Big Lou broke even on his investment in 12 hours, and had made a cool $200 grand after 3 days of launching the site. I know this because he shared intimate details of the project’s economics in a refreshingly plainspoken follow up statement, which you can giggle admiringly through here. Today I got an e-mail titled, “A statement from Louie CK.” It read exactly as follows:

Hi.  This is LOuie.  It seriously is me. Im even going to leave the O stuipdly capatalized because who would pay an intern to do that?? Okay so you bought the thing with my fat face on it and you clicked the button that said i could email you. And i know that now you are thinking “aw shit. Why’d i let this guy into my life this way?”. Well dont worry. Because i really swear it that i wont bug you. I will not abuse this privalage of having your email. You wont hear from me again… Probably, unless i have something new to offer you. The reason i’m writing now, in the back of a car taking me to the Tonight Show set, is to let you know that as of now there is some new and cool stuff on my site, related to Live at the Beacon Theater. Theres a thing where you can download and print a dvd box cover and label so you can burn and make your own dvd of the video. And theres a new option where you can gift the special to as many people as you want (for 5 bucks each) and they’ll get a nice gifty email from you with a link to the video.

Also, some of you may know, i recently made a statement (that sounds so dumb. Like i’m the president or something) about how the video has been doing online. Im pasting it in here below in case you missed it.

Lastly I’m planning to put some more outtakes of the show on youtube and i think i will put one on the site that is only available for free to you folks on this list, who bought the thing and opted in. But dont hold me to that because really i just thought of it and typed it.

Okay well please have a happy rest of the year and more happy years after that. And please even have been happy in your past. What?

Thanks again for giving me 5 dollars. I bought 3 cokes with it.

Regards. Sincerely, Actually,

Louis

There is much to be learned from this. First, dis-intermediation is awesome. Look for ways to go direct to your audience… not only to pull cost from the equation, but so you can maintain a direct relationship with your customer in ways that will benefit you both.

Second, sometimes your most important business asset is the balls to try something that sounds crazy to everyone else, and maybe even to you at first. Think it through, of course, in terms of downside, upside, and risk. But if you really think you can pull it off, the only way to know is to give it a shot.

Third, people give you what you expect of them. Treat them like pirates, and they become one. Show them some trust, and they feel bad about screwing you out of your due. So they don’t.

Fourth, its thrilling to be spoken to like a person, by a person. Brand managers, take heed. And finally… Newton’s own Louis CK is an an innovator worthy of some love and attention from the BostInno community. So as one divorced, balding, bearded Dad to another; between two guys just trying to make a few sheckles and get some love in the downtime, I say unto you…Well played, sir. Well played.

This content was originally posted on bostinno.com on December 16^th, 2011

Tangential as it may seem, the point is to bring to light the importance of recognizing what delight means and then recognizing the people and things that deliver them. Affecting delight is a key driver of business satisfaction and brand loyalty; however it’s a state of existence for business that requires constant attention.

So enough of the delight soapbox. It’s story time.

I don’t want to have to wear fancy gym clothes, but the truth of my life (and likely self confidence) is that the days of grabbing a tshirt and gender neutral mesh shorts are over. There are too many mirrors. Too many people I know. (Lest we forget the occasion appearance by Ryan Reynolds or his mini-friend Mila Kunis.) Not to mention, all the people who should look terrible enough to motive me are clad in incredibly figure flattering outfits. Not gym clothes. Outfits. It’s a nightmare. An expensive nightmare. And just when you imagine it can’t get worse, you go to shop for these gym outfits and find out that the stores selling theses wares combining the lighting and mirrors of your gym with a confined space and Lycra.

And the stores, save the banner few like Lululemon and Lucy, don’t seem to acknowledge a problem. Despite selling to a female market, they are largely run like sporting goods stores. Expertise, but very little understanding of human psychology.

So imagine my surprise… no, delight, when I entered the CitySports on Boylston Street in Boston to discover that they had undergone a rather extensive remodel/reorganization to create a mini “boutique” within the clothing department. Rather than rack after rack of pants, they’d created a simple wall system (very similar to the kind Lululemon employs). You could look at the style, read about the fit and length, and then grab a size. Everything about it was so… reasonable. They installed two new fitting rooms exclusively for the new area– big fitting rooms. The lighting and colors didn’t highlight how ridiculous I looked, but rather made me feel like I could sit down on the handy bench and think about what other things I wanted to try on. It was elated. I emailed friends about it…from the fitting room.

