Thursday August 03, 2006

Don't miss the Dave Norton experience

I had a chance to see Dave Norton of Stone Mantel present at last year's ridiculously insightful Experience Architecture Forum at Harvard and have had the chance to follow up with him since. He has a great take on what it means for brands to communicate by experience-making in ways that are both relevant and resonant.

Well now, here's your chance to learn more: Dave's giving a two-day seminar through the DMI: Strategies for Designing Meaningful Brand Experiences. The dates: September 8-9 in NY; October 19-20 in L.A.

By all means, highly recommended. And by the way, if you're anywhere near Boston, drop in on Greg Beck and the EA @ Harvard TODAY or tomorrow if you can to say hello and meet the architects behind today's (and tomorrow's) most compelling physical experiences.

( Aug 03 2006, 12:05:45 PM PDT ) Permalink

Monday July 17, 2006

Whole Foods: The Upward Flow of Human Development

Wow. Three things I never expected to hear from the CEO of a leading, publicly traded grocery chain:

"Sprial dynamics is a bio-pshycho-social-spiritual framework..."

"The creation of animal 'factory farms' has greatly lowered the costs of all animal products, but it has come at a tremendous cost in animal welfare."

"We are all connected together in an upward spiral flow toward greater health, happiness, peace, love, and ecological sustainability."

...and yet it's so. Whole Foods's bloggin' CEO John Mackey goes deep. Warning text-scanners: print this out, as it'll probably be the most interesting thing you read this week.

( Jul 17 2006, 04:49:09 PM PDT ) Permalink

Tuesday November 22, 2005

CMO Magazine: Experience Preferred

CMO has a useful blurb on what IBM, Deluxe, Fuse Networks and Hilton Hotels are doing to prodvide a better experience for their customers. What I'm digging in this piece is that they're reiterating the notion that it doesn't take much to provide a value-add moment, one that differentiates you from your competitors and also brings home the bacon.

[Sidebar: 10 Ways to Create and Manage Experiences]

Hilton looks inward

In Hilton's case, the firm found that despite its brand mantra of "be my guest," none of the visitors to its corporate HQ felt very welcome:

"We're in the hospitality business, but there was no sense of hospitality at all," says Phil Cordell, senior vice president of brand management for Hilton's Hampton Inns. The corporate offices, he says, "are buildings that could have been for a computer company or an insurance company."

Working with consultancy FRCH, Hilton redesigned its welcome lobby to create an experience that told the brand story. The project took less than five months, from idea to execution. A key step was to hire a full-time greeter (a reassigned security guard) who welcomes guests in the waiting area and verifies their appointment. Instead of numbered tags, guests now have a quick photo taken and are given a personalized name tag. In the case of especially important guests, the greeter is informed ahead of time and prepared with a photo so that he recognizes the visitors upon arrival and can greet them accordingly.

OK, nice idea, but...hospitality's really a slam dunk, isn't it? After all, a bad experience in the hospitality biz is sort of a transparent no-brainer...poor experience clearly equates to poor revenues. Which is why we need to commend Deluxe -- that's right, the checks people -- for creating their own revenue opportunities based on "experience." Here's the story:

Deluxe gives good phone

Deluxe recently discovered that people have a stronger affinity for personalized checks that most of its managers had been aware of. So Deluxe capitalized on that opportunity. They trained their call center to create a "retail experience" on the phone for willing bank customers...

They recruited existing clients—some of the country's largest banks—to join the program. Now, instead of bank managers distributing plain checks and check catalogs to customers, the managers direct customers to Deluxe's call center to reorder checks. Deluxe has trained its call center employees to create "an upbeat, permission-based environment on the phone," says Feltz. "People were trained to respond to individual interests. We call it 'comfortable indulgence.'"

The results were impressive: Initial studies showed that 72 percent of bank customers who purchased checks through the call center said the experience reflected positively on the bank's brand. Moreover, participating banks' margins for checks experienced an average lift of 40 percent to 50 percent. "We found that if we can create more consciousness around the experience, it has ROI," says Feltz.

But the brand remodeling didn't end there. The pilot was such a hit that Deluxe invited executive bankers out to its Phoenix call center for training in enhancing the client experience. The call center has since evolved into a showcase of Deluxe's experiential expertise, providing up to 60 bank tours a year.

The icing on the cake: Deluxe's marketing department, which executed the changes developed by Feltz and the executive team, has reallocated 1.5 percent of company revenue out of its ad budget to support the shift. "Our marketing group has gone from a staff function of product management to one of the leaders of our strategy development," says Feltz. "It's put them in the forefront."

