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When you’re overtaken by events, act quickly, decisively and confidently.
I’m getting a new iPod Nano, it seems.
At first, I thought it was a hoax – yet another spam email that Outlook had failed to spot.
But no. This time, it was the real Mac-Coy.
The stories in the papers made me chuckle. Apple iPod Nano recall of earliest model: If you find yours, get a new one free, said the man from the Daily Mail. Apple recalls 1st-generation iPod nano — remember those? said the LA Times.
Well, yes, actually – I do remember those. And I can find mine. For the simple reason that six years on, I’m still using it virtually every day.
And guess what? It hasn’t exploded yet.
But that’s not the point.
It still might go pop, and that’s enough to send Apple’s PR people into overdrive. So I’ve registered for a free replacement, and before you know it (and in time for Christmas, I hope) I’ll have a brand-new one, with video, FM radio, and the ever-useful pedometer.
Be still, my beating iPod.
So it’s bad news turned into good news, as millions of people get an Apple windfall.
You just couldn’t buy that sort of publicity. It’s a bad news story, followed by quick decisive action, and a happy ending.
Yes, yes, it’s an expensive campaign, and one they’d rather not have. But they are where they are, and their response has been an object lesson in how to handle bad news.
They hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, and have come up smelling of roses.
Extra sh*t with wings
Not everybody handles bad news quite so well.
Starbucks’ stores in New York were recently in the news. Rumour had it that they were tiring of lingering latte-sippers who used their free WiFi and hogged the toilets. Not to mention people who just dropped in for a little light relief, without purchasing a drink.
So they were shutting their toilets in all 190 of their stores. Avoid the venti (the largest cup size) said Canada’s Globe and Mail. Just a ‘wee’ change, said the New York Post, lapsing into Britspeak, and continuing in that vein with ‘Bucks shuts loos, a subhead worthy of an English redtop.
Bad news, then. So how do you turn it into good news?
Not easily.
Because some bad news simply can’t be flipped, and the best you can do is trot out a denial. Which is exactly what Starbucks did, issuing a statement making it clear that they weren’t closing the toilets.
The reports, they said were ‘completely false’. In larger stores with two restrooms (how euphemistic that sounds to UK ears) they were converting one into a storeroom.
But the damage was done. And worse, it came just days before World Toilet Day, when glitzy celebs help highlight the fact that most people in the world don’t have decent sanitation.
Some bad news you just can’t flush out of the system.
Flying high
The thing about bad news is that there’s just no way of telling how the cards will fall. Sometimes, bad news has the strangest of outcomes.
When a Ryanair plane slid off the runway in Glasgow, bookings went up. When one of their planes landed at the wrong airport in Northern Ireland, bookings went up.
Why? Because people saw the Ryanair logo, and thought I must book a flight. Bizarre, but true.
The key thing here, however, was that nobody got hurt.
When an Air Florida plane crashed in the Potomac in Washington in 1982, killing all but four passengers, it spelled the end for the airline. Just as the Lockerbie crash of 1988 did for Pan Am, which closed its doors and cross-checked for the last time in the early 1990s.
Some bad news you can never recover from.
My bad
Like the wise man said, stuff happens. What matters is what you do next. So how do you deal with it in the context of your everyday marketing?
Well for a start you could:
- Act immediately – don’t wait for it to blow over (it won’t).
- Tell the story before somebody else does. If you get in there first, you set the context, frame the story and limit the damage. And a proactive approach looks more honest – because it is.
- Devise a crisis-management plan well in advance, so you’ve got a clear course of action and a checklist drawn up long before the heat of battle.
- Don’t deny it – even if you think you can get away with it. Sooner or later, the details will come out, and do much more damage.
- Look for positive angles and outcomes. There’s almost always a way of turning a negative story around.
And lastly, do more than anybody could reasonably expect from you to fix the problem. Make your response the story, not the original problem.
In other words, do an Apple.
Find out more:
That figure you’ve always wanted is just a few steps away
As the Eurozone inches ever closer to the abyss, I’ve been trying to get my head around the numbers. So have the EU bigwigs, but so far, it seems like they’re having as much luck as me.
Which isn’t much.
The trouble is – for me, at least – the numbers are just so huge I don’t know what to make of them.
It’s a bit like being told that dinosaurs walked the earth 65 million years ago, or that it’s 70 million miles to Mars, which I discovered when I read about a remarkable trip that was simulated in a Russian warehouse recently.
When it comes to effective copywriting, numbers can be your friend. They can bring a piece to life, illustrate a point and win the argument.
