Mike

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)

She’s got a gig in a play up the street and had stopped by the restaurant for dinner. Afterward, she shared this from her Twitter account…

Guy Niel, Post390′s GM, picked up the thread on HootSuite, and the restaurant responded with this:

She said something nice in return, this time with a link to Post390′s Twitter account:

And the restaurant responded:

The whole thing took an hour. By morning, Post390′s banana cream pie was in the Boston Globe, and in New York Magazine popular food blog, Grub Street Boston.

There’s so much to be learned about how marketing has changed from this silly little exchange.

First, the spark that ignited this whole episode was banana cream pie worth talking about.  We say this all the time… but your product is your marketing. If it’s not good enough to inspire advocacy, measured by the creation of net promoters, you need to focus on that first. If it is, your marketing should flow organically from that.

Second, listening is no longer optional. There’s a conversation happening on the web that you care about. It might be about you. It’s probably about at least one of your competitors. It’s definitely about the problem your product solves, or you wouldn’t be selling enough of it to care.

Finally, the power of digital media lay in it’s potential to create scalable intimacy. A conversation between a local brand and a genuine celebrity took place in real-time last night, in front of the 90,000 people that followed both. That was inconceivable 10 years ago, but it’s how smart people do digital today.

Kudos to the good folks at Post390 for embracing this model so fully in such a short time. You guys earned what happened last night and this morning, and I’ll be stopping by for some banana cream pie myself a little later today.

Social events have and will continue to play an important role in knitting us all together, which is why I’d like to take a moment to invite you personally to the upcoming TechProm on Thursday, October 20.

Dave Balter’s TechProm is the brainchild of a few of the more interesting characters in the Boston startup ecosystem, including spiritual father and serial entrepreneur Dave Balter, serial diva and Runkeeper Director of Marketing Sarah Hodges, startup vet and Apricot Capital angel Jennifer Lum, DART Boston evangelist and aspiring lothario Cort Johnson, and your truly.

The backstory is pretty straightforward… We were talking one night about how a lot of the cool kids on the scene were probably somewhat less than that back in high school, and somebody hit on the idea that it sure would be fun to have another shot at Prom. Dave agreed to support and lend his name to the gig, and the rest is pretty much history.

There’ll be hors d’oeuvres, dancing, and an open bar from 8:30-1:30 at the Fairmont Copley Plaza, along with a whole bunch of goodies and surprises we’ve lined up for all attendees. Tickets start at an accessible $20, thanks to sponsors including Wayfair, BULLHORN, GSN, BzzAgent, Boston Seed Capital, Holland-Mark and Carbonite. The theme is “Sunglasses at Night,” and you should come in your ’80s Prom best, stag or with a date.

The World Premier of our new promo video appears below… enjoy it, share it with the digerati you want to hang with, and we’ll see you on Thursday, October 20.

The constant winner in this space? Mobile apps. Gartner estimates mobile app store revenues will hit $15billion in 2011. A market that didn’t even exist 5 years ago. And now, just as agencies have established their mobile app divisions to help eager marketers take advantage of this emerging medium… whap! The DIY app market is here.

At Holland-Mark, we have leveraged a couple of the DIY mobile platforms (Mobile Roadie and AppMakr) to help our clients go to market with a custom app faster than was even possible a year ago and at a fraction of the cost. These DIY platforms have strengths and weaknesses depending on your objectives but most provide reasonable flexibility for customization with a little imagination.

Our latest mobile app was developed with Boston magazine, using the Mobile Roadie platform, exclusively for last nights Best of Boston 2011 Party attendees. Allowing Boston magazine to take their party beyond the physical event, this app supported interactive discussions, photos and comments, scheduled push notifications, and a native QR code reader to connect users with event sponsors. After the event it serves as a journal for everything users experienced and all the things they missed.

The event was invitation only, but the app is Free. Download for iPhone, Android or Blackberry.

Related articles

• What’s a loyal mobile app user and how much do they cost? (gigaom.com)
• How to Build an iPhone App Without Hiring a Developer (drayspencer.wordpress.com)

I learned a lot at the event, and many of the nuggets from it were captured in the steady tweetstream to the #ack2011 hashtag. A few highlights for me:

• “A billion dollar valuation is not cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars in revenue.”
• “It’s easy to start a company. It’s hard to build a business.”
• “Be passionate. But not religious.”
• “There’s more innovation happening at big companies than at small companies. They’re just bad at bringing it to market.”
• “IPO investment bankers are all pretty much all alike. Pick the one you like the best personally, because you’re going to be spending a lot of time with him.”
• “Don’t stare at the other guy. Stare at the problem. Or the customer.”
• “There is no such thing as permanent human disability. Only limitations of the technology to overcome it.”
• “Don’t make the first thing when you start a company raising money, find a way to make progress every day.”

On and on and on. And the offline conversations were sometimes even more engaging and valuable than what was happening onstage.

What I found really exciting, though, was the sense that the walls were coming down in Boston.

I had lunch on Friday at a table of people that wouldn’t have come together 10 years ago, let alone 20. Established power-brokers and up-and-comers. The accomplished, and the accomplishing. Guys known by name at the front desk of the White Elephant, and others who pocketed dinner rolls because they’re still not taking cash out of their businesses.

The club of people who make stuff happen in this town was closed and not accepting applications for a long time. The people in it did well, in politics and in business, and did good for the city when it served their interests. Things were “fine.”

