I cringe most when creative agencies themselves do bad creative on themselves.

How could this text be improved? [apart from the spelling mistake].

WildfireApp poor quality support

The details of my issue were not resolved by the first ticket I submitted.  Then, in order to provoke a response (rather than raise a new ticket) I had to use their ‘customer satisfaction questionnaire’ to add in my supplemental question.

I’m not going to spell out what it takes to offer good customer support but this fails on several levels.

The WildfireApp website fails to give real people’s names, the email contacts for support are all the same (whatever office you use) and I don’t want sales.

Can I speak to a real person?

We all get loose ends and links that break on websites. It’s a fact of online marketing life.  So don’t stress – take our 3 steps and make the most of a bad situation.

How to make the most out of an error

Accept that these things happen. Now try and put it right for your readers.

• Apologise – first things first, say you’re sorry that the visitor has been inconvenienced.
• Signpost – send them to other places where they might be able to find the content they want e.g. your archive or a search box
• Be wryly humorous, if you can. Take a look at all these excellent page designs- many will not be suitable for your brand (some are downright obnoxiously rude) but they have a common theme of originality, humour and reinforce the site’s brand values.  Like these two below
  

  Mock-Microsoft error page

  .

Urban Outfitters errorHumorous error page text

Image by antitezo via Flickr

Is it possible that a creative agency can build a pipeline of new business without having to respond to RFPs as a means of finding new leads?

Two articles in my RSS feed today struck me today as being relevant to this topic
The first is a slide deck from the excellent Courtney Pemberton and Tom Ross

Where the presenters contrast Schipul - a 37 person web development firm who do low-budget websites and lots of them; with Four Kitchens a 12 man operation whose average web development budget is $250,000.  Which firm would you rather do new business development for?  I know my response!

And the second is a USA Today expert opinion from Steve Strauss. He details the hideously comic-if-it-wasn’t-so-awful conference call with a web development team who fail to deliver even a basic understanding of their prospective client’s business.  I am sure it happened just as he recounts

•They internally scheduled the wrong time for the call (we are on the west coast, they were on the east coast).

•Once the call started, 15 minutes late, two of the folks on their end couldn’t find the website we had asked them to review with us on the call.

•The boss was not on the call at the start and they scrambled to find him.

Finally, 10 minutes into a call that was already starting 15 minutes late, the boss jumped on the line. He didn’t really know the purpose of the call, or who I was, or what we were doing, and so asked “So just what is it you do again?”

Are you disorganised in your new business process?

Making new business happen is one of the 7 steps in our new biz dev process.  Internal team management in advance of and during briefing calls is a ‘hygiene’ factor.  It is necessary as the underpinning to a solid new business pipeline.

Image via Wikipedia

Reading the rules the IOC is imposing on athletes competing at London 2012, makes me cry out loud. IOC, STOP and THINK. You are potentially challenging the largest consumer-powered communication engine to a fight to the death and I think I know who’ll win.

What is social media best known for – quick updates and fast thinking sound bites. Here’s what people accredited for the Games can do “…postings, blogs or tweets should be in a first-person, diary type format and should not be in the role of a journalist – i.e. they must not report on competition or comment on the activities of other participants or accredited persons.”

So I can say what I’m doing but not that I just beat someone else or noticed them eating, breathing or taking off an (unbranded) shirt.

All sounds unworkable and just too onerous – except that the threat of being chucked out and de-accredited may mean athletes decide just not to do any social media at all to be on the safe side.

As one commentator, Chris Matyszczyk, says

…the IOC might not yet understand the instant impulses that tweeting engenders. You grab your phone. You cradle your laptop. Out pop words whose speed is that of a Usain Bolt from the blue.

The long history of regulation and control of the Olympic branding and logo is well known (A client of ours, Rowperfect even got a “cease and desist” letter in 2000 for using a photo of an athlete in GB kit and mentioning that they trained using their product).

So the rules include the statement “Participants and other accredited persons must not use the Olympic Symbol – i.e. the five interlocking rings used alone on their postings, blogs or tweets on any social media platforms or on any websites.” You also can’t create a website with the word olympic in the URL but can create a sub-page like rowperfect.co.uk/olympics – for the duration of the games….till 15th August 2012. What’s the point? Make and leave a legacy not create and take down.

