Payless, an American shoe retailer, faced this problem a few years back. Facing competitive threats from big-box discounters, a deteriorating customer experience, and a management team far-removed from the average customer, the company’s CMO tried to drive improvements in the customer experience but predictably failed due to lack of senior management buy-in.

Realizing that the company needed to make the lack of customer focus “real” to senior executives, Marketing arranges a series of executive-immersion sessions. They listen in on focus groups to learn the characteristics of core segments, then “act out” those segments in a series of visits to Payless and competitor stores – a constraint that forces them to remove their functional hats and view stores from the perspective of a consumer, rather than an operations or a finance executive.

A key part of the visits to Payless stores is that they are unannounced and incognito. Executives, assuming their roles as a particular customer persona, shop in the store as any other customer would, avoiding the problem of stores “preparing” for pre-announced visits.

The end result? Executives quickly figured out where the customer experience was lacking and identified a few key elements to fix, leading to higher same-store sales and increased foot traffic and customer satisfaction.

MLC members, check out the full case, or listen to this webinar replay on how companies – including Payless – have pioneered consistent, differenteated, and delightful customer experience.

Give more than we take. Marketing’s job, at its most basic, is about a) gaining customer attention and b) converting that attention to dollars. The strategies for doing that vary, obviously – some firms opt for longer-term relationship and brand-building, deferring the attention to dollar conversion to a later date, while others choose shorter-term strategies.

Regardless, it’s worth remembering that that attention is as limited a resource as the money it leads to, and the best firms will do everything they can to extract the most value out of every minute of consumer brain time. For most, that will mean something that might be a bit revolutionary – positioning marketing efforts to add value to the life of the customer.

How to do it? Last year’s major research projects (B2B, B2C) suggested some examples of how big companies have made the buying decision easier and more valuable for customers.

Get empirical (well, as empirical as possible). “Data-driven marketing” is repeated so much by vendors and consultants that it’s nearly at the cliche level, but our initial impression of how large-enterprise marketing organizations use customer data is that there’s a lot of room to improve. In a number of organizations, we’re seeing that data is used mostly to give an empirical veneer to already-formed conclusions; that’s not what empiricism is about, to say the least.

Our best-practices research into this topic is ongoing, obviously, and subject to change. But one key area we think marketing organizations can pretty easily key in on is reducing the cost of being wrong. Why? Well, making fact-based decisions requires people willing to be proven wrong by data – the market is a complex place, and our assumptions about customer behavior, marcomm effectiveness, and any number of critical knowledge areas will sometimes – perhaps often – be wrong. If the stakes of being wrong aren’t quite as high, decision-makers will have more incentive to bring an open mind to customer data.

Forge better cross-functional connections. Critical to progressing on adding customer value and making the most out of data is an old Marketing bugaboo: forging effective relationships with other functions. For instance, making the best use of data requires an effective partnership with IT, at the very minimum, and incorporating added customer value into marketing activities likely requires us to play nice with customer service and R&D.

This is an old standby topic for MLC; for more, check out our cross-functional alignment topic center.

Get serious about establishing a truly global marketing organization. Most large enterprises have marketers around the world, but, judging from the best of the best, that’s not quite enough to call your marketing department “global” anymore. What’s needed, rather, is a focus on building out local marketing staffs and incorporating local practices and knowledge, to the extent possible and necessary.

Last year, we did a project on global marketing that lays out how some of the best companies are structuring their Marketing organizations to take advantage of all that a global footprint has to offer.

Do you have any marketing-related resolutions for the upcoming year? Let us know in comments.

Focused on expanding the share of voice, marketers may be guilty of paying very little attention to streamlining the information path for their consumers. In a noisy marketplace, consumers today are faced with analysis-paralysis, and increasing marketing messaging has done nothing, but confused them. This has resulted in delayed or reduced responsiveness to marketing messages. So what should marketers do?

Leading marketers reduce the information overload on their consumers by compressing their decision journey towards purchase. They do so by actively helping their consumers learn more about their products, instead of passively passing information. They aid consumer research, and propel consumers forward in their purchase decision journey. Marketers can achieve c consumer learning by taking the following steps:

Understand the consumer decision path: Traditional purchase influence research covers the consumer purchase path in bits and pieces. It does not reveal the best timing and order of messages and touchpoints. MLC members Maritz combined qualitative consumer research, media testing, and click-stream analysis to map the full decision path. Follow the analysis up by developing a purchase path that provides minimal and relevant information needed to streamline the consumer purchase journey.

Predict where consumers are in the purchase path: A logical question would be, once you’ve developed you purchase path, how would you know where consumers are on it? Inadvertently, while searching for product information, consumers leave behind some clues to where they are in the purchase path – the “digital breadcrumbs”. These could be online search phrases, visits to comparison sites, etc. Marketers should use analysis tools on this online data to identify the stage of purchase research their consumers are in.

Send shoppers to purchase-driving touchpoints: Once you’ve determined the shopper location on purchase path, use accessible touchpoints to drive consumers to purchase-inducing paths. Like Tesco, who created a virtual mall, reduce consumer distraction by using messaging that drives urgency, induces purchase confidence and enables a smooth purchase. Finally reduce decision stress on you consumers by marketing innovations such as subscriptions, bundling, auto-upgrades, etc.

MLC members can access our full study on Compressing the Decision Journey from our work this summer.

Managing the cross-channel experience is the second third biggest priority for B2C marketers next year, according to our recent member polling.   It’s no surprise, given the growing number of channels to coordinate as well as consumers’ high expectations.

The problem?  Customer-facing employees lack visibility into how their work fits together with other teams’ efforts to impact the whole experience.  As the channel mix grows in complexity, even managers can struggle to keep to visualize the entire experience.