But only if they make sense. And only if you’ve done the hard work.
The final countdown
So how do you get that figure you’ve always wanted? Simple – just follow these five steps, and you’ll be counting the customers and summing up the sales.
1. Make them relevant.
Big numbers are meaningless, unless it’s money in the bank or sales on your bottom line. If somebody’s worth $500m, people can relate to it. It they’re told 500m telephone directories would stretch to Mars, they can’t.
It’s the same with debt, deficits and cuts. People don’t get it unless you make it relevant. Even breaking down debt by head of population (£x for every man, woman and child) still doesn’t get the point across.
Instead, make it relate directly to people’s everyday experience.
It’s precisely what a French journalist did recently. To make sense of the jaw-dropping numbers being bandied about by politicians, he simply scaled it down to a human level.
He said that France’s situation is like spending €5,700 a month when you earn €3,000 a month, while starting out with a debt of €339,000 (which – you guessed it – increases by €2,700 a month).
Bingo. Now people get it.
2. Make them obvious.
Don’t bamboozle people with complex calculations, and don’t let them do the hard work.
Recently, UK book chain Waterstone’s announced the end of its famous 3-for-2 promotion, which has run on and off for years. It’s been fabulously successful, often shifting books (the third one, usually) that wouldn’t otherwise have reached such numbers.
There are downsides, of course. If you can’t find that third book, you don’t bother with the first two. It’s an all-or-nothing choice, which isn’t the best idea.
But the key thing is, it’s obvious.
If they’d simply said up to 33% off (which is what 3 for 2 is, of course) the result would have been threefold.
First, people wouldn’t have thought of one of the books as ‘free’ (the cheapest one, unsurprisingly). Second, they wouldn’t have bought three books. And third, the ‘up to’ would have watered down the proposition (it’s only 33% if all three books cost the same).
People think in simple terms: 3 for 2 / buy one, get one free / buy one, get one half-price. They make snap decisi0ns, so they need simple, obvious choices.
And that’s your job.
3. Make them comparable.
Would you rather have 50% more minutes on that mobile phone contract, or a reduction of 20% on your bill? Or you could extend the contract to 24 months, and get a ‘free’ phone? Or get a bolt-on package to make landline calls, which could reduce your monthly bill by 25%, depending on your usage?
Clients faced with a this-but-that-but-the-other type of choice often simply freeze.
I do, all the time. And my standard response when confronted by choices whose relative merits I can’t weigh up is to do nothing.
Buying is stressful, so don’t add to it. If you know what you’d ultimately like your customers to do, arrange the numbers so they tell a story that makes that end-point seem obvious, easy and achievable.
4. Simplify them.
Yes, you have lots of numbers. You can build a business case from the ground up, stacking numbers on numbers till you have a solid structure composed of figures that you feel confident about.
Great. Now throw it all away and start again. Take the headline figure, and discard all the rest.
Recently, I wrote a cost comparison for a client, showing just how much business travellers could save using serviced apartments instead of hotels.
The raw data was in a 3D matrix: number of nights (three different numbers), locations (four of them) and whether food was included (a simple yes/no). The result was a complex number of permutations, showing average savings in pound terms.
It was completely baffling.
So I rolled up the numbers by consolidating the locations, showing only two lengths of stay (short/long, which maximised the difference) and displaying percentages, not figures (why let the reader do the hard work?).
The effect was immediate, obvious and striking. One glance and you could see which choice to make.
Job done.
5. Use magic numbers.
If you’re going for simplicity – and you always should – round your figures up or down. Use whole numbers or nice big chunky ones (25% off! Save on average 30%!).
Or you can take the opposite approach if you want to show rigorous research. Simply follow a tip an old boss gave me many years ago: use two decimal points. (87.65% of clients saw an improvement in productivity over a three-month period).
Nobody ever argues with decimals, and people are invariably impressed by your thoroughness.
Use numbers that resonate with people (Top 10 reasons to use serviced apartments / Three ways you can cut your costs). Don’t use unusual numbers (Top 4, 7, 9, 11 ways… ).
Also remember that all language is musical – so tap into the rhythm. And remember the subliminal power of three.
If you read Shakespeare – or even my blog – you’ll see that what’s called the triadic form is used extensively. Put simply, it’s things listed threes. Cut your costs, improve your productivity and increase your bottom line. Add a fourth element, and the sentence falls apart. Cut one out, and the same thing happens.
Why?
It just does. Don’t question it – simply use it. It’s powerful, effective and appealing.
