Experience Manifesto

Burger King's Big Misstep - BusinessWeek

Not surprising that people are starting to questions how well the Burger King ads are working. If you go all the way back to Subservient Chicken, people in the ad industry have talked about what cool things they do, but we've always wondered whether or not they were having any impact with either the consumer or with their sales. But, what's really interested though, is when you read through the comments, you'll see how important the role of experience is in advertising.

burger king food is rally not that bad.but the place just yells sleezy at you as soon as you drive in the parking lot.its the whole package that needs redone. trh commenting on the Burger King article.

I've said here before, we eat at the Burger King in West Orange at least once/week. We like the food, true, but the main reason we go there is the indoor playground, a 3rd place for Sydney. She likes to go and play with other children and that's why we go. Although, she's starting to get a little old to keep playing there, but that's another (sad) story.

The Burger King we go to seems fairly clean and we go there oftern enough that they know us now, so that's nice. And I think that the staff is generally on their game. We've had the occasional mistake, but they take care of it right away.

Forget the commercials, better hire some people with half a brain that can acutally make the sandwiches. Last 6 orders I've made at the Spruce Pine, NC store weren't worth eating or not what I ordered. I'm tired of it. I like to get what I pay for and what I order. keril commenting on BusinessWeek article.

Nanette Byrnes, who wrote the article, made this comment while reading through all of the comments on the article:

I'm the author of the story and am reading this thread with great interest. It especially jumps out at me that a number of people who are negative on BK -- Cici and Terry among them -- actually think the food is better than McDonald's. Drive through is the biggest single business for both chains, so food would seem most important. But cleanliness is still a big negative for BK, and quality doesn't seem able to overcome that.

Yes, cleanliness is important to people in deciding where to eat, especially for children. Depending upon our tastes, we can put up with varying levels of cleanliness, I mean I eat street food, but we don't like our restaurants really dirty. And we want the staff to be able to handle our food requests.

Management at Burger King is trying to build the chain from the top down instead of how they should do it from the bottom up. The majority of the BK's in eastern OH, WV, and western PA (Pittsburgh) could care less if your sandwiches are cooked right. If I were to choose a burger from a fast food restaurant I would rather a Whopper than a McD burger of any kind. However BK needs to take some of those ad $$$'s and start training their help better to bring back the customers who have left for various reasons posted here. To BK the comments here seem to be constructive criticism read and then do something about your stores. Terry commenting on the Burger King article

See, here's the thing. NOTHING, not cool ads, or a great campaign on Twitter or doing some UGC on youtube overcomes a bad experience. There will always be people who don't like the ads you create, although I think the SpongeBob commercials were in very bad taste.

What people really dislike is when your your marketing tactics don't match your actual experience.

The other day I made the comment on Twitter that there is no such thing as WOMM, only people talking about great experiences. We really try to get our clients to understand that at the end of the day, your advertising tactics can enhance your brand, but it can never make up or replace for bad experiences.

Burger King (BKC) gets a lot of buzz for its irreverent, often sexy ads. There's the "manthem," sung by men turning up their noses at "chick food" to get their hands on a Texas Double Whopper, and its Texican Whopper commercial featuring a short man in a colorful cape who's simply known as "a little spicy Mexican." This spring, the company has run a TV ad tie-in with SpongeBob SquarePants in which the fast-food chain's mascot, "The King," dances alongside curvy women with rectangular derrieres.

Chuckles and kudos aside, CEO John W. Chidsey now has a problem. He has missed a sharp turn in consumer spending and sentiment. While competitors like McDonald's (MCD) blanketed the market with dollar deals this spring, Burger King stuck with ads that wooed its male "superfans"—and alienated thousands of parents. And sales in April alone show the results: a 7% rise for McDonald's as Burger King revenues remained weak in many markets after a dramatic fall in March. "That caught us a bit off guard," admits Chidsey, 46.

Burger King's Big Misstep - BusinessWeek.

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Jaffe Juice: Bloggers v Bloggers (your comments welcome)

This is one of the stories that bloggers have been talking about the past few days and I've been catching up on all of the threads tonight. There's also been some discussions about the Nikon D80 blogger give away (full disclosure, I wasn't one of the blogger who received a D80 and I'm pretty bummed about it! Damn, what do I need to do to get on these lists???) and how it should be played in the blogosphere. But these kind of stories continue to raise issues about the rules and working of blogs and how, if at all, they should fit into the traditional world of main stream media.