Enter Marketing at United Services (a pseudonymed North American financial services company).  They illustrate every interaction customers have with the brand – at each stage of the purchase (and repurchase) cycle – on huge poster boards.  To bring it to life, they even display actual examples of marcomm materials, such as direct mail or screenshots of TV ads.  Depicting the entire experience in one place helps employees see the big picture.  MLC members, see a sample storyboard here.

United Services highlight three key elements of the consumer experience:

• Segment-specific experiences: The poster boards illustrate multiple segments’ individual experiences.
• Inconsistencies: Red stickers pinned onto the boards highlight problem areas and priorities for improvement.
• Competitors’ efforts: At the bottom of the boards, United Services displays competitors’ marcomm materials.  This provides unique insight into how your value proposition compares to others’.

As a result of this visual initiative, Marketing at United Services experiences several benefits:

• Common understanding of  the customer experience
• Greater coordination of cross-functional workflows and initiatives
• A more streamlined customer experience, as a result of spotting and removing inefficiencies

MLC members, learn more about how to use experience storyboards to drive cross-channel consistency.

(minor edit: cross-channel is the third biggest priority for marketing leaders this year, not the second.)

Till recently, most such examples of banks using new media innovatively have come from the West. But off late, I’ve seen banks in Asia also begin to tap channels such as social media and mobile quite innovatively. Here are 3 of my favorite uses of new media across Asia

DBS Bank’s Social Media Check-in Promo

What DBS Did: Singapore-based DBS Bank recently held a month-long Facebook Places and Deals campaign in Asia for Singapore, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Jakarta, and Taipei. Anyone who owned a mobile device could participate and earn points. Participants earned points by checking-in to a DBS Bank branch through DBS Places, successfully referring a Facebook friend, and points for each Facebook friend participating in the campaign. They could then redeem these points against merchant deals throughout the campaign.

I like it because: Instead of following an ad-hoc approach to using social media, DBS used social media strategically choosing to run the campaign across Asia. Moreover, recognizing that consumers are interested in deriving tangible value from brands on social media, DBS built in merchant deals in the campaign – a great way to engage both existing bank customers as well as potential customers.

Standard Chartered’s Breeze App

What Standard Chartered Did: A global bank, Standard Chartered launched its mobile app ‘Breeze’ in Singapore, and has since rolled it out in parts of Asia. What’s different about this app? A host of innovative features and a customer-friendly intuitive interface.

For example:

• WishList allows you to create and categorize multiple savings goals, track progress, and even let your Facebook friends know what you’re saving for.
• BreezeLiving informs you of all the deals available to the bank’s customers which you can avail of via location-based coupons.
• E-Check Service allows you to sign a check electronically on your computer or iPhone and the bank will automatically print and mail the check for you.

I like it because: Besides offering standard services such as bill pay or funds transfer to customers, it provides new-in-kind value through its innovative features leading to deeper customer relationships.

I also liked how StanChart promoted Breeze – after gauging the media consumption patterns of the target audience of this app, the bank primarily promoted it through social media.  The bank previewed the app before launch to bloggers, and also held an iPad giveaway campaign.

State Bank of India’s ‘SMS Unhappy’

What SBI Did: A few months ago, India’s largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI) launched a new customer service channel  – “SMS Unhappy”.

So, how does this service work? As a consumer, if you’re unhappy with any of the bank’s services, you can simply text ‘Unhappy’ to a specified number. The Bank’s Happy Room will call you, register the complaint, and also notify you once the problem is fixed.

I like it because: With ‘SMS Unhappy’, SBI not only tapped a new channel, it successfully changed customer perceptions of the brand. Specifically, SBI has created a more customer-friendly brand image, in line with its vision.

So, how are you using online and mobile channels to differentiate your brand?

Lack of executive buy-in. What’s the biggest driver of social media success at the organizational level? Evidence we’ve collected suggests that, unsurprisingly, it’s CMO buy-in. Why? Because social isn’t a typical channel investment; to achieve success, processes within the marketing organization (like marcomm approval and integration of customer voice) have to be sped up or revamped entirely.

What happens without buy-in? Nothing good; you’ll likely end up using social as just another advertising channel (a particularly ineffective one, at that), and not realizing the unique benefits a two-way conversation with consumers can provide.

Developing CMO leadership in this space is so important that we devoted an entire year of research to it – check out our findings!

Campaign-style thinking. Long-used to viewing marketing as a series of discrete efforts to induce some kind of customer action, marketers are prone to applying this paradigm to their social media efforts, as well. The idea is that, via social, brands will introduce a number of stimuli into the market, with the desired result of bigger sales, heightened brand awareness, or some other positive outcome. This model is strictly linear – message + distribution = customer result – and it has strict end and beginning dates.

By contrast, social media offers greatest returns when it’s thought of in a non-linear, open-ended way. An organization getting involved in social should be prepared for a few things – a) results not might be immediately measurable, in the way that traditional campaigns are and b) the commitment should be to enhance consumers’ lives over the long-term.

Want to avoid campaign-style thinking? Check out our resources on developing enduring social media strategies and content.

Focus on platforms and channels, not outcomes. It’s a common sentiment heard within marketing functions: “Of course we get social! We’re on Twitter!”

Maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but this idea embeds an odd assumption that technologies – rather than conversations or utility – are what’s important about social media. Customers aren’t going to give you points for registering a Twitter handle and then being useless or unresponsive; they’re going to give you points for using a channel to improve their lives in some measurable way.

We counsel organizations considering starting or expanding their social presences to work backwards from two things: business objectives and customer needs. Does a particular channel fit those objectives and needs? Go for it! If not? Maybe you should still go for it, but proceed with caution.

Brand – not customer – centricity. Similar to the above, marketers often make a few mistakes when it comes to what consumers care about. A lot of times, the assumption is made that consumers want “brand engagement” – what this means in practice, we’re still not sure, but we’re guessing it means stuff like this:

I love you, Peanut Chews, but damn: is there an assumption out there that consumers care about stuff like this? And don’t just think it’s about niche candy brands – many of the biggest consumer brands in the world – including some of you reading this – do the same kind of stuff.