See what I mean?
Find out more:
If it ain’t broke, leave it and take the rest of the day off.
One of my local branches of Starbucks – a test site, I’m guessing – has improved its ordering process.
Well I say improved, but what I actually mean is ‘improved’. Which means, of course, it’s considerably worse.
And yet I’m sure they started out with the best of intentions. It’s just that somewhere along the way, things didn’t quite work out as expected. And so in the face of a little local difficulty, they did what most misguided people do. They ignored it.
Here’s how it used to work:
- I brave the queue, reach the till and order my usual: a grande, skinny, sugar-free hazelnut, decaf, extra hot, wet latte. A mouthful (in both senses) but no great challenge when the Starbucks till wallah has a thick felt pen and a little adhesive slip with boxes they tick or write in (or over).
- Then, the slip is passed to the barista, stuck on the gleaming metal plate over the hissing pipes and gurgling outlets.
- I pay, and move along to the end of the counter.
- (I try to connect to Starbucks’ free WiFi, usually fail, and wonder why I bother. Not really relevant, but why pass up the chance to moan?)
- The barista delivers my coffee, and I move off to the toppings, where I shower it with an obscene quantity of chocolate powder.
So far so good. Or at least it was.
Last time I was there, the till wallah had a touchscreen, with a slightly hesitant finger hunting and pecking the appropriate button. Grande (peck), skinny (peck), sugar-free hazelnut (peck), and so on.
“Very high tech,” I said, as he pecked his last and looked up.
“Hmm,” he replied, as if not convinced. And then I saw why.
“Grande, skinny, sugar-free hazelnut…” he barked over the hissing and gurgling to the bemused, foreign (Hungarian, I think) barista.
Who duly wrote it down with a thick felt pen on a little adhesive slip and put it where, just a week earlier, the till wallah would have placed it.
So the ordering end of the supply chain is automated, and production end is slowed down. Not very clever.
“Wouldn’t it make sense to transmit the electronic order to the barista?” I asked with an air of amusement and feigned innocence.
“They do that in the US,” he said wearily, “but not here. Yet. At least I hope not yet.”
I felt his pain and smiled sympathetically.
“Everybody here thinks it’s a really bad idea,” he continued. “But nobody listens to us.”
The only constant
Change, change, change. It’s the byword and the watchword and the gospel according to Marketing. Without it, companies grow stale, wither and die.
So we become change maniacs. Upgrades, rebrands, repurposing, repositioning and reorganising. We just can’t get enough of it.
But often, we make changes that are pointless and unnecessary.
You’ve done it. So have I.
I ploughed ahead with a website upgrade (I use the term loosely, as it was more in the down direction if I’m honest) that I half-knew was doomed before I pressed the Big Red Button.
And still I did it. Why?
Because I’d invested so much time in it. Because I was propelled by the unstoppable impetus of project mode, and the looming inevitability of a (self-imposed) deadline. Because I was tired of the old site – which in the end I had to revert to anyway.
The thing is, it’s often for our benefit, not our clients’. They’re quite happy with what they’ve got, thank you very much. But we tell ourselves they develop ‘brand blindness’ and ‘product fatigue’ and that we need to change or else the world will pass us by.
But does it have to be so radical?
‘Disruptive’ is on the lips of marketers across the global village. Challenge the established order. Break the mould. Dare to be different. Question orthodoxy. Go on – you know you want to. Just do it.
Which is fine. Disrupt the market, the sales process, the retail channel, the production engine, the business model, the marketing mix.
But don’t disrupt the customer.
If you roll something out, make sure it’s thought out. Properly. If there’s a potential problem on the horizon, don’t brush it aside as I blithely did, and hurtle towards the adrenaline rush of the Big Red Button.
Inside the comfort zone
When was a kid, I sometimes mistook stock phrases.
We all do it at that age. My sister thought ‘to all intents and purposes’ was ‘to all in tents and porpoises’, which is infinitely more memorable and certainly more fun.
The one I remember was ‘familiarity breeds contempt’. My innocent ears heard this as ‘familiarity breeds content’. Of course it did – your familiar teddy, toy, TV programme, blanket. Why wouldn’t you be content?
You can imagine how crestfallen I was when somebody pointed out my error.
And yet, and yet. To this day, I still believe that my mishearing had a grain of truth in it.
Familiarity does breed content.
Don’t underestimate how happy your clients are with things just the way they are. Everything changes all the time, and the pace of change seems to get faster and faster.