And above all there’s full personal legal liability AND the Games police will be watching from the Olympic offices www.olympicgamesmonitoring.com password protected and restricted access.

Read the full IOC Social Media Internet and blogging guidelines.

Take a read of Benjamin Ellis on fine form writing about “Making an Apology”.

He writes “as a bare minimum I expect

• A genuine acceptance that what happened was wrong.
• In as far as is reasonable, an explanation of what went wrong and why (i.e. does the offender understand? Is it under control?) – Not everyone agrees with this one.
• A commitment to a) put it right and b) ensure that it doesn’t happen again (i.e. lessons learnt).”

Have you ever had to make an apology in business?

Can you tell us what the key things you felt needed to happen

What were the customer reactions?

Did something good come out of the situation?

David Cushman writes a helpful explanation of the difference between “black hat” and “white hat” search engine optimisation.  He is careful to explain where he sees the boundary between appropriate and unscrupulous marketing practices.

Abuse is normal in business and in life.  There are always people who play ‘fast and loose’ and ‘fly close to the wind’ and sometimes the law catches up with them.  Most people and businesses play fair and North Americans and Europeans brought up on a strong sense of fair-play will tend to align with these rules of engagement.

What is right for your brand?

Brand positioning is a fine art and the tools used for marketing communicaitons will tend to help consumers reinforce their views of the brand positioning.  As David says, Twitter is open; the API is open. Opportunists will continue to spot ways of gaming the system.

I am grateful to David for writing this article and ‘labellling’ the practice.  I have been irritated recently with a similar action by Scribd.   It’s a nice file sharing tool a bit like Slideshare. But it automatically told my friends about itself on Facebook (because I used FB to sign up) and signed them up too.

I received a flush of inbound emails from Scribd telling me my friends had signed up to it – but few had any documents loaded.  So I wrote to them asking what they use it for, how they found me and what the purpose of the app is if you haven’t got any documents loaded onto it.

Kristie Wells of Social Media Club’s views matched most of the other respondents.  She wrote back to say she agrees with me

I just started using Scribd on a different account to host a couple of Social Media Club’s documents, and had signed up a personal account (just in case).  I had no idea signing up via Facebook was going to automatically seek out friends and add them for me.  Honestly, I hate that. I actually wondered why I was receiving quite a few notices of people scribing to me, especially when there were no documents there.

To be honest, I am not sure I am going to use it personally. A good business tool for me, but now I wonder about the practices with the auto add I am not sure I am thrilled about using them.

I absolutely hate that feature.  Give me a choice to auto find friends and add – I don’t like any service that does that automatically.

Unscrupulous, certainly.  Fraud – probably hard to prove.  It’s certainly an app that is now unlikely to gain widespread traction because of this practice.

Spread the word.

Related articles

• “I feel like Scribd used me” (ericgoldman.org)
• Black hat peer-to-peer (fasterfuture.blogspot.com) David Cushman’s article on his blog
• SEO is Dead, Long Live SEO (level343.com)
• SEO Avoid Black Hat Techniques (stevehartkopf.com)

I am subscribed to a few of their emails (although unsubscribing is an issue) and today received a message asking me “How are you using telemarketing as part of your demand generation or new business activity?”

As a rule I like to take part in surveys becuase as a marketer I rely on people doing them for me.

This was an unmitigated disaster.

How not to structure a questionnaire survey

I started to answer the questions but more and more doubts arose about the quality of information I was imparting and the ability of the company [who presumably paid to do this] to use any answers I gave.

1. How can you use two points in a matrix that are on both horizontal and vertical axes to gain any meaningful data? see question 5 below the fold.
2. If the answer to question 8 was ‘no we don’t use telemarketing’, how can you answer question 10 about how closely integrated email marketing and telemarketing are?
3. question 12 “Do you use email analytics to help assess the effectiveness of your campaign and assist in prioritisation of telemarketing activity?”  This is two questions in one.  What if I use email analytics but don’t use it to prioritise telemarketing?
4. Question 17 “Which of these processes would you describe as the most effective?”  How about making this a top 3 choice?  You’d gain more insight from the answers.
5. Consider these three questions (18, 19 & 20) They can be organised better through an automated questioning so that when yes or other is clicked a new question 19 appears.  Freak this is SO basic.

