Just Who Am I?

I have been working with a client on a new web site. Like most of my clients, the company is small, techie, and brainiac. The founding father (FF) is one of the most brilliant people I've ever worked with, and exceptionally gifted in his ability to translate complex technical concepts into something that a lay person with only the most minimal technical grasp can easily understand. He also writes with real personality. His white papers are a tour de force. I really enjoy working with this guy.

One of the things we're doing with the new web site is taking the opportunity to really define what the company is and does, and making sure that what we're saying is consistent with the FF's desired outcome for his company.

For the most part, the company's business has been providing custom technical solutions, with a limited revenue stream from the software that's an off-shoot of their consulting work. Their desired outcome, however, calls for them to flip the ratio of professional services to software on its ear and become a "real" software company.

Once that got settled, I drafted up the proposed positioning document that I needed the FF to okay before proceeding to write the web site content.

Yes, yes, yes.

This is what we'll say

Yes, yes, yes.

This is who we are. (Or at least who we'd rather be.)

But sometimes things that seem right in black and white just don't translate into living color.

Yes, yes, yes.

The word docs that contained the draft content were all well and good.

It was only when we mocked up the Home page and a couple of drill down screens that the FF began to get a little nervous.

"You know we get two-thirds of our revenue from professional services," he told me.

"Oh, yes," I answered. "We've been all through this."

"But the new site has hardly anything about professional services. It seems kind of buried."

"That's because we agreed that we were going to, well, bury it a bit and focus more on positioning ourselves as a software company," I said.

"But we're really a professional services company," he said.

We backed and forthed on this for a while, and talked about the implications of choosing one path vs. the other. (A conversation that I had thought we'd already completed.)

I realize that now that as the new positioning is nearer to going live, it's truth time.

One thing to have the new story in a word doc on your PC; quite another to have it out there for the world to see.

In some sense, I realize that I'm serving as the FF's shrink as he makes what seems like a pretty scary transition.

I'm going to do a couple of things to make the transition less scary, but I'm really trying to keep the FF from completely backsliding into his comfort zone.

We spent quite a bit of time talking things through yet again, reminding ourselves that the desired outcome is inconsistent with being a professional services organization. Being a software company is perfectly consistent with it.

The goal of the new web site was to put a firmer stake in the ground about our software products. (It's not as if we don't have them; it's just that, for a variety of reasons, it's been easier to do the pro serv work. And I have a growing feeling that the FF and his brainiacs find the consulting work more interesting, since it's always on to the new in a more dramatic way than if they were "merely" updating/upgrading their products. (Yawn.))

I'm working on a compromise solution, but I'm concerned that a year from now this company will still be a consulting firm claiming that they really want to make software, rather than a software company that happens to do consulting.

The whole thing reminds me of just how difficult it can be to develop an identity, especially if it involves shedding some old skin and thinking of yourself in a new way. Change is hard. Maybe the FF isn't quite as ready for change as he thought (or hoped) that he was.

He took one look at that web site copy as it was going to appear on the screen, in all its glorious, living color, and said to himself. "That's not me."

But he hasn't yet settled the big questions, "Just who am I, and who do I want to be?"

Custom Job

I'm sitting in a Doubletree Hotel in balmy Syracuse NY, hoping to get out of town before what they're saying is going to be light snow blows in and turns out to be two feet of lake-effect whiteout.

The hotel is quite nice and convenient and - a big benefit, given my lack of direction - I know just how to get here without consulting MapQuest. I may have liked it better last time I stayed here and it was a Wyndham, which provided free WiFi to members of their frequent guest program. Now I have to pay for the access - although it would be free if I was in the lobby or the restaurant. Frankly, I'm not willing to sit in the lobby in my PJ's and check my e-mails and blog.

But I am a Hilton Honors member, so on check-in they brought me two bottles of water and a small packet of custom M&M's - purple and white. And while I do maintain that white M&M's and, to a lesser extent, the pastels they sell at Easter, taste funny, it is nice to have this little mini-pack of M&M's. Just enough to give me my chocolate fix, without having to roam around - again something I wouldn't do in my PJ's - looking for a vending machine that sells full-sized bags of M&M's.

I've had these custom job M&M's (a.k.a., M&M Colorworks) before and I think that they're fun and a nice way to reinforce your brand.  (They'd make a good little trade show give-away, too.)

Of course, now that I've consumed the paltry little packet they gave me, I wish that they'd left me two packets. Now that would have been really thoughtful, and would have more than made up for having to pay $9.95 for Internet access.

Enough With the Upsell

I am sitting in a Starbucks as I write this.

When I got my coffee, the clerk said, "Do you want to try a cinnamon dolce latte?" I declined. He was asking everybody that; obviously, the order has come down from above that all customers must be offered this drink. (There's also signage up in the store.)

Just now I overheard the barista telling someone, "Oh, it's just, like, the best latte ever!" as the clerk was asking (again), "would you like to try the cinnamon dolce latte?"

