Otis Regrets... or not

The sauce that made Mr. Durkee famous

I was introduced to Durkee’s Famous Sauce as a college freshman at the home of my roommate Reynold. His mother invited a homesick boy into their home for Thanksgiving and I discovered a ritual which included eating leftovers in sandwiches the day after with turkey, cranberry sauce, last night’s wilted salad, reheated dressing and gravy if you wanted it… all served on sturdy bread with a generous slathering of Durkee’s. That day their ritual became my own tradition.

Durkee's jars through the decades. Click for a larger version to read the ingredient lists.

Durkee’s Famous Sauce is a niche product, literally, that somehow manages to hold onto a sliver of shelf space in many supermarkets year after year. It is a mayonnaise-mustard combination with extra richness that tastes like additional egg yolks… but the effect in a sandwich is more complex than that. It’s the sauce that holds its own when a lot of flavor notes are present. And though I know there are other uses, it is such a perfect partner with turkey (smoked as well as Thanksgiving leftovers) that I have never wanted to venture further.

There is lore suggesting Durkee’s is a traditional American recipe that was served, among other places, in the White House by Mary Todd Lincoln. But in fact the recipe has been through some changes over the years, as has the provenance of the expensive little jars. During my time the proprietorship has shifted from Burnes Foods of San Francisco (but manufactured in Canada), Tone Brothers of Ankeny IA, and currently ACH Food Companies of Memphis. The ingredient list shows that corn oil has been replaced by soy oil and water has moved ahead of vinegar as the second component with subtle changes in the preservatives further down the line.

By the time I am ready to open a new jar, the old one is either empty or pretty well past its prime so I have never been able to do a head to head taste test. But I do believe that the taste has remained consistent through all these permutations. Hats off to the food chemists… and Thanksgiving leftovers!

Maker Shed ate my children

My two boys are big fans of the O’Reilly “Make” concept. They’ve read the magazine, attended the Maker Faire, and would like a few blinking things in their stockings for Christmas. Unfortunately the lame makershed.com site makes this very difficult to pull off.

I’m presenting my experience not so much as a personal diatribe as a reminder that much of online shopping used to be this way. I invite you to cluck-cluck at these guys, then be thankful their practices are not more common.

I should be a pretty good prospect to Makershed since I subscribe to the magazine and have attended Maker Faires myself. So I get an email inviting me to enjoy the “deal of the day” which is an Arduino (that’s a blinking thing) with a $14 manual thrown in for free. Score! I click on the button and am taken to the website where I am told the manual is temporarily unavailable but I can download a PDF as part of the offer. WTF, that’s not so good, so I email help@makershed.com and tell them I want the offer but am in no hurry, want to wait till the book is back in stock.

You know what happens next: quick reply from customer service saying they have taken care of it. But not in the Makershed. It’s a full 5 days before they respond and say the offer is long past and the best they can do at this point is offer me a link to the pdf download.

So my boys will go Maker-less for Christmas apparently, but a couple weeks later a new email. Save 15% on anything with our special code on orders $125 plus. I click on the offer, get a message that says I have entered an invalid code. Click all over the email, same result. The hell with this, my boys need their blinking objects. So I do a search for Maker Shed on Google, find the site, put in my order, enter the special SAVE15 code… and am informed it expired a year ago.

I have no more time for shenanigans so I place the order and in a comments field point out that I tried to enter the 15% off code (I enclose a screen cap) and expect it to be taken off my total. 24 hours passes and I get a notice that my order has shipped. I click on the “my account” link to see if the 15% was taken off and am rebuffed because my password is not recognized… apparently Maker Shed allows customers to order without setting up an account but then gives you no way to check on order status.

You don’t want to hear more about my personal frustration with the above, which probably sounds like blab bla bla at this point, but I am not relating all this just to rant. At one time, a lot of e-commerce was like this… companies appeard quixotic and apparently uninterested in customer service because they didn’t actually have a clue about customer service, or else because they were overwhelmed at holiday time.

