AS Starman - Can you hear me ground control?

Excuse me for such a frivolous comparison to a classic. I'm not even sure what made me think of it. My situation with cable and Internet service is probably the exact opposite of what Major Tom was experiencing in the song. In my case Starman would be the ground control that couldn't care less that "I'm floating in a most peculiar way".

See, for three weeks now, instead of the 77 channels I got only 6. Yes, I wasn't really watching most of them to begin with, but still. I'm paying for them. Plus losing the international news channels does annoy me.

I do take full responsibility for my failure to stay on the phone line for longer than 10 minutes and because of that I have not been able to talk to a actual physical person customer service rep. That is - if they do exist.

So here I am with six channels and Internet connection that's iffy at best. Since I do like to vent and like most people enjoy complaining about bad consumer experiences, I told my story to a good friend. Do you think he was shocked or surprised? No. I may add that he's also a Starman customer, if only for few weeks.

To my great disappointment he managed to top my bitching story with one of his own.
And it's a good one. He decided to get Starman Digi-TV service at the end of May. One of the deciding factors was that they were offering two months service for free. As it happened, he became a Starman Customer on May 31 at around 16:00. Just recently he was attentive enough to notice, and this is a riot, that they counted these 8 hours in the month of May as A MONTH.

I know and you know that this is not a coincidence. Long conference table with at least eight people sitting behind it was involved and a conscious decision was made. I just can't believe that they didn't discuss what should happen in case some one calls. See, my friend was told that his situation will be investigated.

Unfortunately "your situation will be investigated" is the corporate equivalent of giving a finger. What is there to investigate? You tried to trick your new customer and you were called on it. So apologize and fix it right then and there. Done.

But no, AS Starman considers us all idiots with bank accounts. I will spread the word and tell this story on every possible occasion. This is our last chance. They don't realize that this is not 20th century. All they have is the service they offer and we have the power to reject it.

If you do the math solution taken from a pretty good book by Mark Hughes - for every 23 unhappy customers who take time to complain to you, your company will have ten thousand enemies who didn't bother to write or call. Starman are you getting this? Right now it's 2 down 21 to go and 10 000 is a freaking ARMY.

Wasn't expecting this

Rimigratsioon

Dear Rimi,

I respectfully ask you to cease all advertising efforts present and future. See, I still haven't recovered from " tudish piip ". Your explanation that these are sounds - "tudish" being the thump that merchandise makes when it hits the moving belt at the cashiers and "piip" when it gets UPC scanned... I just couldn't wrap my mind around that. Every time I tried, I was getting a feeling like I'm having an embolism, so eventually I stopped. And now this.

Rimigratsioon. What the hell do you mean by that? Yes, yes I get it - play on words. The first one is obvious- RIMI and then what? Migration? Immigration? Something else?
And if it's migration, then migration of what? Are you talking about money migrating out of my pockets into yours? I can't even guess what's the deal if it's immigration.

So please do us all a favor and stop. If for no other reason then think about public safety, people are driving past your billboards doing 50-60 km/h and we all know that
laughing, rolling around and driving don't mix.

Please stop, no more.

Respectfully Yours,

Ron






OK, guys I really could use your input on this, in any of the world's languages.
I know I'm not laughing alone.

vidSENSE

No doubt vidSENSE is an original and ambitious online video advertising solution, that differentiates it-self from all the wannabes by taking the video content from publishers environment to the advertisers domain. Great...except a tiny issue that doesn't sit well with me and maybe others. See the very first step in their advertising process is basically deception.

This is how vidSENSE describes the process in their DEMO, they call them content units - small pictures or thumbnails taken from vidSENSE video content, that are invitations for viewers to click on them. And now it gets little creepy, at least in my opinion and I'm quoting vidSENSE: "Content unit appears to be part of the website, it does not look like advertisement and because of that gets much higher CTR ".

Let's see - appears to be part of the website, meaning that they are not. So you guys figured out a way to trick me into watching advertising and you are actually proud of your-self.

