Just when the first snows came to Minnesota in 1994 -- about the time of the fifth game of the World Series, as luck would have it -- a prospect called me. He was desperate to work with me because of the mountain of publicity I had generated for another company in his industry.
I was flattered. But while I did not want to correct the caller, he was wrong. Yes, I had helped generate some publicity for the company -- a full-page trade magazine feature, a three-paragragh blurb in a local newspaper business section, and a three-paragraph mention in a national magazine. That was what the company aimed for, and we achieved our objectives. But it was not an avalanche.
Why, then, did it seem like an avalanche to this prospect?
Because we also ran two large ads in that same trade publication at the same time. In his vague memory, this prospect could not distinguish the ads from the articles. All he remembered was what seemed like a lot of publicity -- and he wanted an avalanche, too.
The prospect demonstrated another principle of marketing: Advertising is publicity. Advertising is mention in the public forum from which people learn about and come to know the companies mentioned in the ads.
If you want publicity, advertise.
Expectation, Satisfaction, and the Perils of Hype
You send a letter to New York that takes three days. Is that bad delivery? Well, it's terrible delivery for an overnight service and hideous delivery for a fax, but it's acceptable delivery for a letter. It's the level of service you have learned to expect. So you're satisfied.
A customer's satisfaction is the gap between what the customer expects and what she gets. Service below her expectations makes her dissatisfied -- and the greater the gap, the greater her dissatisfaction.
This means that one of a marketer's most suicidal marketing weapons is hype. Few marketers can resist using hyperbole to boost sales. But does it work for the long term?
Ask IBM. In 1983 IBM introduced its PC Jr. with an uncharacteristic flood of hype. Americans got "Charlie Chaplined" into believing that this new PC would be the IBM of personal computers.
That raised people's expectations enough. The added hot air from what was typically such a modest company inflated expectations even more.
The PC Jr. could never meet those expectations. People who tried the PC Jr. were dissatisfied, because it fell below the enormous expectations that IBM's hype had created.
To manage satisfaction, you must carefully manage your customer's expectations.
-- Excerpts from Selling the Invisible
On the Lighter Side
With enormous thanks to reader and fan Robert Morris of Dallas, Texas, these asides this month:
Random Acts of Spontaneity
1. Page yourself over the intercom. Don't disguise your voice.
2. Specify that your drive-through order is "to go."
3. Go to a poetry recital and ask, "Why don't these poems rhyme?"
4. When your money comes out of an ATM, scream "I won, I won! Third time this week!!!"
5. When leaving a zoo, sprint to the parking lot shouting "Run for your lives, they're loose!"
Hire Some Republicans
When will the Democrats learn? They have a marketing problem. And like most marketing problems related to services, theirs involves a relationship issue: They insist on choosing candidates who cannot relate to people.
George McGovern always looked like he had just swallowed something bitter. Michael Dukakis was so bereft of heart than when asked how he'd feel if his wife had been raped, he treated the question as he might the query "Paper or plastic?"
Al Gore managed to demonstrate that you can be tall, dark, handsome and smart, get an Ivy League education, address large groups almost every day -- and still not know how to speak. Democrats quickly found a good double for Gore in John Kerry, who stumbled over the same bumps that had tripped up Mr. Gore.
When actress Meryl Streep attended college, she was exhilarated by the experience. College seemed a new paradise where intelligence and mastery were prized. When she reentered the world, however, she realized that life was different. "I thought life would be like college," she told an interviewer. "It's not. Life is like high school."
That's the Democrats' problem: they think life is like college. So they nominate summa cum laude college types, on the apparent theory that voters ultimately will choose the smarter candidate. The Republicans, by contrast, know better.
They choose high school prom kings instead -- a group among whom Ronald Reagan was the classic representative. Pundits labeled him The Great Communicator. The Democrats said that of him, too, but with contempt. "He's a communicator, not a thinker," they said, and headed off to find their next wonk.
On one occasion they got lucky. They chose a true wonk -- so wonkish he married the only First Lady ever to deserve that description, too -- who had managed to cultivate the other side of his persona. The man could talk, which means he didn't merely speak. Bill Clinton talked -- to us.
Perhaps the Democrats one day will learn that electoral politics are like all services: they are relationship businesses.
And perhaps one day they'll nominate a man who seems capable not just of speaking, but of truly feeling. Until they do, they seem destined to end up right where McGovern, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry took them: nowhere.
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Harry Beckwith is the best-selling author of Selling
the Invisible, which has been named one of the top
ten business books of all time, with over 675,000
copies sold in 14 translations. He is also author of
The Invisible Touch and What Clients Love, which
have sold over 275,000 copies in 13 translations. He has been a keynote speaker for 14 Fortune 200 annual sales meetings and the National |
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Speakers' Association convention, and has made presentations in Europe, South America and Asia. He is
cited regularly in national media including CNN,
The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Entrepreneur,
Crain's New York Business and numerous
American, European and Asian newspapers. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, Harry resides in Minneapolis and is the father of six. |
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