A few reasons why brand-centricity and “engagement” strategies are bad: first, there’s little evidence that consumers want to be engaged by brands in any serious way – most follow brands online in search of discounts; second, there is pretty good evidence that engagement efforts serve mostly to distract customers from the purchase path; and third, it takes valuable resources – including your budget, your staff’s time and the available well of consumer attention – away from higher-ROI efforts.

Inappropriate measurement practices. Even if you’ve managed to create lasting business and consumer impact via social, you run the risk of getting the plug pulled prematurely if you can’t communicate that impact in a way that the rest of the organization understands.

In order to do this well, you have to be measuring your efforts – but what, and how, should you measure? ROI is a notoriously-limited way of getting at the value of disruptive investments, but returns can be shown using a “bridge metric” model that measures indirect benefits like decreased customer care spend or offset marcomm spending in traditional channels.

How else do social efforts fail? Let us know in comments.

So, how should marketers expect their jobs to change? We came up with a few ways; let us know more in comments!

A (gradual) shift from patient acquisition to patient education. Marketers in the health and pharmaceutical space already do a lot of education, both to comply with regulations as well as to improve patient understanding and compliance. But in many parts of the business, particularly in mass-market consumer drugs and health plans, companies are still doing a lot of patient acquisition. My educated guess is that the mix of acquisition and education will shift decidedly towards the latter in the next 10 years or so.

Why? First, there is enormous pressure – political, legal, and economic – on healthcare organizations and pharma manufacturers to begin aggressive moves to control costs. Patient education can help lower those costs, and a decrease in patient acquisition – for instance, a dip in advertising spend – can lower costs as well. Second, there’s some anecdotal evidence that pharma pipelines are slowing, and as medicines come off-patent, margins will dip – making acquisition a lower-ROI activity. Finally, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of tightening of DTC rules in the next few years. Everything seems to add up to future with less traditional consumer marketing, and more activities that support other business goals – like cutting costs.

Less intervention, more prevention. Going along with the political mandate and economic necessity to cut costs, we’re already seeing insurance marketers, in particular, going the extra mile to emphasize the importance of healthy lifestyles. Providing content for employer health-related newsletters and internal communications portals, direct mailing preventative health pamphlets to consumers, and other marketing activities will definitely play a role in companies’ efforts to lower costs while improving or keeping health outcomes steady. More promising are efforts to incentivize better health – both for employers and consumers – but I’m not sure what, if any, role Marketing is playing in developing those programs.

Will these programs work? I’m skeptical that they will, to any broad, systemic degree. Financial incentives tend to work when the incented activity is very beneficial and easily accomplished; plastic bag taxes, for instance, work because it’s quite easy to bring reusable bags to the store. Incentivizing weight loss is something else entirely, since the American obesity epidemic has roots in systemic factors, not personal choices. If insurers can drill down to the level of individual choices – for instance, a micro-incentive for eating an apple, rather than a candy bar – I could imagine a higher degree of success, but I doubt we’re anywhere near that point.

Greater leeway with technology. As one of the most regulated industries in the world, the healthcare space faces significant limitations on consumer communications. The most visible of these regulations are those surrounding side effect disclosure and “adverse event” reporting that I discussed last year – the result being that pharma companies can’t meaningfully participate in social media activities other consumer brands take for granted.

The US Food and Drug Administration, which regulates brand-to-patient communication, is apparently considering revisions to rules requiring companies to report adverse events and to adequately disclose side effects, giving brands a better opportunity to reach customers via social media. Hearings were held almost two years ago on the subject, but the agency has repeatedly delayed issuing new guidance.

Although the agency can be slow to respond to marketplace developments, they can’t ignore social media forever, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a significant loosening of adverse event and side effect reporting – offering marketers a greater opportunity to connect with customers. When that happens, the industry will have a lot of catching up to do.

MLC members, what do you think the future of marketing will be? Let us know in this survey we’ve developed.

Activate your advocates. Disney encourages its most loyal fans to apply to be a part of the Disney Moms’ Panel and other interest-group-related panels.  Not only does this allow your most avid consumers an opportunity to share their personal experiences, it also helps build trust in your brand because potential vacationers can find a panel member whose needs and interests match their own.  Like Disney, Ford has also used brand ambassadors to share more about a product; MLC members, click here to learn about how the Ford Fiesta Movement helped launch the American model of the Fiesta.

Make your product easy to buy. With Disney’s Vacation Package Guide, prospective vacationers can plug in their budget, dates, travel party size, and vacation styles to get recommendations on what type of Disney package is best for their needs.  This eliminates the need to conduct intense research on each of the resorts, ticket options, and dining plans.  This simplification allows guests to research their vacation options quickly yet efficiently, allowing them to find an option that meets their vacation and budget needs.

But provide detailed information for those who want it. Disney also realizes there are some people who love to research their vacation options, intensely looking at every hotel, menu and ticket option (I’m incredibly guilty of this).  For these vacationers, Disney offers web pages on every on-site resort (all 21 in all) that feature picture slideshows, restaurant menus, and links to TripAdvisor reviews.  The high-involvement resort guest can look through all of these sites before deciding whether her family would most like to vacation at an African-themed lodge or a Boardwalk-style resort.

Make your product easy (and fun) to use. Disney makes vacationing at Disney World incredibly simple through easy transportation and dining.  Disney offers a free shuttle from the airport to a guest’s hotel (aptly named the Magical Express) and then from the hotel to all of the parks and shopping destinations.  This ease of transportation (no need for a GPS or a rental car) allows guests to have a less stressful vacation, which encourages them to keep coming back.