After reflecting on it for sometime, I realized that even though I acknowledged it was a smart business move, it felt like it was made in the interest of the client. I genuinely felt that someone with good sense and a good head on their shoulders made a decision to do what was right for all of us ladies, and the result added a tremendous amount of value to my experience and perception of CitySports.

To come full circle, CitySports found a way to create delight. For five years I lived around the corner and while it’s a lovely store, there’s never been anything delightful about it. It’s a good place to buy the athletic and outdoorsy things I sometimes need. But that experiential tweak changed the game. I want to go back. It’s now part of my go-to inner circle for new apparel.

So many businesses turn to marketing to solve a problem based on a set experience, but today’s marketing is about so much more than that. It’s about understanding the critical importance of delivering value and affecting customer delight and then making that experience known and desired by others.

Marketing isn’t a thing, it’s a psychology of business interaction and outreach.

Two things happening at Holland-Mark right now. First, we’re in deep with the start up community. As of last night, the MassChallenge 2011 Awards sent a new batch of financed and confident entrepreneurs out into the world, which was a promising reminder that Boston is not shying away from innovation and opportunity. (We even have a district to prove it!) Secondly, we’ve been drinking Fred Reichheld’s Kool-Aid vis-s-vie the revised and expanded The Ultimate Question 2.0. To be clear, we’ve believed in the power of NPS since the Harvard Business Review introduced it to us years ago, but the release of Reichheld’s latest edition has a timeliness that makes it all the more relevant. There’s a simple system for measuring, structuring, and understanding opportunity and we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what NPS as a system can do for businesses of all sizes.

But how can NPS guide decisions for how business like ours (businesses in the business of consulting other businesses) approach opportunities? It’s obvious that it’s more than a tool for measurement– meant more as a framework for guiding smart business decisions and positive growth– but is it possible that NPS could tell us what is a bad business altogether?

Groupon. The daily deal phenomenon has attacked our inboxes, removed our ability to assign accurate value to any good or service, and raised our standards while removing our desire to be… loyal. In retrospect, it’s easy to ask the question, “in an age where loyalty is becoming the most valuable customer attribute, can a business that promotes trial over relationship really be viable?” and even easier to say, “NO!” but the truth is that we wanted cost and experience to have a different relationship, and that led us all to discount that driving down cost can dramatically increase volume… and the experience is soon to follow.

So, what does this have to do with Mr. Reichheld and NPS? Everything. If you’ve read the book (either one), you’re familiar with the concept of good and bad profits. Bad profits are those made when the end game is profit and the means to that end does not take into account the emotional, intellectual, or experiential toll on the customer. Good profits, on the other hand, are those made with the willing–and happy– consent of the customer. In other words, it’s the age old adage, “you have to spend money to make money,” but with a twist. You have to spend money improving the lives of your customers and in turn they will spend money improving your bottom line. How? With loyalty that begets an enthusiastic referral to friends and family.

But Groupon is, by design, a bad profit for any business, specifically any small business. By investing money in short returns, companies dilute the experience for existing customers and in turn lose their good profits and promote short-term bad profits with disloyal “brand tourists.” Imagine if every company who offered a Groupon instead invested those losses in substantial perks for existing customers? The loyalty that it would engender would, theoretically, lead to sustained growth and profits.

Another way to look at it is through the lens of promoters, detractors, and passives. The elements of NPS. The “Groupon Gamble” is that passives– or those who are unfamiliar with the brand– can become promoters. Unfortunately, the reality of business is that with a massive influx of unmanageable business, you’ve gambled your promoters to passives and your passives to detractors, resulting in a business with upset regulars and a slew of strangers bad mouthing the experience all over the internet.

The good news is that it’s not over for Groupon. There is still ample opportunity for them to invest in good profits for their customers, the retail stores who trusted them to help build their business. Instead of diluting stock, perhaps investing in a system to help small business owners manage the boom in business and actively convert new faces into loyal customers. Essentially, Groupon could reposition itself as a good profit opportunity for businesses if they are willing to invest in good profits themselves. It’s a cycle that, if taken seriously, can benefit everyone– even investors in the beleaguered start up. The question is whether or not anyone is willing to step out of line and suggest radical change to promote a radical change in outcome?

Besides us.

