We’ve reached the mountaintop and it’s time to share some lagniappe

Let the record show that on January 9, 2012… the Purple Goldfish Project logged in its 1,001st example of marketing lagniappe. I thought long and hard about what example should be the capping milestone. Thanks to some advice from Dr. Kent Gustavson at Blooming Twig books, a lightbulb went off. He suggested I consider going Kindle exclusive with the e-Book for the first three months. The benefit being is that I could offer the e-Book  for FREE on Amazon for 5 days. Done and done. I’ve selected January 11-15 for my promo days. Click here to download the book for free.

I’m also glad Amazon is my 1,001st example because they (and subsidiary Zappos) are  Purple Goldfish Hall of Famers. Former Amazon entries into the Project have included:

Frustration Free Packaging – a genius move to reduce packaging, colored dye and the inherent “wrap rage” that results from clamshells and wire ties. Full post here and great video here.

Free Video Streaming – Amazon offers streaming video and 2 day shipping for free to Prime members. Full post here.

Free shipping – all orders over $25 qualify for free super saver shipping.

Wait… I don’t have a Kindle, iPad or Nook!

OK, not everyone has an e-Reader. As much as I’d like us all to drink the Kool-Aid and let Jeff Bezos buy everyone a book, it ain’t gonna happen. So I’ve decided to put a full advanced reading copy of ‘What’s Your Purple Goldfish?’ up on Scribd.  Let me explain why I made this move. I didn’t write this book to make money. I embarked on this crazy quest for 1,001 examples because I firmly believe traditional marketing needs to change. I want to shift a paradigm and make marketing more about the customer and less about the prospect. Invest in the “one in your hand” and opposed to the two in the bush. It would make my millenium if 100,001 people read WYPG? on Scribd or on the Kindle / iPad for free as opposed to a few thousand buying the book.

Click the image below to view and / or download the book on Scribd:

The original Mobile Marketing was about 4 wheels, the open road and a marketing message

[Republished from the original submission by Stan Phelps at 12most.com]

July marked the 75th anniversary of the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile.  The 13 foot weiner was one of the pioneers of mobile marketing.  It worked long and hard touring the country to engage consumers where they eat, lived, worked and played.

Today it has doubled in size.  Six weiners criss-cross the country evangelizing the brand. Those lucky college grads selected for the task are appropriately called ‘hotdoggers’.

[Sidebar - they hand out weiner whistles at each event, #362 in the Purple Goldfish Project]

Enough background, let’s have a look at 12 of the most awesome examples of custom vehicles in the history of mobile marketing:

1. The Pep-o-mint Car

Product Replica: This idea was totally out of the box.

2. Zippo Car

Product Benefits: The Zippo Car lit up the roads back in the day.

3. The Clydesdales

Heritage: These iconic symbols and Super Bowl MVP’s of the Budweiser brand define the term ‘horsepower’.

4. The Stagecoach

Tradition: Not to be upstaged by the Clydesdales, Wells Fargo draws upon its heritage of once owning the Pony Express with their iconic stagecoach.

5. Go Fish

Personality: This is near and dear to my heart . . . the Pepperidge Farm Goldfishmobile

6. 3 Kisses

Replica: The Hershey Kissmobile.  Sweet motoring.

7. It’s Mr. Peanut to You

Character: He’s over 100 years old, wired for speed and completely nuts.

8.Taking to the skies

Larger than life: It’s a bird, its a plane … its the Goodyear Blimp

9. Kicking it up a notch

Novelty: Marshalls Department Store red stiletto.

10.A big truck

Larger than life: Tonka takes it up a notch

11. Bringing a campaign to life

Symbol: Coors rolls in on the rails.

12. Army Virtual Experience

Go Big: Four 53 foot trailers and a colossal inflatable.

Any custom vehicles I’ve missed?