Give reasons to keep buying. There are so many seasonal activities and little details that it is impossible to do everything in one vacation at Disney World.  Even though I’ve been to Disney World a lot of times, in my upcoming trip in December I’ll be staying at a new resort, dining at new restaurants, and even riding a new ride.   Because Disney World has so many choices, it is possible to have a new experience with each trip.

MLC members, for more on creating unforgettable experiences, check out our resources on branding and customer experience.

I don’t think this is wrong, per se. But do I think it misses a key paradox. Jobs and the company he created did invent wonderful user experiences, but they did it in the exact way that most companies wouldn’t.

For most of us, a focus on the customer means that we make a commitment to go above and beyond to address customer complaints and needs, and that we find smarter ways to incorporate their feedback into all aspects of our business. So, a customer focus initiative might raise customer planning to the level of other important enterprise planning processes, like Tesco did. The basic model? If we listen better, and do a better job of incorporating our learnings into our products and services, we’ll resonate more with customers and sell more stuff.

By contrast, Jobs and Apple succeeded by having a compelling vision. They ignored their users almost entirely – at least in the product design process – and focused on an integrated, streamlined design – an enlightened, benevolent tyranny of sorts. Jobs was famous for a kind of perfectionism that most executives would think absurd: for instance, he once asked engineers working on the original Macintosh to re-design the computer’s motherboard – a part most users would never see – because it looked inelegant. OS X, Apple’s current operating system, was delayed by six months over Jobs’ dissatisfaction with the way the scroll bars worked. Taken individually, these are elements of design that very few users would notice or care about; but together they created the famous Mac user experience.

The user experiences of Apple products – from iOS devices to Mac computers – reflect the user experience Steve Jobs wanted, not the one his customers would have told him they wanted, if he’d bothered to ask. And it worked – but there are pretty big risks with going this route. Apple relied on Jobs’ design vision to make its products work, and if his vision had been faulty, or hadn’t resonated with the market, they’d be in trouble. His vision raised costs, both for the consumer and for the company itself. His insistence that the user experience be uniform across all applications significantly limited the developer pool for Apple devices (at least, at first, until the iPhone became an irresistible hit). The relative inability to customize the experience limited – and still limits – Apple’s penetration into the business market.

But Apple’s focus on top-down design – rather than the needs of customers, as they might report them – is a counterpoint to a growing trend in the corporate world of finding new and inventive ways to find out what customers want, and do exactly that. It’s a vote for visions over data, and that’s a dichotomy we’ll probably explore a bit in this year’s research.

Do you have thoughts on the right balance between vision and data? Let us know in comments.

Armed with unprecedented market information, buyers today are harder to impress than before. So is it impossible for B2B marketers exhibit the real value of their products to today’s empowered customers? Absolutely not – as we learned from MLC members FedEx.

FedEx realized that the primary reason clients don’t understand solution ROI is because it is hard for them to quantify it. So instead of quantifying solution value to their clients, FedEx created ValuePoint – an online calculator that allows clients to enter their own assumptions and customize value calculations.

Once the cost of the problems is established, the clients are more likely to be motivated to solve it. Although FedEx never pitches itself as a solution to the clients’ problems,  a FedEx makes the pitching easier for reps, and the value more apparent to the clients.

Here are our thoughts on why this approach works for B2B businesses:

1. Psychologically appealing – By presenting a real and quantifiable problem, this approach drives urgency and appeals to the risk-aversion mindset of the customers. The urgency to solve the problem
2. Logical –  FedEx studied the supply chain of key customer segments before it established pain points in ValuePoint. This approach is made the arguments concrete as it relied on conditions that are known to the customers, rather than abstract value judgments which are more open to questioning.
3. Transparent – ValuePoint allows customers to input their data into the system and see the calculations for themselves in a reasoned manner. Since the calculations are well-researched, and readily visible, the customer buy-in is likely to be higher.

FedEx’s ValuePoint allowed customers to decide what’s best for them, and the company only played the role of a facilitator to enable this understanding. This approach helped FedEx turn a prospects who previously admitted to disliking FedEx—motivating them to abandon long relationships with another suppliers in favor of FedEx Solutions.

MLC members can access the FedEx case, which forms a part of our larger research on Influencing the Newly-Empowered Customer.

Social shopping. There’s been an awful lot of talk and theorizing about social shopping – a sort of blanket term for any technology that connects customers to each other in the retail experience – but not a lot of hard evidence as to what kind of foot traffic and incremental sales it can drive. That’s starting to change, though, as big brands like Walmart get involved in the space.

So, what’s the potential for consumer brands and retailers? Stressing that this is my opinion only, I don’t see a ton of returns from this technology – at least yet. First, there are organizational as well as technical challenges in developing the nimbleness to quickly take advantage of rapidly-shifting social data. Even if you can generate consumer insights from social data, there’s no guarantee you can implement changes based on those insights rapidly enough to take advantage – and, we’re hearing that many organizations can’t.

Real-time demand management. Along these same lines, retailers are beginning to use social media data – as well as more finely-tuned seasonal sales trends – to inform decisions about inventory levels, store placement, and in-store promotion in real time. Walmart’s @WalmartLabs is doing some of this – for instance, adjusting supplies of bicycles when it detects an increase in cycling-related chatter in a given area – but most retailers haven’t cracked this nut in any serious way.

The same caveats apply: while technology might be enabling real-time knowledge into demand, most companies’ internal processes – everything from legal to supply chain and beyond – aren’t yet ready to take systemic advantage of those new insights.

Mobile payments. By this point, I think most of the audience is at least somewhat familiar with the concept of mobile payments – paying for goods using a variety of mobile-based technologies like SMS, RFID, or near-field communications. A number of analysts have projected mobile cash flows to increase exponentially between now and 2015, and with a number of big-name financial providers and processors jumping aboard, it’s only a matter of time before most large retailers are accepting pay-by-phone.

