Micheline, head of our International Desk, recently gave me a Time magazine article about seducing customers. Actually, it was about how supermarkets create "zones of seduction" that get customers to spend more. What the author and consumer fan Martin Lindstrom (check out his buy-ology book pictured below), called "seducing," I used to refer to as "engineering." But seducing sounds well, more seductive (and is actually more customer-centric). Don't you think? 

A key point was changing the environment to trigger our primitive, and often subconscious survival responses, like hoarding for lean times. The approach requires lots of customer field research to know what works and to fine-tune the changes. For example, changing a point of purchase sign in the supermarket aisle from $1.95 to 1.95 increased sales. The dollar sign seemed to trigger a greater awareness of expense, not value. Adding the line "maximum 3 cans per customer," coupled with smaller shopping carts and a bumpy (and noisier) tile floor that led people to slow down increased spending sevenfold. Sevenfold!

Think about slot machines in Vegas, starting with your first steps off the airplane.They are everywhere! You can't even go the bathroom without passing a zillion slots seductively beckoning your credit card.

Are we being constantly manipulated? Yes. Is that bad. Sometimes. Is it an inherent part of a capitalistic society? Yes.

And the real bottom line question: How can YOU more effectively and ethically seduce your customer (or client, patient, partner, investor, etc.) to "buy" from your organization?

Leading. Solution. Best. Innovative. These are the top 4 most overused buzzwords in public relations, according to Adam Sherk and PRFilter, a website that searches and aggregates press releases. Here's the Top 10 list and the number of times each word was used in press releases in a 24 hour period:

1. leading (776) 
2. solution (622) 
3. best (473) 
4. innovate / innovative / innovator (452) 
5. leader (410) 
6. top (370) 
7. unique (282) 
8. great (245) 
9. extensive (215) 
10. leading provider (153) 

What does this mean? Clearly, these words lose their impact through overuse. While intended to convey uniqueness and value, instead these words communicate "ho hum," "me too," "jargon," and "I don't really know my customer." Digging deeper, I believe the biggest offender is "solution." What customers talk that way in everyday life?? Aside from being generic and ubiquitous, the term "solution" has a very sterile feel to it that weakens your intimate connections with customers.

So what's the alternative? Stay real. Get to know your customers. Find out what the "solution" is, and what problems you can help them solve. That's what you talk about in press releases, in sales training, and especially with customers.

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(Click here for the full list in PR Daily, and thank you Tom Gable, San Diego PR expert, for posting the link on LinkedIn.)

Apple has become synonymous with product innovation. We have a number of clients in the life sciences, in healthcare, and even in public health who say they aspire to be like Apple. What they really mean is they want to make very hip, cutting-edge, trend-setting products. They want customers with cult-like devotion. And they want to score major "cool points" -- lots of 'em. All while making a ton of money.

Which is a problem. Why? It reminds me of a large, national, nonprofit we work with that said they want to be world class. The question was, are they willing to pay the price of being world class? Like letting go of mediocre employees, investing in top training programs, rewarding high performance, etc. 

Similarly, companies that want to establish a value discipline of innovation need to be willing to pay the price. In the development phase alone, Apple makes a huge investment. For example:

• A small team of extremely well-paid, top-notch designers with a maniacal focus on perfection.
• Who create 10 perfect mock-ups for each potential new product feature, from which three mock-ups will be selected for further exploration, to result in the feature in as perfect a form as possible.
• Which means Apple knows in advance that they will get rid of 90% (9 of 10 mock-ups) of what they create.
• And happily makes that investment.
• Fueled by leadership that is relentlessly committed to winning by innovating.

Which results in game-changing, industry-inventing, highly profitable products with incredible demand.

And Apple's style of innovation invite a fundamental re-positioning of form and function. As Alain Briellat put it in his excellent analysis:

"Apple doesn’t sell functional products; they sell fashionable pieces of functional art."

So... two simple questions for you, dear reader:

1) What do you sell?

2) Are you willing to invest what it takes to be a top innovator in your space?

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P.S. Check out these classics: Peter Drucker on The Discipline of Innovation, and Treacy & Wiersema on Value Disciplines.

When asked for help, the late great management guru Peter Drucker asked two basic questions. The first was "what business are you in?" In Good to Great, Jim Collins distinguishes between what a company needs to preserve - its core purpose and values, and what a company needs to change to stimulate progress. In our consulting work, we invite clients to complete this simple sentence: We are in business to ___________________ . These three approaches have in common the importance of identifying your core purpose, adhering to it, and distinguishing it from the strategies and practices you employ to achieve your core purpose.

The classic example of confusing purpose and practices goes choo-choo. Fifty years ago, railroad execs thought they were in the business of trains. Had they realized they were really in the transportation business, they would likely be leaders in the industry today. As Theodore Levitt tells the story in the timeless HBR article Marketing Myopia, railroad executives were product-oriented, not customer-oriented.

