a setting on my Motorola KRAZR phone. Why that's up and my Slingbox question is down makes no sense to me whatsoever. But what do I know?

I tried emailing Yahoo through a link in its help materials, but the page was down. I also posted a message in their forums. I'm not expecting an adequate response, but I'd love to hear from others in the blogging community if they've faced similar problems. There are dozens of other Q&A services out there, and if Yahoo gets trigger happy with filtering, then it won't dominate this category indefinitely.

I've also included my interpretation of their wallpaper below (click to enlarge).

Nintendo's Blog-Worthy Service

I've posted a few rants about customer service gone wrong. Via Digg, I found an amazing example of how Nintendo does it right - ridiculously so. This is just the icing on the cake for making the Wii the Barack Obama of game consoles. I'd quote it, but you just have to read the quick story start to finish.

Service with a Style - Bongenre

I just moved within Manhattan to the Upper East Side. I wanted to get Cara a housewarming gift, and she gave me a great idea. She read an article in Crain's NY Business about tableware from Bongenre that was both elegantly designed and also plastic. We're both prone to the occasional (okay, for me, more than occasional) household accident, so having some dishes that might last awhile in our apartment is a plus.

I'm not much of a design junkie, especially when it comes to tableware patterns, but I was impressed with these, and Cara's favorite, Clarissa's Picnic (shown at right), was a great one.

After I ordered the gift, I needed to get in touch with Bongenre.com for a few reasons, first to check on the order, then to confirm the date I needed the plates (they're so popular, that pattern in particular is sometimes on backorder). All in all, I had a few lengthy email exchanges with Bongenre designer Jill Fenichell, and she could not have been more courteous. I also couldn't believe that any time I'd write, she'd respond within minutes.

I'm sure with some of the PR she's getting, and with the quality of the products, I'm hardly her only customer, but I always felt like I was, and it's an unbelievable experience, one I never have when shopping through Amazon, FreshDirect, or the countless other online retailers I frequent.

For that, I can't resist plugging Bongenre's tableware here; it's fun to have a forum to spread the word share this with others.

PS: I gave Cara the gift right when we moved in, as soon as the movers left, and she's always excited when we use them. I'll even admit they brighten up the place considerably.

Not So Fast

FastCompany rang me this evening saying I'm a "preferred customer" and that in return, they'd like to lock me in at their lowest-ever rate of $1.25 per issue for a five-year subscription.

When the representative finished, I told her, "While I was on the phone with you, I found a better deal online for $1 an issue, and that was at the first website I went to." She was stunned, and then wished me a good day.

Of course, the different arms of your marketing organization aren't siloed like that, right?

Thought so.

Marketers Studio vs. Blockbuster, Part I

An epic saga in the making... or a box office dud. Regardless, Marketers Studio is angrier than Kong.

Marketers Studio went to Blockbuster tonight to try to rent the DVD of the original King Kong but left the Blockbuster card at home. Upon approaching the counter, my membership wasn't on file since I hadn't rented a movie in over three months, and then they reminded me why they're bleeding market share to rivals such as Netflix, Tivo, and the cable giants.

I wasn't allowed to apply for membership (even though I already am a member) with only a debit card and driver's license. I'm able to take up an address in Manhattan but can't rent a $4 movie. This is bordering on the absurd, and it's a customer service policy that signifies bigger problems. This one policy alone could be considered an anomaly; I know I'm a rare outlier with my preference for debit or bust. But if I'm Blockbuster, I'd want to use this as a learning experience to say, "What obstacles are we putting in our way that prevent us from acquiring new customers?"