We’ve written a little about mobile payments before, and since I asked the questions in that post, to be honest, there haven’t been a ton of answers. If it’s simply about making payment as painless as possible for the consumer, then great; if there’s a greater strategic reason to roll these systems out, then I’d like to hear your take!

Apps for staff. Developments in the smartphone and tablet spaces have mainstreamed the concept of “apps”, but brands are typically rolling these out for consumer benefit. But there’s an exciting new trend in deploying apps for floor staff that we expect to continue. So far, the retailers empowering their staff with mobile apps have mostly been luxury and high-end brands: for instance, Nordstrom is testing iPod-touch mobile POS systems, and BMW is giving leasing agents iPads that will allow them to finalize paperwork immediately after test-drives. Among more everyday retailers, Lowe’s is also rolling out iPhone-based POS systems.

This strikes me as relatively low-hanging fruit for retailers. Yes, there’s a fairly large up-front expense in app development, as well as actually deploying devices to the sales floor. But a well-designed app, I think, could reduce in-store “friction” and allow staff to spend more time serving customers and less time checking if items are in stock, for instance.

In-store context and navigation. Hand-in-hand with reducing staff informational friction is reducing customer informational friction, and there’s been some movement to empower individual customers with apps and tech designed to enhance the retail experience. For instance, a number of brands are using QR codes and RFID technology to offer contextual information to customers in the buying experience: Macy’s is using QR to link physical goods to online videos featuring interviews with designers, Home Depot is rolling out QR to link to videos explaining how to use products, and LL Bean is using RFID to launch videos on in-store screens when consumers interact with certain products.

This is another piece of low-hanging fruit that I think is a no-brainer for retailers to implement, particularly in certain classes of goods. Home improvement tools are notoriously complex and hard to differentiate in-store; why not give consumers the ability to do it in a way that benefits the brand?

What other cool tech have you come across? Let us know in the comments.

Editor’s note: We put this up (and in our member newsletter) prior to last night’s news that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had passed away. We’ll have thoughts on his legacy later this week.

The following is a guest post from Robert van Alstyne, a media and technology analyst with our sister program, Iconoculture.

It’s a testament to technology’s ascendant role in pop culture that today’s Apple press conference had more consumer buzz than any new TV show this fall season. With media-saturated consumers’ tastes increasingly splintered, gadget lust is now one of the last common denominators uniting the masses.

Heading into today’s press conference, professional pundits and John Q. Public speculated wildly, debating what new treats Apple would unveil. Would we get an iPhone 5 or just a new iPhone 4? Prior to the event, rumors of a slimmer, 3X-faster iPhone 5 reached a crescendo. By the time new Apple CEO Tim Cook took to the stage this morning, online chatter had reached such a pitch that one colleague speculated on Twitter, “I wonder, did America stop what it was doing in, say, 1953, when the next model *car* was announced?”

In a move that disappointed some true believers, there was no iPhone 5 announcement, “just” the iPhone 4S, which will hit stores October 14. The new phone still boasts impressive hardware advancements. Among the iPhone 4S’ selling points are the ability to switch intelligently between two antennas to transmit and receive (thereby doubling data download speed), along with a serious camera upgrade. Initial online reaction was “meh,” but we’d be shocked if the 4S doesn’t sell extraordinarily well, just like its predecessor.

Right now, Apple’s main selling point is its image as a cutting-edge company, so the product details matter relatively little to the average consumer. By tirelessly turning their brand into an essential emblem of digital savvy, Apple has carved out both a cult-like following and an ever-broadening base of users. Apple’s old-guard faithful might be disappointed, and they might not “need” the latest iteration of the iPhone. But whatever the specs, in a growing number of consumers’ eyes, Apple’s latest remains a cherished status symbol, broadcasting to all that they’re in step with our fast-moving information-driven world.

MLC members, for more great Iconoculture insights, check out the selected pieces we publish each week on the latest consumer trends.

Of course, few things are more important for a female Millenial than shopping.  Now I haven’t been the most ardent shopper amongst my friends and peers (and not just the ladies, mind you), but I have been an ardent observer of their passion.  From what I’ve personally noticed, shopping, too, underwent a layered transformation, one that is particularly significant to marketers.

The PC revolution of the late 80s and early 90s allowed traditional brick-&-mortar businesses to expand and add stores in an organized fashion – a resulting increase in foot-traffic was reflected in inventory holdings growth across multiple retail segments.  Then, at the turn of the millennium, eCommerce began herding people home to the comfort of online shopping.  Today, online sales are still up, but I’ve noticed that my friends have begun physically returning to stores more often, rarely without their Smartphones in hand.

The recent ANA Mobile Marketing Conference provided three insights as to how some companies are using the third technological revolution  – the mobility revolution – to bring consumers back out of their homes.

Simplifying/Store Mapping. Walmart, one of the presenting corporations at the conference, utilizes a mobile app that maps out an entire store as you go through while simultaneously providing price transparency.  In-and-out in half the time – I’d certainly consider saving myself the online shipping fees.

Enhancing the Experience. Hewlett-Packard, another presenter, has been using QR codes to provide targeted information to consumers in the store.  HP currently has unique QR codes for 32 IPG products on 84 packaging varieties in 34 languages.  That’s a whopping 379 unique web experiences, all accessible from your mobile.  Its app provides pre- and post-sale support, incorporating all the information available online with a visual and tangible in-store experience.

Transforming the Process. Tesco PLC has taken out-of-home shopping to a whole new level.  In Korea, it has launched a platform where mobile users literally shop on a metro platform.  With photo images printed onto the car exteriors, shoppers need only scan the codes on the products they want, which are then shipped directly home.  This is real shopping on-the-go.

MLC members, how has the mobility revolution impacted your business?  Let us know in comments, and don’t forget to check out our Mobile Marketing Resource Center for more on this growing trend.