[Over the coming weeks I'll be sharing excerpts as we work towards completing the manuscript for 'What's Your Purple Goldfish?'. Yesterday was Chapter 5 and today is Chapter 6]

The Engine behind Word of Mouth – The v4 principle

I first came across the concept of the v4 principle over 10 years ago. This is from a hilarious post from a guy named Rob from Boston (a.k.a Streetracer). I can remember almost peeing my pants when I originally read this:

Think about your entire history of relationships… Every person you dated long term, short term, prison term, and every random hook-up in between. The vast majority of those relationships were with someone you met through a common friend. Very rarely do you find a couple who met randomly at a bar. Most couples met through a friend, a friend of a friend, or a relative. The reason most relationships begin this way is what I call the “v4 Principle.”  “v4″ is short for “Vouch For” and it is this reason that the majority of people in America get laid.

EXAMPLE: Say you’re out on a Friday night and you see a cute brunette at the bar. You approach her, make small talk, and attempt to pick her up. To you she’s a hottie with dating potential. To her you’re just another one of the drunken masses out there trying to score some ass. Now take the same situation as before, but when you see her at the bar she is talking to your best friend’s girlfriend. Now when you approach you’re SOMEBODY as opposed to the NOBODY you were before. The girl at the bar has a reference point for you and your best friend’s girlfriend is there to vouch for you: “Oh, that’s Fred. He’s Mike’s best friend. They work together at the law firm. He’s a real sweetie, and he’s sooo cute when he’s drunk.”

See how it works? You’re the same drunken ass either way, but now you’re perceived as charming. So, if friends are largely responsible for our hook-ups, how does one improve his odds? Simple, just use this handy dandy friendship reference guide that follows to determine who you should hang out with more and which friends to discard:

1. Married Friends – Don’t have any. They only hang out with their miserably married couples and they constantly attempt to pull the rest of us into their pit of despair. There is no ass for you here.
2. Friends Who Work In The Service Industry – Hold on to these. People who work in restaurants, bars, retail, and the like tend to have a plethora of same aged single people to kick it with. They are laid back and don’t work until noon, so they’re always up for a night out. Also, all hostesses are easy.
3. Friends Who Do A Lot of Drugs – Keepers. Whether you do drugs or not is irrelevant. People who do a lot of drugs tend to hang out with other people who do a lot of drugs… and, chicks who do a lot of drugs tend to be easy.
4. Religious Friends – No! No! No! All of their friends are usually bible-thumpers as well, and meeting a group of hot Baptists is like going to your favorite bar without any money. You can look all you want, but you can’t have anything.
5. Strippers – If you have any friends who are strippers you can contact me. Please let me know where you’ll be this weekend…

On a more serious note, v4 or ‘vouch for’ is also how the majority of purchase decisions are made. A reference point or recommendation by a friend is the strongest factor impacting purchase intent. Add on the fact that 90% of word of mouth happens ‘face to face’.

According to research by Keller Fay:

Personal experience with a product or service is the #1 catalyst for recommendation, with 86% saying they recommend a brand or service based on first-hand experience. 60% of word of mouth conversations include advice to buy, try or consider a brand. Fewer than one in ten conversations advise avoiding a brand.

It only makes sense to maximize the experience with your customer.  Giving that little extra provides AMMO for your customers to relay their experiences.

The Power of WOM

One of the frustrations I have with measurement of marketing is that it is fundamentally flawed.  It assumes that all impressions are created equal.  There is no weight given to context and / or the delivery mechanism.

Let’s have a look at advertising, sponsorship, pr and word of mouth:

Advertising is a one way dialogue that is inherently biased.  It’s unlikely that a  company or brand is going to show you their warts. Ads are vested in trying to grab your attention via interruption. They sell ‘blue sky’ by putting the product in the best light. Let’s call the impressions via advertising V1.

Sponsorship plays on the interests of the consumer. The company or brand aligns themselves with a second party. They are still vying for your attention, but now they are engaging you at a point of passion. Sponsorship works on the idea of affinity or attribution. Let’s call the impressions via sponsorship V2.

PR is the proactive process of managing the flow of information between the brand or company and the public. It allows for exposure to the target audience via third party sources. Those sources are predominantly mainstream media. This third party authentication provides credibility to the message. The impressions gained at no cost through PR are much more valuable than those obtained by paid advertising. Let’s call those PR impressions V3.

