Buzz Builder

Greenpeace's Publicity Stunt on Mt. Rushmore Achieved Its Objectives

On 7/8/09, three Greenpeace activities climbed on Mt. Rushmore and unfurled a giant banner with President Obama's profile and message saying “America Honors Leaders, Not Politicians. Stop Global Warming.” Immediately, news of this action spread around the world. The stunt was particularly effective at garnering media attention for three reasons:

1. It took place on one of America's most iconic memorials.
2. It's bold size and juxtaposition of President Obama vs. great past presidents created a powerful image.
3. It provided a strong visual image to illustrate the passion of environmentalists regarding the talks about global warming at the G8 meeting in Italy.

A journalist for the Rapid City Journal (SD), who had found my post in this blog about publicity stunts, called me to ask about the efficacy of the publicity stunt and ran my comments in a story about the Greenpeace effort. The article observed:

“I’m guessing activist groups around the world are going to be looking at this saying, ‘hmm, this might be a case study for us,’” said Patrick Galvin of Galvin  Communications in Portland, Ore. Galvin specializes in helping businesses build buzz without expensive advertising.

Greenpeace snapped a photo of the banner with an aerial camera, and a video camera operator near Highway 244 at the memorial broadcast live footage of the incident online.

Greenpeace released a well-timed statement about the demonstration and placed it prominently on its Web site, which included live updates posted on Twitter, an online microblogging site. 

Media organizations throughout the country quickly picked up the video and still images supplied by Greenpeace. The video, images and Twitter messages fleshed out news articles which initially took much of their information from a Greenpeace statement issued moments before the climbers unrolled the banner.

Galvin said he also was impressed by the activists’ adept use of Twitter. Before the event, friends and supporters of the organization and the climbers on Mount Rushmore eagerly spoke of the event on the online site Twitter in the hours and minutes leading up the banner drop.

Several of the climbers broadcast their location to the world via Twitter as they rappelled onto Abraham Lincoln’s stone face.

“Twitter has become this platform that, more than anything else, people are attracted to it for its immediacy,” Galvin said. “Having one of the rappellers tweeting about it was brilliant.”

In a subsequent interview that I provided the same day to The Christian Science Monitor, which appeared on 7/8/09, I observed that the Greenpeace effort might not be a total success:

Galvin said in terms of communicating a message effectively, he’d give it a “nine out of ten.” But the jury is still out he says on whether the overall strategy will work. That’s because Greenpeace broke the law and if any damage to Mt. Rushmore was done, it could be a big negative for the organization.

“If there was any defacement, if that banner whipped a piece of Abraham Lincoln’s nose, then the message will get diluted very quickly,” he said. “I’d give it a qualified thumbs-up.”

Since those articles appeared, it appears as if the Greenpeace publicity stunt served its purpose. Traffic to the Greenpeace website spiked as the story was reported around the world in thousands of blog and media outlets. The global warming debate seemed to garner a surge of discussion. The apparent lack of damage to Mt. Rushmore and quick release of the Greenpeace activists who carried out the stunt did not engender any long term negative consequences for the organization.

United Airlines Finds Path to YouTube Infamy in Broken Guitar Song

I just caught my wife cracking up as she sat in front of her computer watching the latest YouTube sensation. Canadian musician Dave Carroll released a hysterical music video in which he sings the blues after United Airlines workers at O'Hare smashed his guitar and the carrier refused to pick up the $1,200 cost to repair it.

The video, which was only posted four days ago, has already had more than 641,000 views. To learn the details behind the story behind the song, visit this article on the Chicago Tribune's website.

The video is a great example of how we're living in the Age of the Empowered Customer. Companies that ignore customer complaints are now just one small step away from YouTube infamy.

Why Last Impressions Are Essential to Generating Referrals

A few years ago, I wrote about how critical first impressions are to business success. But, a company’s last impression with a customer carries even more weight when it comes to generating repeat and referred business.

Recently, my wife Ellen and I spent three nights at the Trumpeter Inn, a bed & breakfast on San Juan Island in Washington State. During our stay, Geoff and Shaun, the attentive husband-and-wife owners, provided top-notch service which included answering all my inquiries about the best things to do and places to see (no easy feat when you consider that Ellen calls me “The Question Man” for my propensity to grill people for information).