No, it's not all bad. The fact that all the viewing takes place surrounded by the advertisers brand, since it takes place on advertisers website is a brilliant idea.
It's just that I can't get over the very first step, you deceived me and tricked me.

Sure it generates traffic to advertisers website, but what kind of traffic? Disappointed, pissed off traffic who in the next step are googleing products that similar to pop-up blockers will block involuntary traffic direction generators.

Maybe, maybe not.

And what about the brands? Do they want consumers with funny tastes in their mouths viewing content in this branded entertainment type of environment?

Again, maybe, maybe not.

Here's an good counter-view to mine by Seana Mulcahy who always makes an excellent point, as she did in her last post for OnlineSPIN. I just happen to disagree with her on this subject.

nrme

Possibilities, possibilities. A new app for the I-Phone nrme is coming out soon and this one looks promising. Twitter-like by style, but if you take a closer look, it'll be all about location by substance. The transmitting of messages will be controlled by a pretty narrow geographical area surrounding the sender.

Now if the marketers get involved the use of this app can be promising. Sure it's gonna be fun to find out in which bar or club your friends are getting wasted at, but think about this - last minute price-drop for perishables, it doesn't have to be fish. Fruits, flowers even wedding cakes, that are not picked up.

On demand pricing for opera tickets or for over-purchased wagyu beef at the elite restaurant. Did I mention coupons? That's right location and time-line aware coupons.
This could be fun. It could be turned into a social marketing game.

Here's a link to TechCrunch post that describes nrme quite well
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/26/exclusive-peek-at-nrme-location-based-twitter-without-the-noise/

Best Crowd-sourcing effort up to date

Brazilian best-selling author Paul Coelho declared a competition on MySpace for making a collaborative movie of the book "The Witch of Portobello". You can pick a character and film the segment of the book in which that character is the narrator (there are fifteen). Then the best entries for each character will be combined to complete the storyline.The entire movie will be submitted to film festivals.

Holy Crap! I think this is incredible. Considering that he's known to have passionate fans, he's executing this perfectly. He's narrowing the creative by dividing the project into segments, well actually his book did that, but it works out great. Meanwhile loosening the reins on trying to control the creative.Plus there will be more than one winner. Like I said - best crowd-sourcing up to this point.


Except...MySpace...Well you can't have it all.


In any case I will go and see it.

And don't take the "best" in the title literally, of course I'm aware of importance of Wikipedia, InnoCentive, Threadless and many others.

Overfriending

Just today I noticed somebody new following me on Twitter. Somebody with the user-name OOzzl, he(since there's a picture) is also following 144869 others. Yep, that's right one hundred forty four thousand eight hundred and sixty nine others. WTF.

I do get it. He's a collector. He thinks that by following me there's a good chance I will be following him. But NO. I don't need another so-called friend. I truly believe, that my online friends should be at least somewhat similar to my off-line friends. I can't believe I just called REAL LIFE - off-line.

So here it is - Facebook's Beacon failed and there are a lot of reasons, but one that nobody's talking about is - that Word of Mouth only works if you care about the person's opinion in the first place. Oozzl's opinion on the other hand means absolutely nothing to me.

There's a definite connection between me, my every-day decisions (where to eat, what movie to see, which department store to shop at) and the source of the recommendation. If I don't know you, don't respect you - it means ... you guessed it.

Oh yeah, couple of weeks ago I met an old friend on the street and later tried to contact him on Orkut, but unfortunately he's over his friends limit. In case you didn't know, I'm pretty sure it's at 1000. I'm happy for him - that is a lot of friends.

Too bad, there's just very little value from marketer's point of view with these online super-connectors. The connections are too weak. That's putting it mildly, quite often the connections are non-existent.

So I will keep my real life friends and connect with them in real life, using all possible communication methods. Online and off-line.

APML

I guess the future is now. Finally. Attention Profiling Mark-up Language is taking care of all of my on-line needs.Is there other kind? In a little while I-myself will cease to be necessary.

No more surfing the net,
Facebook-Orkut-Amazon-Ebay-Twitter-Google-Last.Fm mash-up will know exactly what to do.