But today there’s not any excuse for this… especially since we are not anywhere close to the holidays. The learning and lessons:

Don’t go live before you have the elementals such as web links and savings codes locked down, which is where Maker Shed repeatedly fell down in my experience. It is particularly embarrassing because this is a “high tech” outfit but would be just as bad for a scrapbooking website.
Be accessible. Don’t take days and days to answer customer queries. These guys don’t even list a phone number!
If you do fail at the above two requirements, or even if you don’t, remember the customer is always right. Which is especially true if you have sloppy ecommerce practices and the customer is expected to pick up after you.

I expect that what has happened here is that the Make folks have simply contracted out the entire Maker Shed operation. They get a small commission and it’s somebody else’s problem to run the show. But that’s wrong. I used to think Make was cool. Now I think they are incompetent and rip-offs. That’s my left brain talking but my right brain is listening in.

Marketing to idiots

I had a client who was concerned that the information she was collecting on a registration page was going to be a potential problem because people are registering to win a prize and if they do win a prize then a/they might not want to receive it at work (which is the address we’re asking for, this being a B2B mailing) or b/they might have given a fictitious address as some people do because they don’t want to get advertising contacts yet they have to put something in the fields.

This same client had a problem at a previous company, which was the cause for her concern. She was giving away iPod shuffles (then selling for $59) to qualified prospects in return for their time to sit through a demo and apparently many people did not get their shuffles. I say “apparently” because it could also have happened that someone lied in order to get an additional shuffle…. dishonest, but hard to prove. Anyway, once bitten she wants to be sure this time.

My response (before caving, of course) was that there are always going to be a few idiots and outliers in your audience who are not going to play by the rules no matter what you tell them. And you should not do anything that is going to make your offer more complex to the vast majority, such as adding additional information on the reg page to deal with this issue by requesting an alternate shipping address in case they win. (Everybody who has ever designed an online survey or reg form knows that each additional field or question causes a certain number of people to drop out.) Suppose they fill in the form with their preferred address but, being idiots, they write it down wrong. What do you do then?

Along the same lines, I had a client back in my “suit” days who wanted to know if it was a good idea to pay a 1.5% commission based on the value of all sales paid by check in return for this supplier’s guarantee to make good any bad checks. This one was easy to figure out. Do bad checks cost more than 1.5% of revenue from all checks? No. Then this apparent insurance service is a money-losing sinkhole. Plus, cheats are cheats. If a customer has it in their heart to trick you out of money, they’ll just find another way to do it.

Today’s moral is, the customer is not always right, not when they are idiots and outliers. Don’t screw up the rest of your promotion by making accommodations for a few wingnuts.

Cooks Source: on the internet, everyone knows you’re a doofus

If you too are just now catching up with the Cooks Source train wreck, this LA Times blog entry is a good place to start. A small, low budget regional food publication printed a blogger’s post without permission (apparently this is the only event that is clearly documented and an uncontested fact) and when the writer protested, the editor or someone using the email of the editor of the publication wrote back and said everything on the web is public domain and the writer should be glad they were not sending her a bill for editing the piece.

I don’t have the complete chronology but apparently it was last Thursday, November 4, that all hell broke loose. Just before midnight on the 3^rd, the blogger posted her account on her own very eclectic blog and by the next morning the story was everywhere including the LA Times. At some point it was discovered that Cooks Source had a Facebook page and that was when the pile-on began.

Some time during the day on November 4, the editor or someone with access to her account posted on FB, “Well, here I am with egg on my face! I did apologise to Monica via email, but aparently it wasnt enough for her. To all of you, thank you for your interest in Cooks Source and Again, to Monica, I am sorry — my bad! You did find a way to get your “pound of flesh…” we used to have 110 “friends,” we now have 1,870… wow!”

But of course, those “friends” were simply “liking” Cooks Source so they could post. The comments, assuming they are still there, are pretty funny for the most part but the whole experience certainly adds up to a public dunking or time in the stocks, which is appropriate considering that the original recipe was from a blog on medieval cooking.