WOM or Word of Mouth is the act of consumers providing information to other consumers. This is the V4 or ‘vouch for’ principle. V4 means that the consumer is standing up for the product and giving personal assurances to its value. It’s been around for thousands of years and remains one of the most powerful forms of promotion. It’s a friend recommending a new restaurant or the latest movie. New social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and Google+  have elevated WOM to a new level. Call it WOM 2.0 or WOM on steroids.

v4 reminds me of the old Breck shampoo commercial where they start to split the screen by saying, ‘She tells two people, then they tell two people and then they tell two people . . .’ and soon the screen has hundreds of people on it. That’s the magic of WOM.

You need to figure a way to get people to talk about and recommend your product. A small, unique and unexpected touch that provides fuel to the ‘word of mouth’ fire.

What are you working on?  What are you doing? What’s on your mind?

These are the respective questions asked by LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Brian Solis of PR 2.0 is a thought leader that is constantly evaluating PR’s role in shifting marketing landscape.  I absolutely have fallen in love with a term that Brian has coined.  It’s called the ‘STATUSPHERE’.

In Brian’s words with my thoughts in BOLD:

We’re shifting into a rapid-fire culture that moves at Twitter time. Attention is a precious commodity and requires a personalized engagement strategy in order to consistently vie for it [How are you engaging your best marketing resource - YOUR CUSTOMER?]. The laws of attraction and relationships management are driven by the ability to create compelling content and transparently connect it to the people whom you believe benefit. [What is your distinctive 'PURPLE GOLDFISH' and is it relevant to your customer?]

The Statusphere is the new ecosystem for sharing, discovering, and publishing updates and micro-sized content that reverberates throughout social networks and syndicated profiles, resulting in a formidable network effect of activity. It is the digital curation of relevant content that binds us contextually and through the statusphere we can connect directly to existing contacts, reach new people, and also forge new friendships through the friends of friends effect (FoFs) in the process. [Getting into the status updates of your consumer exposes you to their vast network]

Twitter, Facebook News Feeds and other micro communities that define the Statusphere, are driving action and determining the direction and course of individual attention.

So – what does this mean to me as a brand manager, CMO or a business owner???

The statusphere (people updating their status on social networks) has become the new digital watercooler.  It’s increasingly how people are sharing content via word of mouse. It’s how a vast majority of folks are getting their news. Your goal is to get your brand into that ’statusphere’. How do you WOW your customer to the point that they want to share their experience?

An Interview with Francois Gossieaux

I had the opportunity to catch up with Francois in San Mateo, CA. At the end of our discussion I asked about a post he wrote on the importance of customer experience. Here are the couple minutes where we discussed customer experience as a differentiator:
Here is a highlight from Francois’ blog post:

“The reason why exceptional service is the new competitive differentiator is not just because it’s easier for competitors to catch up product-wise, but because the news about exceptional service travels fast in the networks that matter – peer and friend networks where the buying decisions are increasingly being made. When people recommend products to friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, they do not focus on the features, functions and benefits the way many marketers have been trained to do – they focus on the overall experience of adopting the solution, and the exceptional qualities of that “whole” offering. So if you are like most companies and operate in a market where it is really hard to differentiate based on the product alone, you got to focus your attention on WOW service offerings.”

Marketing Takeaway: You need to find ways to differentiate your product or service. The easiest way is to focus on the customer experience. Exceed the expectations of your customers by offering those little extras that surprise and delight. You need to give your best marketing resource something to post, blog, tweet or Facebook about.

Are you creating PROsumers or CONsumers?

What are your customers talking about after leaving your business, logging off your website or hanging up the phone?

John Ernsberger (@johnestella) of Stella Service stated that roughly 6 out of every 7 tweets he sees involving customer service are negative. I’m not sure of the sample size on his assessment as they (whoever they are) say that 68% of statistics are made up on the spot. Whether its 70, 80 or 90% I think its a generally accepted fact that the overwhelming majority of tweets involving customer service are negative. This led me to the following question:

Based on their experience . . . Is Your Customer a CONsumer or a PROsumer?

