Why Girl Scout Cookies Are So Incredibly Wonderful

I know I'm not the only person who makes an occasional meal out of Thin Mints or Samoas (now called Caramel Delites - I just looked in the freezer to check), so I was happy as a cookie-eating clam to pick up my delivery at my sister's this weekend.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of Girl Scout cookies, and it's one tradition that I'm thrilled see survive.

I was never much of a Girl Scout myself. I was part of an active Brownie Troop, but we kind of fell apart after we flew up to Girl Scouts. The summer after we flew up, my friends and I spent a week at a completely low-budget day camp for Brownies and fly-ups, where we made Sit-Upons out of newspapers and mooned over the cute lifeguard. On the last day of camp, there was a show, and I was supposed to dance a can-can with another girl. But I was a little weirded out because I didn't really know the other girl, and I believe she was a Protestant, to boot. In any case, I was too embarrassed to get up in front of the cute lifeguard -  even though he wouldn't have known who I was if he'd saved me five minutes earlier from the depths of Stiles Lake -  so I pretended that I was sick. Also on that last day, the counselors and said cute lifeguard took off on us, hid in some secret reaches of the low-budget camp, and made themselves Samoas (real ones with graham crackers, marshmallows, and Hershey bars). When we found them, they told us to scram. This definitely lowered my opinion of the counselors, who were supposed to be some kind of Girl Scout goddesses, not to mention the cute lifeguard.

That fall, it didn't help my Scouting career that the two troop leaders in our parish - a couple of tough, chain smoking Irish women - died of lung cancer just about the time I became a full-fledged Girl Scout. In any case, I never got my cookie selling badge - or any other badge, for that matter.

Still, I have always loved GS cookies and, as a purist, I do not believe that there is any cookie on the face of the earth that can compete with a Thin Mint (let alone a stack of Thin Mints). But there's other reasons why Girl Scout Cookies have such a great value proposition:

• You get to support a good cause. The Girl Scouts both let kids be kids, and help girls navigate the increasingly perilous shoals between childhood and adolescence. (I believe this, despite my earlier experience with the Samoa-hogging Girl Scout meanies.)
• You get to buy from girls who are involved in a wholesome endeavor. There are no doubt Girl Scouts who worship Britney Spears and dress like skanks, but it seems to me that girls involved in Scouting are going to be more likely to be taking part in age appropriate (and appropriate appropriate) activities.  
• In my own personal case, I get to support my wonderful niece, Molly.
• For whatever reason, the Girl Scouts seem to be a pretty darn scandal-free organization. (Samoa-hogging scandal aside.)
• You can bring Girl Scout cookies into the office and make everybody happy.
• In fact, you can sell Girl Scout cookies in the office and make everybody happy - unlike those fundraisers that sell the scented candles or the wrapping paper sets where each sheet of paper might let your wrap a ring box.
• Girl Scout cookies now come mostly trans-fat.
• Girl Scout cookies last forever in the freezer and taste great frozen. Actually, I don't know if they last forever, but they do last at least six months in my house.
• You can definitely make a meal out of Thin Mints. Serve with cold milk. Preparation time: 0 minutes. (I think I know what's for dinner tonight.)

Email Marketers and the Long View of Spam

Email marketers hate spam filters and blacklists, right? After all, they usually wind up blocking some legitimate marketing email. Well, not everybody, as this column by Matt Blumberg, the CEO of ReturnPath, indicates: 

Marketers need to understand what is happening across the vast communication network to which they belong.  You may have read that  the spam problem is getting worse. The numbers are so huge they numb the mind.

The spam problem is quickly becoming a very big deal.  Such a big  deal, in fact, that it threatens the viability of the channel.  As networks become overwhelmed with spam and viruses, they will become  increasingly unstable.

Moreover, the increase in phishing and other fraudulent e-mails erodes consumer confidence, threatening the effectiveness of legitimate e-mail. 

Exactly. There's something that Blumberg doesn't touch on, though: the problem isn't just what we can all agree is spam. It's also the "spam-lite" of unwanted email that comes from the online merchant who has decided to send uninteresting, too-frequent messages; the company that decided that when you placed an order, you were also asking for a weekly newsletter; or any of the many marketers who don't really understand that "personalized, useful" messages aren't just "things sent to your address that are useful to our company."

For an example, look at the telemarketers, who abused their ability to dial a customer's phone number to the point that legislation was needed to reign them in.