So, let's start with what happened with Deborah Weil and the alliConnect blog. It seems that they weren't getting enough comments on the site and Debbie Weil was hired by GSK (more disclosure, we've worked with GSK in the past and I'm kinda' bummed they didn't call us about this!) to help boost the conversation. So, here's what Debbie sent out to bloggers show knew:

Hi everyone,

This is a shameless request. I'm working with GlaxoSmithKline on the official corporate blog for alli, the first FDA-approved, OTC weight loss product. You may have seen the TV ads.

While traffic to the blog is growing, readers seem shy about leaving Comments.

You can help jump start the two-way conversation! Take a peek at the blog at http://www.alliconnect.com.

If you're inspired or provoked, leave a comment on any entry. No need to say that you know me, of course. (Emphasis mine, DBP)

It really is kind of neat that a Global 100 company is doing a blog like this. It's not easy.

Now, I send out stories from our blog to other bloggers to both increase the conversation and increase traffic, so that by itself is not really all that unusual. But, there are two things that do make it a little unusual.

1. Asking people to post comments on a client blog, especially when they may or may not have any relation to the product. So, when I send out something to fellow bloggers, I know that their POV will be of interest to my readers. And I do really want a conversation, so whether or not people agree with me is not as important to me as having a good dialogue. But, unless I'm trying to lose weight or I'm using Alli, then what's my credibility to comment on the blog? And what's the value of comments when they have no value to the blog? I have to turn on comment authentication every few months just to stop blog spam. Wasn't Debbie in fact, inviting blog spam?
2. But the thing that seemed to get people really upset was when she said No need to say that you know me, of course. I don't understand why Debbie would've even mentioned that, it just creates the wrong perception of what she was trying to do.

Debbie posts her side of the story here, but I think she's missed the two important above. It's OK to send a note saying Hey, take a look at what I've written and post your thoughts, but that's not really what she asked people to do. She didn't ask fellow bloggers to critique the blog and give her ideas for improvement. She asked people to post comments on the blog as if they were actually commenting on the effectiveness of Alli.

With Nikon, they gave the D80 to a bunch of bloggers and really didn't ask them to do anything is return. They were clearly hoping to get bloggers to do posts both about the camera and with the camera. You may remember that Microsoft faced some controversy earlier this year when they sent some high end laptops loaded with Vista to blogger to get them to write about Vista.

As with the Alli blog above, the issue always seems to come back to transparency. If you disclose that you've received the product for review and then you review it, hey, that's OK. It's only when you don't disclose the potential relationship that trouble can start. On the other hand, brands have used celebrity spokespeople for years and most times we didn’t believe they actually used the product. Is it OK for bloggers to do the same thing?

But, to stir the pot just a little, there's an interesting thing happening in the blogosphere. There seems to be a fluid set of rules and, many people saying there shouldn't be rules at all. Hey, it's the internet, man! But let me ask this question -- what's so new about blogs? Is it just that they're instant and global? Is there really something fundamentally different that blogs do then what was available PB (pre-blog)?

We like to talk about how much better we are then MSM, but we don't want to have to play by their rules and that's not really fair, is it? If MSM have rules about how they handle review samples, then why don't they apply to bloggers as well? If disclosure is necessary for MSM, then shouldn't it be required of bloggers? Why do we need a new set of rules just because we're bloggers?

Now, I never seem to be able to get people to comment here no matter what I do, so let's see if this post gets some dialogue going. Should there be a different set of rules for bloggers and MSM? What's the real role of transparency in media? And what about Naomi? Extra points if you know where that reference is from!

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Link: BlogWrite for CEOs: Using the backchannel of email to invite Comments on your blog.

Link: Jaffe Juice: Bloggers v Bloggers (your comments welcome).

Link: Blogging: Who Makes Up the Rules?.

Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality

This is a great example of the difference between advertising and the actual experience of the brand. Thanks to things like the internet, we can not only document things like this, but share them with the whole world in an instant Ad brands don't know how to handle this kind of criticism. And what it most surprising is how quickly companies cut their staff, which is the way to combat this kind of problem. Make sure you check out the pictures and feel free to post your own picture pairs and let’s see if we can get lots more of them going. Thanks to AdPulp for the tip!

Each item was purchased, taken home, and photographed immediately. Nothing was tampered with, run over by a car, or anything of the sort. It is an accurate representation in every case. Shiny, neon-orange, liquefied pump-cheese, and all.

Link: Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality.

MediaPost Publications - Doritos Brand Chief Plugs Authenticity, Reveals Next Online Play - 03/20/2007

More brands joining the authenticity conversation!