18. Do you regularly seek to enhance prospect data to ensure more effective marketing in future? Yes/No/Don’t know

19. If you answered ‘yes’ how do you do this? Through telemarketing/Through email newsletters and dedicated offers/Other

20. If you selected ‘other’ please specify

6. Is this question written in good English? How accurate would you describe the current size/status of your business database?  Plus the tabulation is crap.  First select the size of your database, then answer the quality question.

What do you think?
The full survey text follows

B2B Marketing Demand Generation Survey

How are you driving new business?

1. In terms of your marketing priorities, how important is generating new business or sales leads for your organisation?

It’s my top priority
It’s in my top three priorities
It’s on my ‘to-do’ list
It’s not a priority in 2010
It’s not something which we’re doing this year
Don’t know

2. What percentage of your overall marketing budget do you allocate to generating new business?

0%
1-5%
5-10%
10-15%
15-20%
20-25%
+25%
Don’t know

3. If you selected ‘don’t know’, please specify which of the following reasons best explains why

Still awaiting confirmation of budget sign-off
Have not started the budgeting process for this financial year
Don’t know what previous spend was
This is confidential

4. How will this allocation changed in 2010 compared to 2009

It’s going to increase a lot (by over 25%)
It’s going to increase a bit (by less than 25%)
It’s going to remain broadly constant
It’s going to decrease a bit (by less than 25%)
It’s going to decrease a lot (by more than 25%)
Don’t know

5. Which of the following marketing techniques, tools or channels do you use to support new business or demand generation activities? Please identify which activities are part of your plan for this year, and which are one of your top priorities?

2010 activity     Is it a priority     No activity
Search marketing (SEO/PPC)
Email
Social media
Telemarketing
Events
No activity for new business

6. For what specific new business/demand generation tasks do you use telemarketing?

Prospect identification
Data cleansing
Qualification
Appointment booking
Conversion
General feedback
Other
We don’t use telemarketing

7. If you selected ‘other’ please specify

8. What role does telemarketing play in your new business/demand generation activity?

Telemarketing is the lead channel and focus of activity
We use telemarketing as a support function, following up emails
Telemarketing does not play a role – we focus on web, email etc.
Don’t know

9. Do you or have you considered outsourcing your new business/demand generation activity?

Yes, we currently outsource this function entirely
Yes, we outsource elements of this function
We are looking at this, but have not outsourced yet
We’re not looking to outsource
We’ve not even considered this
Not relevant to us

10. How closely do you integrate your telemarketing activity with your email activity, as part of your demand generation/new business process?

Email and telemarketing are very closely integrated
Activities are co-ordinated, but not completely integrated
Email and telemarketing are completely separate

11. Are you using demand generation technology, or a marketing automation application, to enable this activity?

Yes, we’ve implemented a marketing automation system
We’re seeking to implement one, and are currently evaluating options
We’ve looked at options but discounted this approach
We’ve not even considered this technology
Not relevant to us

12. Do you use email analytics to help assess the effectiveness of your campaign and assist in prioritisation of telemarketing activity?

Yes, we have a detailed and formal process in place
Yes, but only on an infrequent basis
We have the technology but don’t use it
No, we’ve not even considered this
Don’t know

13. Who is responsible for new business/demand generation-orientated telemarketing within your organisation?

The marketing team
The sales team
Neither
Both
Don’t know

14. Have sales and marketing teams agreed a framework for development, management and handover of leads?

Yes, we have a process adhered to by both departments
Yes, we have a formal process but it’s not closely followed
No, we have no framework
Not sure

15. What processes do you use to manage prospects from initial identification, prior to handing over to the sales team? Please select as many as are relevant

Telemarketing to enhance prospect data
Email to push out additional content
Marketing sets appointments via telemarketing
Tracking by social CRM
Invitation to events
Other

16. If you selected ‘other’ please specify

17. Which of these processes would you describe as the most effective?

Telemarketing to enhance prospect data
Email to push out additional content
Marketing sets appointments via telemarketing
Tracking by social CRM
Invitation to events
Other

