Does HP Need a Plan for Broken Promises? Do You?

Well before the social media age, we all learned that trust and reputation are important currencies in this thing called life.  That's why our parents, professors and parish priests have taught us to be honest and honour our promises.  And most of us try and do just that.  It doesn't always work like we want, but largely we get by.  Or if things go wrong, we apologise and try to make amends.

As a company, this is a bit more difficult.  Not in the least because the promises are typically made in one part of the business (marketing), while the actual delivery against them happens somewhere else (in production, logistics, service, sales, ...).  Along the way, just like in the best of families, things are bound to go wrong.  The question then becomes how do you deal with that?  Because, just like in real life, the brand trust you have taken years to build, can evaporate overnight.

A little case of how HP printers lost my trust
An example of this happened just the other week.  I won't bore you with the frustrated customer details, but HP seems to be unable to provide any of its dealers in the viscinity of Belgium with a particular printer drum cartridge for at least another month (starting already weeks ago).  Without the drum I can't print, hence no printed invoices, no customer presentations, no recipes for creme brulée.

Not delivering on what I understood to be the promise of a printing company (i.e. we ensure you can print) was bad enough.  But things got worse when the HP small business help-desk sent me around to various dealers after which it transpired that the service agent full well knew they didn't have inventory (to which he just mumbled an apology).  In addition, it became clear that he actually knew more about the situation than his dealers yet had elected not to tell me at first.  I think you can understand my frame of mind.

But what if it had been done differently?
Now some may say this is about "one guy living in call-centre hell" and "one type of drum cartridge" in a world of HP people and products which generally get it right.  That's probably true, and either way I can't judge, because I don't have all the data.  But I can't help wondering what would have happened if HP had pro-actively developed a broken promise plan.  What if:

    * on my very first visit to Staples, HP had already informed them of the difficulties and offered me to buy a temporary small printer to tie me over (note: a drum costs € 164 +21% VAT which is the price of a small printer). 
    * HP had pro-actively gotten in touch with me to inform me of the delivery issues and offer alternatives or at least information clarity (as a registered user they have my email address and know the type of printer I own).
    * the call center person had immediately come clean to me on the phone, rather than give me the run around. This would have challenged the tyranny of the get rid of complainers quickly metric (aka. first call resolution), but it would also create room for real conversation.
    * set up a mini-website to explain the situation to the people affected by this (and from the empty shelves in store, it's not just my drum that went AWOL).

I might still have been annoyed for a moment, but probably would be thinking well, in the end they took care of me ... s*** happens.  I might even have bought an extra printer which my son could play with after mine was sorted out.

Food for thought
The morale of the story is that broken promises happen in every relationship, but if they are dealt with in the right way they can be an opportunity to strengthen the bond with your brand. 

As marketers are typically the promise makers of the company, I believe they should also look at the ways the business deals with promises that are broken, and pro-actively establish systems that kick in, if not everything goes to plan.  

Oh yes, and I am switching back to Dell.

Is Your Brand Cheap & Easy?

Or are you the sophisticated and seductive type?  As a follow-up to my earlier comparison between human love and the occasional affection we display for brands, I sometimes wonder whether some brand managers are still stuck in a bad 70s macho interpretation of Don Juan.

I'm sure you remember the type.  Curly hair on head and chest.  A purple shirt with so little buttons closed that you wonder whether it has any at all.  Dark - oversized - sunglasses that are only used at night. And to really blind you a few pounds of golden chains doubling as early warning signal for the fact that "Mr. Cool has arrived".

Of course, I exaggerate.  Still, walking through the supermarket aisles, surfing the web or zapping channels in a New York of Hong Kong hotel room, a lot of what I still hear is "look at me, I'm bigger", "I'm cheaper", "I'm easier to use", "I'm this", "I'm that" ... 

Brands flaunting their features and benefits, and continuously emphasizing how they are easier to "get" than the one that came by 30 seconds before.

Now, in the right mood, I'll be the last to knock the concept of a cheap & easy thrill.  But I do wonder if those thrills are the ones that relationships are made of?  The difference between lust and seduction is that the former concentrates purely on the body, while the latter deeply penetrates the mind.

Just think about it.  Would you stay interested for long in a partner who bared it all at the first encounter and left very little to discover over time.  Or would you be more intrigued by a man or woman, who slowly seeped into your mind, continuously surprising, occasionally startling?