Marketing as strategic weapon

How about them apples: new revenue opportunities through the...marketing group? Talk about a liberated culture. Makes me almost want to start writing checks again, but I happily killed that habit years ago.

(Which makes me wonder what Deluxe's plans are, given a presumably declining check-writing population. For another day, good friends of the Internets!)

( Nov 22 2005, 03:00:17 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Thursday October 27, 2005

Coffee and beer: explore your inner connoisseur

Cool bevvies are hot and the warm beverages are cool this week, if recent trends spotted in this week's press are any indication.

First on Sunday came the news in the NYT about Illy's "pop-up cafe" (or "coffee themeland" this week in SoHo -- a temporary cafe/museum/educational space intended exclusively for the sake of brand-building. Let me restate that: the Illy cafe is not being built to make money. Revenue is not a key driver of this space. Rather long-term relationships with Illy's market and specifically their brand are Illy's goal.

Here's the scoop from Sunday's New York Times: Situated on West Broadway in SoHo, in a 3,500-square-foot, two-story space formerly occupied by Dom New York, an eccentric housewares store, Galleria Illy is a sort of coffee themeland. It is divided into an art gallery, library, classroom and espresso bar. Nothing beyond desserts and coffee drinks - including a $2 espresso and a $5 cappuccino - can be bought for immediate gratification, though many products, including the company's distinctive vacuum-packed canisters of coffee, can be ordered from computer kiosks in the store.

Scheduled to close on Dec. 15, after just three months of operation, Galleria Illy is what is known as a pop-up store. But its soft-sell approach - centered more on branding than on profit making - thrusts it into the vanguard of temporary retailing. (In Illy's case, it is an effort to connect the company's coffee to high art and culture.)

Big applause to anyone willing to front a vision like this -- I'm happy to clap for any organization that's willing to step up and go beyond the immediate pack of trinkets, widgets and shiny spinning pinwheels for the sake of conversing with customers rather than speaking at them and expecting manna from gleefully open wallets in return.

[Which prompts the possibly troubling transitional question: today, now, at this moment, are your marketing efforts, product-development initiatives or advertising programs of the spinning-wheel, short-term buzz-generating sort, or are you working on something a little more holistic, er, meaningful, er, sustainable for the long haul? Or am I just full of BS, oversimplifying the issues? Anything's likely, but the truth shouldn't be hard to uncover.]

Moving from the hot to cold, Wednesday's Wall Street Journal (sorry, no link/print readers or online subscribers only) had a nifty article on beer glasses at pubs: some European brewers and distributors are finally catching on to the value of presentation at the bar, and they're pushing branded swillmugs to go along with their beers. They're offering their own glasses to pubs at a major discount (compared to pint-glass prices) and occasionally give the stuff away.

It's one of those ideas that's long overdue: if men traditionally drink from the pint and women are tempted by the somewhat sexier, sleeker look of a nice cocktail, why should premium beers be relegated to the land of the ages-old pint glass? Speaking as a craft-brewing male from Oregon (read: we pretend to take this stuff seriously), I'd have to say that many of my own beers don't belong on a shelf aside a can of Blatz -- it's my handmade, finely tuned creation, and to have it downed in a few simple moments without a hint of magic in the consumption is a crime.

Apparently some brewers like Leffe and Hoegaarden are feeling the same way. Fortunately for them they have an opportunity to pursue the magic of the brand beyond means of the tongue.

Quick takeaways from the WSJ article: smaller glasses appeal to a crowd that may not normally want a full pint; aromatic brews are much more likely to be appreciated if the glass has a full-bodied bowl shape, suited for sensory stimulating pre-drink whiffing; and the sexier the glass, the higher the perceived level of quality. Which means it's likely that people are willig to, um, pay more.

Bonus: the glass-proud beer companies are rewarding bartenders who complete training courses which tout their beer's finer qualities; audits are performed by mystery shoppers/drinkers, and when a barkeep articulates particularly acute knowledge of Brand X's brew, they're rewarded on the spot with big-ticket gifts like a hi-end home audio system.

If you're smelling a pattern, we're drinking the same stuff: the bigger picture here shows a movement away from consumers as simple customers and towards consumers as connoisseurs. Coffee and beer? That's just the beginning. You and I could probably sit down for a nice lunch conversation around the notion of connoisseur as a measure of status -- 'cuz that's really what this is all about -- but I'll let it roast/brew/steep for you to reflect on. At the end of the day, tho, these guys are finding ways to get to that little expert inside all of us who's just waiting to bloom. And they're doing it in mighty tasty fashion. I'll drink to that.