Related articles

• Do Businesses Really Like Groupon? (blogher.com)
• Groupon, so who exactly profits here? (coverboom.com)
• Groupon Down 30% (coverboom.com)

For starters, the profile looks a lot more modern and polished than the current version. An image you can add as a banner dominates the visual impression, a nice and Twitter-like change from the dull sameness of the current version. There’s an updated 3-column layout, bringing more content above the fold and shifting the emphasis from the old, single-threaded feed to a more modular representation of your interests, tastes, and activities. Scanning the page gives you a sense of who someone is, not just what they’ve been up to. A secondary navigation in the right-most column even lets you follow the milestones in someone’s life from birth to the present. It’s pretty cool, actually, and I find myself looking forward to scanning the life histories of people I know only in the present.

Status options have been expanded to let you more easily indicate life events with just a few clicks, a clear effort to encourage habitual lurkers to jump in and participate. The music I listen to on Spotify now hits my profile directly, for example, neat until I was outed as a Barry Manilow fan by an attentive “friend.” Overall, the new profile embraces the lifestream concept in a much more tangible way, finally showing the fruit of Facebook’s FriendFeed acquisition back in August of 2009.

That was 2 years ago, though, and the word “lifestreaming” seems both pretentious and dated now. In the same way distinctions like Mobile and Location-based are ideas past their prime, lifestreaming is just life now. It’s all mobile, all local, all social… all the time.

So how does this new design change the game?

My take is that Twitter is becoming more and more about real-time attention, and Google Plus all about content sharing and distribution. A lot of people (including me) think G+ is actually a better platform for sharing content than Facebook ever was, and in a way Facebook may be ceding that ground to them to move in a more mass-market direction. Facebook may be moving beyond content, indicating with this interface that it really wants to be about people. Facebook seems to want to be about life itself, and the implications of that could be profound.

Imagine a world where you check in to a hotel, and learn that your parents had stayed in room 301 25 years earlier. Maybe you could browse their photos from that trip, or get their recommendations for restaurants in the area, as they wrote them then. Imagine pointing your phone at a menu and seeing an augmented reality overlay of what your closest friends had ordered and enjoyed there recently, or entering a car dealer and calling up a sentiment analysis of references made to the brand by anyone you know, in just a few clicks.

Imagine, on your wedding day, hitting a kind of real-world “easter egg” in the form of a shared reflection from a long passed grandmother, left in anticipation of a future she knew she would not see. Powerful stuff, all in the line Facebook has just established.

There’s a scene in one of the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles where Lestat emerges into the modern world after a hundred-year rest. Hearing jazz alongside classical music, The Smiths and Wagner over the course of his first day in this strange new place, he marvels that in the 20th century, musical past and the present mingle and coexist in ways that are strange and magical to an 18th century vampire.

Reflecting on the new Facebook, I wonder if we might not see the same thing a hundred years from now… Not just for music, but for the very lives of of people we are and were connected to.

Heady stuff, indeed. But when 800 Million people are already addicted to your product, I guess the need to think big takes on a whole new meaning.

Related articles

• Facebook Resurrected The Lifestream and Killed Your Personal Blog (newcommbiz.com)
• Facebook Ushers in Lifestreaming for the Masses (lifestreamblog.com)
• Glossi Takes a Fresh New Approach to Lifestreaming (lifestreamblog.com)
• Two More Ways To Hack Facebook’s Timeline Cover (allfacebook.com)
• Leslie Hendry: Facebook’s Timeline Sells Emotion (huffingtonpost.com)

Here’s the full video of his presentation:

He left attendees with some time-tested advice about the value of being imperative: “all four of these things [relevance of offering, clarity of message, consistency of experience, and driving of engagement] must come together to create an imperative relationship with your customers or your prospective customers, and really the translation of all that is about getting to love. It’s about getting to a place where your customers don’t just buy what you’re selling, they actually promote what you’re selling to others just like them.”

Related articles:

http://masschallenge.org/blog/bootcamp-day-2-recap-points-clarity

http://bostinnovation.com/2011/06/30/inside-look-at-masschallenge-bootcamp-2011-photos-mcbootcamp/

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Here’s my thinking.

Before Google Plus, Facebook was mostly for personal, LinkedIn was mostly for professional, and Twitter was in the middle:

I think G+ will make people focus Facebook all the more on their personal lives, and LinkedIn all the more on their professional ones. I’m already considering de-friending all of my professional contacts on Facebook, so I can post family and political stuff there without having to master the Byzantine administrivia of Facebook’s “privacy controls.”

I’ve already started to interact more with my professional contacts over on G+, which has become the default among the digerati crowd with remarkable speed. But while the Circles feature is brilliant, simple, and useful in clustering groups, I’m not going to get my Aunt Lala to dump Facebook and master G+  at this point, so home base for family etc. will stay in Facebook.

