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.

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?

**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.

WHO IS THIS WOMAN? BLOGGER? MOM?  WOM ADVOCATE?  WIFE?  STRATEGIST? She’s not confused, just multi-dimensional like you.

This week, I was honored to be asked to participate in IBM’s Social Media Marketing Summit.  The first speaker of the day was a social media standard, but someone whom I had not previously met: Frank Eliason, the man behind @comcastcares.  Frank has not only become a poster child for his company, he has become a go-to case study for traditional media getting value out of Twitter.  Frank had a lot of great nuggets of wisdom to pass along through sharing his journey, but there was one aspect that I got some additional questions on later: his very open, brave take on how personal and professional worlds fit together in social media.

Frank’s profile page not only bears his own photo, but links to his family’s personal websites.  This is Frank’s interpretation of a critical principle: people don’t create relationships with a company, they create relationships with people. He shares these links to personalize both himself and his employer.  While I agree with the underlying concept, my interpretation of what it means to bring this principle to life is different.  While my tweets, this blog, and my entries on the Ogilvy blog are all written in a very conversational style that reflects my personality, I do not have digital links up to family or (non-business-relevant) friends.  I am also pretty sensitive to the topics of what I cover and try to stay close to my mission of discussion social media & WOM-relevant topics with an appropriate slice of life on the side.  For the purely personal or “venting”, I usually use Facebook.

I truly don’t think there’s any right or wrong or black or white on this issue.  Over the last few days, I’ve been trying to figure out why I have consciously and unconsciously made these decisions.  Here’s what I’ve come up with:
I have clients – there is already a certain level of professional self-censorship on the stories I share as much of what I am exposed to is proprietary or sensitive for my clients.  Someone who is the face of a brand might feel a bit more comfortable sharing a larger percentage of their days and nights.

I’m female – I started blogging in the age of the mommyblogger explosion, but was not blogging about anything personal.   Because I am a mom who blogs, but am not a mommyblogger, I have probably veered a little dramatically to stay out of that category and pay proper respect to those who truly excel at sharing about their personal lives.  And like Rock and Roll Mama says: I’ve still got it.  Even when I am up to my elbows in Elmo and goldfish.

Virginia Miracle is a Professional Construct (or: Dad Ate My Google Results) – Virginia Miracle was born in 2004 when I married into an awesome last name.  Prior to that, I had a different, somewhat complex and very southern name that is extremely close to that of my Dad – my fabulous and extremely prolific writer father.  For a guy who just got broadband last year, he has a shockingly robust digital footprint.  Getting a new name coincided with the year that I found WOMMA and my career changed.   Thus, everything public that is associated with the name “Virginia Miracle” has stayed relatively professional and been highly correlated to Word of Mouth Marketing.

I don’t think there is a “best practice” here, but it is important to be conscious of your choices as you start that Twitter feed, create a YouTube video of your friends in Vegas, or blog about your parenting style.  Depending on how and where you share, it could follow you to your next job interview, background check, or family reunion.  Best of luck and happy social media sorting…

I am often asked – in and out of work – about how to get fans, customers, ambassadors, bloggers to do something FOR US.  This very approach is why most communities and outreach efforts never get off the ground and the disconnect that Mack Collier discussed in this blog post.  Most community building efforts fail because they are created in order to be monetized, yet communities will not grow and thrive around the concept of monetization.

In order for you to grow a community, you need find a core set of people who will find disproportionate value from what you can provide.  This could be information, a space to gather, entertainment, or a willing ear.  That audience will be the ones to offer you feedback and guidance on how to build a community (or any sort of engagement program) and the ones who will talk about it, help you recruit, etc.  So how do you find ask your core audience?  By asking (with apologies to JFK):

Ask not what your audience can do for you, but what you can do for your audience.

This is similar to the advice that we as a community offered to Recipecomparison.com here, but it is applicable in any number of social media strategies where you are trying to find your talkers.

Try taking this audience-centric approach and find the people for whom you can do the most.  They just might be the ones who can do the most for you regardless of their “influence levels”.

I was technically out searching for a duvet cover, but thought a cupcake break might hit the spot so I crossed the street and noticed a sign on the door:

SOLD OUT – will reopen at 5

Hmm. They must be good if they’re sold out, right? I was so wiped from shopping that I sent my dear husband back at 5 to pick up a few. He found a line so long that he announced the only way he would have waited in it would have been if a private concert with U2 was on the other end. Foiled again.