(And...sure, I'll glady pay a premium for it, too.)

( Oct 27 2005, 06:30:30 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Monday October 03, 2005

Point. Click. Watch. It's the Sun Brand Summit...

...and it's now available in streaming media for your perusal.

Recap: the first-ever Sun Brand Summit was a gathering of some of the world's foremost brand thinkers and practicioners, and they gathered with over 300 of us in Sun's Santa Clara auditorium in late September to start a conversation. About brand. About the future. About Sun's place in the world. And about companies that get it and those that don't.

This was the first such gathering of its kind at Sun, and I'm thrilled to say that it won't be the last. Why? Because this flat-out kicked ass. In fact, many of us who have been to similar (expensive!) conferences in recent months believe that the content, speakers and production for the Sun Brand Summit far eclipsed most those other conferences.

Click on over to view the full conference to see what I'm talking about. Then get in line for our next shin-dig.

Special kudos to Bruce Lee for making it all happen.

( Oct 03 2005, 12:50:36 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Thursday September 08, 2005

Free Webcast: Seamless Customer Experience

I like the folks over at MarketingProfs.com. Sure, they humor me on occasion by publishing some of my stuff, but more importantly their articles are often a step above the noise that's typically floating in the marketingsphere. Many of their pieces provide a great case for why all of us (whether we're in engineering, product development, facilities or sales) play a not only an important role in creating value for our companies, but a connected role, too -- because in your paying cutomer's view, no company individual or department is an island.

That said, MarketingProfs.com's Allen Weiss is giving a free webcast on September 22: "Busting Silos: Create a Seamless Customer Experience." Expectations are high. Consider clicking on over.

( Sep 08 2005, 09:30:27 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Wednesday August 31, 2005

Sneak Preview: Douglas Rushkoff's Latest

Experience Manifesto gives us a nice teaser of the upcoming Douglas Rushkoff book:

American enterprise, in particular, is at a crossroads. Having for too long replaced innovation with acquisitions, tactics, efficiencies, and ad campaigns, many businesses have dangerously lost touch with the process – and fun - of discovery.

”American companies are obsessed with window dressing,” Rushkoff writes, “because they're reluctant, no, afraid to look at whatever it is they really do and evaluate it from the inside out. When things are down, CEO's look to consultants and marketers to rethink, re-brand or repackage whatever it is they are selling, when they should be getting back on the factory floor, into the stores, or out to the research labs where their product is actually made, sold, or conceived.”

( Aug 31 2005, 11:16:48 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Friday August 19, 2005

A few words on desire

Matt Zellmer is starting a conversation about "brand experience." Check it out, and join the fray.

On a related note, yesterday Matt and I had an interesting conversation about desire. And specifically about the BMW Mini. Work with me here: Matt has a family of five. He lives in the mountains of Colorado and has always opted for the larger, SUV-type vehicles. There's no practical reason for Matt to want a Mini, yet he's losing sleep at night trying to figure out how he can get his hands on one (and still stay happily married, my editorial added ;-)

All of this, of course, just screams of an incredible, holistic brand experience: in my opinion, he doesn't want the car at all -- he wants the design values that went into the car, to be sure, but perhaps more importantly he also wants the whole breadth of experience that comes with the car. Starting with its reputation, its hip factor, its pre-sales "configure your own" website, its magical delivery experience. That's what he wants and is willing to pay for: the complete experience.

Again: he doesn't want the car. He wants the experience.

But what he pays for is the car. Which leads us to a question: what's he really buying?

Athe end of the day some companies (and certainly most car companies) think they sell "goods." The product is what people actually fork over money for, so it's what most companies focus on. Product managers in such firms could easily look at a spreadsheet of sales figures and get a sense of their company's health, and choose to do reactionary things like offer an "employee discount" as an incentive to get people to buy cars that as exciting as a cow pissing on a flat rock.

But what's really being sold are attention and relationships that span all those touchpoints over in Matt's map, from advertising to followup. Driving that institutional change is a very hard thing to orchestrate within a company. But it's also very much worth it...in the case of BMW, it's part of what's generated insane demand for their Mini Cooper. It's also why they'll never have to offer a sales gimmick like an employee discount anytime soon.

( Aug 19 2005, 09:16:37 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Wednesday August 10, 2005

Non-YAMB Wednesday

Today's the day: Experience Architecture at Harvard. Exciting stuff. Given that, I'm officially declaring this a "Non-YAMB Wednesday." (Why not. After all, "worst moniker ever made for a Wednesday dot com" wasn't available at NetSol.)

