What's Your Purple Goldfish? How to Win Customers and Influence Word of Mouth

by Stan Phelps

  Chapter 6

  All Impressions are NOT Created Equal

  “If you do build a great experience, customers

  tell each other about that.

  Word of mouth is very powerful.”

  - Jeff Bezos

  THE ENGINE BEHIND WORD OF MOUTH - THE V4 PRINCIPLE

  I first came across the concept of the v4 principle over 10 years ago from a hilarious forum post at Sportbikes.net. {Endnote 56} Here’s the sanitized version:

  Think about your entire history of relationships… Every person you dated long term, short term, prison term, and every random hook-up in between. The vast majority of those relationships were with someone you met through a common friend. Very rarely do you find a couple who met randomly at a bar. Most couples met through a friend, a friend of a friend, or a relative. The reason most relationships begin this way is what I call the “v4 Principle.” “v4″ is short for “Vouch For” and it is this reason that the majority of people in America hook-up.

  EXAMPLE: Say you’re out on a Friday night and you see a cute brunette at the bar. You approach her, make small talk, and attempt to pick her up. To you she’s a hottie with dating potential. To her you’re just another one of the drunken masses out there trying to score. Now take the same situation as before, but when you see her at the bar she is talking to your best friend’s girlfriend. Now when you approach you’re SOMEBODY as opposed to the NOBODY you were before. The girl at the bar has a reference point for you and your best friend’s girlfriend is there to vouch for you: “Oh, that’s Fred. He’s Mike’s best friend. They work together at the law firm. He’s a real sweetie, and he’s soo cute when he’s drunk.”

  See how it works? You’re the same drunken dude either way, but now you’re perceived as charming. So, if friends are largely responsible for our hook-ups, how does one improve his odds? Simple, just use this handy dandy friendship reference guide that follows to determine who you should hang out with more and which friends to discard:

  1. Married Friends – Don’t have any. They only hang out with their miserably married couples and they constantly attempt to pull the rest of us into their pit of despair. There is nothing for you here.

  2. Friends Who Work In The Service Industry – Hold on to these. People who work in restaurants, bars, retail, and the like tend to have a plethora of same aged single people to kick it with. They are laid back and don’t work until noon, so they’re always up for a night out. Also, all hostesses are easy.

  3. Friends Who Do A Lot of Drugs – Keepers. Whether you do drugs or not is irrelevant. People who do a lot of drugs tend to hang out with other people who do a lot of drugs… and, chicks who do a lot of drugs tend to be easy.

  4. Religious Friends – No! No! No! All of their friends are usually bible-thumpers as well, and meeting a group of hot Baptists is like going to your favorite bar without any money. You can look all you want, but you can’t have anything.

  5. Strippers – If you have any friends who are strippers you can contact me. Please let me know where you’ll be this weekend…

  On a more serious note, v4 or “vouch for” is also how the majority of purchase decisions are made. A reference point or recommendation by a friend is the strongest factor impacting purchase intent.

  According to research by Keller Fay: {Endnote 57}

  Personal experience with a product or service is the number one catalyst for recommendation, with 86% saying they recommend a brand or service based on first-hand experience. 60% of word of mouth (WOM) conversations include advice to buy, try or consider a brand. Fewer than one in ten conversations advise avoiding a brand.

  It only makes sense to maximize the experience with your customer. Giving that little extra provides AMMO for your customers to relay their experiences.

  THE POWER OF WOM

  One of the frustrations I have with the measurement of marketing is that it is fundamentally flawed. It assumes that all impressions are created equal. There is no weight given to context and / or the delivery mechanism.

  Let’s have a look at advertising, sponsorship, PR and word of mouth:

  Advertising is a one way dialogue that is inherently biased. It’s unlikely that a company or brand is going to show you their warts. Ads are vested in trying to grab your attention via interruption. They sell “blue sky” by putting the product in the best light. Let’s call the impressions via advertising V1.

  Sponsorship plays on the interests of the consumer. The company or brand aligns themselves with a second party. They are still vying for your attention, but now they are engaging you at a point of passion. Sponsorship works on the idea of affinity or attribution. Let’s call the impressions via sponsorship V2.

  PR is the proactive process of managing the flow of information between the brand or company and its publics. It allows for exposure to the target audience via third party sources. Those sources are predominantly mainstream media. This third party authentication provides credibility to the message. The impressions gained at no cost through PR are much more valuable than those obtained by paid advertising. Let’s call those PR impressions V3.

  WOM or Word of Mouth is the act of consumers providing information to other consumers. This is the V4 or vouch for principle. V4 means that the consumer is standing up for the product and giving personal assurances to its value. It’s been around for thousands of years and remains one of the most powerful forms of promotion. It’s a friend recommending a new restaurant or the latest movie. New social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ have elevated word of mouth (WOM) to a new level. Call it WOM 2.0 or WOM on steroids. V4 reminds me of the old shampoo commercial where they start to split the screen by saying, “She tells two people, then they tell two people and then they tell two people...” Soon the screen has hundreds of people on it. That’s the magic of WOM.