After all that I got around to checking out the actual Cooks Source website, where there was an announcement that the magazine has taken down its website (sic), and shut down its Facebook page as of 6 pm on November 4. Unfortunately, the announcement continues, the Facebook page is still there because it has been taken over by hackers. I wonder what the Cooks Source people thought they were doing and if they know it is actually pretty simple to take down your Facebook page if that is what you want to do. I hope nobody tells them because like I say, this is an entertaining read. Also, on the bottom of the non-website Cooks Source page there is an apology to the blogger which seems sincere.

This is a cautionary tale for how there really is no privacy on the web and no place to hide once you make a mistake. This particular editor (or some devious person portraying her) offended a particularly vocal segment of the population and apparently did not have the good sense to make a full and complete apology in time. Crowing about the situation on Facebook, if indeed she did this, was gasoline on the flames. If you’re wrong, or simply if you decide for your business survival to say you’re wrong, the only possible course of action is to apologize repeatedly, abjectly and without reservation to anyone who will listen. RIP Cooks Source.

Some good advertising from Microsoft… Really?

The folks who brought us Windows Vista and Bob the Paper Clip are coming up with some good advertising all of a sudden.

In a spot promoting a photo retouching service, mom is frustrated because she can’t get all her family members to look charming at the same time for a photo, so she says “to the cloud” and accesses an online link where she can mix and match faces from different photos. This is the first execution of a “cloud computing” message I’ve ever seen that works… most marketers get obsessed over explaining the technology and stumble on their copy, as in my example from the DMA recently.

On, you thought I was going to talk about the “Really?” campaign for the new Windows Phone? Well, here’s my problem with that. I first saw the full version of this during the 2^nd inning of the World Series last night (GO GIANTS) and thought it was damn funny: people so obsessed with their phones that they are banging into each other, ignoring strippers and in one case picking up the phone after it’s been dropped in a urinal, causing the guy at the next stall to say “Really?” Then (without really showing the phone, because it hasn’t been released) Microsoft closes with the tag line, “it’s time for a phone to save us from our phones.”

The new spot has well over a million hits on YouTube since it went up on October 10, and a viral campaign has been launched inviting viewers to share their own “head in phone” moments. Hipsters get it. But I think this is going to go completely over the heads of post-ironic consumers of mass media. They are going to look at the obsession over phones, see Microsoft as the sponsor, then conclude “I want a phone that is so cool I can’t put it down like the people in the commercial.”

Though come to think of it, that might sell a lot of phones. Really.

Marketing the moment: why “live” is the new “live”

Born in Dallas and a longtime San Franciscan, I have taken an unusual interest in this year’s baseball playoffs. As my teams climbed higher my viewing apparatus got correspondingly smaller. The first round was watched in a hotel suite with big screens, the early games of the league championships on a tube set in a hospital room, and by the time we got to the final game where Texas beat the Yankees I was using the live update feature on ESPN on my iPhone.

Glued to the tiny screen as I was, I barely noticed that there were advertisers who wanted me to click away to their websites. In these days when we TiVo everything I wanted nothing more than to be on the screen at the exact moment when the rangers got the final out. On the other hand, this is a great spot for brand advertising. Anybody who inserts themselves unobtrusively in the heat of the moment, as ESPN did with some of its own self promos, becomes part of the experience and is carried along with the ride.

Yet the final out in a baseball game is one of the rare times when you can know that the drama is about to happen. Most baseball excitement is unpredictable, a lull shattered by sound and fury. Many fans miss the moment because they are kibitzing or out for a beer, so they rely on replays or on announcers to tell them how excited they are. It’s rare to have an end-to-end nail biter like the Giants’ final home victory when I told myself, “I’m watching a game for the ages” before the commentators informed me of that.

And this is something we marketers can do something with…. remind consumers how excited they were at some pivotal point in the past and then offer some product with a real or imagined tie-in. I did this with a video continuity program for an old series called Highlander, asking people to remember where they had been when they saw the show for the first time. (Not having been there myself, I channeled the experience of watching the final episode of The Fugitive, as a wee lad at a youth hostel in Scotland.) Didn’t win a pennant but it got an Echo and, more important, sold a bunch of videos.