Are you invoking Bonnie Raitt and her most famous tune, “Let’s Give’em Something to Talk About”?

Specifically:

• Who do we want talking?
• What do we want them saying?
• How can we add value?

Here is my take on how ‘marketing lagniappe’ addresses those issues:

• The best marketing is 1st person word of mouth, i.e. your customers
• Control the things you can control . . . how you treat your existing customers
• Deliver value with your product or service and exceed customer expectations
• Provide that ‘little signature something extra’ . . . a purple goldfish

Using a little artistic license (apologies Bonnie) on the song lyrics:

Let’s give them something to talk about
A little purple goldfish as they wonder out
Let’s give them something to tweet, blog and Facebook about . . .

[Next Up is the start of Section II, Chapter 7 - The five ingredients of a purple goldfish]

[Over the coming weeks I'll be sharing excerpts as we work towards completing the manuscript for 'What's Your Purple Goldfish?'. Yesterday was Chapter 3 and today is a glimpse at Chapter 4]

Goldfish on the brain

OK – I’ll be the first to admit it.  I am oddly preoccupied with goldfish.  Mainly because the average common goldfish is 4 to 5 inches, yet the largest in the world is almost 5 times that size?

5 Times Larger!!! – Imagine walking down the street and bumping into someone 20 feet tall? How can there be such a disparity between your garden variety goldfish and their monster cousins?  It turns out that the growth of the goldfish is determined by 5 factors. Part of my obsession is my firm belief that the growth of a product or service is similar to that of a goldfish:

Let’s break down a ‘purple goldfish’ into two parts:

Why a goldfish?

Because the growth of a goldfish (your product or service) is affected by 5 factors:

1. Size of the Environment = The Market

GROWTH FACTOR: The size of the water the goldfish is in.

RULE OF THUMB: Direct correlation.  The larger the bowl or pond, the larger the goldfish can grow.  The smaller the market, the lesser the growth.

2.  Number of Goldfish = Competition

GROWTH FACTOR: The number of goldfish in the bowl or pond.

RULE OF THUMB: Inverse correlation. The more goldfish, the less growth. The less competition, the more growth opportunity.

3.  The Quality of the Water = The Economy

GROWTH FACTOR: The clarity and amount of nutrients in the water.

RULE OF THUMB: Direct correlation.  The better the quality, the larger they can grow.  The weaker the economy or capital markets, the more difficult it is too grow.

FACT: A malnourished goldfish in a crowded, cloudy environment may only grow to 2 inches / 5 centimeters.

4.  How they’re treated in the first 120 days of life = Start-up Phase / Launch

GROWTH FACTOR: The nourishment and treatment they receive as a fry (baby goldfish).

RULE OF THUMB: Direct correlation. The lower the quality of the food / water, the more the goldfish will be stunted for future growth. The stronger the leadership and capital, the better the growth.

FACT: The difference between the largest and smallest goldfish is by over a factor of 10.  The difference between an average and the largest is by a factor of 5.

5. Genetic Make-up = Differentiation

GROWTH FACTOR: The genetic make-up of the goldfish.

RULE OF THUMB: Direct correlation. The poorer the genes or the less differentiated, the less they can grow.  The more differentiated the product or service from the competition, the better the chance for growth.

FACT: The current Guinness Book of World Records holder for the largest goldfish hails from the Netherlands at a lengthy 18 inches / 50 cm.  To put it in perspective that’s about the size of the average domesticated cat.

Which of the 5 factors can you control?

Let’s assume you have an existing product or service and have been in business for more than six months. Do you have any control over the market, your competition or the economy? NO, NO and NO.  The only thing you have control over is your genetic make-up or how you differentiate your product or service.  In goldfish terms, how do you stand out in a ’sea of sameness’. How can you make yourself PURPLE?

Why Purple?

