Experience Manifesto

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Brand Appeal Among Young Adults

I wonder if this is a change due to the economy or if this has always been the case. One thing that was really a shock was:

Sixty-five percent of the teens and young adults surveyed felt seeing a brand on TV created a sense of quality, though how much varied from country to country. Seventy-seven percent of respondents in India thought TV equaled brand quality, followed by residents of the UK, US, Japan and Germany.

Could this mean that mass marketing, like TV, still plays an important role in how people choose products? Well, that's a horse of a different color, isn't it? The balance was that the internet made it easier to find brands. As they say in the article, it's important to get your message out on multiple channels.

If you want your brand to be associated with young people, then image isn’t everything, at least not according to a study by MTV Networks, the long-time arbiter of cool—and what’s hot—among young audiences.

For the study, Internet users ages 12 to 24 in five countries—Germany, India, Japan, the UK and the US—were surveyed.

According to respondents ages 18 to 24, the most popular features of a brand were good quality, trustworthiness and workability (emphasis mine) —three traits not usually associated with the stereotypical image of free-wheeling youth.

Brand Appeal Among Young Adults - eMarketer .

Sam Adams Happy Employees Commercial

Saw this commercial this morning while watching TV and thought it had a great message for all brands to hear. It's about how all of the employees are passionate about beer and that everyone learns how to brew beer, no matter what their position in the company. We always talk about the importance of putting your employees first and happy to see someone putting it front and center.

American Takes Flak Over Bag Fee, Despite PR Strategy - Advertising Age - News

American Airlines has taken a pretty big hit lately because of their $15 fee for your first suitcase. Of course, flying today is a general nightmare for the most part. In general, the airline industry is showing some of the worst customer satisfaction numbers in history. Here's a great quote from the Ad Age article:

Mr. Fornell said consumers' hopes for a positive airline experience have become so diminished that the business plan for any airline wanting to distinguish itself from the competition needs to follow is a simple one. "Bring your passengers to their destinations on time with their luggage," he said. "Nobody has higher expectations than that now." (Emphasis mine)

But here's as so frustrating about things like this. When things are going well, most brands aren't out there trying to do things for the customer either. There's no real relationship being developed. I happened to be in London during last year's crisis at Northern Rock bank and he's what I observed then:

It does beg the question as to how much loyalty Northern Rock created with it's customers before this all began. Too many brands use a crisis as the first real time they reach out to say "Hey, we're here for you. Help us get though this and we'll be there for you when it's all over." But when the crisis is over, they go back to business as usual. Do you think they'll offer to drop the interest rates on their mortgages for people who leave their money where it is? Or will they send your nasty notes when you're a day late with your mortgage payment?

So to American Airlines I would say this. The reason you're not getting any sympathy for all of your troubles, even legitimate ones like much higher gas prices, is because we don't have any reason to give you that sympathy. You've never really been there for us. You ask us to make sacrifices for you all the time. But every time we've ever asked you for help, you almost always say no. Show up late for a flight and you almost never say "Hey, no problem, we're just put you on the next flight." No, usually you say too bad, you'll need to pay the change fee, blah, blah, blah. I can't tell you how many times I've had a chance on other airlines to change to an earlier flight flying into a different airport in NYC and been told that I'll have to buy a new ticket. All convenience for them, none for me.

So, now you need our help and you just don't understand why we're not supporting you in this time of need. Well, after years of a one-way friendship, we're just not that into you!

Link: American Takes Flak Over Bag Fee, Despite PR Strategy - Advertising Age - News.

Link: Experience Manifesto: The Power of the Crowd.

Polls: 44% Normally Disbelieve Any And All Company Statements

Thanks to copyranter for the tip on this piece. Wow, 44% of people surveyed don't believe anything a company says! If ever there was a reason to understand the value of compelling, authentic and relevant brand experiences, this could be it! If this many people don't believe what you say, you better give them a good reason to believe what you do! There's not an industry on the list that cracks 40% trust and that's pretty sad. Some interesting numbers:

HMO's and health insurance companies are at 4 & 7% respectively, but hospitals are at 28%. And while that's much better then HMO's and health insurance companies, you would think that people would trust a hospital much more then that!

Oil companies & tobacco are at the bottom of the list, no surprise there.

I'm surprised that packaged goods companies scored so low, I mean, all of the information has to be right there on the box!

Guess it's a good thing they didn't ask about the advertising industry!

A recent survey found that 44% of Americans don't trust a damn thing that comes out of the mouths of companies. The poll asked, "Which of these industries do you think are generally honest and trustworthy - so that you normally believe a statement by a company in that industry?" and then posed a variety of industries, from supermarkets, airlines, to tobacco companies. Since the poll began in 2003, the amount of people answering, "none of these," increased 7 percentage points. Either companies are getting more deceitful, or somehow, Americans are getting smarter. When queried about the poll, Big Business, Inc. told The Consumerist, "We're aware of the results, and we're taking them very seriously."

Link: Polls: 44% Normally Disbelieve Any And All Company Statements

getFreshMinds.com | Creativity | Innovation | Ideas so fresh--they should be slapped!

Learned about a new blog today and this was the first post on it. Love stories like this and wish more brand managers took this kind of knowledge to heart. I'll bet that you can use similar information to track brands to see which ones will be successful based on what the brand managers are spending their time doing. I think that way too many brand managers spend their time on the minutiae of their job, pushing paper just to keep the status quo going. That’s why brands lose their relevance over time. Too many people at too many brands just look internally at what’s been done before and maybe checking to see what the competition is doing that they never get around to looking at the future. They’ll even tell you that if you ask. So, maybe they’ll look at this study and see if they can start looking to the future to save their brand! And make sure you check out the rest of getFreshMinds while you're there.

