MarketCulture Blog

Entries categorized as ‘Customer Value’

Video Enables Never-Before-Possible Conversations

May 19, 2008 · No Comments

Using videos to interact with clients has always been powerful.  A video report at an annual shareholder or sales meeting will hold attention better than most, if not all speakers.  And back in our younger years, how much more interesting was a watching an educational film than listening to the teacher?

Over the last number of months we’ve seen that video can enable conversations that just wouldn’t happen otherwise.  I’m talking about online video.

Example 1 - Jemima Kiss is an online journalist for the UK publication, The Guardian.  Excited about the upcoming Indiana Jones movie, she recently posted questions via Seesmic.com to Steven Spielberg and Karen Allen (Marian in the 1st & 4th films) … and got responses!  Click here to read her article and view the videos.  From her home in London she was able to speak directly to these Hollywood celebrities, and she was rewarded with a couple of direct answers.  Pretty empowering.  As she puts it, “The best thing about it is that it bypasses the Hollywooid/Cannes schmaltz and gets straight into a conversation.“

Example 2 - Baron Davis, NBA allstar, sent out a “dare” directly to some of his fans via iBeatYou.com a site that elicits video responses to fun and outrageous challenges.  He directly challenged a teenaged fan to an online staring contest.  That teen then responded and further challenged Jessica Alba (star of the Fantastic Four movies) and she responded.  Now these videos are not really that interesting, and the whole thing is just a lot of fun and nonsense.  But the bigger picture is that here is a teenage fan that gets to play a game with two of his favorite celebrities.  That’s pretty neat!

We’re still very much in the early adoption stage of online video, but what other opportunities does this provide us and the companies we work for?  A more personalized message for one.  A lot more meaning and understanding can come from a video conversation than can over the phone, or worse, email.  Enabling video chat raises one’s “cool” factor.

Just as teleconferencing with our coworkers in other offices reduces confusion and builds comrodery - put a face to the voice - online video enables that powerful connection with anyone out there, including our customers.

Categories: Customer Value · Innovative Thought
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Mark Cuban is a “Market Culturist”

February 12, 2008 · 1 Comment

I’m a fan of Mark Cuban. I like the enthusiasm he brings to his basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks, and to the NBA. I like watching them play. When I was dominant on NBA Live ‘03, the Mavericks were my team. I appreciate the rebel spirit he brings to his team and NBA referees, and the way he goes after what he wants, like the Chicago Cubs.

So when I saw a post on his blog about one of my other favorite topics, music, I had to dive in. And wouldn’t you know, he a “market culturist!”

A little over a week ago, Mr. Cuban talked about a movie’s official soundtrack. A few get really popular - these days the hype is for Juno - but most just languish in the final end credits that no one watches long enough to read anyway. So if most of them aren’t really doing much anyway, and they cost so much to publish and record, is there any other way they can be used to provide value to a customer? Yes, says Mark Cuban, give it away for free to whoever buys the movie ticket.

That’s where the real Hollywood money is made anyway, right? Ticket sales. And as prices for tickets approach $10 apiece, I do, from time to time, wonder if seeing the movie in the theater is worth the money. I mean, thanks to bit torrents and Quick Silver Screen, I can see a lot of movies for free at home. Legality questions? Try Usenet.

So, back to, “why would I want to pay $20 to see a movie with my gal, when we can see it at home for cheaper and not have some idiot’s cell phone go off in the middle of important plot developments?” Because I’m a music fan and the ticket will give me access to a free copy of the sound track. And as a music lover, if I’m made aware of one more band that I’d like, or a new version of a popular song, that’s really valuable to me. Some people are writers, or like to chop up movies on Fan Edit. Mr. Cuban says give them access to the script. As he summarizes,

“Bottomline, is that anything that can be delivered digitally as a download could be bundled into the value of a movie ticket and delivered from the ticketing site, the studio or from the theater’s website. The cost to deliver a song, script or even video (like what you might find as extras on a dvd) digitally is nominal relative to the marketing investment required to get people to the theater”

Mark Cuban: Visionary, business “maverick,” and a true “market culturist.”

Categories: Customer Value · Innovative Thought · Value Propositions
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Customer Value Versus Customer Satisfaction - Lessons from Sprint and Apple

January 22, 2008 · 1 Comment

In the quest to improve business performance, companies and marketing departments in particular have for many years focused on customer satisfaction as a metric worth focusing on for customer retention, loyalty and even growth - (see Fred Reichhold net promoter for his views).

Althought customer satisfaction is undoubtly important, we would argue that a more powerful metric is customer value… but first let’s take a look a customer satisfaction……

Customer satisfaction is certainly an important metric in a competitive market and companies that ignore it do so at their peril. Take Sprint for example, a company that last year cancelled more than 1,000 customers accounts due to excessive complaints? No doubt there would have been some customers that no company would want in that number but I do wonder whether Sprint were really listening to some of those customers that obviously were extremely dissatisfied……perhaps some of them had very valid concerns?

Given the recent news about Sprint’s performance “Sprint Nextel Announces Plan to Lay Off 5,000 Workers” and the fact they lost more than 300,000 customer in the last quarter of 2007, I cannot help but think they have some serious marketculture weaknesses…….namely a lack of customer insight

So it seems customer satisfaction can certainly be a predictor of business decline but how can it help predict growth? This is where customer satisfaction measures can become problematic and it is necessary to look at other measures….

How so you ask? Well let’s take a personal example, I am highly satisfied with my Samsung BlackJack, in fact I would rate my satisfaction 10 out of 10, I have never owned a better phone BUT my next phone with be an Apple iPhone..

Why? Although I am extremely satisfied and would recommend the Blackjack, the iPhone will meet my needs (and wants) better, it has a larger screen, integrated music, looks cool etc…….. to put it technically it provides me with greater customer value than any alternative….

Regular customer value measurement provides companies with a way to predict the performance of their products in the market place and put in place retention strategies based on the real alternatives customers have in today’s hyper competitive marketplace.

So although customer satisfaction is very useful it is no longer enough to stay ahead…..

Customer Value is a central theme for us as a professional services firm with a focus on marketing and you will see many of our services and training programs emphasize this important element of world-class marketing, for more information click here…..

Categories: Customer Satisfaction · Customer Value · Market Culture Inaction