  You need to figure a way to get people to talk about and recommend your product. A small, unique and unexpected touch that provides fuel to the word of mouth fire.

  ENTERING THE “STATUSPHERE”

  What are you working on? What are you doing? What’s on your mind?

  These are the respective questions asked by LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

  Brian Solis of Altimeter Group {Endnote 58} is a marketing thought leader who is constantly evaluating PR’s role in the shifting marketing landscape. I absolutely have fallen in love with a term that Brian has coined. It’s called the STATUSPHERE. {Endnote 59}

  In Brian’s words with my thoughts in BOLD:

  “We’re shifting into a rapid-fire culture that moves at Twitter time. Attention is a precious commodity and requires a personalized engagement strategy in order to consistently vie for it [How are you engaging your best marketing resource - YOUR CUSTOMER?]. The laws of attraction and relationships management are driven by the ability to create compelling content and transparently connect it to the people whom you believe benefit. [What is your distinctive PURPLE GOLDFISH and is it relevant to your customer?]

  The Statusphere is the new ecosystem for sharing, discovering, and publishing updates and micro-sized content that reverberates throughout social networks and syndicated profiles, resulting in a formidable network effect of activity. It is the digital curation of relevant content that binds us contextually and through the statusphere we can connect directly to existing contacts, reach new people, and also forge new friendships through the friends of friends effect (FoFs) in the process. [Getting into the status updates of your consumer exposes you to their vast network]

  Twitter, Facebook News Feeds and other micro communities that define the Statusphere, are driving action and determining the direction and course of individual attention.

  So – what does this mean to me as a brand manager, CMO or a small business owner???

  The statusphere (people updating their status on social networks) has become the new digital water cooler. It’s increasingly how people are sharing content. It’s how a vast majority of folks are getting their ne
ws. Your goal is to get your brand into that statusphere. How do you WOW your customer to the point that they want to share their experience? In the words of Francois Gosseaux , {Endnote 60}

  The reason why exceptional service is the new competitive differentiator is not just because it’s easier for competitors to catch up product-wise, but because the news about exceptional service travels fast in the networks that matter – peer and friend networks where the buying decisions are increasingly being made. When people recommend products to friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, they do not focus on the features, functions and benefits the way many marketers have been trained to do – they focus on the overall experience of adopting the solution, and the exceptional qualities of that “whole” offering. So if you are like most companies and operate in a market where it is really hard to differentiate based on the product alone, you’ve got to focus your attention on WOW service offerings.

  ARE YOU CREATING PROsumers OR CONsumers?

  What are your customers talking about after leaving your business, logging off your website or hanging up the phone?

  John Ernsberger of Stella Service {Endnote 61} stated that roughly six out of every seven tweets he sees involving customer service are negative. I’m not sure of the sample size on his assessment as they (whoever they are) say that 48% of statistics are made up on the spot. Whether it’s 70, 80 or 90 percent, I think it’s a generally accepted fact that the overwhelming majority of tweets involving customer service are negative. This led me to the following question:

  Based on their experience... Is your customer a CONsumer or a PROsumer?

  Are you invoking Bonnie Raitt and her most famous song, “ Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About ?” {Endnote 62}

  Specifically:

  Who do we want talking?

  What do we want them saying?

  How can we add value?

  Here is how marketing lagniappe addresses those issues:

  The best marketing is 1st person word of mouth, i.e. your customers

  Control the things you can control... how you treat your existing customers

  Deliver value with your product or service and exceed customer expectations

  Provide that little signature something extra... a purple goldfish

  Using a little artistic license (apologies Bonnie) on the song lyrics:

  Let’s give them something to talk about

  A little purple goldfish as they wander out

  Let’s give’em something to tweet, blog and Facebook about

  PART II:

  THE 5 INGREDIENTS OR R.U.L.E.S OF A

  PURPLE GOLDFISH

  Chapter 7

  First Ingredient: Relevancy

  “Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future.”

  - Susan Sontag

  MAKING LAGNIAPPE IS LIKE MAKING JAMBALAYA

  Have you ever made jambalaya? It’s a bunch of different ingredients all thrown in together. The chef takes a look at what’s lying around in the kitchen and throws it all into a pot. Let it stew with some spices thrown in and voila... you have a yourself a jambalaya or purple goldfish.

  Here are the five main ingredients or if you are an acronym fan (like I am), the R.U.L.E.S

  Relevant – the item or benefit should be of value to the recipient.

  Unexpected – the extra benefit or gift should be a surprise. It is something thrown in for good measure.

  Limited – if it’s a small token or gift, try to select something that’s rare, hard to find or unique to your business.

  Expression – many times it comes down to the gesture. It becomes more about “how” it is given, as opposed to what is given.

  Sticky – Is it memorable enough that the person will want to share their experience by telling a friend or a few hundred?