Companies whose chief executives speak about future events and external activities innovate more than those whose chiefs don't, a U.S. university study says.“By simply counting the number of future-oriented sentences in annual reports we can predict future innovation by the firm,” said marketing Professor Rajesh Chandy of the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

CEOs who focus their attention on future events and external activities lead their firms to early adoption and invention of new technologies and greater and faster development of innovations, said Chandy, whose study appears in the next issue of the Journal of Marketing.

In contrast, firms whose CEOs focus on internal operations are slower to detect, adopt and implement new technologies, Chandy’s study found. Words, not just actions, of the CEO set the tone to inspire, propel and
motivate employee innovation, he said....

Link: getFreshMinds.com | Creativity | Innovation | Ideas so fresh--they should be slapped!.

Information that should be shared...

So the picture on the left is a screen grab from today of the AMP's home page. The picture on the right is what you get when you check their Q& A section. Feont page seems completely normal, business as usual. The Q & A, in fairly small print, lets you know that they're probably going out of business on the 31st of this month. Now, don't you think that if you're a phone company that people rely on, that maybe you'd want to post that on your front page? Reassure your customer, perhaps? How many people do you think will stay with them even if they get additional funding. Especially when they've been treated like this.

My First Week with the iPhone -- The iPhone Troubles Begin!

I've had my iPhone for about a week now and as with all new products, I've been really thrilled with some parts of it and not-so-thrilled about others. But, I’ve been having some problems with my iPhone battery since I got it. I’ve barely been getting a full day of use from the phone. I’ve taken it back three times in the 6 days or so I’ve owned it for this problem. One helpful Apple employee actually told me that 6 hours of usage and 11 hours of standby was pretty good! So I went back yesterday, since I barely got 6 hours out of the phone. And what do you know, they know they’re having problems with the battery. I was one of three people with this problem just while I was there. So my very helpful genius (he was actually very helpful!) tells me that they think it’s a software problem problem and they’re working on it and they should have a fix soon. That this was just one of the problems they discovered during “user testing.” Yep, I apparently paid $600 to participate in their user testing trials.

But, he did say he would exchange the phone for me, since the problems I was having were so well documented. He left for a little while and then came back and said that the managers were not allowing for exchanges on this problem, since thy know about it and they’re working on a fix. Of course, they don’t know when the fix will be coming and , in the meantime, so the phone only gets 6 – 8 hours on a full charge. And that’s with me only making like an hour of calls a day! I guess their suggestion is that I just need to use it less and wait while they fix the problem.

Honestly , the experience of the phone itself is a mixed bag. It’s without a doubt, one of the sexiest pieces of hardware ever made! The phone/iPod integration is outstanding! I've found that the internet experience is a little beter then on my Nokia 9500, but not always much better. In fact, the fact that flash doesn't play on the iPhone is pretty disappointing. And although I've found some games at iPhone Games (the collapsing brink game is almost become an obsession in our house), I wish it had some games that didn't require the internet to play them. Can't play them at all in the subway!

However, not all of the software works as well as it should. There seems to be missing some key pieces of software that even the folks at the Apple stores I've visited were surprised they weren't included. I mean, there’s no search and it’s really hard to read e-mail, especially since it doesn’t change from portrait to landscape. Actually, e-mail had been the biggest disappointment and I'm not alone in saying that. Take a look at iPhone review, part 2: Phone, Mail, Safari, iPod - Engadget.

There's no other way than to come out and say it: we are extremely disappointed in the iPhone's email app. So much so, in fact, that despite the keyboard and the rest of the things the iPhone lacks in the features department, its mail support may be the largest factor in killing its status as a productivity device. Don't get us wrong, the application is just fine for anyone who wants to do light email, but it lacks the power and convenience that frequent-emailers require.

But, knowing you have a pretty significant problem like the battery draining very quickly — especially when they’ve already been getting some negative reviews for the fact that the batteries can’t be replaced without sending them back to Apple — and telling people to just “suck it up” until Apple gets it fixed just seems, well, un-Apple.

I can live with waiting for software updates that would make the iPhone more productive, but I really shouldn’t have to wait for this battery update. I’ll be patient for a little while, but eventually, it’ll be too annoying to know that I won’t get a full day use out of the phone and I’ll probably return it. Let’s hope they can resolve all of these issues before too many of us early iPhone users start spreading the bad instead of the good.

MediaPost Publications - Kids' Artwork To Appear On Heinz Ketchup Packets - 04/11/2007

A DOZEN KIDS FROM MIAMI and New York State, with one from Minnesota thrown in for good measure, will have their artwork displayed on 200 million single-serve packets of Heinz ketchup.

H.J. Heinz Co. chose a winner from each grade level from first through 12th grades. The contest drew 15,000 entries.

While the company gave the kids themes to choose from, the one that was most used was "Heinz in outer space."

Link: MediaPost Publications - Kids' Artwork To Appear On Heinz Ketchup Packets - 04/11/2007.

Link: Heinz - Financial Information.

MediaPost Publications - The Last Quack: Aflac Duck Stays - 02/21/2007

I'm happy to see that Gilbert Gotfried will be able to keep his job!

CALL IT AN EXECUTIVE ABOUT-FACE. Although Jeff Herbert, Aflac's Chief Marketing Officer, said the company would use less of the affable duck in future ads, he has reversed himself. "Like all of America, we love the Aflac Duck," said Herbert in a statement. "It is as central to our marketing efforts today as it will continue to be going forward." The Aflac Duck, according to Aflac, has helped it achieve 90% brand awareness. Herbert says more such spots will be unveiled "later this year as we continue to spread the message about the need for Aflac products."

Link: MediaPost Publications - The Last Quack: Aflac Duck Stays - 02/21/2007.