On our last night, we told Shaun that we needed to catch the 6:00AM ferry to the Mainland. It pained us to leave early since breakfasts had been so delicious. Shaun promised to have brown bag breakfasts waiting for us when we left. While other hungry ferry passengers had to make do with stale vending machine food and coffee, we enjoyed a breakfast bonanza which included homemade muffins, yoghurt parfaits with fresh fruit and granola, boiled eggs and juice. We sipped gourmet coffee out of takeout cups that she had thoughtfully left for us next to the coffee machines, which were programmed to kick into action when our morning alarm sounded. The Trumpeter swans that Shaun drew on our breakfast bags made us smile as we unpacked them on the ferry with San Juan Island receding in the background.

Over the years, I’ve left stayed at enough bed & breakfast inns to know that I would have to fend for myself if I checked out before the standard breakfast hour. By doing something completely unexpected in such a classy way, the Trumpeter Inn stands above it competitors and it’s no wonder that it’s the top-rated B&B on San Juan Island according to TripAdvisor, America’s leading customer review website for travel recommendations.

It’s not just B&Bs that benefit from leaving customers with a strong positive impression. With the weather heating up in the Pacific Northwest, I hired a company to power wash and seal our back deck. After I was given the price for the job and the work had started, I asked the owner of the company whether he could spray off our outdoor table while he was at it. Not only did he do this, but the job took longer than expected because he took extra time to thoroughly wash the table and all the outdoor chairs so they look almost new again—at no extra charge.

Professional service providers can also find ways to leave their customers impressed. Whenever we complete an engagement for a client in which we’ve carried out a successful media relations campaign, there is always the possibility that journalists will contact us about a future story. Whether we are billing a client or not, we promptly follow up on media opportunities and respond to queries on the client’s behalf without charging anything. We’ve learned that the hours we work for a client without being paid after an engagement officially ends is a wise time investment because it dramatically increases the chances that the client will reengage our services and recommend us to others.

In these tough economic times, those companies that find ways to leave a great last impression will not only survive but thrive.

GM and Chrysler Should Learn from Efforts to Build Online Buzz for the Ford Fiesta

Thanks to a recommendation from Brenda Buratti, who blogs about how to minimize stress and create better relationships in her interesting Live Your Better Life Blog, I read an interesting Wall Street Journal article about how Ford has picked 100 young, Web-savvy drivers to get behind the wheel of its new Ford Fiesta subcompact for six months and post their impressions on sites such as YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.

This campaign makes a lot of sense given that it will likely reach the young drivers who will like the stylish and sporty Fiesta (now there are two adjectives I've never used to describe a Ford vehicle) that is still unavailable in the U.S. but continues to rack up impressive sales in Europe.

The article points how leading executives at Ford were reluctant to give away cars for six months when they have no control over what the young testers will say about the car or where they will say it:

From the article:

When Ford first tossed around the idea of loaning 100 cars without the ability to control what the drivers might say, Ford's sales chief emerged as the leading internal skeptic.

"I was like, 'Nah, go to Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica [Calif.], go to Royal Oak [Mich.] on a hot night with the kids out for ice cream,'" said Jim Farley, Ford's global vice president for sales and marketing. "Pull up with 10 vehicles, give away free T-shirts, have people do test drives, broadcast the whole thing on the Web."

Mr. Farley said his reluctance softened when a group of sons and daughters recruited from Ford's largest dealers endorsed the six-month online effort.

"The interest in the Web [campaign] had far exceeded my expectations," he says. "My hunch was pretty traditional."

Today's consumers, particularly savvy young ones, are looking for authentic information about the products that they might buy - particularly big ticket items.Ford's campaign for the Fiesta provides this authenticity. Although some test drivers might make negative observations, their comments will only reinforce the authenticity of the campaign which should be overwhelmingly positive given that the Fiesta provides benefits that are likely to appeal to the young testers.