So give them a marketing teddy and stop changing, already. Unless it’s a big, exciting, eye-popping, game-changing, forget-all-that-came-before change.
Make your change work for them, not you. Or them before it works for you. Because they’re what pays for the change through their continued loyalty and returning custom.
The refill drill
Meanwhile, back in Latteland , Zsa Zsa handed me my steaming drink and beamed a broad smile.
Just to be on the safe side, I ran though my complex order.
“Extra hot?” she said quizzically, then looked down at her scrawled slip. “I don’t get that.”
Didn’t, I silently corrected.
“Well I definitely asked for it, ” I said in my most conciliatory tone, topped off with a smile that belied my unshakeable determination to have my order in all its glory.
She took my coffee back. She couldn’t just heat it up, of course (Health & Safety – what else?) so she had to start all over again.
So there. Delay, waste and frustration. Unhappy customers and staff. Another triumph of change.
I stepped back to make way for the next disgruntled customer and fiddled with my smartphone to see if I could get WiFi working.
And landed on a brand-new Starbucks WiFi login page.
Oh joy.
Think you’re doing your clients a favour? Think again.
Last week, I was on holiday. In France.
And there, on the shelves of the local supermarket, I eagerly looked out for my favourite evening drink.
No, not pastis, but one of the extensive range of herbal infusions that grace the aisles of Intermarché, Leclerc and Géant.
It’s called Nuit Etoilée – or Starry Night to you and me. With its pleasing blend of lime, verbena, orange flower and lemon balm, it’s your ticket to a good night’s sleep.
But it’s not available in the UK, so once back home, I sought out a local alternative. And I soon discovered one on the Tesco website: Clipper Organic Sleep Easy tea bags.
I already drink Clipper green tea, so I was familiar with the brand. And I knew they did regular tea, so I mentally had a nice neat picture: Green, Normal, Sleep Easy.
I decided to have a closer look, though, so I clicked on over to the Clipper website to check out my three favourite teas.
And was horrified.
There’s everyday, white, green, specialities, fruit infusions and herbal infusions. Fairtrade, organic, organic Fairtrade, decaf, organic decaf. Green with lemon, jasmin, strawberry, echinacea and nettle. Ditto with white. Then every combination and permutation of the above, available in big boxes and small boxes, in envelopes, bags and loose leaf.
On and on it goes. The more I looked, the more I felt confused and disoriented – by the choice. Endless, barely differentiated choice.
On Tesco, it’s simple. Green, Normal, Sleep Easy.
Choose, click, buy.
But on the Clipper site, it’s a nightmare. Just as well I’ve got my Sleep Easy teabags to send me off.
Analysis paralysis
The conventional wisdom is that more choice is better. Offer customers a wide range, and they’ll thank you. What’s more, you’ll impress them.
But they won’t. And you won’t.
Studies have shown that people use a problem’s complexity to decide how important it is. So a theoretically easy one – which tea to drink, which toothpaste to choose, which cereal to buy – is made more difficult by choice.
There must be a reason why there’s all this choice, your brain tells you, and it must be important.
More frustratingly, it tells you there must be a right choice. So you spend a disproportionate amount of time choosing the right one, when in fact any of them would do (yes, really).
And often – or frequently, in my case – you simply give up, stymied by the impossible task of weighing up near-identical variations on a theme.
Less choice, more choices
Remember one simple lesson the next time you do a sales pitch, send out an offer or design a marketing piece.
Simplicity sells. Complexity confuses.
And unexpected complexity is even worse, catching people off guard. Not expecting a choice, they’re even more baffled by it, and find it harder to decide.
And the more they struggle, the harder it becomes. It’s been termed decision quicksand, a delightful analogy that perfectly captures the syndrome.
I notice this all the time with clients.
If I say ‘we should do A’, they often agree immediately. If I say ‘we could do A, B or C – and I’d recommend A’, the effect is much the same. They’re presented with a choice, and a suggested course of action.
But if I say ‘we could do A, B or C,’ and leave it at that, confusion ensues. They hesitate and then often go into analysis mode, usually tying themselves up in knots about the right choice.
So now I always make a suggestion. And in a way, that’s what clients are paying me for: to help them make a decision, to take the problem away. To make things easy, and reduce the mountain of choice to a no-brainer.
And that’s what you should do too. Cut out excessive choice, present a limited selection of options, and suggest one.
But here’s the thing: if clients think they’re being manipulated, or pushed into a choice that’s right for you, not them, they’ll feel resentful.
