Bill was in attendance at the December 16 WOM Supergenius conference in Chicago where I along with some other old WOMMA friends including Jake McKee, Spike Jones, and John Moore was speaking at the invitation of Andy Sernovitz and his team from Gaspedal.  While all the sessions were great, Bill’s was the only one where I broke out a pen and started trying to capture what was being said word for word.

What better way to kick off 2010 than remembering why we care about WOM in the first place from a brand that is most certainly worthy of a weekend (or a 6 year ambassadorship)?   Thus, enjoy the paraphrased quotes from Bill Samuels, Jr  – some of which originated with from his dad.  I hope they can inspire us all to a 2010 of meaningful marketing resolutions…

<our target audience is…> Anyone with an above average interest in taste and taste distinctiveness that we would enjoy having home for dinner.

<how will we reach them?> We will not enter the airspace of anyone who has not invited us to enter it.

We will talk to the people who want to talk to us.

Wherever we travel, we blow the whistle at 5 and they all come running.

We send Ambassadors text emails from Bill, because your friends don’t send you Flash emails.

Surprise and delight is more powerful than a reward triggered by taking an action.

Every gift we send is a tool to help you introduce your friends to your brand, Maker’s Mark.

Thanks for the reminders, Bill.  And for the reminder to specify brands when ordering a bourbon & ginger.

The below table is a consolidation of lessons shared in an internal discussion of 360 DI strategists across the network for best practices before during and after an event.

An additional follow up consideration for all, especially for complex programs, is Social Influencer Relationship Management.

If you have some experience designing or participating in these brand events, please throw in your $.02.  I think it could benefit all parties to avoid the pitfalls in mistaking participants invited due to their audience and influence for people who are already passionate about everything your brand does.

Co-Creation – 5 minutes after the theater doors opened, the stage was covered with cards, letters and notes with heartfelt requests of favorites, standards and covers for Bruce & the band.  He read some of the notes on stage and, while he jokingly responded to someone yelling an arcane request “we’ll play what we like”, he definitely made a point of letting the audience shape the show.  The fact that every show is different drives nerds like me to research setlists and hit multiple tourstops.

Transparency – There is no rockstar or even jazz virtuoso posturing.  Bruce chose to play the highly-requested Harbor Lights solo and explained that it was because the band hadn’t played it fully orchestrated in so long that they would be rusty.  He also apologized in advance for 1 tune that wasn’t good in sound check, but they needed to get used to playing it live (still sounded great).  And for the first time I’ve ever heard, he ended the show saying “I know times are tight and I really appreciate you all coming out”.

Surprises, Mashups, Inside Jokes - Bruce performed a live debut, played the dulcimer (which I had never seen him do), and pulled off a couple of song mashups that were headscratchers even for me.  The encore was technically 1 song – Mandolin Rain – but jammed through pieces of the lesser known Shadow Hand, Halcyon Days and the Dead song Black Muddy River for those hardcore fans hanging on every note.  Another little fun shoutout was a Sopranos nod with “Got Yourself a Gun” during an earlier tune.  Newcomers may not even notice, but there is an element of discovery makes repeat customers feel lke insiders.

Remember Your Roots – 10 – 15 years ago, Bruce regularly also had a live feature where he invited women on stage to dance to Rainbow’s Cadillac.  I even found a video of this happening at his show on millenium eve – memorable because the weight of the women broke the revolving stage (and yes, I was there).  Listen for the chorus of “Women are Smarter” in the song.   I hadn’t seen him do it in a while, and as the picture at the head of this post shows, he brought it back because “they finally got the stank back on it”.  That’s Bruce on top of the piano playing the accordian.   Another example of honoring roots is Bruce always playing The Way It Is, End of The Innocence, and Mandolin Rain.  This is that moment of recall for those who may be less familiar with his work and a chance for him to really push the envelope on how he twists and turns 20+ year old tunes.

Give it Away Now – If you love something set it free.  Bruce’s new record company has just put up a complete livestream of his new album – 5 weeks before release.  Will it stop me from buying the real thing?  Far from it.  It gets me excited now and has me making more concert plans.

All of the above principles give me a real, multidimensional story to tell about Bruce.  Are you feeding your customers’ hunger for conversational capital?

You may think of Piggly Wiggly as an old or outdated brand.  So did I.  Upon driving into Folly and seeing that there was also a Harris Teeter, I planned to buy food there.  Our hosts, however, kept joking about ‘The Pig’ so when it came time to stock up, that’s where we headed.