If American car manufacturers adopt more creative word of mouth marketing campaign likes this one rather than dumping billions into boring car commercials that people skip with their DVRs, they might just survive without government-funded bailouts.

Matt Weinstein in "What Bernie Madoff Couldn't Steal From Me" Video

Last December, my wife and I were extremely lucky to travel in Antarctica for nearly two weeks with a group that our client OCSC, a sailing and adventure travel company in Berkeley, had organized. The trip was even more spectacular that we had hoped. The scale and grandeur of Antarctica never ceased to amaze. But, we never expected to learn so much from a fellow traveller.

On our boat, we met Matt Weinstein, a successful professional speaker and all-around great guy. Midway through the journey, Matt was called up to the ship's bridge to take a satellite phone call from his wife Geneen Roth, an accomplished author and healthy eating expert. Geneen told Matt that they had lost nearly everything that they had saved for retirement since they had invested with the infamous Bernie Madoff.

Unable to rush home since there are no flights out of Antarctica, Matt still had about a week left on the journey. During this time, when we talked with him, we were amazed that he didn't demonstrate much anger or grief. Surely, we thought, he must be in a state of shock which would morph into rage as time passed. But, over the past few months, we've seen that Matt possesses an amazing ability to reflect on what's really important in life. While he and Geneen will likely only recoup a small percentage of the money that Madoff stole, he has earned something of greater value.

Below is a video of Matt presenting an insightful and entertaining speech on "What Bernie Madoff Couldn't Steal from Me." It's the best eight-minute presentation I've ever seen. If you like it, please forward it to a friend. Here's wishing that Matt gets a lot of groups to hire him to speak about what's really important in life!

Customer Service Is the Future of Marketing

A couple of days ago, I heard a great interview on NPR's Talk of the Nation with Emily Yellin, author of Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us. Emily spoke about the history and future of customer service and discussed some fascinating research that she did at customer service centers around the world. One comment that I found particularly striking and true: "Customer service is the future of marketing."

Too many companies are preoccupied with trying to stir up interest in their products and services with word of mouth marketing. Yet, once they get a prospect to call them, visit their websitie, or come into their showroom, poor service prevents them from making the sale. Or, even worse, the customer makes a purchase and then has a problem that the company fails to resolve in a quick and satsifactory manner.

Positive word of mouth will grow when a company delivers upon its promises with stellar customer service. Many businesses would be much better served getting their customer service practices in order so that purchases create happy customers willing to come back and refer their friends.

An Antidote to Negative Economic Buzz: Humble School Bus Driver in Queens Feeds the Needy

All the buzz about climbing unemployment rates and economic distress is enough to depress even the most optimistic person. This recent post on the Pink Slips Are The New Black Blog about how one regular guy has made a difference in improving the lives of thousands should lift your spirits:

CNN recently featured a truly inspiring story about a 44-year-old Jorge Munoz who emigrated to the United States from Colombia in the 1980s.

A school bus driver by day, he spends the majority of his free time feeding hungry people out of his mobile soup kitchen in Queens, NY. He started the program in 2004 and he estimates he’s served 70,000 meals to date. Now it has evolved into a non-profit organization called An Angel in Queens.

From CNN:
Muñoz estimates that food and gas cost approximately $400 to 450 a week; he and his family are funding the operation through their savings and his weekly $700 paycheck.

Asked why he spends so much time to help people he doesn’t know, he answers, “I have a stable job, my mom, my family, a house… everything I want, I have. And these guys [don't]. So I just think, ‘OK, I have the food.’ At least for today they’re going to have a meal to eat.”

The Best Marketing in a Down Economy

Below is an article from the March 2009 edition of my free monthly eNewsletter The Buzz Bulletin. To sign up for future issues, please visit the Galvin Communications website.

“Do what you do so well that your customers will want to see it again and bring their friends.”
Walt Disney

In today’s difficult economic climate, it’s easy to feel as if there’s little you can do to improve sales since the media keeps churning out stories about how consumers and companies aren’t spending money. The good news is that many of your competitors will believe this and stop trying to attract customers. This presents tremendous opportunities to grow your business.