G+ is actually more about Twitter’s franchise, in the great middle of indiscriminate social networking. But while the feature set in G+ is much more robust than that of Twitter, in the end Twitter works because it’s simple, and it will win the shootout for the center because of two other important factors in this dialogue: Apple and Microsoft.

Apple has already embraced Twitter in it’s new OS, and I predict Microsoft will make a few more lame attempts at a consumer social net before realizing it’s franchise is in Office and setting it’s sights on LinkedIn by acquiring Slideshare. With that said, the OS wars will keep Google at bay, and ensure Twitter’s franchise as the mass market social medium of choice.

The result will be this:

That’s my take, anyway. What’s yours?

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7 Habits of Highly Effective CEO Tweeters

Did we miss anything?

We chose “Social Media for CEOs” as the topic for our first event, and Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith opened the festivities with a few personal thoughts on the need to overcome one’s own cynicism and continually “Innovate Yourself.” Scott was also kind enough to share the story of personal growth that came from his successful bout with cancer many years ago, and it set just the right tone in getting an initially skeptical crowd to open up to some new ideas.

After that we started through the deck below, though we never made it through given the steady stream of questions, anecdotes, and other personal insights from the audience. In the end we were glad to stimulate that kind of dialog among a group of smart people just trying to figure this stuff out, and taking comfort in the fact other smart people were still struggling to do the same.

Anyway you can see the slides yourself here, please consider sharing them with you CEO if he’s someone you’re trying to get on board with the program.

Be sure and subscribe to the blog at upper right… I’ll be posting a special eBook we made for the event later, title “7 Habits of Highly Effective CEO Tweeters.”

It was a 101-type session, reinforcing the fundamentals of social media for business:

• It’s about building relationships,
• It starts with the delivery of content worthy of your target’s attention,
• It continues with an effort to help and connect people,
• Doing so builds social equity,
• That same social equity becomes an asset you can leverage in ways that deliver tangible business results.

Some entertaining tidbits and anecdotes were shared along the way, conducted beautifully by the masterful and golden voiced Anthony Silva.

Click below for video of the event, and please let me know what you think.

Related articles

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The dialogue boiled down to a debate about what marketing really is in a startup environment, and what it’s becoming more generally.

So what is marketing in a startup? Well, bottom line, it’s a lot more than advertising. Most people agreed, and yet the two words are often used interchangeably in the panel, as they so often are in the wild. When someone talks about how marketing doesn’t matter much for a startup, they’re really talking about marketing communications… the importance of which seems to have declined precipitously not only for startups, but for businesses and brands across the board.

5 Levers of Startup Marketing

Advertising – marketing communications, really – is just one lever of Marketing (note capital “M”) in a startup. And it’s often the least important one.

Inbound marketing, to borrow a phrase from the HubSpot juggernaut, is another lever. Call it social marketing, content marketing, blog/twitter/facebook marketing… It’s the place most startups begin, in large part because it’s powered by passion instead of cash. But more than a cheap advertising, it’s also a great toolkit for pulling the other 3 levers.

Lead generation, or more specifically Funnel Development is the third lever. Dave McClure put this idea on the table a while ago, and David Skok has since taken it to a whole new level of science. It’s rooted in the belief that marketing is really just a process of breaking the bottlenecks in your sales funnel. If you can instrument your marketing process in a way that finds those bottlenecks, then execute to bust them open, you win. It’s interesting to me how much momentum this idea seems to have in VC circles right now, and that’s probably equal parts because it works and because it’s reassuring to the engineering types that lead most startups.

The fourth, and I would say most important lever of startup marketing is Product Strategy. Alex Bogusky’s Baked In really brought this idea into focus for me, but it boils down to the idea that, today, your product is your most important marketing vehicle. It needs to tell your story in a way that resonates in the marketplace, and if it doesn’t, no amount of “bolt-on” marketing is going to solve the problem.

The fifth and final lever, and the one which polarized the audience most intensely, is that of Brand Strategy. On one hand was the cheap logo crowd, noting the availability of great crowdsourcing options where all you need to get a logo is a dream and a $100. On the other were those who felt equally strongly that understanding the emotional value proposition of your offering, and placing that at the core of your entire marketing program, is the absolute key to success.

I closed the panel with a variation on a simple question: If you had $10 to spend on marketing an early stage, tech-oriented B2C startup, how much of it would you spend in each of these five dimensions of Big M Marketing?

Answers from the panel and the audience varied widely. So what’s yours?

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