Even though the weather and leaves are just beginning to turn, and we still have to get through Columbus Day, Halloween and Thanksgiving before turning our thoughts to visions of sugarplums and eight crazy nights, marketers are hard at work figuring out ways to close the year off strong with a good holiday season.

But how should they do it, while stengthening their brand positions for the year to come? We’ve got a few tips below:

Find ways to lighten the load. For kids, the holiday season is a magical, wonderful time of presents, candy, and sometimes magical elves. For adults, though, it’s probably among the most stressful times of the year – even if the stress is likely to pay off in the form of fun with family and friends.

Great brands recognize that not only is the season particularly hectic, the very act of brand interaction might be, too. Finding ways to save consumers time and money, as well as raising the chances they’ll make the right choice when it comes to gifts, can pay dividends throughout the rest of the year.

So how does this play out practically? Offer your consumers some measures of assurance that they’re making the right choices. Some brands we’ve studied have done this through transparent buying guides – presenting consumers with a range of criteria and offering relevant gift ideas for each – while others have gone the technology route, using social networks to make gift recommendations.

Clarify the brand promise – and deliver it, 100%. There’s no better time to make sure brand promises are airtight – and delivery consistent – than the holidays. The uptick in shopping offers brands an opportunity to make a positive imprint on the consumer, but if crowd-weary shoppers aren’t satisfied with what they get, you may suffer the consequences the rest of the year.

MLC has a wealth of material designed to help companies consistently deliver their brand promises: for instance, here’s how Exxon Mobile motivated employees to consistent brand delivery, how Starbucks ensured consistent brand delivery across all touchpoints – human and not human, and how we recommend brands ensure consistent brand delivery across geographies and segments.

Find avenues of emotional differentiation. Here’s the place where brands – particularly consumer and retail brands – have a golden opportunity to set themselves apart from the competition: finding areas of shared values and ways to emotionally differentiate themselves from competitors. We’ve found, for instance, that brands that align with consumers around emotional values perform at a much higher level than brands that emphasize functional differentiators.

Luckily, emotions are running high during the holiday season, and there are a number of brands that have particularly strong associations with the holidays. Macy’s, for instance, is associated in my mind with the holidays: their sponsorship of the Thanksgiving Day parade and the movie “Miracle on 34th St.” form that association in my mind, and I’m much more likely to shop there during the holidays than at any other time.

Understand and fit into seasonal routines. Routines shift a bit during the holidays for a lot of people and families. I’d say that, on average, one is more likely to bake cookies on a random Tuesday night during December than in other months; one is more likely to visit a mall in December than in other times, one is more likely to drive around looking at tacky Christmas lights – all sorts of things.

Brands that unearth subtle shifts in consumer routines during the holidays can capitalize big on them. For instance: there’s the classic case of General Mills’ Betty Crocker brand figuring out that parents often spent the first week of the holidays doing nothing special, then felt guilty about doing so. So the brand targeted cookie-baking in the second week of the holidays, figuring this was an easy way to assuage parental guilt about not being festive enough.

MLC members, how are you shifting your brand communications mix for the holidays? Let us know in comments below.

But the most fireworks happened around a discussion on mobile marketing.  Sean Bartlett, the director of mobile strategy & platforms at Lowe’s, presented on recent mobile activity by that company.  What they’ve accomplished is great mobile work for marketers to emulate. The new Lowe’s app, which has been on the top download boards in the App Store, scores very well against MLC’s 11 criteria of a world-class mobile execution.

Why the fireworks? One marketing leader in attendance asked a simple question: how does Lowe’s measure the ROI on its mobile efforts?  The assumption behind the question was that Lowe’s is spending well into six digits, or even seven digits, and so how to justify the resources internally?

(light fireworks here)  The discussion quickly bounced back and forth between various other retailers in the room, several of which stated that the ROI discussion is over—that was for 5 years ago.  Consumers are moving so quickly that it’s not a question of if, but how.  One retailer shared that it had just launched m-commerce the week before, and watched as its mobile sales ticked up to 3% of total–in just 3 days!!  The CMO indicated customers must have been wondering what took the retailer so long to offer mobile purchasing.

The discussion took on a life of its own, and ultimately landed in a place that struck me as a turning point for retail marketers—if you’re obsessed with ROI to the point that it’s hampering getting some big mobile bets up and running, you’re moving too slow for your consumer.  I’m sure there are exceptions in categories that serve older generations, but by and large, the mobile train has left the station.

MLC members, score your mobile concepts against world-class criteria using our Mobile Execution scorecard.

Last week, Target generated so much buzz that increased traffic shut down its website and some stores sold out of new merchandise within hours.  Surprisingly, this wasn’t a big Black Friday-style sale – it was the introduction of a new clothing line.

With e-commerce sites increasingly encroaching on bricks-and-mortar sales, retailers are being forced to innovate to keep consumers coming back to their stores.  From 2009 to 2010, e-commerce revenue increased 15.8%, while general merchandisers’ revenue increased 2.9% and department stores saw a revenue decrease of .8%.

A major factor in this shift to e-commerce is the rise of price transparency.  Before the rise of smartphones and price trackers, consumers would have to either go to many physical stores or leaf through many weekly circulars to know which stores offered the lowest prices.  Since both of these methods are incredibly time-consuming, though, consumers didn’t research the products and prices as much.  This gave retailers some wiggle room to offer slightly higher prices without alienating their shoppers.

But now, price trackers and smartphones abound.  Consumers are able to research products in-store, getting historical price information on sites like camelcamelcamel and finding cross-store location-based price information on sites like Goodzer.  And since so many shoppers have smartphones, they are now able to do this anywhere – even while standing in one retailer’s aisles, examining the product.

So what’s a retailer to do?

Make stores more of a destination experience.

