The Economics of Relationships
24 Mar
“Embarking on a social media strategy to help with marketing, is like embarking on a facial muscle strategy to help with smiling”. (original tweet)
Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
Why do you buy stuff? I mean, of course we buy products that appeal to us personally. I’m not going to buy a full rack of ribs if I’m a Vegan, or a Heat Jersey if I’m a Knicks fan, or a Dell if I’m a Mac fanatic, or sign up for Time Warner Cable if I’m a fan of being treated with respect (people of New York, you know what I’m talking about).
I’m talking about something different. When you walk down the street and there are three comparable coffee shops within a two block radius, what makes you choose the one and why do you keep going back?
In other words, when weighing a decision between products of commensurate value and quality, what is the delineating factor in the decision making process?
Recently, I was in Orlando on a client engagement. Melissa and I attended college around these parts so we made it a point to visit our favorite Indian Restaurant of all time! I mean, in college I would have killed a baby bunny for this food. As soon as we arrive, I was kind of disappointed that our favorite server wasn’t working, you know the guy that is really friendly and just makes you feel good about being there. The guy that smiles a lot. The guy that guides you through the menu. So anyway. We sit down. We order the usual. We get excited. We finally receive our food. And you want to know what? The food sucked.
I was sitting in a session this week at SXSW Interactive. A blogger that I respect a great deal said something I find kind of silly. He said that all engagement with customers within social media channels had to speak from “the voice” of the brand. He actually made a joke about how people that buy your product or follow you don’t give a shit about what movie you (ie the person running the brand’s twitter account) watched this weekend. I find that statement ridiculous and completely incongruent with our experiences in real life. The best beers I have are sitting at Lily’s bar in the Roger Smith Hotel. You want to know why? Well, it’s not because they have a magical tap of Guinness that teleports the black gold from Dublin. It’s because I know Brian, Adam, Yamile and the crew and I do in fact care what movie they watched this weekend.
Do you have a favorite coffee shop? I do. Anyone that knows me, even a little bit, knows that I *heart* The Bean Coffee & Tea in the East Village. Is it because their Lattes are stirred with the horn of a unicorn? No (at least I don’t think so). It’s because I know Guy (the Manager) and Ike (the Owner) and I like those guys. They’re funny and cool. I know about Guy’s time in the Armed Forces, and about Ike’s other business ventures. And I like joking around with them on twitter. Recently, I’ve been trying to convince Ike to rename their signature drink from the Kuddocino to the AJChino. Not only do I know them, but they know me, not just as a customer but as a human.
The natural reactions to this concept of humanized business are either “it’s not scalable for large companies” or “it’s not safe to allow individuals to tweet on behalf of the brand (for legal reasons)”. Both of those responses represent what I will call poor man’s problem solving .
A very long time ago, I used to work in Assurance at a Big Four firm. Translation: I lead complicated audits of Fortune 500 companies. On my very first audit, we approached an account dealing with employee stock options. It was a highly complex account, which no one quite understood right off the bat because it required knowledge and experience with the Black Scholes Option Model, which is essentially stochastic calculus (aka math that the devil himself created). What do you think I did? That’s right, I stayed up for two days straight studying every aspect of the financial modeling to ensure that I understood the account, and could sign off and be confident that they were not doing anything unethical. I didn’t have the option of saying, well, it’s just too complex of a problem, I think I might just sit this one out.
You don’t concede an issue simply because the problem is complex or abstract. You think harder or you shut the hell up, get out of the way, and let someone else that can think harder figure it out.
In our lives we make purchasing decisions all the time that are based on the fact that we know and like the individuals that are selling products to us. Imagine if brands could figure out how to let the humanity of their communication team shine through. You want to know one of the problems? Most people preaching social media to brands are attempting to use metrics and analysis alone to sell it. At my very core, I’m a finance guy, so I appreciate metrics more than most. But the advent of social software is SO much bigger than metrics, analysis and fancy charts. It affords the opportunity for a large brand to act like my corner bartender. To transmogrify from a shiny, lifeless corporate logo to my local barista. To be human.
Try talking with your customers and followers and, yes, not just about your product.
Say good morning.
Ask them how their week is going.
Ask if anyone is working on any interesting projects.
Be human.
Be as human as you like people that you buy from to be.
In business, we are taught to dismiss the things we cannot directly analyze. As if squeezing something into a pie graph makes them more useful. If you think about it, the things that separate the great from the good, the experiences that enforce our love for our favorite coffee shops, for our favorite applications, for our favorite anything are unique and human. And those experiences cannot necessarily be crammed into a spreadsheet.
We can’t use the same old ways to measure brand new things. We have to think harder.
What do you think the greatest possible outcome is of using social media?
How do you tell others to employ strategies to achieve that outcome?
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