Bloghound

Nothing gets people talking (and thinking) like a contrarian or counterintuitive point of view. A good example can be seen in a post today over at the Running a Hospital blog by Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. There’s a local hospital in financial trouble that none of the Boston-area hospital groups have the money to acquire and fix. Levy suggests an alternative — that the Service Employees International Union take over the hospital as they have a strong interest in hospital management and lots of cash.

“So why not approach SEIU with a proposal to have the union purchase, own and operate Carney Hospital? Let the union show how it can handle the full panoply of issues of running a hospital and demonstrate how it can profitably operate a neighborhood facility without the kind of state aid that has been pouring into Carney for all these years. Let the union negotiate contracts with the insurance companies, encourage access for low-income patients, maintain high regulatory standards for patient care, and do all the other things required of hospital management, while, of course, providing excellent working conditions for staff members and physicians.”

An innovative idea or a friendly smack at the unions who so often complain about how hospitals are managed? Hard to say, but Paul’s post will certainly be the topic of conversations in the Boston healthcare community this weekend. And there’s nothing healthier for any industry than frank, open conversations about contrarian ideas. That’s where change so often begins.

Thanks to Howard Kain, managing principal of the healthcare group at PNC for turning me on to Running a Hospital, a great example of CEO blogging — and in a highly-regulated, conservative industry like hospital management no less!

Yesterday I witnessed insanity at the Hertz Gold check-in counter in San Francisco. The businessman next to me wanted to change the credit card his car would be billed to. He handed the woman at the counter an American Express card. She quickly informed him that it had expired.

“Didn’t you hear me miss? I told you to put my account on that card. How many times to I need to explain it to you. I want the bill on my American Express and not my Visa. Got it? Or do I have to explain it again to you?”

“Yes, sir, I understand. But American Express is telling me that your card is not valid. So we can’t use it.”

“Lady, I don’t know what your problem is today. But put it on that card.

He finally gave her the Visa card and stormed out all indignant. The indignant part was astounding.

“Wow, you were the picture of calm with that guy,” I said. “Not sure I could have held my cool with someone like that.”

The man waiting on me said, “That’s nothing. We had a person in here this morning whose driver’s license had expired and he yelled at us for not reminding him that he had to renew it. I told him we weren’t the department of motor vehicles. But the guy continued on and said, ‘Don’t you people realize I’m a Gold Club member?’”

Like being a Gold Club member has anything to do with him taking responsibility to get his driver’s license renewed.

“How do you do it,” I asked the Hertz people at the counter. “How do you handled such crazy rants from insane people all the time?”

“It’s our job,” they said. “We stay calm and remember it’s just a job.”

Front line employees are the ones who most influence how we feel about brands. And on most days their jobs border on insanity. Maybe more of us marketers should work the front lines for even just a week a year. Seeing these unsung customer heroes at work at Hertz makes the “we try harder” tag line more meaningful than ever before.

P.S. — Oh Canada, thank you to the folks at Raincoast Books in Canada for such a nice review of Beyond Buzz. Canadians, some of the best people to have an interesting conversation with, seem to be liking what the book has to say. Merci and thanks again.

“Word of mouth is an objective, not a strategy or tactic. ”

That small but significant nugget came during a conversation I had last week with Gary Spangler of Dupont to prep for our July 31 presentation at ad:tech Chicago, ” Word of Mouth Marketing: Luck or Skill?” If you’re going to ad:tech, please join us.

Today’s Wall St. Journal has a great article about how Narragansett Beer is successfully reviving its brand using listening tours to tap into the brand’s genuine differentiation (”the townie’s beer”), and word of mouth marketing to develop passionate customer relationships.

Writer Simona Covel interviewed me as part of her research for the piece and we had some great conversations about the value of tapping into what consumers believe a brand stands for and then engaging directly with those passionate brand believers and turning them into advocates. There’s no better example of how a company is doing this than Narragansett Beer, the official beer of the Boston Red Sox for decades, but an almost dead brand by the 1980s. Mark Hellendrung bought the rights to the brand from Pabst Brewing in 2005, and revenue is expected to reach $5 million this year.

No traditional advertising in this success story. Just savvy targeting, reviving what people love about the brand, and a disciplined word of mouth strategy, led by the CEO.

The Break Up
Uploaded by geertdesager

Don’t miss this great video, produced for Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions by Geert Desager at Bring Back the Love. It captures the change in selling and telling marketing to conversational marketing, reminding all of us that the consumer has had enough with old style techniques.

Hat tip to Tony Bloomberg over at Diva Marketing for sharing.

Good on Nike for turning Don Imus’ outrageous comments about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team into a more positive conversation about public speech, women athletes and the game itself. Nike ran this full page print ad in last Sunday’s (April 15) New York Times, and plans to roll out banner ads this week that make it easy to pass the ad along to a friend.

A great piece of conversational marketing — tying into a relevant news item with a fresh point of view that provokes new conversations.

“Thank you, ignorance.

Thank you for starting the conversation.

Thank you for making an entire nation listen to the Rutgers’ team story. And for making us wonder what other great stories we’ve missed.

Thank you for reminding us to think before we speak.

Thank you for showing us how strong and poised 18 and 20-year-old women can be.

Thank you for reminding us that another basketball tournament goes on in March.

Thank you for showing us that sport includes more than the time spent on the court.

Thank you for unintentionally moving women’s sport forward.

And thank you for making all of us realize that we still have a long way to go.

Next season starts 11.16.07.”

Imus/a> Nike

What makes good advertising today? Two things. It helps sell more products and provokes conversation — getting people involved in the ad and giving them something to talk to people about. Kleenex’s “Let It Out” campaign is succeeding on both counts. The person-on-the-street interviews also show just how much people want to tell their stories and be heard.

David Lawee, Google’s vice president of marketing, shared these “Seven Principles of Google Marketing” at this week’s Red Herring CMO 2007 Conference:

1. Let others peak for you.

2. Data. Not hype.

3. Results must be trackable.

4. Promote trial.

5. You’re smart and your time matters.

6. We’re serious. Except when we’re not.

7. Big ideas move us.

Google marketing David Lawee

General Electric values these two marketing competencies over all others, according to CMO Dan Henson, who spoke this week at the CMO 2007 conference:

1. Segmentation, particularly down to very granular level.

2. Ethnography. Helps in finding innovative ideas, fueling GE’s “Imagination at work” focus.

Lauren Flaherty, CMO of Nortel and former IBM marketing executive shared her thoughts on what it takes to be a “21st Century CMO” at this week’s Red Herring CMO 2007 Conference:

1. Lives by fact-based decisions. Measure whatever you can. Benchmark to know who is best in class. Shift from historic to predictive insight.

2. Creates organizational excellence. First the who, then the what. Know where ball is moving and what skills you’ll need for what’s coming. Talent is a top priority. Get organizational hygiene in place.

3. Is a partner to sales. Does sales have the right tools for an engagement and dialog model with customers?

4. Drives business and growth. CMOs must be oriented to revenue. Identifying new sources of revenue. Forging alliances to fuel momentum. Being at the door of business units, pushing and driving ideas forward.

5. Is a chief architect of the business. Create agenda for CEOs internally and externally. Champion the voice of the customer. Help the organization stay centered on the customer and on the future.