One way to do this is to make the shopping experience incredibly fun, like I wrote about earlier about the American Girl Place or the World of Coca Cola.   Retailers are making their stores more novel by pursuing strategies like launching lines of unique merchandise (like Target’s Missoni example above), while others are hosting classes and events (like Home Depot’s Kids Workshops).  These unique products and classes can intrigue shoppers enough to get them into the store, and they will often buy more things once they are there.

Several retailers are also adding departments that feature products that can’t be or aren’t yet often purchased online.  For examples, health clinics can encourage shoppers to come to the store.  Since most visitors to a health clinic will pick up little things like cough drops and medicine on their way out, these health clinics can help increase both foot traffic and sales.  Groceries, too, can help increase foot traffic.  Since most grocery products have relatively short shelf lives, most consumers go shopping on a weekly basis, boosting foot traffic.

Use technology like mobile alerts and coupons.

New technologies like Shopkick can reward consumers for going into a store by providing points and coupons.  These points for checking in may be enough to actually get to the store, and the coupons may be enough to get them to buy more once they are there.

Take the store to the shoppers.

This summer, H&M successfully took its merchandise to the consumers by building a beachfront pop-up store that sold summer clothes and accessories, like shorts, swimsuits, and sundresses.  Shoppers were able to buy the beach gear and use it almost instantly.  This model increases foot traffic by significantly reducing the effort shoppers must exert to get to the store.

Other retailers are doing this by building smaller locations that cater to local shoppers.  This is taking the form of City Target, a store under construction that will be in a historic building to blend in with the nearby streetscape, and it will feature products like apartment furnishings to cater to neighborhood shoppers.

We have just begun our 2011 research on ways to boost foot traffic.  If have any ideas on how retailers should do this, please email me at colong@executiveboard.com to get involved!

By Ana Lapter

Rising event expenses, declining consumer attendance, and increased competition from suppliers of virtual event solutions: these are three factors forcing many B2B marketers to rethink whether trade shows are any longer worth the expense.

I certainly don’t believe that trade shows are worthless.  Our B2B research last year indicated that, if planned and executed correctly, trade shows are effective channels for enabling conversations with customers who are ready to buy.  MLC members – please click here if you want to see the full list of the most effective conversational channels that influence mid-funnel purchasing decisions.

So, what are the ingredients of an effective trade show strategy?  Our recent case study profiling Hill-Rom’s trade show approach illustrates a few critical ingredients that transform a trade event into a lead generation machine:

Focus on key influencers in the buying center. Several months back, I wrote a post regarding the psychology of business buyers. I argued that marketing strategies should focus less on seniority and formal role in the buying center, and rather emphasize functional experience and personal authority, as drivers of specific purchasing decision-making outcomes.  For instance, Hill-Rom’s marketing team targeted the hospital nurses as key influencers in buying centers and built the trade booth around these critical purchasing stakeholders and their critical work outcomes.

Apply the concept of commercial teaching. We define “commercial teaching” as reframing the way the customer assigns value to the product areas where you outperform your competitors.  Hill-Rom successfully applied this concept when building its trade show strategy.  First, Marketing discovered that a critical outcome for health professionals is reducing the number of days in ambulatory facilities, as critical care patients commonly face serious or even deadly complications.  Once this problem became obvious, Marketing identified an under-appreciated solution that helps patients become mobile sooner – namely, special hospital beds that enable patients to recover faster by enabling progressive mobility.  They then set out to teach customers about the value of progressive mobility – a lesson clearly dovetailing with Hill-Rom’s differentiators.

Deploy an experiential approach. Unlike many trade shows where customers pass by various booths and get inundated with brochures and explanations of products benefits and features, Hill-Rom’s trade booth provided its key visitors with a memorable, visual experience. The booth reproduced a real “progressive mobility” process inside a hospital, allowing visitors to experience the solution as a patient. By turning the visit into a real experience, Marketing created a long-lasting experience.

Hill-Rom’s example illustrates the power of a live trade event in building the momentum for a purchasing decision, by blending knowledge of a group’s decision-making psychology, the “commercial teaching” philosophy and experiential marketing strategies.

MLC members, how important are trade shows in your overall marketing mix? And how are you driving conversions from your investment in trade events?

It’s been just over a year since we brought you the “Funniest Customer Service Spoofs”, an entry that continues to rank among the most popular in Wide Angle’s history. And if we learned (or rather, confirmed) anything from this diversionary post, it’s that customer service professionals have a healthy sense of humor about themselves and their jobs—even though we seem to get more than our fair share of ridicule.

Let’s face it, though. Despite the fact that we all strive to eliminate poor experiences that are frustrating for customers, from an outsider’s perspective these situations can be…well…absolutely hilarious. And it’s not just standup comedians and sitcoms that are leveraging the comedic fodder to be had; on the contrary, more and more companies are pushing customer service to differentiate themselves—and using some spectacularly bad examples to illustrate their competitors’ allegedly inferior service.

With that in mind, we’ve dug up a few more customer service-related spoofs, pranks, and advertisements that are sure to keep you laughing…unless, of course, you’re that frustrated customer on the other end of the line:

1. Diapers.com – Customer Service Experts
In a possible nod to the talking E*TRADE baby, Diapers.com (a business patronized and often praised by a certain unnamed CCC consultant and mother of a toddler) gives new meaning to the phrase “putting yourself in the customer’s shoes” by staffing their call center with an army of helpful baby-agents. Sympathetic to the familiar plights of ordering formula and assembling tricycles, these junior customer service reps field calls in between naps—all while pulling off the impossible task of wearing nothing but a diaper at work.

2. Elaborate prank on Belgian call center
If we were hosting an awards show, these guys would win hands-down for “most complicated/time-consuming prank” related to customer service. But we’re not, so you’ll have to settle for just watching the video.