But the 9 zillionth time we asked what Silicon Valley got right and 128 got wrong, the idea occurred to somebody that the two most important factors of production – capital and talent – might do better if they got to know each other on a first-name basis.

There seems to be a considered effort underway right now to break down the barriers to innovation and commerce. I feel it from the NEVCA, in initiatives like CriticalMass. It’s behind the Globe’s protection of the Boston World Partnership. Even Mullen’s advocacy for The Next Great Generation blog feels, in a way, like the guys who made it helping the guys still trying to do so… not out of charity, but out of the sense that we’re all in this together now.

We all know Ideas and Passion eventually need Power and Money to sustain themselves. Lately we seem more attuned to the fact that the reverse is also true.

Another conference nugget:

• “Make the pie big enough, and everyone will be happy.”

Indeed.

Introduces Best of Boston iPhone App

Boston, MA (August 2010) – With the introduction of its innovative Best of Boston iPhone app for Boston magazine comes the formal launch of Holland-Mark’s Venture Branding practice. Led by agency principal Mike Troiano, the Venture Branding unit will focus on identifying, developing, and launching new consumer brands and product ideas with partners. “As an agency we are very focused on having measurable impact and seeing the tangible fruits of our creativity,” shares Troiano. “We created the Venture Branding practice to be able to put some skin in the game, to realize some of our own innovative ideas, and simply to work with smart people who want to build something with us.”

The Venture Branding model provides two entry points: The agency offers its ideas to partners and together they go to market, or partners approach the agency with their ideas and Holland-Mark provides the support. The Best of Boston iPhone app is an example of the former, with Holland-Mark executives proposing the idea to Boston magazine’s leadership in March 2010. Holland-Mark developed the software and interface and licenses the content from Boston magazine. With the early success of the Best of Boston app, the Venture Branding team has already begun working on the Best of Philadelphia offering, another property of Boston magazine publisher Metrocorp. The second Venture Branding partnership type is reflected in the agency’s work with Chris Lohring, CEO and owner of Notch Session Ales. “Chris came to us in the fall of 2009 with an interesting idea for a new category of ale,” said Troiano. “We worked with him on everything, from the recipe and name to the distribution strategy. The Notch brand launched in May. We went from an informal conversation to barrels going out the door in six months. That’s pretty cool.”

“Holland-Mark and the Venture Branding practice brings it all together,” said Chris Lohring, Notch CEO. “Strategic sensibility, real marketing expertise, creative horsepower, and a focus on delivering a brand and business model that works. As a one-person start-up it would have taken me another year to get where we got in six months. And the demand for Notch is incredible.”

Holland-Mark is in talks with several potential Venture Branding partners and plans for a portfolio of five to ten brands by the end of 2011.

****

Holland-Mark is a strategic marketing firm focused on creating imperative brands. Clients include ACIS, BodyScapes, Boston magazine, Chelsea Clock, Corning, Harvard, Himmel Hospitality Group, IHRSA, MassMutual, Mercer, Notch Brewing, Pearson Education, and World Energy.

A few months back he and Chris Colbert were having a conversation about a category Chris L. felt was about to take off in America, the category of session beers.

Session beers are so named because they’re built for a session at the local pub. Low alcohol but full flavored, they’re the one beer to have when you’re having more than two. Quoting Martyn Cornell’s great Zythophile blog:

“I love session beers. I love the way they make a good evening down the pub with friends even better. What makes a good session beer is a combination of restraint, satisfaction and ‘moreishness.’ Like the ideal companions around a pub table, a great session beer will not dominate the occasion and demand attention; at the same time its contribution, while never obtrusive, will be welcome, satisfying and pleasurable; and yet, though each glass satisfies, like each story in the night’s long craic, the best session beers will still leave you wishing for one more pint, to carry on the pleasure.”

Brewing a good session beer is tricky, because getting just the right balance of alcohol and flavor requires some vigilance over the brewing process, and a practiced hand at the barrel. Chris Lohring – having two such hands – came to us with his vision for the first great American session ale, and the product of his labors in a pair of re-used but properly chilled dark quart bottles. He asked our help in building the brand around “the liquid.” We signed up on the spot.

After assembling a message model in record time, including a One Simple Thing™ that was pretty straightforward (“Session”), we kicked around some brand names before finding one that said everything we needed to say: “Notch.” From there we worked up some creative treatments for the mark, then labels, then a web front-end, etc., all culminating in the brand identity you see at right.

Meanwhile, Chris focused on perfecting the recipe and timing for Notch, and on securing the right production and distribution partners. He worked the content marketing channels on his blog, Twitter, and Facebook, telling the stories of both session beer and the birth of Notch. Together we chose Boston’s SlowFest as the perfect venue to bring our creation to the public, and tonight is the big night.

Every client is special, and every project has something in it that you can bring a little bit of yourself to. But, speaking for the whole agency, Notch feels like our baby almost as much as it’s our good friend Chris Lohring’s. Bringing his vision to life and to the world has been a real privilege and a lot of fun for all of us, and we wish him and this brilliantly crafted tipple the win they so richly deserve.

Please join us to celebrate tonight with an ice cold Notch at the SlowFest VIP event…

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• Drinking in Boston: No Beer Fools Here (bostonist.com)
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• Berkshire pub guide: The Hobgoblin in Reading, Berkshire (telegraph.co.uk)
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