We'll get to YAMB in a moment. Here's where our connection begins: today Smart Money recommends Whole Foods stock, specifically because they're more than just a supermarket:

"The main reason people shop at Whole Foods, and are willing to pay more for the experience, is that it's fun. When you think about it, the Whole Foods concept is pretty revolutionary. It's reinventing food retailing, and might change agriculture...Wall Street analysts tend to think of it as a supermarket chain, which is myopic. Whole Foods is competing not just with the old-line supermarkets, but also with restaurants, catering businesses, coffee bars and chains like Starbucks, wine and beverage retailers, and even cosmetics sellers. Whole Foods is becoming what the department store was in its heyday — a destination, a meeting place, a community center, a town square."

I agree with the assessment of WF, and I'm immediately led to think about how they got where they are (they had a vision that they're realizing on most levels in their organization). Or perhaps more importantly how they didn't get where they are. And it wasn't by relying on surveys to drive "voice-of-customer" data.

Come again? Well if you sat down with most very smart, able-minded people what their "ideal" grocery store would be like, most of the time they'd recommend what should go in the aisles and exactly how those aisles should be laid out. And voila, you'd have a nice assembly-line supermarket in the end, fancy logo and all.

If you ran a survey past potential customers querying them on what they want, the results might be high on things like "organic milk" and "friendly staff" and again, you'd wind up with a shiny, factory-made grocery store, ready to go.

You would get a Yet Another Myopic Business (YAMB). You wouldn't get a revolutionary place like Whole Foods. Somewhere in Texas a very bright person had an idea and they were armed with deep knowledge of what turns customers on -- much deeper than anything generated by most surveys, which work on the assumption that most people can adequately articulate what they want, what they'd need and what they're willing to pay for.

Just like focus groups or any other feedback tool, surveys have their place and can be useful for certain things. But far too often they're relied upon as a tool by you, me, our peers and coworkers for creating vision and driving requirements...which can only lead to YAMB.

Stop. Just stop. Take a breather and ask yourself this: if we hadn't been doing things this way all along, and had a chance to start over, how would we do things differently?

Those folks at Whole Foods, Google and Starbucks were willing to take a hard look at themselves (or their industries) and answer that question in a potentially painful way. Obviously it's paying off.

Back in my Carbon IQ days we developed a reference tool that was essentially a cheat sheet for getting inside your customers' heads. (Have at it.) It contains a lot of the methodologies that got some of these better companies where they are today. I'm going to pull that out again and take a look at how it can apply specifically to designing customer-facing spaces, which is where I'm focused these days.

Meanwhile, we all need to be asking ourselves about where we're headed and what tools we'll use to get there.

Whatever it takes to avoid YAMB.

( Aug 10 2005, 04:56:41 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Friday July 08, 2005

The business ripple from a fancypants outfit

Some airlines are seeing dollar signs all over their employees' bods. Come again? Despite a total lack of ability to differentiate (my take), some airlines such as Delta are starting to realize that some simple, small changes -- like a sleek new uniform -- can affect employees' attitudes and quell customer tensions.

As seen over at USA Today (the lackluster paper of decent hotels everywhere -- what an opportunity for hotels...anyway...): Airlines hope new fashions make financial statement: "Marketing and security aren't the only drivers behind the makeovers. Delta, Air France and Korean Air believe that a suitcase full of new clothes will lift employees' spirits, which can improve passenger service." More power to 'em. hey, if it can work for cops, hospital orderlies and the Wal-Mart greeters, then uni-as-brand can work for airlines, too. Here's to hoping they get it right.

( Jul 08 2005, 08:45:28 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [3]

Thursday June 16, 2005

Acting like a designer?

Dan Pink has some pointers for businessfolks on "how to think like a designer" in FC.

Fun stuff. But hey, while we're at it, let's flip the coin -- it's great to think up ways to extend our arms and bridge the divide, etc. It's another to create a useful conversation between business and design, and I think the onus for that falls on the role of the designer. It's almost exclusively their job need to frame the conversation in a way that makes design relevant to business. Yes, it's a bottom-line world after all, and we can't pretend we're not part of it.

Where to start? Why not with Harvard: Business Perspectives for Design Leaders kicks off in July. See you there?

( Jun 16 2005, 06:15:45 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Friday June 10, 2005

A business magazine all about design.

Last week Experience Manifesto pointed us to the latest issue of Fast Company, and after a week of insanely busy days and nights, I finally got a chance to flip through it yesterday during a flight back home. It was superlative -- I thought it was probably one of the most relevant issues, cover-to-cover of any magazine I've read in a while.