MARKETERS NEED to "get real" and acknowledge that marketing isn't merely advertising and communication: It's about "building a relationship with consumers," according to Jason McDonell, director of marketing for Frito-Lay's Doritos brand.

Doritos, McDonell said, learned that its target consumer--16 to 24-year-olds--embrace self-expression, independence, and something he called "belongingness"--the desire to belong to something. Doritos learned that the target lives a "hyperlife" (life on a multitasking, 24/7 basis); likes creative control and evidence of its own creative DNA (it wants a stage to perform on); and craves authenticity, reality, and relevance (We've been talking about authentic, relevant compelling for years! DBP). These consumer insights were critical to establishing the framework for Doritos' consumer-generated Super Bowl challenge.

Link: MediaPost Publications - Doritos Brand Chief Plugs Authenticity, Reveals Next Online Play - 03/20/2007.

Fake bloggers soon to be "named and shamed" - News-Politics-TimesOnline

I came across this story on a couple of blogs tonight and it speaks to two of our predictions for '07, authenticity and the advertising backlash. I personally think its cool for companies to have fake blogs, but they have to be really fake. Like, if I were reading a blog by Snidely Whiplash about his plans for the lovely Nell, I'd be cool with it.

But, I think that there's a real, fine line between creating character or brand blog and creating a flog. Intent is one of the factors that makes it a line crossed. Is it your intent to deceive people? If so, then you’ve crossed the line. But if it weren’t for the fact that so many companies are ready to deceive their customers, then laws like this would not be necessary.

Hotels, restaurants and online shops that post glowing reviews about themselves under false identities could face criminal prosecution under new rules that come into force next year.

Businesses which write fake blog entries or create whole wesbites purporting to be from customers will fall foul of a European directive banning them from “falsely representing oneself as a consumer”.

From December 31, when the change becomes law in the UK, they can be named and shamed by trading standards or taken to court. The Times has learnt that the new regulations also will apply to authors who praise their own books under a fake identity on websites such as Amazon.

Online consumer reviews are playing an ever greater role in shaping shopping habits, with websites such as TripAdvisor for the travel industry being seen as increasingly influential.

However, a string of businessman in the UK and the US have been caught posing as supposedly independent customers in an attempt to boost sales.

Link: Fake bloggers soon to be "named and shamed" -News-Politics-TimesOnline.

Link: Kinetic Ideas: Marketing Blog -- EU Makes Sock-Puppet Blogs Illegal Small Business Marketing Ideas, Marketing Tips.

This Blog Sits at the: How Vince really feels about Jen (secrets revealed?)

Another take on authenticity from Grant McCracken. He’s got a number of really great essays on his blog, so take some time and and do some reading!

We can see why authentic is overtaking genuine in these circles. Genuine is too often merely nice. When we apply the term to something more than nice, we are usually giving praise for the extent to which the person so called has performed the social emotion in question in precisely the right way. (He told me he was sorry my dog Rickey had died. He seemed so genuine!) Genuine is about being true to your responsibility to saying and doing and of course feeling the right thing. Being genuine is distinctly not about being interesting, unexpected, spontaneous or unorthodox. That's authenticity's job.

Link: This Blog Sits at the: How Vince really feels about Jen (secrets revealed?).

Authenticity Goes Mainstream

Right after we sent out our 2007 Predictions, we got an e-mail from Neil Crofts in the UK saying:

I have been writing about and working with authenticity for five years now - so I was delighted to see your prediction for the future.

I would like to quote it in my weekly authentic inspiration e-mail that I send out to around 3000 subscribers and just wanted to check that you are OK with this?

It will also end up in my blog at www.authenticinspiration.co.uk

I was excited to be sharing our thoughts with the world and readily agreed. And Neil's blog is quite good, covering quite a range of thoughts on authenticity. So clearly, authenticity will become more & more important as brands look to differentiate themselves. So take a look at what Neil has to say and see how you can use authenticity to help you in your brand efforts.

Link: Authenticity Goes Mainstream.

Prediction 1: Authenticity is the Key

Companies not acting in an authentic and honest way will be subject to the wrath of the newfound consumer voice.

The buzzword for 2007 will be authenticity and it will become a driving force for businesses. Witness what's happened with all of the flogs of Sony, Wal-Mart, McDonald's and I'm sure many others. Or look at what happens in the blogsphere when companies don't deliver on their promises. Heck, just take a look at some of the posts on our blog about my personal experiences in this area. Companies will be held more accountable then ever before, now that information can travel the world in a matter of seconds.