Except, I kinda like the discovery part of online experience. It's the same with a lot of people and shopping, they don't want to find that perfect accessory in the very first store. They enjoy the process way too much.

Still, lately I have been fooling around with Engagd and I've been using Particls for quite some time. I also use Piggy Bank browser add-on and Last.Fm and Jango for my background music needs while using my laptop.

What I'm unhappy with is the quality of the recommendation engines. Maybe it's just me since even I consider my taste in music odd. It ranges from old hardcore punk like Black Flag to mellow crooner k.d.lang. My likings of movies are no better.

Even if it is me, there's still no question these engines don't work. Netflix is working hard on improving theirs, but hey - after entering around 200 movies I like, it still showed "Dude Where's My Car?" as one of the recommendations.

Personally I still like Amazon's - "buyers who bought this, also bought these".
It's not really an engine and there's no algorithms involved, but quite often it works for me. Maybe it's the human factor.

I don't know what I don't know and too often I don't know what I want. It also doesn't look like truly semantic web is happening any day soon. It could be a good thing.

I dread the day my browser will know exactly where to take me.

Online Marketing Buzzwords Du Jour

What would I do without the ability to hypothesize about the tools of engagement that can monetize my platform for customer synchronization? Without that, how could I possibly automate the optimization of my behavioral targeting methodology or expand the customization engine with which it meets my ROI?

WOW...

P.S. Does that ROI stand for Return On Investment or Return On Influence?

I want to play

Yes I do, I want to play and I'm sure there are others. Not everybody is willing to admit to that. Well I'm ready and brave enough. I admit it. That's what I want. I want to play.

Life is not easy and we are way too serious most of the time. So this is my resolution, I know it's not New Year's, but who said you can't have June or July resolutions. Now I just have to figure out a way that will seem at least somewhat acceptable for the rest of society.


See I think that we could use play in almost all of the everyday situations. The workplace - it just screams for it. The daily commute - let's see, if I let every car that's not yellow to cut in front of me in traffic, how long would it take to get the finger from the driver behind me? OK, maybe it'll add few minutes, but I could feel better about the whole trip. Then there's relationships, it's already all play, not all fun play though. We need to work on that. Sex - need I say more, without play and being fun it's just a release, then again with fun play - it's the best thing possible.

Distinguished psychologist, ethologist, affective neuroscientist, and one of the greatest intellectual troublemakers of 20th century Jaak Panksepp discovered that play offers another arena for social epigenetics. His work identified a specific compound generated during play that drives genetic transcription. His findings add new significance to every child's universal yearning and to mine and I have a feeling to your's as well.

I want to play just means that everything that's going on gets suspended in "as if" reality. That can only happen in relatively safe environment. Well ... where could that be in the beginning of 21st century? Too many family environments are dysfunctional. TV? Not really an environment, still more like moving pictures invented in the beginning of the previous century. Facebook or Orkut? Basically schoolyard bullies who are spying on us just to tell on us, all the while taking our lunch money. I personally think it does not exist.

So here I am with my brand new resolution, but no good outlet. Guess what? This whole thing requires a simple action. Letting go. Saying ... fuck it. I want to play.

All you marketing people out there are you getting this? I' m not alone and we are not afraid. If anything we are bored. So what are you scared of? We are ready and you can make money off us. Let's play.

Free beer

Euronics stores that sell home electronics and household appliances are giving away free beer as a mid-summer promotional campaign. Just imagine, you shell out 36 000 EEK's for a plasma or LCD TV with diagonal size somewhere in a range of 40 inches and you will receive 24 cans of A.LeCoq beer.

Whoaa, beer for nothing. Who cares that it amounts just around 1% of the purchase price. It's FREE and it's BEER. Again - it's BEER.

Alright, in case you did not detect my well hidden slight case of sarcasm, I confess - I am being facetious. I think this is an absolutely idiotic use of marketing man hours and an idiotic use of beer for that matter. Think about it, it's a store that sells refrigerators, but the beer is displayed on top of them, not inside. That even takes away the surprise factor. It doesn't stay cold that way either.