Marketers don't typically have a lot of restraint in this area. And so the same tragedy of the commons is playing out in the email world.

Technorati tags: email marketing, spam filters

Wifi at the Airport

Is this a market that needs a disruptive new player, or what?

Here's something interesting I've noticed: from my travels (a limited sample, I admit) it seems like smaller airports understand that wifi is becoming an amenity like bathrooms and water fountains, and larger airports just don't get it. So I've used free wifi at Palm Beach International and in Syracuse, New York, but found that at Cleveland, Houston, and Newark, you have to pay.

There doesn't seem to be any quality difference. In Newark last week, I went through Boingo's annoying sign-up procedure, which left me utterly frustrated and cursing them and their overly-cute name. (It's the kind of name that, when things go wrong, makes you think, "Boingo? The name alone tells me that I'm dealing with a pretend company, not a serious business.")

Apart from the irritation of having to create a user account for something you will hardly ever use, their signup procedure is so Web 0.0 - I went through five usernames being told that the username was taken. Um, couldn't you check that before I filled the whole damn form out? And then I started getting server errors. Stupid.

Syracuse had some issues with its free wifi; it seemed to think that every time I opened a new browser tab, I was a new user, and gave me the obligatory "accept our terms and conditions" form. (After that you come to a brief airport user survey - just a couple of questions - and that's smart, although the 15th time I saw it I was a bit sick of it.)

I wonder what's going to happen when Houston's municipal wifi network is built. It's supposed to reach every corner of our sprawling city's 600 square miles, and that includes the airport. If I sign up for city wifi service, will I be able to use it there? Why do I think that Sprint will try to keep that from happening?

Not that I ever actually pay for wifi at the Houston airport; like everybody else, I huddle near the door of the Continental President's Club and use their free wifi.

If you want business travels to think of your airport as a 21st century travel facility, rather than a backwater hellhole, the wifi signal should be strong, free, and accessible all over the facility. West Palm Beach gets that. Syracuse gets that. (The economy hotel I stayed at this trip which charged $42 a night even got that. Free wifi included in that bargain price.)

Are you listening, Cleveland, Newark, Houston, and everybody else?

A side note: while I checked out the wifi situation in Cleveland, I saw this:

See those "free public" and "tmobile" networks? They're computer-to-computer networks. Which made me very suspicious; I suspect that someone was trying to lure travelers who didn't pay enough attention to connect to their machines for some nefarious purpose. Watch where you connect, folks; you don't know where that wifi signal's been.

(UPDATE: Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle's TechBlog offers an explanation of those odd computer-to-computer networks.)

Technorati tags: wifi, airports, Newark, Cleveland, Syracuse, Houston, West Palm Beach, Palm Beach International, Boingo, Web 0.0

Under-Promising and Over-Delivering

Last night my Continental flight arrived in Houston about half an hour early. Which normally is a great thing.

Except that my partner was picking me up at the airport, and wasn't coming from home, so when I sent him a text message to let him know that I was on the ground, he had to rush to the car and drive up to the airport from downtown Houston (about 20 miles away).

This happens all the time; your flight is late, but you land early. Yes, sometimes it's great tailwinds. But it's pretty obvious that they are padding the schedule because otherwise, 95% of the flights would be late.

(And I should be clear - I'm not whining. I spent the extra ground time sitting outside enjoying a perfect spring evening, which is lovely after you've been in a place with sub-zero night temperatures. Yes, it was nicer than spending that time on a plane.)

Under-promising and over-delivering can be a very smart thing to do, because beating expectations always makes customers happy. The problem is that if you do it all the time, customers catch on to the scam. And sometimes over-delivering isn't helpful.

Going back to flight schedules: arriving early is annoying if somebody on the ground is planning his schedule to pick you up. It's mildly annoying if you've decided to watch a 40 minute video on your iPod because you've got 60 minutes left in your flight, but then you land 30 minutes later. And many of us just like to know what's going to happen next, whether it's ideal or irritating.

I assume that airports know that this is all a scam: they've got to organize facilities and ground crews to receive all those planes coming in, so they must know the real story.

All of this leaves me thinking, "Any expectation Continental sets is a ploy to improve their on-time figures." That annoys me simply because I like to do business with people who are honest with me. And it sets a new expectation: if you don't over-deliver, you've failed. I expect every Continental flight to land early, because I know the scheduled duration of the flight is a lie. If they just meet their schedule, they were late.