Piggly Wiggly had what you expect them to have, plus lots of surprises – including tiny shopping carts for kids to push and occasional visits from “Mr. Pig” who played some patient Peekaboo with the youngest Miracle.  Because of the fun, going to the store wasn’t a chore at all.  We went often and spent heartily.  The Pig took a lot more BSOW (Beach Share of Wallet) than one would expect from a grocery store.  In addition to food, we purchased: Pig Coozies, Giant Pig cups, shockingly fashionable sunglasses, and local specialty Benne Wafers and Blenheim Ginger Ale (fan site for this shockingly HOT ginger ale here) for gifts.  We’re back in DC, but I may still order the toddler “big on the pig” shirt.

You know what the Pig has?  Fun, Personality, and oodles of conversational capital.  They are *not* trying to be Whole Foods, nor they your everyday cheapo store.  The Pig is not trying to be anything other than what it is – a great family southern chain that understands its audience and embraces its kitchiness and the surrounding nostalgia.  I would say that I wish we had The Pig here – except removing it from its surroundings would kill the authenticity, heritage, and magic.  The Pig has truly bloomed where it was planted and we will be running back as soon as we can.

**Image Pier Madonia for the International Red Cross**

One topic that I have written about extensively in this blog is consumer relationships with brands and, in special cases, Brands Worthy of a Weekend (BWOW).  When I started writing about BWOW, it was still a relatively lofty  bar – a brand for which you care so deeply that you would spend a weekend away from your family to connect with other people who feel the same way about this brand, learn more about the “inside” of the business, meet the people who make the magic happen, etc.   With the seismic shift in the blogosphere, however, brand “weekends” have become more and more common, but with a major difference – they are largely designed for influential voices versus passionate fans.   In the mom blogger space in particular, these events are happening in rapid fire succession with some players covering  multiple per month.  While these executions absolutely hold water as communications strategies – at least for the time being – they are no longer about “passion”.  I would argue it is very difficult to be truly passionate about more than a handful of things.

Enter compassion.  I’d never stopped to give compassion much thought, but having begun work on a project that centers on compassion, I am now hyperconscious of it in the world around me and there are a lot of business applications.  While we expect compassion in/from our fellow human beings, we don’t expect companies – with their one-size-fits-all policies and protocols for front line reps – to want or choose to show compassion.    But upon further reflection,  a lot of brand fan creation stories have an act of compassion at their core.  A couple of examples:

• This weekend, the waitress at Inside Park at St. Barts who came outside (where I was exiled with my toddler-gone-wild) to chat with me, suggest some places where I could entertain him, and take my order on the go made me a fan.
• My St. John Knit fan creation story is ALL about a VP of Customer Service reading my letter and breaking the rules to help a desperate bride (now customer for life).
• Every Twitter/online customer redemption listening story – from @comcastcares to the Dell outreach team or non-tech areas like the Vermont Teddy Bear Company reading a complaint I had made about some spam affiliate marketing and correcting the problem (that turned me into a supporter of their sister venture Pajamagram).

The first step in codifying compassion into your business or brand as witnessed above is listening.  You can not understand “the other” or “walk in their shoes” unless you pause to try to understand and consider an issue, opportunity or problem from their point of view.  In the examples above, “listening” took the forms of watching a situation visually, reading a letter from a customer, and blogosphere monitoring respectively (note: great post on active listening from John Bell here).

The second element is trusting those human beings who do represent your brand with the power to act.  Ritz Carlton famously gives front line reps a budget from which they can do whatever they need to do to correct any problems in a customer’s stay and send them away happy.  That not only creates customer evangelists, it proves that the brand trusts the human beings that they have selected to embody the brand.

So, next time something happens that turns you into a positive-WOM machine for a company or a brand, think about the role compassion plays and whether or not you are in turn entrusting your team with the power to pass it along to your own customers.

I received a letter from Marie Gray, CEO of St. John Knit at home this week.

I assumed it would be about the economy.  That’s why we hear from CEO’s these days, right?

It wasn’t.  It was a 5 paragraph letter about a major change in the staple color of the staple fabric of the classic clothing line: the black Santana knit.  For various reasons including the environmental impact of dyes, the fabric color dying process has changed over the years.   Marie Gray writes that she had noticed that recent “black” collections had a bluish cast and had migrated far too close to their navy blue color.  So, they innovated.  They created a new process that would use less water and energy and produce a truer black that will be called “Caviar”.

