Virginia Miracle

On July 2, I tweeted about a very cool real life application for Twittter during the Tour De France – Nike’s @chalkbot.  You could send a 40 character tweet to the @chalkbot handle and the message would actually be chalked onto the road during the race.

Given that the race is now over and our attentions focused on the upcoming LIVESTRONG Global Cancer Summit in Ireland, I had kind of forgotten about this.  Last night, however, I got a Direct Message from the Chalkbot with a link to this:

This is a photo of my tweet from 6 weeks ago in “real life” on the TdF raceway.  If you could read the fine print on the bottom, it actually gives the GPS coordinates of where it was chalked and the date and time it appeared.

This is a great example of creating another opportunity of Nike + LIVESTRONG providing additional conversational capital and opportunities for engagement.  The way that this principle sometimes plays into our lives at Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence is that we will create assets from events with influencers – interview videos, photos, etc.  They become an additional way to provide value and a great opportunity to keep the conversation going.

And on the LIVESTRONG front, the Tour is over, but the fight goes on.  Follow the road to the Global Cancer Summit in Dublin and beyond at livestrongblog.org.

(Disclosure: LIVESTRONG is a client, but the Chalkbot project is not in our purvue)

I like to think of myself as Bruce Hornsby Superfan #1, but I know it to not be true (that would be Si Twining of Bruuuce.com).  That being said, you can comfortably place me in the next tier of fandom down the line.  Through the years I have seen Bruce in many different type of configurations – solo, with an orchestra, with the Range, etc, but there is no party like seeing him with the Noisemakers.  This is why I happily schlepped to Red Bank, New Jersey to see the full band at the Count Basie Theater (site of my first live Steve Winwood at the tender age of 20) last week.  What struck me about the show was not just how musically remarkable it was, but how many best practices of word of mouth marketing the Noisemakers experience exemplifies.  Its part of the magic that makes folks like me come back show after show, year after year.  Here they are:

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?

(Note: Cross posted on the Ogilvy Fresh Influence blog)

We are 10 days away from PR Blackout Week – a week for mom bloggers to get back to the basics of blogging and temporarily ignore PR folks and brands – being organized by mom blog aggregator MomDot.  Opinions have varied as to  whether or not this is necessary or is a PR tactic in its own right. Regardless of your position, it is a wonderful invitation to discuss the state of union and give current practices a good sniff test.We see PR Blackout Week is a timely call to refocus all of us who love blogs on the value exchange that must take place in order for them to maintain their magic.   This sounds soft, but it is very real – the whole notion of “Digital Influence” is the changing sources and forces of influence around us.  If blogs went the way of infomercials, we would start blocking them with our Personal Message Shield(TM) along with the rest of the noise that bombards us daily.  Absolutely everyone in that scenario loses.

I participate at all levels of this particular food chain – I’m a mom, a PR professional, a blogger,  and a blog reader.  When I think about this value exchange issue, I ask myself a few questions in front of the mirror in harsh flourescent light:

• Am I, as a PR professional, providing something of true value to the bloggers I would like to work with?
• Are bloggers, by working with me, in turn empowered to share something of value with their readers (insights, a new experience, media, meaningful pass alongs, etc)
• Am I acting in the best interests of the ultimate blog readers when I work to craft a blogger experience?
• Am I as a blogger delivering great content to my readership?
• Am I actively supporting the bloggers who provide me with great content, ideas, experiences, and laughter?

While PR Blackout week may not be for you, there’s no time like the present to look at your own RSS reader, your blog, or your blogger engagement programs to reassess whether or not you pass the test on adding value to every link in the chain.

It’s hard to believe it, but I am only 3 days back from a wonderful vacation to Folly Beach, SC.  I learned a lot of things while I was there – the wonders of a planter’s punch with lunch, the beauty of the Charleston Place Hotel, the calming presence of the SC Aquarium for toddlers and…the power of THE PIG.

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.