It’s got to work for both of you, so make sure it does. As an added benefit, you’ll sleep easy at night, knowing you’ve done the right thing.
And if that doesn’t work, you can always reach for the Clipper.
Find out more:
Being different is easier than you think (but don’t tell anybody).
“Come again, this time in plain English?” said my poor baffled client.
The biz-speak had escaped my lips before I’d even realised.
You operate in a commoditised market place, I’d said.
He hadn’t taken offence. For comprehension precedes offence-taking, and we hadn’t even got to that initial stage.
So much for talking like you write.
“People can’t tell your stuff from other people’s stuff,” I translated. “To them, it’s all just stuff. You think it’s different, but they don’t.”
“But I don’t sell stuff,” he said pointedly, as if talking to a very slow learner, “we’re a service company.”
“Like I said – stuff,” I replied, though rather less pointedly.
And then I explained why his services are no different to a box of cornflakes.
Checking out the checkouts
Where do you shop?
Me, I’m a Tesco man. Why?
Because they check 1,000 prices every week so I don’t have to. And because their own-brand cornflakes – and bran flakes and chocolate-coated flakes with extra Type-2-diabetes-inducing sugar levels – are made by the same manufacturer as Asda’s, and Sainsbury’s and Waitrose’s.
They’re commodities. The only difference is packaging and price. Except the prices are the same nowadays, so it’s down to the packaging – which is more than just the box.
In the consumer’s mind, the difference is the look, the feel, the experience, the service, the story they tell themselves.
Because there’s always a story.
Successful established types shop at Waitrose. Sainsbury’s is for upwardly mobile professionals. Asda is for the cost-conscious lower-income bracket.
Cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes.
The only thing that matters is what you put on top of them.
Snap, crackle and pop
In a busy, competitive, crowded market place, you’ve got to stand out. You’ve got to have an angle, a story, a way into the customer’s imagination.
Or in other words, your cornflakes have to taste better than the next person’s, even if they’re essentially the same.
So how do you set yourself up as a cereal entrepreneur?
- Be different, though not so different that you’re filed away in the prospect’s mind as too specialised, too expensive or too eccentric. See what everybody else is saying, and take a different line. Tell your story in a left-of-field way that makes people sit up and take notice.
- Be a mind-reader – which is actually easier than it sounds. It’s just another way of saying ‘think like a reader’. What are they looking for? What problem are you solving? What frame of mind are they in? What signals will they respond to?
- Be brutal – with yourself. Cut the waffle, reduce your ‘About Us’ web page to a couple of paragraphs, lose the company history. Stop gazing at your navel, and remember the plight of your prospect.
- Be realistic and honest. Don’t say you’ll deliver by midday tomorrow if you can’t. Don’t say you respond to emails within two hours, if that puts you under pressure. Don’t guarantee satisfaction unless you’re prepared to go all the way. Talk is cheap – until you have to pick up the pieces, and then it becomes very expensive indeed. Not delivering on a promise is twice as bad as not making it in the first place, as the client tumbles from positive, to neutral, to negative on the satisfaction graph.
- Be human. “I can’t put that into the bio,” said a client to me recently. He was referring to his first startup, aged eight: a gardening service for the horticulturally challenged. To him, it was embarrassing. To me, it showed a human side – a sweet little kid, moving, clipping and weeding – a world away from his rapidly expanding company in the City. But it was a way in for readers of his bio. It showed he was approachable, adaptable, friendly, helpful and not afraid to show his human side.
- Be funny. Remember that joke you told at the party that broke the ice? The one that gave you a warm, fuzzy feeling and an instant connection with your new best friend? You can use the same approach in business copy. Avoid dodgy humour and salacious stories, though. Instead, show that you’re not afraid to laugh – or at least, smile – at your own expense. It’s all part of being human (see last point).
- Be distinctive. Find a writing voice that speaks to people. Read aloud what you’ve written, because that’s how they’ll hear it in their head. If it sounds stilted and stuffy, that’s because it is. Try again. And if putting pen to paper or finger to keyboard causes you to lose your voice, try recording yourself instead. Do a sales pitch. Chat to an imaginary prospect. (Closing your eyes helps.) Now transcribe and watch the magic unfold on the page.
The bad news is that in a commoditised market place, it’s harder to stand out. The good news is that most people don’t make the effort. And the even better news is that it’s really not that difficult.
With a bit of thought, planning and effort, you’ll be fresher, crunchier and more appetising than everybody else.
It really is that simple – but keep it to yourself. Because if everybody’s different, nobody is.
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