  Keeping it relevant

  The first rule and probably the most important ingredient for a purple goldfish is relevancy. If it’s just a throw-in or SWAG (stuff we all get), it probably is not that relevant. It needs to be something that is valued by your customer.

  Let’s look at three examples:

  1. The Overnight Test Drive: BMW [PG #150]

  I was driving up to New Haven on I-95. I noticed an interesting billboard from BMW of Bridgeport {Endnote 63} that stated:

  BMW wants YOU to take an overnight test drive

  IMAGINE THAT – they are willing to give you “the ultimate driving machine” for an extended period. No driving around with the salesperson (I hate that by the way) and no more imagining what a BMW might look like parked in your driveway.

  I’ve done a little research. There is probably a strong reason why they want you take the car. Here is an excerpt from a JD Power survey : {Endnote 64}

  “When it comes to the test drive, most shoppers expect to be able to test drive the vehicle for an hour or more, with most premium brand shoppers expecting to test vehicles for five hours or more. Most shoppers also expect to be able to take the test drive on their own, without the salesperson accompanying them.”

  Strong move from BMW of Bridgeport. Even if those who test drive don’t buy... they are probably going to

  2. Buy one Pint of Ice Cream TO GO… and Get Two Cones for the Road: Toy Boat [PG #144]

  How about making a cone in the comfort of your home? Here is what Molly Holtman shared about Toy Boat:

  ”Toy Boat, a great dessert shop on Clement Street in San Francisco, throws in two complimentary ice cream cones (cake or sugar, your choice) when you purchase a pint of ice cream. It’s kind of fun to eat ice cream in a cone at home. Plus, their rocky road and pumpkin ice cream is fantastic.”

  This a thoughtful and simple complimentary touch from Toy Boat... dare I say sweet genius.

  3. Free Cleaning for Life [PG #232]

  One of the nice extras that Tiffany provides (in addition to the little blue box) involves free lifetime cleaning of your rings.

  From the Tiffany.com site: {Endnote 65}:

  “Tiffany offers complimentary cleaning to keep your ring as beautiful as it was the day you received it. An expert will check your stone’s setting and give your ring a thorough cleaning.”

  My wife and I will stop by once or twice a year and drop off our rings. Come back in an hour or two and they’ve given you a complimentary steam, buff and polish.

  Chapter 8

  Second Ingredient: Unexpected

  “So what exactly is ‘surprise and delight?’

  It's when you give your customer something - that little gift

  or ‘extra mile’ - that they didn't expect.

  Surprise and delight is that small benevolent act that

  shows that you put the customer first, and that

  you're willing to make their experience special.”

  - Marc Schiller

  WHAT THE HELL IS A SCHEMA?

  Steve Knox of Tremor (a P&G agency) took me to school recently. He wrote an enlightened post in Ad Age entitled, “ Why Effective Word of Mouth Disrupts Schemas.” {Endnote 66} The premise of the article is how to leverage cognitive disruption to drive word of mouth. By doing something unexpected, you force people to talk about their experience.

  First off let me admit I had no clue what a “schema” was. So here is my interpretation of the word:

  It turns out that our brain remains typically in a static state. It relies on developing cognitive schemas to figure out how the world works. It recognizes patterns and adapts behavior accordingly. It basically doesn’t want to have to think. For example, every day you get into the car and you know instinctively to drive on the right side of the road. Fast forward and you’re on a trip to the UK or Australia. The first time you drive on the left side it throws you for a loop. Its disruptive to your normal driving schema and it forces the brain to think, thereby it elicits discussion (i.e. word of mouth).

  Steve provided some great examples in his article. My one favorite was for a new
Secret deodorant that P&G was launching. The deodorant utilized a moisture activated ingredient which kicked in when you sweat. The brand understood that this could be positioned against a traditional schema, i.e. the more you workout, the more you sweat and the worse you smell. The tagline for the brand became, “The More You Move, the Better You Smell.” A staggering 51,000 consumers posted comments on P&G’s website about the product. {Endnote 67}

  I started thinking how this idea of disruption applies to the concept of marketing lagniappe. The second ingredient in the lagniappe R.U.L.E.S is the concept of being Unexpected. It’s that little something that’s an unexpected extra at the time of purchase. It’s the unexpected surprise and delight that triggers disruption of our schemas.

  Let’s face it... most companies fail to deliver an exceptional customer experience. It’s only when a brand goes above and beyond do we get shocked. And what happens when we receive that unexpected lagniappe act of kindness ? We tell our friends, we tweet it and we post to Facebook about it.

  Let’s look at a three examples:

  1. The Power of an Unexpected Discount [PG #134]

  I was at the Pepperidge Farm Factory store recently picking up a few things. There was a senior citizen standing in front of me in line buying a few items. Her total bill was $9.96. The clerk informed her that all purchases over ten dollars received a 20% discount and asked her if she’d like to pick out something else. Quickly she made a b-line to the Milano cookies (good choice by the way) which essentially were free once the discount was factored in. I could tell she left with a smile on her face and a bounce in her step.