Find a small way to over-deliver: the staff was extra nice! The seat was actually designed for an adult human being! (Don't hold your breath.) Over-deliver now and then, and you'll make customers happy.  

But do it all the time, and customers just catch on, stop believing your promises, and get jaded.

So Much For Finding Essentials Online...

Sometimes it's the strangest little events that show you all the gaps in our supposedly online world.

I'm on a trip this week. Last night, my mobile phone died. I'd noticed that the battery didn't seem to be holding a charge as well as it used to, and made a mental note to see about getting a replacement. Well, last night the battery died and now will not even take a charge... which means I can't even turn my phone on.

I'm like so many of us - when the mobile dies, I feel like I've been tossed into the bottom of well and nobody knows I'm there. But I have some time before catching my flight today, so I went to Cingular's web site to see if there was a store nearby - figuring I could pick up a replacement battery, and hopefully find a convenient electrical outlet at the airport to charge it up a bit.

This should be easy, right? Find a Cingular store near my hotel in an office-park-type location in an upstate New York city.

Ha! The Cingular store locator is fascinating; it produces different results at different times, giving you a feeling like you're at a table in Vegas, not at your laptop looking up a business. I also tried Google, which gives you an entirely different set of places.

I managed to find some nearby locations, jotted down the phone numbers, and started calling to see if they had the right battery in the store. Some of these locations aren't stores at all; they're corporate sales offices.

All of which left me wondering, why can't the Cingular web site tell me the nearest place where I can buy a battery for my phone?

Another fascinating feature: when you get a map of the store search results, you can't zoom in or out on the map. Not helpful.

This is such basic stuff; for a business that has retail outlets, like Cingular, it should be an absolute baseline requirement that their web site tells a person how to get to the nearest store.  Very nice, but slightly more complicated, would be a way to find out what's available for sale at that store.

Even better, for a customer with a contract who spends a good bit of money each month with them, would be a way to buy the battery on the web site and have it waiting at that store.

And something I'd actually pay a premium for right now would be for someone to deliver that battery from the store to my hotel (a distance of about 3 miles). (I don't have a rental car so I'm depending on the kindness of fellow Opinionated Marketer Maureen to give me a lift there en route to the airport later this morning, if they indeed have what I need).

Mobile phones are a necessity for business travelers. Cingular could make a nice profit off of me today - and I'd thank them for it!

Sadly, no. Meanwhile, though, here's something I'm adding to my list of tech travel essentials, along with the iGo charger, a phone cord in case that's the only way to get online, and the like: a spare battery for the mobile.

Technorati tags: Cingular, mobile phones, business travel

Banned in Boston: Will Marketers Be Licensed?

Well, I'm sure proud and pleased that, in light of two recent marketing campaigns gone awry, the Boston City Council is considering licensing corporate marketers. No details yet: Councillors Stephen Murphy and my namesake Maureen E. Feeney are going to figure out exactly what they're talking about in the next few weeks.

First, for those who haven't heard about the ker-flooey marketing that triggered this over-reaction, in the last month or so guerrilla marketers promoting Aqua Teen Hunger Force feature-length cartoon and a Dr. Pepper treasure hunt ran into problems in the home of the bean and the cod. Not content to put their signs where hip young things would recognize what they were, some hip young marketers acting for the Cartoon Network upped the ante and put the signs (which contained exposed wiring and batteries) underneath an overpass near a train station. The Dr. Pepper folks thought it was a good idea to hide a coin in a 300 year old cemetery and have hundreds of treasure-hunters marauding around ye olde slate gravestones trying to find it. (Prior blogs on these topics are here: Dr. Pepper, Aqua Teen 1, Aqua Teen 2.)

 According to the Boston Globe article by Raj Mishra (March 7):

The proposal's authors said new measures are needed because current fines and regulations do little to deter massive corporations seeking publicity through unconventional marketing campaigns.

"If they broke city laws and ordinances, then their licenses could be suspended," said Murphy, pointing out that a range of professions, from beauticians to doctors, are licensed and regulated by the government.

It will be interesting to see what details get worked out, but it's really hard to believe that an edgy, guerrilla marketing company is going to get themselves licensed and/or meekly seek the City's permission whenver they wanted to do something edgy and guerrilla.  Hard to see either of these scenarios occurring:

Guerrilla Marketer A to Boston Marketing Licensing Authority: Recognizing that your city was the launching pad for two of the 9/11 airplane bombs, and guessing that your city is still a bit skittish, we'd like permission to lodge a sign designed to look a bit like a bomb underneath a highway that runs above a bus station, public transit station, and a commuter train station. We understand that this is probably going to be fine with you, but just wanted your OK.

