Caveat emptor

The hotel looks pretty in the pictures. The reviews are great. It has thousands of Instagram followers. Their restaurant appears attractive.

The request for a quiet room was for naught, since most of the rooms face a parking area. The restaurant, which appeared to be in the main building, is in the parking area. The late night people made noise as they left the restaurant.

The air conditioning unit was deafening, so the engineer brought a fan to use instead. The dead bolt was misaligned, so he had to repair it so the room's door could be locked. The mirror on the bathroom door was loose and might fall. The floor was warped where it met the entrance to the bathroom and would be replaced, the engineer said.

"Old Painting" by Krebs' Class is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The blanket did appear like the one in the pictures. The lobby is cute and cozy. The location is close to town, within walking distance. A move (luckily) to the main building assured sleep, due to a less noisy air conditioner.

However, the time spent on repairs to a place not one's own was disconcerting. It is a motor inn transformed to a boutique hotel, which was not completely successful. We met the photographer outside, who excels at dreamy photos.

Don't believe everything on social media. Ask friends if one can. Anyway.

What's in a Logo?

photo courtesy of Starbucks

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet." Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Shakespeare understood this as does Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, re: Starbucks' new logo. The name has not changed; it is still Starbucks, although the name is not present in the new logo. Many consumers do not understand the change. Another issue is that consumers who are very loyal to a brand claim ownership and entitlement to control the brand's image.

What's in a logo? A logo stands for a brand. Many consumers complain on Facebook and Twitter about the logo change, since they do not want their brand to change. It is their unacceptance of change which outweighs their acceptance of the company modification, a transition beyond coffee. It would be beneficial for many Starbucks customers to read Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, M.D., to better adjust to change.


photo courtesy of Parvin

Many Starbucks customers are loyal to the brand and prefer its coffee to other coffees. This loyalty translates to a feeling of belonging to and identification with the brand. They believe that they are a Starbucks person as opposed to a Peet's Coffee & Tea person, for example. The brand and its product were made for them, they believe, and in reciprocity, they own the brand.

Ownership leads to consumers' belief of entitlement to affect a brand. The logo decision should be theirs. How dare the company change it without asking them? they say. We witnessed this unacceptance with the GAP logo debacle, where ultimately GAP reverted to its old logo, due to consumer outcry. In Starbucks' case, Howard Schultz communicated the change before it occurred, and explained its reason: This change mirrors the change of the company.

We learn for our own brands that change must be communicated clearly to our consumers. They cannot manage companies although they believe they are entitled to, due to their loyalty to a brand. Companies must partner with consumers through social media channels and constantly monitor their conversations with consumers. They must reassure their consumers during change, yet ultimately make their own decisions.

Oh! The Places Marketers'll Go

photo courtesy of Mario Groleau

Lionsgate Entertainment uses Facebook Places instead of Foursquare or one of its competitors for a new social media campaign: http://goo.gl/KsUO2



The campaign is interesting in that it is by a large company and incorporates a game with locations related to the film. It continues with the winners of the game eligible for a bigger prize. Foursquare and its competitors, of which there are many, face competition from Facebook Places. Some users have become bored with checking in on Location Based Services (LBS) and receiving badges. It is easier for consumers to check in with their Facebook accounts instead of logging into a different app.

Marketers need to reinvigorate check-ins. Coupons will work if the user agrees to opt in. Prizes, discounts and rewards are more attractive to customers, and may influence them to visit your business. The rewards should not be one-time only, but continue. They could be tied to events and unique product offerings. If your company uses LBS, it should offer gifts, which make customers feel special and increase brand loyalty and equity. How is your company using LBS?

The Sweet Smell of Social Media

It is not easy to invigorate a 71-year-old brand like Old Spice. One may describe it as a scent which perfumed one's father. Some sons prefer to not wear their fathers' colognes. They prefer their own scent, a new one. Companies cannot always change their products. Yet they could change the way consumers perceive their products, which Procter & Gamble, with the help of Wieden+Kennedy, achieved with Old Spice.

How did Wieden+Kennedy accomplish this? With the help of consumers. After updating Old Spice's brand through a confident spokesperson, Wieden+Kennedy utilized the tweets, Facebook messages and YouTube comments of consumers to create content -- user-generated content. Thus the consumer speaks, and the brand responds: a dialogue. Consumers no longer want brands to speak to them without sharing in the conversation. In the recent Old Spice spots on YouTube, the "Old Spice guy" responds to their comments which originated in social media. That the actor, Isaiah Mustapha, responds humorously only embellishes the experience, since fun is a valuable commodity in these serious times of economic, environmental and political issues. How to invigorate a brand: user-generated content, a dialogue with consumers and fun. That is also how to invigorate sales.

Social Media and Ballet

At a recent excellent performance of Alonzo King LINES Ballet (linesballet.org), music and dance joined together. Often at the ballet, one awaits the hushed, expectant pause before the conductor enters the orchestra pit. After the ballet begins, music serves the choreography, and one perceives it in the background while one focuses on the choreography. At the performance of LINES’ “Wheel in the Middle of the Field,” four singers from the San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows joined the dancers onstage, which eliminated the separation of music and dance.

This calls to mind the past separation of consumers from marketers and brands. Currently consumers would like to interact and converse with brands. The opera singers in this production represent consumers. They are on the same stage as brands in this production. They even interact, where one singer while seated comforts dancers individually. At times a singer stands at the front of the stage, with the dancers in the background. At times the singers dance. Roles are reversed, as consumers would like. They now prefer to interact with brands in conversations in social media, create products through crowdsourcing (e.g. vitaminwater) and their own commercials. How will your brand join the dance?

How Twitter Could Become Profitable

What's in a tweet? A $1 billion valuation of Twitter (Financial Times, September 25, 2009 http://tinyurl.com/yzye8tb), a company which is not yet profitable. The company is not managing itself to become profitable, nor managing its brand to control its image and build its brand. Twitter's business is content management. The company needs to emphasize its knowledge of content management and social media, which could be done through conferences, partnerships and a social media agency. Then it could become profitable.

Due to the novelty of social media, many in the advertising industry are unfamiliar with how to utilize social media for their clients and in advertising campaigns. Thus they seek advice from others in the industry by asking questions and attending conferences. Twitter could utilize its brand to organize paid conferences at which some of its successful users could speak, and teach marketers what they know about social media.

Twitter could streamline its applications and partnerships. The many Twitter applications, with Twitter or tweet in the title, dilute the brand, since the consumer does not know which are authorized by Twitter. The company could partner with one of the popular applications for disseminating content, for example, TweetDeck. Twitter would recognize TweetDeck as its official content management tool. In exchange, it could partner with TweetDeck to receive a percentage of TweetDeck's advertising revenue.

To become profitable, Twitter could start a social media agency business and manage companies' content for marketing, since it already manages content for companies and individuals. This business would build on its current operations by adding a revenue component. It is a natural extension of its business which would also strengthen its brand.

Conferences, partnerships and a social media agency: possibilities for Twitter to make its tweets financially viable.