Sunday, I returned with Blackberry in hand figuring I could read some email while waiting for a cupcake. About 20 minutes in, someone was deciding whether or not to wait and asked “Has anyone actually tasted these cupcakes?“. Only 1 line-waiter had and she assured us they were good, but she was going to try a different flavor this time. A few minutes later, a woman walked by, remarked on the line and said, “Oh! I think the founder was on Martha Stewart this week!” Martha knows cupcakes, right? This will totally be worth it. After waiting for FORTY MINUTES, the proprietors walked out to announce they were sold out again. WHAT?? ARE THE CUPCAKES MADE WITH JOHNNY DEPP’S TEARS OR SOMETHING?

During the week, while the touristas and 8 to 6ers like your humble blogette were safely out of cupcake distance, my husband snuck back to Georgetown Cupcake and procured these as a surprise:

They’re cute. They’re small. They’re cupcakes. Really, thought, the taste and form factor are not remarkable. What’s remarkable is THE LINE. I’d like to tell you that this type of WOM will fade once everyone tries them and realizes that they’re just OK cupcakes, but I can cite at least a dozen food based businesses all over the country as known for their lines than their food (ever visited Pepe’s or Sally’s in New Haven?).

I discussed this with Malcolm @ BzzAgent over lunch on Monday and he noted that we, as a culture, rarely have to wait in line these days. We can handle shopping, ticket purchases (source of my favorite line stories), post office and even many DMV duties virtually these days, so are we just a bunch of lost sheep searching for a line to stand in?

Now that I have had a Georgetown Cupcake, I will not be waiting in any 40 minute lines again. If anything, I am having dreams about turning my house into a cupcake bakery making over-sized cupcakes with unusual fillings in awesome gift boxes that I sell for $8 a pop. Given the nothing more than adequacy of their product, it will be interesting to see if the lines at Georgetown Cupcakes last…And if the Dean & Deluca across the street starts selling killer cupcakes to capitalize on the folks who wont wait in line.

1. Provide a remarkable experience (in it’s literal “worthy of remark” sense)
2. Facilitate sharing this experience – between customers, between the brand and customers, between communities, etc.

Video and video sites make video chunks of information very easy to share. The rub – and what determines whether or not a video becomes “viral” – is whether or not the video is remarkable enough to inspire sharing.

How do you become remarkable? You have to know your customers – listen to what they find remarkable now and note what topics make their radar. Then, examine your product/service/culture/offering etc and what potential sources of conversational capital you can own. After that, it’s all about making a great video, check out these guys or the Viral Video Artiste below.

If you do not start the world’s next viral sensation/Word of Mouth Marketing case study, what you have is not bad. Having rich, varied, positive multimedia content on your site and tagged on video sites is indeed a critical thing in our search-driven world. If you want to develop multimedia content in the hopes of generating conversations, make the first move not by talking, but listening. If you know what your customers are talking about, you will have a much better sense of how to create relevant videos, regardless of whether or not they show up on the Today Show.

CatchUp Lady, whose post was my first exposure to Nau.

“I would definitely spend a weekend with the Nau brand. With so many companies “green washing” and merely paying lip service to corporate social responsibility it’s nice to see a company that actually IS doing no evil. I think a company like Nau that walks the walk really resonates with my generation – and I’ll bet we see more companies following their lead in the future. Plus, my cousin works for Nau (disclaimer!) and if I took a weekend out there I’d actually get to both experience a great brand AND spend time with family!”

Chris Wojda of the Incite Kitchen

In his nomination of Nau as a Brand Worthy of a Weeekend: Think Patagonia with a little more Patagonia sprinkled on top. Then add a strong twist of Calvin Klein and Armani design aesthetic… and there you have it. Masters at building a sense of community rather than a marketing campaign.

In response to the question “Why are you a fan?”: I’m a fan of Nau because the brand has a clear purpose beyond making money. In my opinion, every great brand has a double or triple bottom line philosophy. They don’t rely on positioning and image, they rely on having a shared purpose with a core group of consumers to sell who they are to the rest of the world…All that said, their style is great. They not only make clothes that will perform while outdoors (freedom of movement, wick away sweat, keep you dry, breathable), their clothes are also made to perform indoors or in an urban environment (designed so that you don’t always look like you just got back from summiting Mt. Hood).