18. Do you regularly seek to enhance prospect data to ensure more effective marketing in future?

Yes
No
Don’t know

19. If you answered ‘yes’ how do you do this?

Through telemarketing
Through email newsletters and dedicated offers
Other

20. If you selected ‘other’ please specify

21. How accurate would you describe the current size/status of your business database?

Up to 2500 contacts     2500-10,000 contacts     10,000 plus contacts     Don’t know
Excellent: 75 per cent highly qualified, accurate and up-to-date
Good: 60 per cent + highly qualified, accurate and up-to-date
Okay: Approximately half qualified and up to date
Weak: Less than half qualifed and up-to-date
Poor: Very poor and patchy data
Don’t know

22. What industry sector does your organisation work in?

Technology/telecoms
Business services (e.g. transport, logistics, post, etc.)
Professional services
Financial services
Automotive
Construction/property
Leisure/health/beauty
Retail
Manufacturing/engineering
Marketing/media/publishing
Other

23. If you selected ‘other’ please specify

24. Which turnover band does your organisation fit into?

Under £1 million
£1-5 million
£5-10 million
£10-30 million
£30-50 million
£50 million and above

Submit your responses to the questionnaire by clicking the “SUBMIT” button below.

Submit

Reading Jay Baer’s recent post about truth and candour, I think he has got a great point.

The RSS-reading public loves a screw-up – an opportunity to poke fun at hubris and pride brought low.  Domino’s is the most recent example of a long list of internet marketing screw-ups.

He says

I never thought I’d see a day when corporations were the most trustworthy and forthright among us, but it draws nigh.

Wow.

The honest corporation is coming… can’t wait.  And yet, a small part of my brain seems to doubt this.  Many people would love to see honesty triumph over evil manipulators but human nature being what it is makes me think that ‘trying it on’ will continue.  It’ll just take a new form.

But taking the moral high ground and thinking positively – I’d like to set a challenge for you.

What is the worst rumour or gossip about your organisation?

I can’t answer this for you.  If you are party to the senior corporate people, policies, strategies and mess-ups that have happened in the past year in your company – you can answer this.

• What is the one thing that has the potential to most embarrass your organisation if it were leaked to the public?
• Which bit of bad news would cause you the most sleepless nights / stress headaches?
• How would you choose to publicly humiliate your employer?
• What could an employee reveal that would make your share price tumble or clients to resign?

The short, easy answer to all of the situations is to not let it happen in the first place.

Quick fixes

Go read about Crisis PR and get some free or professionally paid for advice on how to handle a situation if true but bad news does hit the headlines.

Check employment contracts for privacy and secrecy statement clauses and enforce them if needed.

But in the medium term, surely it’s better to run a clean ship?

What might you choose to do differently if any of the scenarios above came to public light?

Becoming a trustworthy corporation

Firstly, do you want to be a trustworthy corporation?  What are the benefits?

If yes, go and make a list of things to do differently.  Share it internally and make your own subsequent management decisions about what changes to make.

‘Nuff said.

Image by tonylanciabeta via Flickr

BBC's car programme, Top Gear, had a brilliant sequence in which Jeremy Clarkson and James May are sent to a 'London Advertising Agency' to make an advert about the new VW Scirocco Diesel.

They arrive at "Goodyear, Stickleback and Bundsen Burner" and meet two execs….. who are they?  A bit of detective work and I find it's DDB London .

They are taught that 'at the heart of all good VW advertising there's always a product truth' and are sent out to try the car and find that insight. Clarkson enquires why the VW Beetle has never been advertised as "Celebrating over half a century of Europe's greatest mass murderer" and the ad men don't even flicker a smile.  It must be the hardest audience he's ever played to.

They fail.  But along the way create about five separate versions of an advert using their own production team and some hillarious extras (a funeral director, multiple explosions, the mother-in-law and some great time-lapse nature shots).

Watch the iPlayer of the whole episode (it's the penultimate item)

Curiosly I only found one other blogger covering the story from the marketing industry.
maybe it wasn't that funny.

LATER: update from the lovely Grace Wright at DDB

The two men featured were Jeremy Criagen, Executive Creative Director and Jonathan Hill, Group Business Director for Volkswagen.