3. CarMax – “Customer Service shouldn’t be a thing of the past”
Can service ever be scary good? While this may look like a gas station you’d find in Pleasantville, CarMax promises to offer customer service just like they did in the good old days. Later ads like this one also build on the theme of customer-centricity.

4. Seinfeld – Kramer’s Moviefone IVR
Don’t ever take your IVR for granted—as Kramer finds out in this classic scene from Seinfeld, being an automated menu isn’t as easy as it may seem. While we wouldn’t recommend replacing your current system with Kramer, you can find more information on making an informed technology decision here.

5. Saturday Night Live – MetroBank Customer Service
This SNL skit just goes to show that there are two sides to every story; and, more importantly, it highlights that it’s the customer’s interpretation of the experience that really counts. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch here to say that Roseanne was born to play this role.

6. Discover – Peggy
What started as a typical 30-second spot promising a shorter hold time to talk to a ‘real person’ has grown into a full-scale advertising campaign—all based on a nightmare customer service rep that goes by the name of “Peggy”. If you haven’t been keeping up with this popular spoof, Peggy now has his/her own YouTube channel, a Facebook page, and a few A-list customers including Lou Holtz and Bobby Bowden. Don’t worry, though, the service at USA Prime Credit hasn’t gotten any better.

CCC Buzz readers: What do you think?—are we missing any of your favorite customer service spoofs?

Indeed, given the inherent industry advantage, many manufacturers may feel entitled to think themselves relatively secure. But when customers are asked questions that entail comparison between manufacturers of the same industry, they become indecisive, delay contacting suppliers and are swayed by details that suppliers overlook. From a competitive angle, here’s how things shape up:

Your customers don’t think it’s hard to switch suppliers, in other words, they fail to see much of the difference between your offering and that of others’. They will call you only when they’re about 60% through the whole process, assuming that you make it into their consideration set to start with.

Your customers are price sensitive, as a result, 48% of manufacturers’ customers used RFP in their purchase process (the figure for service is 39%). And the top reason to issue RFPs? To compare prices.

Your customers are not in an exclusive relationship with you. They consider just as many suppliers as service buyers in the final stage of purchase.  Even though the winning manufacturers have on average known their customers for about 7.5 years, 25% of the time they lose to a younger, newer competitor.

Now while the win patterns are good news for challengers and bad news for incumbents, most companies wear these two hats at the same time. Fortunately, our data shows that there are levers you can pull to keep existing customers while attracting more. The key is to change the way you present information. Many companies settle for “boring”, just being interesting will put you one step ahead. Service providers and your progressive peers have had much practice at positioning complex offerings interestingly and you should try the same:

Engage customers by tailoring information. Sometimes you do the tailoring, other times you simply build the environment enabling a personalized experience. Hill-Rom, a medical devices manufacturer addresses customers’ differing needs through their Experiential Teaching Trade Show Booth, where customers experience the inconveniences faced by critically ill patients and the Progressive Mobility Solution Hill-Rom offers. This exercise support momentum-building by highlighting Hill-Rom’s unique strength while making an abstract concept concrete. Customers’ takeaways differ, but leave similarly impressed.

Make better use of cases and be thought provoking by linking to the customer’s end goal. Customers are much more receptive to feedback from their peers, especially those who resemble themselves.  Qwest constructed an authentic testimonial video library using the “90/10” rule – 90% of content is positive and 10% is negative. The short videos are neither scripted nor edited and are organized by industry, product, buyer role, business need and geography. With additional integration into their CRM system, Qwest is able to dramatically reduce sales reps’ effort while providing prospects with better, more targeted information.

Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, talks about the way that the home video business has changed in the last few years. “People feel they do not have to own a movie unless they really like the movie.  It’s not just a buy because we may want to watch it one day. One of the reasons for that is the competition for their time.”  [italics are mine]

Similarly, Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, points out that it will compete with satellite and cable competitors much more directly, because “in the long term, we’re all competing for a time share of the consumer”.  In the past, separate media pipes (cable/satellite vs. Internet) meant these models didn’t compete as directly.  But with digital convergence, it’s easy to see how Netflix and Comcast are going to bump into each other much more often.

In both cases, the “time share” of the consumer boils down to the finite attention that consumers have to give.  Here are a few facts that bring the issue into vivid focus:

• Across the past 20 years, the volume of information flying at or available to consumers is increasing at 30-60% annually
• Across the same time period, humans’ ability to process information is increasing at roughly 5% annually (largely through multi-tasking)

These demands on consumer attention were already stringent 10 years ago, when Davenport and Beck wrote their work on The Attention Economy.  Today, ten years later, the information-attention mismatch has quietly but inexorably become the key underlying phenomenon putting pressure not just on consumer electronics and media businesses, but on  most all marketers—or for that matter, any party seeking the attention of large audiences.

This attention scarcity dynamic explains why Decision Simplicity turned out to be so important in our recently completed consumer research.  The research took a deep look at what drives consumers to form and then follow through on brand purchase intent with a high degree of confidence (we call this “purchase stickiness”).

Decision Simplicity is a set of drivers that factor together, including the ease with which consumers learn, trust and weigh the information they need to make a purchase.  It was the most powerful driver of purchase stickiness.  More powerful than brand affinity.  More powerful than brand “relationship”.  More powerful than the number of interactions with the brand.

The upshot for marketers?  Help your consumers traverse the purchase path by acting in service to their attention scarcity, not by exacerbating it.  We’ll share more specific solutions sets—what marketers should stop doing, and what they should start doing—in upcoming blog posts.

Here’s a teaser for one of the solution sets: refashion your advocate strategy into an advisor strategy.

MLC members, we’re working on a web resource center to bring you the full results of this research, including best practice examples and case studies from companies that are getting Decision Simplicity right.

In the meantime, attend a Council executive retreat (reserved for seniormost Council membership sponsors and one right-hand person)—we’ll be in Chicago, San Francisco, Sydney, and London in the coming months.