What would you expect from a weekend with Nau? I would expect a time where work and play were one in the same. As with most passionate people, the group at Nau seems to be the type that doesn’t separate work and pleasure because the two totally bleed into each other for them. They would be completely sold out to their brand and cause and very talkative about it. I’d expect a lot of Stumptown coffee (that’s another brand you should explore), a lot of people riding their bikes to and from the office, and a lot of conversation about affairs that on the surface have not a thing to do with selling apparel. They get their inspiration from a lot of places and clearly don’t chase cool. I’d expect a lot of collaboration in their office which would have few walls, few conference rooms, but a lot of sketches, articles, photos, ads, and other shit scattered through-out as inspiration. I wouldn’t expect them to be very secretive as they are more interested in collaboration than competition.

Nau – a Polynesian word of welcome and inclusion – was formed in 2004 by former executives from high end outdoor & lifestyle brands (Nike, Patagonia, Adidas to name a few). They came together to build a company that found “a better way” for every product and business process. Here are just some of the core elements:

Product: Nau sells technical outdoor items and casual sportswear that express their design philosophy of beauty, performance and sustainability. Nau has engineered 24 of the 32 fabrics used in their clothing to ensure that they are paying off on all elements of the philosophy. Nau uses recycled materials in fabrics as well as biopolymers (polyester-like materials made from agricultural sources) in order to grow the demand for such developments. One the most interesting is PLA (polylactic acid) is a synthetic made from corn instead of petroleum. But before you worry that these are the next gen of hemp clothes – take a look. These new fabrics have the same feel and look of virgin fabrics and don’t require sacrifices on design or style. Like the company, their clothes are also built to last – engineered for multiple uses, easy care, and subtle color choices to stay in style.

Participation: Instead of just giving a percentage of sales to charity (as Target and others do), Nau gives a whopping 5% of sales to a handpicked group of organziations fighting for environmental and social change (vs. just dealing with the consequences of programs). At the time of purchase either online or in one of Nau’s webfronts, customers can select which of the organizations will directly benefit from their purchase. It may seem like a small gesture, but by soliciting participation in this way, Nau is truly benefitting their “Partners for Change” with awareness and co-ownership of the customers who chose to support them.

Sustainability: There is a lot of talk about sustainability these days, but Nau lives it. From a remarkable headquarters that uses passive ventilation, recycled wood, and natural light and heat control to hiring external auditors to ensure the practices of their manufacturing, sustainability is baked into everything Nau does. Nau distributes their own products and, in addition to online sales, has 4 “webfront” stores to offer a place for customers to experience the brand and be able to try on clothes. Like all of Nau’s practices, they are designed for maximum efficiency and minimum impact. At a mere 2,200 sq feet on average, they carry very little stock (reduced shipping impact) and require little to heat and cool. They company buys wind and solar credits to offset the impact from the stores and headquarters operation. When you purchase an item at the webfront, you are offered a 10% discount if you do not take the item with you and have one like it shipped to you in recognition of the savings to the store for not having to carry lots of inventory.

Influencers: Nau recognizes the importance of influencers to the growth of their business and even boasts a “VP of Influencers” who hails from Nike. Influencers are seen as the face of Nau in the field and the representation of the company spirit. They identify 3 major communities that map to the elements of Nau’s brand identity: athletes (technical outdoor performance), artists (beauty of design), and activists (environmental and social change). Influencers have the ability to purchase Nau at a substantial discount, offer feedback on improving product performance, and participate in shaping the brand by blogging on the Nau site.

How does all this drive WOM? There is so much conversational capital here that it’s hard to know where to start, but when I asked folks in marketing at Nau how new customers find out about them, here is how they responded:

“The goal of most of our marketing & PR efforts (and, in part, our work with out Partners for Change) is to facilitate conversations around our products, our company, and our environmental and social mission. One small example: We don’t put logos on our clothing. If someone likes your coat and wants to know what you’re wearing, they have to ask. Our hope is that we have designed our product and our company to be interesting enough to spark discussion without us having to be too heavy-handed about it.”

As I mentioned at the top of this post, Nau raises the bar. Giving your customers something to talk about is difficult anough in this cluttered world, but doing it while being as subtle as the colors of Nau’s clothing line takes far more finesse.

Check back tomorrow where I’ll be sharing the words of some of Nau’s biggest fans and why they’d spend a weekend with these folks….