It is easy to sway from one's core purpose: I saw this laboratory's office sign on their building in Atlanta on a recent business trip. Lots of lab services. And bonus, passports too! 

Ready to stay true to your core purpose? Then answer these three questions:

1. What business are you in?
2. Why are you in this business?
3. What is your core purpose?

Next then is linking your answers to the two central marketing questions - the "dynamic duo" as it were.

1. Who are your customers?
2. Why should they choose you?

Let me know how it goes for you!

At ResearchWorks, we talk a lot about customer intimacy. We do our best not just to help clients be customer-intimate, but to practice customer intimacy ourselves. One sign of customer intimacy is when you say you care and show you care, and customers feel it. There is a match between how you intend to treat customers and how customers feel treated.

The sign above pronounces how much this family camp in Northern California cares for its guests. Even though the camp is not much more than a giant patch of dirt, people feel the love. The sign conveys the promise, the camp delivers on it. And guests come back year after year. That's how customer intimacy becomes customer loyalty.

Recently, NPR told the story of a Texas hospital that is trying to use the "speed dating" concept to win new patients and bolster physician loyalty as well. Selected doctors and prospective patients pair off and chat for five minutes, then rotate into the next conversation. Check out the hospital's promotional video:

Clever idea. Attention-getting tactic. Yet there are numerous questions to consider... Will most physicians participate? Will referrals to the hospital increase? How scalable is it?  

And the bottom line question is: Can a good physician-patient match be made through a brief, patient-driven conversation? A Medscape poll shows that only 21% of physicians feel "speed dating" would be effective for their practice.

The key is asking the right questions, that is, questions that are predictive of a good doctor-patient match. And that is a work in progress.

Most of us assume customers want a lot of choices. Nobody likes being told what to do. Right? Maybe not.

In the book The Paradox Of Choice: Why More is Less, psychologist Barry Schwartz tells the story of going into the Gap to buy a pair of jeans. The salesperson asks him what kind of jeans- slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit, or baggy? Stonewashed, acid-washed, or distressed? Button fly or zipper? On and on the choices grew. He replies - a bit confused - jeans, just regular jeans like he always buys. Then he started worrying, well maybe it matters and should he try on 14 different styles? The myriad of choices created an uncomfortable "need."

In our consulting work helping companies really understand what their customers want, need, and value, we invariably find that too many choices is just as bad as no choices. For example, when working with our federal Medicare agency (CMS) to investigate what choices seniors want in selecting health insurance plans, we found they tended to want two or three good choices. And they really valued a trusted resource that could present them with the best two or three options for their situation.

Therein lies the marketing opportunity. Sometimes people are overwhelmed by choices. They want to be told what to do, especially in a domain where they have little or no expertise, like say, evaluating healthcare systems. So step up and make it easier for your customers by reducing their number of choices. Call it "peace of mind" marketing.

P.S. This is where my marketing pseudonym "Les S. Moore" comes into play.

The FTC is mad at the credit reporting company Experian for misleading consumers and luring them away from the government's free annual credit reports in order to get them to subscribe to a $14.95 monthly credit monitoring service. Experian is using classic marketing tactics. The government provides free credit reports at annualcreditreport.com (why not .gov?).  Experian, smelling money, bought a better-named site called freecreditreport.com, and they have been saturating the airwaves with their very popular trio of slackers singing about how they could have avoided ruining their credit if they had only tracked their status on Experian's website.

Now the government is fighting fire with fire. Their video spoofs show a remarkably similar band warning people, as the NY Times story quotes, that: Other sites may turn your head; they say they’re free, don’t be misled. Once you’re in their tangled web, they’ll sell you something else instead. 

Experian knows what they're doing, and refuses to give the FTC their freecreditreport.com domain or to cease and desist. Though they did pay a $1.25 million fine for misleading consumers; small change compared to the money they're making. The other marketing tactic is playing on people's fears. Most of us just don't need regular updates on our credit reports. But messages about identity theft, losing everything we have, etc, trigger us to buy these credit monitoring services.

Lots of people go to Experian's site for free credit reports when they mean to go to the government site, Bottom line is that Experian's marketing is effective and I believe intentionally misleading. But is it right?

Who knew that the sipholes in coffee cup lids at Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts and other caffeine purveyors were affecting the human condition? I just ran across the little green siphole plugs that prevent coffee spilling, splashing, staining and other evils.

I applaud the inventor's open mindedness that led to his epiphany and turned a problem into a solution. You can see how they work in this 32 seconds of action-packed video:

However, what is most interesting to us marketers is the creation of a "need." Now coffee drinkers everywhere will be worried about unplugged sipholes! Some experts say that revealing unmet needs (are there other kinds?) is what marketing is all about. I believe we need to tread lightly here. As a culture, we are trained to confuse wants and needs. Like when my kids used to say "I need candy" in the supermarket. In my book, these little green plugs are about a "want" - plain and simple. While there's nothing wrong with innovating new problem-solving products, as marketers and consumers we need to be aware and honest about whether we are really satisfying a want or a need.