The World's Most Successful Marketer

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He's not Bill Gates. He's not Steve Jobs. He doesn't even work for Procter & Gamble. But the world's most successful marketer thinks a lot like the executives at The Coca-Cola Company and Pepsi. The one thing these companies abhor is excess capacity. If you leave a bottler or fountain account with excess capacity your rival will rush in to fill it. And that's where the bulk of Coca-Cola and Pepsi's business lives. So sometime after WWII someone figured out that non-working housewives represented excess economic capacity. Potential wage earners that could, if nudged, dramatically increase the size of the US consumer economy. Ultimately, to migrate from a cash/gold standard based economy to one in which we lived on something yet introduced to be called "credit." Was the world's most successful marketer a politician, a staffer or a Madison Avenue guru? No one knows, but one thing's for sure. He or she was one smart cookie. In 1958 Diner's Club cards got a wobbly start then American Express checked into the market with a gold card that became the first green card - giving consumers permission, like a visa, to live beyond their means.

The tool? Slick positioning. The feminist movement. By mobilizing women out of the home children no longer had a strong family base. We called them latch key kids and consoled ourselves with advertising to women that said "I can bring home the bacon and cook it too." No. You couldn't. Divorce rates hit 50%. School performances dropped. Gangs rose. Families crumbled. Dual income families didn't raise..."families." Now we have single mothers. Things called alternative families. Made politically correct by children's shows such as Sesame Street. Worse. It's not right.

So who is the world's most successful marketer? Who is the man or woman responsible for Socially Engineering of the demise of American families and values? Who was it that could not leave well enough alone? Who was it who had to have America's excess capacity go to work (now, just to make ends meet)?

The world's most successful marketer brought on the financial crisis. The world's most successful marketer drove Wall Street to financial excess and put pressure on the short term gain. What did regular marketers do? They followed. They adapted to trends. They did not stand up and represent themselves. They bent. And helped the world's most successful marketer promote his or her evil. And so the world's most successful marketer launched a top-two box intent to purchase new product that brought America to its knees.

So who is the world's most successful marketer? Drop the blame on anyone you want here.

What comes after the iPhone

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Do you want to give Steve Jobs your inner thoughts? It's a little bit more than user-generated input. Hypothetical reports out of Apple/Mac headquarters is that uber inventor Steve Jobs is at work on the iMind. Instead of talking into the phone you hold it to your forehead and it reads your thoughts. True or False?

Apple's Approach to Customer Relations

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I thought you'd enjoy this Harvard Business Review conversation starter.

Apple's reaction to its angry customers has been swift. Responding to a flood of complaints from early iPhone buyers over a $200 drop in the still-new product's price, Steve Jobs responded by:

1. Recognizing that customers were upset

2. Recognizing that customers had a right to be upset

3. Explaining why Apple chose to drop the price -- and doing so in a way that appears legitimate and honest

4. Offering reparations to early adopters in the form of a $100 credit

No, Jobs didn't satisfy each and every disgruntled iPhone owner but, like JetBlue's response to its meltdown last winter, Apple recognized it had created a potentially big problem with its core customers and took swift and open measures to address it.

Would your company do the same thing or would it try to bury or obfuscate the problem? Not sure? Consider these ideas from Harvard Business Review to brush up on your approach to customer relations:

Want to Perfect Your Company’s Service? Use Behavioral Science

Why Satisfied Customers Defect

Companies and the Customers Who Hate Them

Manage Your Human Sigma

Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work

You can't please everyone, but...I bought an iPod for my twelve year old daughter two years ago. Cost about $400. After the first year, it stopped working. She had dropped it without its hard case and dented the backing. The hard drive is built right into the backing and the warranty says that if there are any dents the warranty is void.

I tried to reset the machine several times. Frustrated, I made an appointment at an Apple Genius Bar. I was given instructions for resetting the iPod again. It still would not work. I had to buy a new iPod. But I wasn't ready to do that yet. I went online and made another appointment at the genius bar. The only available time was 8:55PM - five minutes before the Apple store here at South Coast Plaza in southern California closes. I went in. Met a different genius.
He fiddled with my iPod, then this is what he did. He said, "You know what?" I said "no." He said, "I'm going to give you another iPod for free." I was stunned, and reiterated that it was out of warranty AND dented. He said Apple didn't see it that way. He said, "At Apple we know people pay a lot for our stuff. We know that these people probably make a lot of money and are probably better than most at taking care of things. So when something goes wrong, we feel it's probably our fault and not their fault." So he went into the back room and returned with a brand new iPod.

At that moment I had rather been indifferent toward whether I used Apples or PCs. But that night I became a convert - and I will give Apple a lot of latitude before I jerk my knee and criticize them. Steve Jobs has been through a lot. And he knows that Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.

And I experienced all of this through my contact with a 19 year old at one of Steve Jobs stores. Simply amazing.

This also reminds me of a story that circulates around one of my client's, Mercedes-Benz.
The owner of a 1981 Mercedes with 480,000 miles had a turbocharger that went bad. A new turbocharger was about $3,800, more than the value of the car today. But here's what the dealer did. He replaced the turbocharger for free. And the following year, rather than shop around, that Mercedes owner came in and bought a brand new Mercedes. Now that's customer service.