It's the same with brands and products.  The propositions we make and the ways we communicate about them should "lure" consumers into a slow and seductive spell, rather than provide all throw all features, benefits and cheapness out in the open.

So as food for thought I throw you a little challenge.  When you look at your  communication efforts, do you "bare it all" at the first contact, or do you leave something to be discovered as customers start engaging with your brand?  Have you built in follow-up surprises which rekindle interest and pique curiosity?  And if you don't today, are there ways you could start changing this?

After all, the proverb "if you've got it, flaunt it" only works while your young and your abs are still firm. After that, it's the depth that matters.

For a great reading tip on the topic check out The History of My Life by Giacomo Casanova.  If you gotta learn, go straight to the master himself.

Two Free Reports on the Brand Agency Disconnect

At best, the relationship between most brands and their communication agencies is "strained".  While exceptional agencies and executives exist (some of which writing for this blog), the industry as a whole tends to disappoint its customers.  This needs to change.  After all, while thousands of agency executives are gearing up for another dance on the Titanic in Cannes, clients are seeing billions go to waste.  Especially in our current climate, this is unacceptable.

But rather than join the choir of complaints, we decided to do something about it.  We want to initiate a global conversation on the renaissance of marketing as a whole (coming soon :-) and in specific on the ways brands and agencies interact.

We have bundled our thoughts in two reports we'd like to share with you (thanks to Management Centre Europe for the kind sponsorship!).  They analyse the disconnect that currently exists between brands and the agencies that service them.

• In Reconsidering the Advertising Industry we take the agency perspective, and compare the internal workings of agencies to what their clients need.  We then offer tactical suggestions and structural recommendations that allow agency executives to better equip their organisation for a challenging future.
• In Bridging the Brand-Agency Divide we look at the same data from a brand perspective.  We review what brands are looking for and what they feel agencies are not delivering.  For each disconnect we offer suggestions and tips brand leaders can apply to get their agencies to better deliver what they need.

Both reports, as well as a bonus slideshow are available as a free and instant download on our free publications page.  They're yours to read, use and abuse (cc 2.0 :-).  The only thing we would request is that if you find them of value, you engage in the conversation.

This can simply be done by forwarding them to others.  Or if you're more digitally active, blogging, twittering or commenting on them.  If you have a client-agency relationship which defies all we have written, share it.  If you have ways to make our recommendations better, build on them.  If you believe we've got it all wrong, write a counter-thesis. 

We want to start the debate, so at some point we can all come to conclusions.  This is our first - of many - steps. What is yours?

Free chapter: Accidental Branding

Now here's a publisher (or should I say publicist) who knows how to market its wares, and I think it should be rewarded with a post.  Instead of sending me the usual (advance) review copies that go to bloggers, Holly Cariddi of Planned TV Arts started up a dialogue with me first.  She basically asked if I would like to review or give visibility to a book she represented, but left it open how this was to be done.

After a few emails up and down, the answer was not to do a book review (I have 10 books in backlog anyway), yet simply to give part of the book away for free publication.  In other words, don't spoil the blogger, spoil the reader.  She immediately got on to the publisher, and got permission to give a free chapter away ... in which she even gave me a pick of the chapter I liked most.  As an ex apparel boy I of course couldn't resist the piece on Columbia Sportswear.

OK, Seth did this years ago, and with the exception of Charles Leadbeater's We Think and the Age of Conversation are already well beyond sharing a PDF, yet the unique thing here is that some people are "getting it" and are starting to have real conversations.  Let's have more of this!

About the book

So, when you click this link, you can download a chapter that is excerpted from Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands by David Vinjamuri.  Copyright © 2008 by David Vinjamuri.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted with permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.  For more information on the book or to purchase a copy, please visit: www.accidentalbranding.com.

The book is a series of interviews with people who "accidentally" developed their business into a brand.  Their stories.  Their tips.  Their wisdom.  Whether it is your cup of tea, I'll leave up to your judgment, yet I already would want to encourage more publishers to start taking the example of Holly Cariddi and start having these conversations.

8 Thoughts for 2008

At Futurelab we've decided not to do any New Year Cards or gifts, yet instead put the money into Kiva loans. Still, as we did want to convey you our best wishes, we put together this short presentation with eight things we ponder as the new year is upon us (and you might want to give some thought as well).

Have a great 2008!

8 Thoughts For 2008

View more presentations from Alain Thys.