Making the switch from iPhone to Android

After my frustration using my iPhone in San Francisco during the DMA earlier this month, I’ve decided to pull the plug. When my contract is up at the end of December I’ll move to Android, most likely the Droid X unless something better comes along. And will do this on the Verizon network, which I know as a former customer has far more towers in the two areas where I spend most of my time, San Francisco and Upstate New York.

My top 5 reasons for making the change:

1. Better coverage on Verizon. Yes, I could wait till the Verizon iPhone is released, but why? The other reasons are enough to switch.

2. Better GPS by all accounts. Even in good coverage areas, GPS in iPhone is near useless if you need to find something in a hurry. By the time the little dial has stopped spinning you are at/past your destination.

3. Ability to use the phone as a modem and tether my computer to the web. The iPhone offered this briefly, then took it away with a system update about a year ago. Having tasted freedom, I want it back.

4. Video camera. Like the idea of one fewer device to lug around when I need to shoot a quick video of something.

5. As a marketer, I’m looking forward to the experience of buying apps in a free market environment, both to experience the buying process and to see what’s available. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other Apple users in my family so I can stay up with what Brother Steve is doing.

And also:

6. Flash movies. This would be much higher on the list if I had confirmation it is working, but seems like it is. You need Android 2.1 or later which the Droid X has and you’re good to go.

7. I’m not sure I really like the idea of listening to music on my phone, as opposed to… an iPod! My two favorite headsets don’t have microphones, and I don’t feel like paying a lot to get a new headset that has both high quality audio and a decent mic. Seems like I am in a minority that feels talking on the phone and listening to music, even though both involve the ears, are two different activities.

The Chile Miners Diet

I for one could not get enough of the rescue of the Chilean miners yesterday. I spent much of the day watching “Miner TV” and I quickly switched to Telemundo so I could actually hear the statements of the rescued miners instead of Larry King talking over them. It was an inspiring example of teamwork on both ends of the tunnel and a testament to what determination and a little technology can accomplish.

The haters (including a few journalists) are now saying that it was no big deal, they weren’t actually in that much danger. Balderdash. For the first 17 days, when they had no idea whether they would be rescued, the miners subsisted on 48 hours worth of rations and when they were discovered the bloodwork showed their systems had started to feed on themselves from dehydration. The medics up top knew that to quickly bulk them up with candy bars or other sugar sources would send them into shock. So the miners got copious liquids… first water, then energy drinks, gradually giving way to protein and finally to empanadas that were specially shaped to fit in “la paloma”, the tube used for lowering supplies into the mine. By the time of the rescue, there was a little concern that some of the miners would fit into the rescue cylinder.

I predict that some entrepreneur will quickly come to market with “The Chile Miners Diet” consisting of this process… but in reverse. Start with a normal diet then strip away everything except protein and ultimately water. Hopefully it will stop at that point before the miners’ original state is reached. You read it first right here.

Sweet way to make a trade show impression

The annual Direct Marketing Association conference is a challenge for exhibitors. It’s a horizontal show, with many different categories of vendors represented from bankers to software to printers to agencies. And many of these have complex value propositions that are hard to convey with an elevator pitch.

Orange cupcakes = cloud computing, get it? — Orange icing = cloud computing, get it?

In this environment, the booth shown here stands out. Everything is orange, and they’re giving away cupcakes with bright orange icing. The cupcakes attract traffic, and when the sales force follows up after the show they can say “we’re the people who had the orange cupcakes, remember?” All good.

The marketing tie-in is a little more tenuous. The booth staffer explained that “we’re the only software-as-a-service solution at the show for migrating legacy systems” for order entry, customer records and other mail order chores. That’s a bit complex to convey in an elevator pitch so the company—named “swyft” and pronounced “swift” I will guess—decided to just go for being remembered. Some people might go to their website, but in any case there are these orange cupcakes.