Now, I'm one of those people who has become an anomaly at Starbucks. I like coffee. I like the taste. I like the smell. And so I am very happy to have coffee, or a traditional espresso drink. Every now and then I've tried one of their special drinks, and generally found them a bit disgusting. So I stick to my coffee that actually tastes like coffee.

And the people who work at this particular Starbucks, who have seen me a million times, reliably offer me all this crap each time I come in and get one of the same three things that I ever get here.

Does anybody believe the barista raving about the new cinnamon dolce latte? Maybe he really does love it. But if next week's drink is the broccoli chai no-whip mocha, he'll be telling us about that, won't he? How do we know? Maybe the words are being relayed from a chip in his head connected to the Starbucks Hive in Seattle.

Here's a different idea - how about employees who are passionate about something you sell, and tell customers about it because they want to share that passion? How about offering the new drink to someone who looks up at the menu and seems uncertain and might want a suggestion, but not to the person who comes in four or five times a week getting the same thing?

In other words, how about an honest relationship with your customers?

Otherwise, the enthusiasm of your employees comes across as... well... flair, as seen below.

Free Wisdom

MarketingSherpa's annual MarketingWisdom report is always fun and informative; it's a big compendium of in-the-trenches stories by marketers about what they've experienced and learned over the last year. I haven't had a chance to read this year's yet, but it's on my stack of things to review when I have some spare time. Enjoy! 

Proving a Concept Isn't Always Rewarding

This recent article about drops in share prices for Whole Foods raises an interesting point about being the company that proves that a market is viable.

When John Mackey started out in 1978 with his alternative grocery store in Austin called Safer Way — a takeoff on the name of the mainstream giant Safeway — he was on the fringes of the grocery industry.

Most mainstream shoppers would have considered Mackey's place to be a hippie store.

But today the mainstream has co-opted his Safer Way philosophy: offering natural and organic foods for healthy, environmentally friendly living. And Whole Foods Market, a very similar concept he opened with friends two years later, has been riding an amazing wave of success, becoming a darling of Wall Street — that is, until last year.

So what happened? A number of things, including extensive expansion (perhaps too much)... but more importantly, other grocers have seen the success of Whole Foods and emulated it in their own way.

Following Whole Foods' lead, other grocers are creating their own upscale models, which include natural foods and organics, Beyard noted.

H-E-B's Central Market and H-E-B Plus, for example, have an impressive offering of gourmet foods and an expansive selection of quality produce, meat and fish. Kroger and Randalls are also revamping stores to reach the same market.

Wal-Mart recently expanded its organic line of foods. In some stores, "we may offer as many as 200 different organic selections," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Karen Burk said.

I've noticed that the local Kroger now carries things I used to have to go to Whole Foods for. Yes, they keep it in a strange little health-food ghetto at the side of the store; no it's not as pleasant as going to Whole Foods. It is, however, four blocks from home instead of across town.

They've even started carrying organic beef - no small thing if you are cooking for somebody with enough allergies that the traces of antibiotics that wind up in a lot of meat can trigger a reaction.

If the success of Whole Foods leads to healthier products being available in regular grocery stores all over America, in a way, John Mackey will have accomplished the mission that led him to open a store in 1978. However, he might not be the one reaping all the benefits of that success.

Why Everyone Hates the Phone Company

OK, just one reason, we don't have all day. The general theme: nobody likes companies who take advantage of them by charging insane prices for something just because they can.

Both Maureen and I have posted recently about the Cingular-to-AT&T rebranding, and both had a general sense that as a brand, Cingular is stronger - AT&T is incredibly well known, but (at least for those of us in states where they are the local phone company) that's not a good thing.

It's always something with them. Today I had the ugly surprise of the bill for an international phone call coming in.

Now, I have no international plan because I rarely make such calls. I knew I'd pay a lot for the call. Here's the thing: my partner was overseas, it was the one window of opportunity in a crazy day for us to talk, and he was having trouble making a call from his hotel. So I got a text message saying "Call me here!"

Had I expected to have to do that, I'd have gotten a code for a prepaid service online earlier. But this was unexpected. So I dialed.

We talked for about 20 minutes. That cost $50. That's to a western European country - we're not talking about calling Malaysia or something like that.

But... come on. More than $2 a minute? I expected to pay a high rate for the call, but that's more than a high rate; that's robbery. A high rate would be twenty-five or thirty cents a minute. (Interestingly, if you sign up for a $5 international plan, AT&T charges eight cents a minute for that same call. I don't believe for a moment that the discounted rate is below cost. So the margin on what I paid was at least $2.15 per minute, or 96%. Look at it this way: they're charging at least twenty-five times the actual cost of the service (and probably much more than that; I'm being generous in their favor here).

And they can. I had no other option at that time. (Obviously, the next time there's a remote chance of having to pick up the phone and dial another country, I'll be prepared to take a non-AT&T route.)