Two reasons: Mardi Gras and Seth Godin

Lagniappe is creole for ‘a little something extra’. Purple is an ode to the birthplace of the word [New Orleans] and the colors of its most famous event [Mardi Gras].

The accepted story behind the original selection of the Mardi Gras colors originates from 1872 when the Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff of Russia visited New Orleans. It is said that the Grand Duke came to the city in pursuit of an actress named Lydia Thompson. During his stay, he was given the honor of selecting the official Mardi Gras colors by the Krewe of Rex. His selection of purple, green and gold would also later become the colors of the House of Romanoff.

The 1892 Rex Parade theme first gave meaning to the representation of the official Mardi Gras colors. Inspired by New Orleans and the traditional colors (purple – symbolic of justice, green – symbolic of faith and gold – symbolic of power), I created three types of goldfish:

Purple represents the ‘little extra’ given to all customers, Green represents the ‘little extras’ given to all of your employees and Gold (inspired by Vilfredo Pareto) represents the benefits given to the top 20% of your customers and employees.

Ode to Seth

Purple also represents differentiation. Seth Godin established purple as the color of differentiation in his seminal book, Purple Cow back in 2003.  Seth outlines the why, what and how of becoming ‘remarkable’.  If you haven’t read this already, run don’t walk to your local bookstore or b-line it to Amazon.

Seth sets up the premise of the book with a story:

“When my family and I were driving through France a few years ago, we were enchanted by the hundreds of storybook cows grazing on picturesque pastures right next to the highway.  For dozens of kilometers, we all gazed out the window, marveling about how beautiful everything was.  Then, within twenty minutes, we started ignoring the cows. The new cows were just like the old cows, and what was once amazing was now common.   Worse than common.  It was boring.”

He further defined where marketing is heading:

The old rule: Create safe, ordinary products and combine them with great marketing.

The new rule: Create remarkable products that the right people seek out.

The Difference Between a Purple Bovine and a Purple Goldfish

Think of the Purple Cow as your product.  Your product needs to stand out and be remarkable.  Your Purple Goldfish is the distinctive way that you deliver that Cow and the extra value you provide.  It’s difficult to make your product ‘remark’able.

I had the opportunity to comment on Marketing Pilgrim to emphasize this exact point.  Joe Hall wrote a great post about the importance of being memorable.   He talked about how all cell phones are similar and his hesitation to upgrade or switch.

Joe made the following assertion:

“Why can’t I get one shaped like a banana with pink and purple stripes? I want one that can also open a bottle of beer, or something else equally ridiculous. Seth Godin will tell you that your brand has to be remarkable.  However, before your brand can be remarkable it has to be memorable. It has to stand out from the crowd. It has to make me want to know more.”

Here were the thoughts I shared:

January 9th, at 11:40 am

Great points Joe. You absolutely need to be memorable. Stand out or perish. The difficulty in Seth Godin’s PURPLE Cow principle is that you need to bake that remarkability into the product. That is extremely difficult. A phone is a phone. It would have to be really remarkable for you to overcome the friction (p.i.t.a. factor) associated with making a switch.

However – let me offer another take on how to color that phone PURPLE. That is by creating a few PURPLE Goldfish. A purple goldfish is something a whole lot smaller than a cow and much easier to create. It’s based on the concept of ‘marketing lagniappe’. Lan-what? Pronounced ‘Lan-yap’ is a creole word that represents the ‘little unexpected something extra’ thrown in by the merchant at the time of purchase. In Louisiana ‘lagniappe’ is part of the vernacular and represents anytime someone goes ‘above and beyond’.

Do small ‘PURPLE’ things make a big difference? Absolutely. Imagine if you asked that same friend for a recommendation and he started gushing about Product X because they did these little things that were unexpected and extra. It could be the customer service they received (think Zappos), a feature that they decided not to charge for (think Southwest and ‘Bags Fly Free’), or a ‘thank you’ with free minutes if you spend X per month (think Stew Leonard’s).

Is it possible for a PURPLE GOLDFISH to become PURPLE GOLDFISH STRATEGY?