Well if you disagree, be my guest and help your-self to a 24 pack at your neighborhood Euronics. Cheers

Kabanoss free - good for your heart

Yesterday I witnessed quite possibly the best advertising campaign in Estonia in years. Well at least in my opinion and it came from an unlikely source. Passing a Neste gas station I noticed a pretty big green banner with easily readable simple font on it.

The message stated "Futura 95 kabanoss free" and a smaller heart shaped banner next to it that said "Good for your heart". Everything of course in Estonian. I couldn't help myself and smirked.
Few seconds later I was laughing out loud.

It was just perfect - low tech, right on the spot, on message, simple and funny. For anybody not familiar with intricacies of Statoil gas stations food offering, kabanoss is something kinda like a hot dog, but not really. But what I loved about the ad was that it wasn't making fun of the quality of competitors gourmet selection, well maybe a little, it just stated the lack of it at Neste's gas stop.

Neste's clients and I'm one of them use them because the price and the speed of their self-serve stations. I know, the gas doesn't flow any quicker at their pumps, but it's just that every time when I do go to pay for gas at Statoil's little store thingy - there's a line. Guess what every other person in the line is purchasing? You got it. It's one of these hot dog type of things. All this while I'm ready to start pulling my hair out, because the whole process is taking forever. There's just too many decisions to make - ketchup or mustard or that white sauce, who knows what that is. We all know that too many options is not a good thing...

So here we go - hats off to whoever came up with this creative. It's directed at Neste's customers and it's making at least some of us laugh. There's value in that. I see too many people at gas stations who look borderline suicidal, so thank you whoever you are.

I saw another banner with "Futura 95 cholesterol free" on it and yes maybe not as funny, but still right on message. Come get your gas without clogging your arteries. Let's not forget - laughing is good for you, just like not eating your kabanoss today.

P.S. In case you miss the banners, here's the link http://www.neste.ee/etusivu.asp?path=1991;2050

Necessary evil or just plain necessary

Hypersonic sound - some would say a really creepy new tool for advertisers who are trying to brainwash everybody around them or a real cool use of technology in cutting edge marketing world. All it really is - is a narrow sound beam that you can only hear when you stumble right onto it's path.

So while walking on a street you can suddenly hear a pitch, be it for a new blockbuster movie opening this week-end or a reminder from the makers of sunblock that at this very moment you are being fried by the harmful UV's.

Except that, it sounds like voices inside your head and unless you've counted on some schizophrenic tendencies in your not so distant future you could be slightly rattled. I can only imagine all the panic that will follow from the sometimes paranoid, passionate about human rights, all kind of advertising is extreme evil types.

I personally think it's cool. Mainly because it is something new, different and not boring. That goes for the technology, the message can still be lame, if the advertisers use the same slogans that we are bombarded with from all the other mediums.

This brings me to the point of this post. Why is it that almost everybody in Estonia loves to hate advertising? Quite possibly it qualifies for the national pastime. Nobody ever mentions the quality of advertising. In my opinion that is a very one sided and narrow point of view that is shared by the majority for no good reason.

There are so many brilliant minds working in the advertising sector, that is absolutely impossible for them not to come up with ideas that would entertain and intrigue the rest of us. Unfortunately way too often it gets all messed up somewhere in the process and what we end up with is just plain offensive.

The reason for this could be that we the consumers are not trusted by the traditional marketers.
They trust us enough to make a purchase, but not enough to engage in a conversation about the purchase and thus they end up unloading a very one sided "buy-buy-buy-don't think" advertising campaigns.

But guess what, for whatever reason we don't consider ourselves idiots. I know, that's gotta be a huge shock for them just by looking at a lot of media advertising nowadays. Sometimes it seems that they don't even try anymore. Why bother, let's just do it the way it's been done before.

And that's where the problem with advertising lies. It's not that there's too much of it or that it's too intrusive. No. It's just that 99% of it is predictable and boring and that's why everybody loves to hate advertising.