Of course, I learned something, too. I learned that AT&T is the kind of company that will grab your money at any opportunity, and is not to be trusted. They'll charge a ridiculous rate - something far beyond reasonable profit - if they can.

That's a message that won't easily be wiped out by any number of "delivered" billboards or any clever Cingular rebranding efforts.

In fact, though my cell phone has always come from a company partly owned by AT&T, it wasn't right there in my face. Now, when the contract is up and I can consider changing carriers, they'll be AT&T - and I'll have been living with a monthly reminder that it's from those people.

And that's the problem with this whole exercise. AT&T is a brand that is horribly damaged, because being their customer is such a horrifying experience. Cingular, probably because they have always had to compete with other mobile carriers, isn't nearly as bad. I am not surprised that AT&T is opting to use the corporate mothership name for everything, but unfortunately, they're picking the brand that's lodged in consumer's brains somewhere near the spot that muggers, rotting flesh, and the IRS occupy.

They should have stuck with Cingular.

Let Your Fingers Do the Walking

The other day, my building received its annual dump o' Yellow Books. On the half year, we used to get a double allotment of Verizon Yellow Pages, but I'm not even sure they exist anymore.

In any case, the tomes come in a difficult to open, impossible to lift, shrink-wrapped clump, and are left on the front steps, I'm sure by forklift. For whatever reason, the task of taking the Yellow Books off the steps and bringing them into the vestibule of our building has fallen to me and my husband. Since we can't lift the entire thing at once, we wrestle the package open and bring the books inside, two-by-two. Occasionally, the package has already been broken open, which makes our task the more urgent. It's January in Boston, and if rain, snow, sleet, and hail hit the books, they'll turn into papier mache or, worse, cement.

Once inside, the books sit there for a couple of weeks, ignored by everyone in the building.

I then put them in my recycle box, and away they go to be recycled so that they can be turned into next year's Yellow Books.

Is it any wonder that I turn an annual jaundiced eye to the delivery of the not-so-good books?

Some years I actually replace my old copy, but I never look at it. Deep down inside I must harbor a belief that every home needs a Yellow Pages. A vestigial belief, harkening back to the day when people really used Yellow Pages or Yellow Books or whatever they're called.

And there was such a day. I remember it well. You wanted to know where the nearest dry cleaner or florist or Indian restaurant was, you could look through the Yellow Pages and find it. They even had a nifty little jingle: "Let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages." This type of search has been largely replaced by the Internet. Or has it?

Yesterday, I was ranting to my friend (and fellow Opinionated Marketer) John Whiteside about the above mentioned books. John's eminently sensible suggestion to the publishers is that at minimum they come up with some sort of "opt out" mechanism to save all those yellow trees. But, of course, we decided that this wouldn't help the publishers get advertisers. (I can hear the pitch now, "Only 83% of the residents on Beacon Hill chose to opt out.")

They could also affix a sticker to the package, with an 800 number to call if you wanted the books picked up. Presumably, the publisher would have some use for them, other than recycling.

As our conversation continued about the utility of the Yellow Books, John mentioned that he does use them, and that, for a number of reasons, the print version is better than the Internet.

Since I use neither, this led us to conclude that because I have lived in my neighborhood for a long time, I really don't have much need for the Yellow Pages. I know where the butcher-baker-florist-hardware store-shoe repair guy are already. Plus, I live in a densely populated urban area. I walk around. I know when a new Indian restaurant opens up.

John, while also in an urban neighborhood, is relatively new to his 'hood. Thus he uses the yellows to find things. He gives especially high marks to the smaller, more localized editions that are just your area. A good message for potential advertisers, I'd say.

John also warned me that the online yellows weren't all that easy to use, and the results just weren't as good in his experience.

Off the phone, I decided to do a tiny experiment.

Yellow Book in hand, I looked up florist. There were pages of them, but in short order I could scan the list and find the one closest to me. Along the way, I discovered that Stop & Shop (local grocery chain) considers itself a florist. Hmmmmm. Life is full of little surprises.

Online, I entered my zip and "florist" and got a list pretty quickly. But since only a few appeared on the page, it was harder to navigate and find the closest one. It was much easier to skim the written word. (Plus I think that the first one that came up online is one of those bogus florists that put a "real" local address and phone number in a listing, but are actually a call center that takes your info and places your order with a real local florist - while charging your a hefty surcharge. I walk by the address of the phoney florist every day, and there's never been a florist there as far as I know. The phone number is no longer in service, either. The florist scam has nothing to do with the listing - the same non-florist is in the paper version. I just found it interesting that the first florist up was a dud.)

I then tried to find an Indian restaurant. While neither book nor online had a separate sort for Indian restaurant it was, again, far easier to skim the listings in the book than page through the on-line information.

Of course, when I put my inquiries to the Google test, putting in florist + zip, and Indian restaurant + zip, the results were quick and correct. Google wins!

So, in my decidedly unscientific survey: if you want to find info fast, Google it. But if you're going to go by the Yellow Book, let your fingers do the walking the old fashioned way. Paper covers online!