Last week, Bob Stonhaus, a friend, client and founder of modular wine storage manufacturer STORViNO, sent me a statistic about the recession of the early-1980s. McGraw Hill Research found that companies which maintained aggressive sales and marketing efforts enjoyed more growth – some 275 percent in the five years after the recession – compared with only 19 percent growth amongst companies that cut or reduced their marketing budgets during the economic downturn.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “Hey, that makes sense but I don’t have extra cash for marketing since my sales are terrible.” Well, the best marketing doesn’t cost anything. Rather, it takes a commitment to love and delight your customers with stellar service.

Yesterday, my wife Ellen and a friend went to Vinideus, a neighborhood wine shop and bar in Portland, Oregon that we’ve walked by for months but never visited. Ellen was curious to check it out since we’ve seen signs in the window announcing a diverse array of activities including a networking evening, French movie night, salsa lessons and a variety of musical performances. One of the owners greeted her and everybody who came through the doors with a smile and warm hello as if they were arriving in his living room (in fact, the shop has the cozy atmosphere of a family-run bistro in France).

When he overheard Ellen and her friend discussing the nuances of authentic French crepes, he apologized for interrupting but enthusiastically told them about his plans for introducing crepes in a few weeks as well many of the other exciting things that Vinideus would be offering.  When Ellen and her friend left, they had signed up for the shop’s weekly newsletter and were already making plans for their return.

They wandered a few blocks up the street to try another wine bar, where the atmosphere was quite different. While the service wasn’t bad, it lacked the warmth, energy and knowledge of the previous establishment. Likewise, the space itself felt cold—literally and figuratively. There was no music, no laughter and, not surprisingly, very few customers on what should have been a popular place on a Friday night. Ellen’s comment was, “There was no enthusiasm, no love.”

Think about the businesses that you love. What makes you loyal to these companies over others that offer similar products and services? Is it possible to adopt some of their customer service tactics? By doing so, you will take your business to new heights as satisfied customers keep coming back and referring their friends.

Will More People Eat Skittles Thanks to Twitter & Social Media Buzz?

In today's Wall Street Journal, there's a fascinating article about how Mars Snackfood launched a new website last week for its Skittles candy which attempts to leverage the power of social media. The article states: "Instead of a typical product site that highlights information about or videos and games related to a product, the Skittles website features content created by consumers - most of it gleaned from other websites."

The article mentions how the online buzz for Skittles jumped quickly after its new website launched with comments on Twitter going from just handful to more than 800 overnight. The comments are multiplying rapidly as you'll see on Twitter's search results page for Skittles. But when you review the comments, you'll note that most are merely attempts to land 15 seconds of fame as a tweet (Twitter post) scrolls up the Skittles home page. Additionally, a significant number of posts are quite negative about the product or Skittles attempt to stir up social media buzz. I'm sure that the advertising agency that created this new campaign for Skittles is telling Mars that online buzz is building and generating coverage in the mainstream press such as The Wall Street Journal and Advertising Age. But, would any of the people seeing this buzz ever eat even one Skittle? While Skittles foray in social media will likely garner its agency some advertising industry awards, I doubt that it will do much to sell Skittles.

Fast Company Article on Customer Review Websites Provides A Good Lesson on How to Manage Opinions

A recurring complaint that I've heard from many business owners is that they don't like consumer review websites since they believe that they serve as forum for cranky customers with axes to grind. Anya Kamenetz' article in the December 2008/January 2009 issue of Fast Company about customer review websites sheds interesting light on how some customer review websites are better than others in terms of screening out fictitious reviews and aggregating credible information.

Regardless of large flaws in many customer review websites, they are having an increasingly important role in influencing buying decisions as more consumers go to the web before making purchasing decisions. It's critical for business owners to monitor the customer review websites popular with their customers to see what opinions are being expressed. This monitoring can provide insight into steps that should be take to improve products or services. Or, if it appears as if a disgruntled employee or customer is orchestrating an influx of negative reviews, it is important to ask satisfied customers to visit the site so their positive reviews can offset the negativity. This approach will garner much quicker results without the negative backlash of suing customers who post negative reviews.