So here's a clue, make us laugh or catch our attention by giving us a scare, an adrenalin rush or anything and the national pastime of advertising bashing will, if not disappear all together, at least see a serious drop in popularity. Everybody would come out as a winner - marketers, advertisers and consumers.

P.S. Speaking of new technologies full of potential. Check this out. http://springwise.com/weekly/2008-05-07.htm#virtualwall

There Is No Tomorrow Marketing vs. Super Professionals of Customer Service

I recently got back from Morocco. 10 days in this beautiful country were absolutely amazing. So many memories and funny stories, but I would like to concentrate on two very different styles of selling and marketing that we witnessed on this trip.

The first one I would like to call a There Is No Tomorrow and the other Super Professional. Both were always around us and I mean always - literally. The first one we encountered in every store, souq and on every street corner. It was the merchants who saw us as wallets and stupid ones as that. All they cared about was the money they could make right then and there, with no thought given to the next day.

Yes I'm sure it's not usual that European tourists stay in Marrakesh for a week, but they didn't learn either. We negotiated on the price one day and they did not remembered us the next, so everything had to start from the beginning. Quite often we were knowingly willing to over-pay for their products and we knew the prices, since we had been around for few days, and that's really all you need. But they refused reasonable offers hoping to make another few % of the purchase price and we ended up walking away.

The whole style of pushing the product on us was just not very efficient. Instead trying to figure out what the buyer is interested in, they kept pushing and pushing. Almost as if what you buy is not really important as long as you buy it from them. Not smart and not efficient. Perhaps they make a quick buck every once in a while, but they would do that anyway, just because of the share size of the tourist hordes in Marrakesh.

Then there's the complete package of customer service from what I would like to call the Super Professionals. It doesn't matter that they were all 8-11 year olds. Anybody who's been to a Medina in any of the cities in Morocco knows exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't then you probably have hard time understanding the whole concept. I'll try to explain.

The Marrakesh Medina is a maze of unearthly propositions. It took us three days before we could find our way to the Riad we stayed at after having dinner on the big square. Well, where there is demand there is a market - enter the Super Professionals of the Medina.

It all started the first night and I'm sorry I didn't witness this personally. We reached the Riad only to realize, that we had forgotten a folder with our plain tickets and some other needful travel documentation in our rental car, that we had parked just around the corner. Maybe 30-50 meters away. So two of my friends volunteered to recover the folder from our vehicle.

Alright., about 45 minutes later they returned laughing out loud. It turned out, that as soon as they walked out, they had encountered the boys hanging on the street. The boys did not bother them,didn't say a thing. They watched on as my friends made their first wrong turn into a dead end. Didn't say a thing when they made their second wrong turn into a different dead end, all this while pretending that they knew exactly what they were doing. I'm sure that must of looked believable- they were just out for a evening stroll.

Only after it became painfully obvious that they had no clue which way to go, did the boys intervene with a simple question - "Are looking for your car?". There was no blackmailing or extortion involved, nobody even mentioned money. It was just all understood. Service and Payment, but Service first. So my friends payed, got the folder and while the kids were distributing the rewards tried to sneak away.

Guess what, couple of wrong turns and they were just as lost as ten minutes ago. So they used the boys again. Now, so you wouldn't get a wrong idea, it had nothing to do with my friends path finding abilities. I confess, maybe I was just a little bit of a non-believer, but all it took was three minutes the next morning. One, two, three turns and I had no idea where I was and that was in the daylight.

So we used the boys several times and what I remember the most is the fact that after every encounter we were left feeling good about the service. They always waited before making serious contact, oh sure they were following us from the get go, but they were patient not pushy.They waited for us to show interest, either in a way of making eye contact or just responding to their jokes.

They waited for the PULL.

I think today's marketers could learn from this. Way too often are they pushing products on us, instead of making us desire the product or a service. There is no stronger logic behind the purchase, than the buyer telling him-self that the whole transaction was his idea.

The combination of push and pull is a very powerful thing.






Here they are - The Super Professionals