A bit of research was done, consisting of looking at the collateral. The cupcake tie-in becomes clearer, though the copywriter unfortunately cannot resist a treacly flow of plays on words: “Sweet! Ripping and replacing legacy systems is about as fun as a root canal. It can be a slow, painful process and leaves a bad taste in your mouth. That’s why we built the Swyft Interaction Hub to sit ever so sweetly right on top of your existing customer systems. It’s like the icing on your customer infrastructure cupcake.”

I have the feeling the booth people either weren’t fully briefed on this platform or didn’t feel comfortable mouthing it. I pressed the booth rep on the tie-in between the cupcakes and the product and she said “we’re cloud computing” and we agreed the puff of orange icing was indeed like a puffy cloud. OK.

I’m giving them best of show for the DMA by default but you see how this could have been even better. Think through that metaphor of cloud computing and maybe there’s a better way to express it…. maybe cotton candy which was being given away at the next booth (not as a gimmick, just free candy). Or here’s an idea, how about tying into the name “swyft/swift”? Any metaphors come to mind for that one?

Gap shoots itself in the logo

I had been looking for a bad example of social media marketing to use in my DMA talk on Monday 10/11, when the good people at the Gap dropped one right in the lap of my denim jeans. Funny thing is, I don’t think they were aware they were involved in social media marketing which is part of the problem.

Gap, as you may know, changed its logo last week. To my non-designer’s eye, the new logo looks like something I was offered free at a conference by an outsourcing design firm: I was asked to answer a few questions about my business, then come back in 20 minutes. Gap’s new logo is simply its name, set in the same font used for the table of contents in the New York Times magazine, with a little blue square at the side as homage to the old logo they’re getting rid of. On the face of it this does not seem like a particularly good change. Plus the old logo had a lot of recognition built up over 20 years; most marketers would consider that brand equity but Gap felt it was a problem. They’d had the same logo for 20 years, so it was time to get rid of it. Not evolve it, as many companies have done (think about how Betty Crocker, Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima have morphed over the years in response to changing social mores). Just toss it out and start over.

The change drew over 1000 comments on Gap’s Facebook Wall, with the balance overwhelmingly on the negative side. (The Facebook page still displays the old logo as of this morning, by the way. Oops!) The critics tended to say either the new logo looked like an exercise from a beginning Photoshop class, or that they loved the old logo and didn’t want to see it go. And, not a few offered to redesign the logo themselves. That’s where it starts to get strange.

Gap's Facebook page still displays its old logo. Oops.

Gap President Marka Hansen wrote on her Huffington Post blog that “given the passionate outpouring from customers that followed, we’ve decided to engage in the dialogue, take their feedback on board and work together as we move ahead and evolve to the next phase of Gap. From this online dialogue, it’s clear that Gap still has a close connection to our customers, so tapping into this energy is right. We’ve posted a message on the Gap Facebook Page that says we plan to ask people to share their designs with us as well. We welcome the participation we’ve seen so far. We’ll explain specifics on how everyone can share designs in a few days.”

Aside from the condescending we-we language (“passionate outpouring”? more like “howls of outrage), what is really going on here? Is the lame new logo actually a placeholder and publicity stunt? Does Gap really want its customers to help design a new logo, and if so why did they not say that in the first place? And if they are indeed going to hold a design competition, what are the rules of the game and how will the winner be compensated? (Designers are already posting to warn their colleagues not to offer designs until copyright protection measures are made clear.)

Right now Gap’s getting a whole lot of free publicity. Problem is, most of it is negative especially for a company that would like to have a positive image for its design and customer interaction skills. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

UPDATE: on the evening of 10/11/10, Gap announced that it was going back to its old logo. Here’s their Facebook statement, thankfully free of we-weisms: “Ok. We’ve heard loud and clear that you don’t like the new logo. We’ve learned a lot from the feedback. We only want what’s best for the brand and our customers. So instead of crowd sourcing, we’re bringing back the Blue Box tonight.” And according to Ms. Hansen in their press release, “There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a different way.” Sounds like a plan.