Let’s compare it to the critically acclaimed model called BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY.  According to authors Kim and Mauborgne:

Blue Ocean Strategy is based on the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost.  It’s goal is not to out-perform competition in the existing industry, but to create new market space or a blue ocean, thereby making the competition irrelevant.  The opposite of blue ocean is red ocean. Characterized by competition and a crowded space, red ocean is bloody water.

Is there a middle ground or better yet a middle ocean?

Purple Goldfish Strategy is differentiation by added value. Finding signature elements that help you stand out, improve customer experience, reduce attrition and drive positive word of mouth.

Customer Experience is now more important than ever

Here are three leading indicators:

1. The cost of customer acquisition continues to rise, making increasing retention the lowest hanging fruit in marketing.
2. Consumers now have a stronger voice given the emergence of social technologies like Blogs, Wiki’s, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Foursquare, TripAdvisor and Yelp.
3. Competing solely on price can commoditize your product or service.

In a recent Temkin Group survey The State Of Customer Experience Management, 2011, more than 200 large companies were asked about their customer experience efforts.  While 7% of respondents think that their company is a customer experience leader today, 61% want to be their industry leader within three years.

Everyone wants to go to heaven…but no one wants to pay the price.

Are customers complicated?

Perhaps we can learn a few lessons from the common goldfish.  Similar to customers, there are many myths about the common goldfish.

Takeaways: Find ways to maximize lifetime value, reduce attrition, and drive positive word of mouth.

[Next Up Chapter 5 - Leveraging surplus and the power of the Gift Economy]

I had the chance to catch up with Phil Gerbyshak (@philgerb) last month during a trip to Chicago.  Phil had contributed a few examples to the Purple Goldfish Project.  One of those was AJ Bombers who became #152 in the list.

Here is my interview with Phil.   We talk about PhilGerbyshak.com, AJ Bombers and #twitterworks:

Today’s Lagniappe (a little something extra) – Check out the new book #twitterworks

The story of how social media built a restaurant, a pizza truck and thousands of relationships.

What are you working on?  What are you doing? What’s on your mind?

These are the respective questions asked by LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Brian Solis of PR 2.0 is a thought leader that is constantly evaluating PR’s role in shifting marketing landscape.  I absolutely have fallen in love with a term that Brian has coined.  It’s called the ‘STATUSPHERE’.

In Brian’s words with my thoughts in BOLD:

We’re shifting into a rapid-fire culture that moves at Twitter time. Attention is a precious commodity and requires a personalized engagement strategy in order to consistently vie for it [How are you engaging your best marketing resource - YOUR CUSTOMER?]. The laws of attraction and relationships management are driven by the ability to create compelling content and transparently connect it to the people whom you believe benefit. [What is your distinctive 'PURPLE GOLDFISH' and is it relevant to your customer?]

The Statusphere is the new ecosystem for sharing, discovering, and publishing updates and micro-sized content that reverberates throughout social networks and syndicated profiles, resulting in a formidable network effect of activity. It is the digital curation of relevant content that binds us contextually and through the statusphere we can connect directly to existing contacts, reach new people, and also forge new friendships through the friends of friends effect (FoFs) in the process. [Getting into the status updates of your consumer exposes you to their vast network]

Twitter, Facebook News Feeds, FriendFeed and other micro communities that define the Statusphere, are driving action and determining the direction and course of individual attention.

So – what does this mean to me as a brand manager, CMO or a business owner???

The statusphere (people updating their status on social networks) has become the new digital watercooler.  It’s increasingly how people are sharing content via word of mouse.  It’s how a vast majority of folks are getting their news.  Your goal is to get your brand into that ’statusphere’. How do you WOW your customer to the point that they want to share their experience?    You need a PURPLE GOLDFISH or three.  You need to give your best marketing resource something to post, blog, tweet or Facebook about.

Need some thought starters?

Head over to the Purple Goldfish Project where you’ll find how hundreds of brands are leveraging the power of marketing lagniappe.