In fact, I think there's a lot worth talking about in that issue -- stuff that anyone in the design-as-differentiator business needs to read up on.

We're packing the family into the car for a work-related road trip next week. But in between Portland and Menlo Park I'll be throwing some of the magazine's more resonant blips on the blog for further reflection.

As a preview, I'm happy to point to Strategy by Design, by IDEO's Tim Brown. It's not that he's saying anything revolutionary, but rather that he does an excellent job of beating that drum we all need to hear. When I find myself, our team or my vendors falling into routines, it's always good to come across something as refreshing as this:

We look for people who are so inquisitive about the world that they're willing to try to do what you do. We call them "T-shaped people." They have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the T -- they're mechanical engineers or industrial designers. But they are so empathetic that they can branch out into other skills, such as anthropology, and do them as well. They are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behavior that point to a universal human need. That's what you're after at this point -- patterns that yield ideas.

These teams operate in a highly experiential manner. You don't put them in bland conference rooms and ask them to generate great ideas. You send them out into the world, and they return with many artifacts -- notes, photos, maybe even recordings of what they've seen and heard. The walls of their project rooms are soon plastered with imagery, diagrams, flow charts, and other ephemera. The entire team is engaged in collective idea-making: They explore observations very quickly and build on one another's insights. In this way, they generate richer, stronger ideas that are hardwired to the marketplace, because all of their observations come directly from the real world.

Enjoy the read. See you from the road.

( Jun 10 2005, 05:12:41 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

Friday June 03, 2005

Trust in a bottle

They've done it. They've finally found a way to put trust in a bottle.

Scientists found that people playing an investment game were more likely to trust others if they inhaled a nasal spray that contained oxytocin...

So, is there a danger that oxytocin could be misused by merchants trying to get you to believe pathetic sales pitches? Antonio Damasio, a neurologist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, told Nature.com that there shouldn't be much to worry about. In any event, advertising already appeals to the parts of your mind that produce oxytocin, he said.

"It lures you in with images of wonderful landscapes or sex, and it probably works in exactly the same way," Damasio told Nature.com.

( Jun 03 2005, 01:20:54 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Thursday June 02, 2005

Broken windows = broken business

Michael Levine has posted a potent preview of his upcoming book Broken Windows for Business / How the Smallest Remedies Reap the Biggest Rewards (due this fall). This baby could have legs -- if the book delivers as promised in its downloadable introduction, Levine may build the most digestible business case yet for improving customer-facing spaces. A few snippets follow...

The broken windows theory states that something as small and innocuous as a broken window does in fact send a signal to those who pass by every day. If it is left broken, the owner of the building isn't paying attention or doesn't care. That means more serious infractions -- theft, defacement, violent crime -- might be condoned in this area as well. At best, it signals that no one is watching.

Broken windows indicate to the consumer that the business doesn't care -- either that it is so poorly run it can't possibly keep up with its obligations or that it has become so oversize and arrogant that it no longer cares about its core consumer. Either of these impressions can be deadly to a business, and we'll see examples of both as we proceed.

A broken window can be a sloppy counter, a poorly located sale item, a randomly organized menu, or an employee with a bad attitude. It can be physical, like a faded, flaking paint job, or symbolic, like a policy that requires consumers to pay for customer service. When the waiter at a Chinese restaurant is named Billy Bob, that's a broken window. When a call for help assembling a bicycle results in a twenty-minute hold on the phone (playing the same music over and over), that's a broken window. When a consumer asks why she can't return her blouse at the counter and is told, "Because that's the rule, that is a broken window" ... They're everywhere. Except at the really sharp businesses.

Looking forward to the release.

( Jun 02 2005, 02:10:34 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

Think sexy -- at every point along the way

Want passionate users? Integrate sexiness into every aspect of your experience. Kathy Sierra makes a compelling case for holistic sexiness in any customer-facing interaction. It's something that designers of every stripe -- from product strategists to interaction designers to architects -- should heed.

Take the nearest computer book on your shelf and open it to a random interior page somewhere in the middle. Can you tell who the publisher is just by looking? Can you tell who the author is? Go a little further and start reading a paragraph. Now can you tell?

That's the problem.

The books might be easy to differentiate on a larger scale like, say, the level of a chapter or the whole book. A book from author "A" might cover the whole of the topic in a very different (and substantially better) way than author "B", but at smaller scales... can you tell the difference? Is there anything distinct about the look and feel? About the writing?

Physical products and experiences work the same way. I'm working to ensure that Sun's guest-facing environments benefit from a very similar treatment. Looking forward to seeing the fruits of these efforts realized.

( Jun 02 2005, 10:42:37 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]