Guerrilla Marketer B to Boston Marketing Licensing Authority: We'd like to hide a coin that might be worth a million dollars in the cemetery where Paul Revere, John Hancock, and Ben Franklin's parents are buried - and where there are many ancient, fragile, slate head stones. We anticipate that no more than 100-200 people will gather at this pocket-cemetery, and we believe that they will behave in a calm, orderly manner - staying on the cemetery paths and not knocking over any ancient, fragile, slate head stones. Oh, and this will all happen at 3 a.m., so could you please leave the cemetery gates open for us.

Let's face it, the edgier the stunt, the more likely it would be to get rejected.

Guerrilla marketers are far more likely to ask forgiveness than permission. And as long as the major corporation's an arms-length behind these stunts are willing to pay hefty reparations, there doesn't seem much reason to cease and desist now, does there?

I do get why Boston wants to go after those who are tampering with public property, public infrastructure, and public treasures. Unfortunately, most of the "go after" is going to be after the fact. Thoughtful, think-through, sensible marketers are probably not going to engage in these sorts of marketing activities to begin with. The Boston Globe article mentions an example of a local company that did ask about hiding a diamong in the Granary Burial Ground. Not surprisingly, they were turned down.

But this company, E.B. Horn, is an old time, non-guerrilla, Boston-proper company, a jeweler that's been around since 1839, and is right around the corner from the Burial Ground. So they get it - and knew ahead of time that they'd need to ask. (Their hiding place turned out to be under a bench in an MBTA T-station.) 

Back to the City Council hearing (and The Globe):

Marketing officials who spoke at yesterday's hearing said that the industry regulates itself and that most companies would not pull stunts like the two that generated controversy here.

"I don't believe that adding rules, regulations, procedures on top of what exists today will help the problem," said Steven Halling, Boston chapter president for the American Marketing Association.

Well, I'll have to look at the American Marketing Association code of conduct, but I didn't even know that "we" (i.e., marketers) even had rules, regulations, and procedures to begin with. (First, do no harm. Nahh, that's doctors, not marketers.)

Again, I can't see guerrilla marketers following anything as fuddy-duddy, so yesterday, as the best practices of the AMA.

Meanwhile, Maureen Feeney is looking with her jaundiced, politician's eye at our "industry".

I have no expectation that there is going to be self-imposed regulations by this industry," said Feeney, the council's president. "I think they are just going to push to out-do their competitors."

Hey, Moe, just what industry is that you're talking about? The guerrilla marketing industry? The citizens' marketers industry? Where you been, girlfriend?

If Boston thinks they can license marketers the same way they do beauticians and morticians, well, I think they've got a bit more thinking to do.

How about enacting a simple little ordinance that says "anyone considering a marketing campaign that involves the use of public property and/or could impact public safety by causing a large, potentially unruly crowd to gather must receive a permit from City Hall or face some big, fat music in terms of a big, fat fine."

Failing this, Boston could establish a "Drop a Dime" system, in which those who had information on a sketchy guerrilla marketing campaign. After the Aqua Teen incident, didn't some bloggers wrote that the Boston police would have known what the signs were if only they'd been monitoring Aqua Teen or hip young thing related blogs? Just set up your Google Alert for "edgy" "guerrilla" "marketing" "Boston", and you, too, could become an informer.

I'm not that wild about the blogosphere becoming the Stasi-osphere, so I'm hoping that marketers just smarten-up and use their heads, or conscience-up and use their moral compass to determine whether their buzz is more important than the public good.

I'm one marketer who just doesn't think that we need to be licensed to practice our profession.

Second Life, A Rough Neighborhood

At least for the John Edwards presidential campaign:

 Second Life has been hit by one of its first instances of political vandalism, with John Edwards's virtual campaign headquarters defaced by apparent supporters of George W. Bush, according to blogger Lyndsay Beyerstein (via Pandagon).

The vandalism included "Bush '08" signs and an altered a photo of Edwards, rendered in blackface (see photo). The vandalists also plastered the area with Marxist-Leninist posters as well as a feces spewing obscenity.

Seems to me that this is a concern for marketers building Second Life outposts as well; it's a bit easier to go to town with vandalism in an online world than in prosaic First Life...

Technorati tags: Second Life, citizen marketing