Today’s Lagniappe – Brian Solis talking about the ‘Statusphere’ at the CLIO awards:

If the Customer Service Dept. is Your Defense . . . then Your Purple Goldfish is Offense

Christopher S. Penn wrote an inspiring post to kick off the new decade on Jan.1.  It turns out he is rededicating his focus in 2010 to stay true to the moniker of his blog, ‘Awaken Your Superhero’.

[I highly recommend a podcast that Chris does with partner John Wall called 'Marketing Over Coffee'.  Roughly 20 minutes of the duo kibitzing about marketing with a focus on SEO, e-mail and social media.  I always walk away with a nugget or two]

Here is the strong marketing takeaway from Chris’ post:

Play to your strengths. Deploy your offense. Look for opportunities to do more of what you know you’re really good at. Find ways to work your powers into more of what you do every day. Give your defensive linemen a breather and score a touchdown or two this year.

I started thinking about the points Chris was making as I was working on my manuscript last night.

I starting thinking about defense.  I always get a chuckle when I hear Boomer Esiason rant about a ‘prevent defense’ in football.  Boomer absolutely hates it.  He says it only prevents you from doing one thing . . .it prevents you from winning.  Then I thought about the idea of customers using social media to vent about their bad customer experiences.  Too often this puts companies on the defensive. As Rick Liebling referenced in a recent post on EYECUBE, it ends up looking like the company is apologizing a lot.

After all – no one is going to go on Facebook, Twitter or blog about a mere satisfactory experience.  Too often companies settle for what an old boss of mine used to call “The New Jersey Compliment”.  Simply defined, “When your customers don’t tell you you’re fu*king up, then you know you are doing a good job.”

The problem with laying back with the Jersey Compliment strategy is that Google has changed the rules.  Now those same customer complaints can show up on the first page of the search results for your company.

The Solution:

Develop some branded acts of kindness, i.e. ‘purple goldfish’.  Figure out a few signature ways you can surprise and delight your customers by giving that ‘little unexpected extra’.  Do it correctly by sticking to the R.U.L.E.S and you’ll tap into the vital 10% of the general public.  I’m talking about the 9% who share comments about brands and the holy grail, the 1% who actually create content on the web.  Give them something to talk, tweet, Facebook and post about.  You need to fight those inevitable bad comments by going on the offensive in 2010.  Gets some ‘attaboys’ on the first page of your Google results.

Could 2010 be the Year of the Purple Goldfish? (#purplegoldfishproject)

Marketing Lagniappe is the Original Social Media Stimulant

I was reading a post this week from Rick Liebling over at EYECUBE.

Rick made an interesting observations about how brands want to utilize social media with the following agenda:

“Let’s get people talking about our brand”

He pointed out the fact that little thought is given to the following issues:

• Who do we want talking?
• What do we want them saying?
• How do we keep the conversation going?
• Is our voice unique?
• How can we add value?

Here is my take on how ‘marketing lagniappe’ addresses those issues:

• The best marketing is 1st person word of mouth, i.e. your customers
• Control the things you can control . . . how you treat your existing customers
• Deliver value with your product or service and exceed customer expectations
• Provide that ‘little signature something extra’ . . . a purple goldfish

I’m not a big fan of Bonnie Raitt (in fact I generally loathe only two types of music . . . ‘country and western’). That said – – I think her song, “Let’s give them something to talk about” speaks volumes about Rick’s issues.

Using a little artistic license (apologies Bonnie) on the song lyrics:

Let’s give them something to talk about
A little purple goldfish as they wonder out
Let’s give them something to talk, blog, Facebook and tweet about . . .

Today’s Lagniappe (a little something extra for good measure) – how about Will Ferrell proving he has singing chops:

Lagniappe defined: A marketing lagniappe, i.e. purple goldfish,  is any time a business goes above and beyond to provide a ‘little something extra’. It’s that unexpected surprise that’s thrown in for good measure.

How do you stand out in the sea of sameness? How do you win repeat customers and influence word of mouth?  Are you Giving Little Unexpected Extras?

What’s Your GLUE?

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