Why does this matter to loyal customers like me?  In short, your old stuff won’t match the new stuff.  Part of the beauty of the items is that they last forever and you can mix and match items from lines and years.  It is garanimals for grownups.  The letter mentions that all stores and consultants have been armed with swatches of old black, navy, and new caviar for people to compare for themselves and prepare for the changes.  It also reinforces St. John’s commitment to craftsmanship at a time when other brands are focused on discounting which re-reinforces why this is a brand worthy of of a weekend – as well as my loyalty and respect.  While I wont be making any big purchases any time soon, the swatch compare will drive me into the store on my next NYC trip and who knows, maybe caviar will be hard to resist.

As this discussion is going on, Rome is burning (economically speaking).  This offers corporate blogs an amazing opportunity to use their platforms for good, not evil, and some art stepping up to the plate in a significant way.

I detailed some examples in a post yesterday to the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence blog.  Meanwhile, my Ogilvy colleague and blogger extraordinaire was also fanning the flames over at the Influential Marketing Blog.

What do you think?  Is the Forrester-reported suckage real?  Or does the transparent social media treatment of recent unfortunate events change your mind about their value the way it has mine?

So, what makes indies so hard to predict?   Influence!   While recommendation engines are built on the assumption that your taste stays the same, our “tastes” are constantly morphing based on the opinions and information we hear from those around us.

“…the reality is that our cultural tastes evolve, and they change in part because we interact with others. You hear your friends gushing about “Mad Men,” so eventually — even though you have never had any particular interest in early-’60s America — you give it a try. Or you go into the video store and run into a particularly charismatic clerk who persuades you that you really, really have to give “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” a chance.”

Not only do your friends’ recommendations encourage trial or purchase, they also change the way you judge or take in the information.  If I already know that someone I respect really loves a film (restaurant, book, whatever), I am walking in with a very positive inclination to also enjoy the experience.  M.I.T professor Pattie Maes, who pioneered one of the first recommendation engines in the early ’90s, believes that these sources of influence are the flaw in the Netflix contest (based solely on movie rating information).  She believes “culture isn’t experienced in solitude. We also consume shows and movies and music as a way of participating in society. That social need can override the question of whether or not we’ll like the movie.”

Our desire for conversational capital and the social connection it can create is indeed capable of overriding, or at least prejudicing, our individual tastes.  Maybe instead of longing for the demogrphic information of the recommenders in the Netflix contest, the golden ticket would indeed be a social graph showing the way various recommenders are connected and the order they have seen the various films.

Strategy: Passion + a Simple Mission

For every pair you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of shoes to a child in need. One for One

Advertising Budget: $0. To quote the founder, “It’s hard to do advertising in a personal way” Marketing dollars are spent on getting involving customers in the mission – truly cutting the marketing clutter. In an MSNBC interview, a retailer explains that the shoes started selling after posting a picture of the shoes being handed out and the mission over the display.

Results:

• 60,000 pairs donated and a goal of 200,000 by the end of 2008.
• People who think the shoes are ugly on first glance (including me) purchasing them and breathlessly waiting for them to arrive.
• A growing army of volunteer marketers who want to be asked about their ugly shoes so they can tell the story.

I am equally excited about the shoes, mission and conversational capital that I just bought!

Once I started buying, I couldn’t stop. Why? The store is not just about the merchandise, nor is it just about the Vineyard lifestyle (or the “Good Life” as they call it) – it’s about being a part of a great entrepreneurial dream. In the words of founding brothers Shep & Ian:

“In 1998 we started vineyard vines on Martha’s Vineyard, and we’ve been having the time of our lives ever since. We’re brothers who decided to leave corporate jobs in New York City to pursue the American Dream. With no money and little experience, we set out to make ties that represent the finer places and things life has to offer. We’re pleased to have expanded beyond the shores of the Vineyard and now offer much more than just ties”.

I can guarantee this is a critical part of their merchandising, because they tell “Our Story” across all customer touchpoints – catalog, in store, on almost every single page of their website, and even the polo short tags read “vineyard vines by shep & ian”. On the section of their website, you are transported out of e-commerce and into a robust online realm that is what vv is selling beyond clothes including:

The Dream – media clips and videos that show the brothers telling their story. A great Entrepreneur clip shows them going from $2m in sales in 2002 to $372m in 2006.

Customer Community – photos of everyone from Violet Affleck to everyday other vv customers wearing the clothes doing everything from getting married to boating with Walter Cronkite (no kidding). You are invited to send in yours too.

Whale Tales – the stories of notable customers told with photos of them modeling their favorite vv outfits.

This is a remarkable case of a business sharing its story – not just by telling it, but inviting you to participate, meet them, come to their events, and contribute your own stories and photos as customers are also a part of “Our Story“.

I wonder how many other business I patronize also have remarkable stories that they aren’t telling? Or do they just not want to invite me in?