As I relate the following three eCommerce mishaps, be thinking about whether you can eradicate all of them from your business by the time the “Holiday Rush” hits. ALL are preventable, if you start today and take one item at a time.

Let’s start at the “precipitating event;” the spark that lit my desire to shop online…

1. An email with a promo code arrived.  w00t!  They paid attention to past purchases, and sent me a great promotion: 10% off a brand I’ve purchased before, and free shipping if the order exceeds a certain amount.

How They’re Losing Sales: Despite not mentioning an expiration date for the promo code, it was expired by the time I reached checkout.  I’m notoriously slow for opening emails from online retailers, but I bet I’m not alone.  Creating a sense of urgency with an expiration date is fine, but remember that shoppers sometimes go weeks without going through their personal email accounts to read your promo codes.

And now it’s Customer Service’s turn…

2. When the promo code came up as expired, I was understandably disappointed.  I’d just spent a fair amount of my weekend building up enough value in my shopping cart to qualify for the free shipping (Yes, I’m cheap.)  My credit card was out of my wallet.  So, I clicked the live chat in the cart to see if they’d extend the promo code, or give me an equivalent one.

How They’re Losing Sales: The live chat agent, while polite and earnest, was not able to do anything to help me (be a cheapskate).  They weren’t empowered by their employer to get creative and save me from abandoning my cart.  They suggested I call the “real” Customer Service during regular M-F business hours.  So my guess is that the live chat is being outsourced, which is fine, but if they aren’t empowered to save sales, they’re probably not giving good ROI.

Now stepping up to the plate, Technology…

3. I came back the next day with the intention of calling the retailer and trying to get them to extend the promo code or give me the equivalent deal.  So, I returned to the site and clicked “My Cart” to review what I’d put in there, and have it on-screen when I called.

How They’re Losing Sales: They didn’t save my cart! So many sites are saving cart items via cookie that I assumed my items would be there the following day or week.  So now I’m definitely not going to re-build my cart AND call them to try and negotiate the promo code.  I’m going to just repress the whole memory…maybe I’ll even forget the retailer’s brand in the process!

These 3 blunders may seem unconnected from a business perspective, but from a buyer perspective, they were all part of a persuasion scenario that broke down and turned a VERY motivated shopper into a lost sale.

I do like the site, and hope they can address these issues and stay in business.  But they and others will have a very painful holiday sales season if they don’t treat the disparate parts as a unified buying experience that must be nearly flawless to be profitable.

According to the nifty pie-chart to the right and the related study, because  print newspapers reach people who are actively looking for, or “checking,” ads, they are still a solid advertising medium.  How these people can conclude one thing from the other is utterly beyond me.

While newspapers may be a medium that still draws people  who are actively searching out ads, that hardly means newspapers are a solid advertising medium for most advertisers.

As Social Media Today rightly points out, the idea of “actively looking” basically implies the following scenario:

“To me it says, ‘I want a new job (or car etc), let’s check the ads.’ And sure, newspapers and online will come first when that’s the motivation.

I would simply add 3 things to that analysis:

1) Newspapers and Yellow Pages are inevitably being displaced by the internet. Local, lower-level job listings may remain a stronghold of local newspapers, but other than that, most prospects feel they’re better off starting with a Google search or a quick check of Craig’s List.

2) You might NOT want to attract the more eager scourers of the local paper.  Especially when advertising a job position.  Seriously, would you rather find an applicant who, while still holding down his present job, thought your position perfectly described his strengths, qualifications, personality, and so on, or would you rather get the guy who’s between jobs, is desperately seeking paid work, and who saw your position in the paper?  Might I suggest that radio, blogging, or social networking sites might be a better option for attracting the first type of applicant over the second?

3) Old school, intrusive media muscle still puts the smack-down on newspapers - especially when the radio or TV campaign is followed up by a strong web presence.   Ad-dollar-for-ad-dollar tests show radio providing a 14:1 increase in driving response over newspapers.

Why Radio + Internet kicks butt for regional and local businesses

If you hear a compelling radio message on something for which you’re not yet in the market, but you continue to hear that same offer/UVP/message from the same brand or company, what do you think will happen when you DO come in the market for that product or service?

Do you think you’ll:

• a) search Google using general category terms?

Or

• b) Type in the offer, campaign name, or brand name from those compelling and memorable radio ads?

I’d guess b, and my experience promoting website via radio strongly suggests the same.  If you do a solid job advertise your offer and your company on radio, you will influence what they search on when they’re finally in the market.

So what happens to your competition when people search on your brand name instead of a category term?

With that scenario, your competitors are pretty much screwed right from the starting block! And that’s a traffic driving system most of us can get behind ; )

P.S.  If you’re interested in learning more about this technique, the great Chris Maddock and I will be teaching Writing for Radio and the Internet in Austin on the 25th and 26th.

While I can’t help but shake my head at the elevated nose and depressed intelligence of a dying attitude that associates “performance-based advertising” with creative shabbiness, that’s not what really bothered me about this piece.

What bothered me was two-fold:

1)    The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s confusion about the very medium it claims to represent.

2)   The implied motivation behind the IAB’s attempt to bring branding to the web.

Let’s deal with the first point and how it relates to branding via Internet Advertising.  Basically it boils down to this:

“You can close your eyes but you can’t close your ears.”

If I’m watching TV or listening to the radio and I’m interrupted by your ad, I can’t help but overhear your message, even if I look away and suddenly switch my attention to getting that last bit of salsa onto my Frito or avoiding the bumper of the car in front of me.

Since I’m at least half paying attention, great creative can cause me to redirect my attention back to your ad, thereby allowing the ad’s message to sink in.  Given enough repetition, the ad gets absorbed to the point where it can sway my decision when I’m actually in the market for the advertised product or service.

It’s a seemingly inefficient process that’s made shockingly effective through intelligent use of mass media.  The required repetition and non-targeted nature of your audience is more than overcome by the sheer number of people you reach and the amount of times you reach them.  As listeners and viewers convert over time, your mass media campaign can potentially create dramatically more traffic and sales on a per-dollar basis than targeted direct response methods.

So for intrusive or interruption-based media, great creative plus reach & frequency all go hand in hand for an effective ad campaign.  And I’ve said before that offline branding efforts can pair especially well with a solid online web presence.

So the takeaways are:

1. Branding almost always requires repeat exposure – this is why frequency matters.
2. Branding only becomes efficient when you can reach a lot of people cheaply – this is why reach matters.
3. The end goal of branding is to implant enough good associations about your product/brand/offer in the mind of the prospect to get them to buy from you once. You get one shot because actual experience either reinforces or destroys branded associations after the first purchase.  Lot’s of recent brands have been built on extraordinary customer experience and very little to no advertising, but almost no brands have made it with mediocre experience and lots of branding campaigns.

Unfortunately, the Internet is NOT an intrusive or interruption-friendly media.  It’s an interactive or “engaged medium” precisely because you need audience permission and participation to make it work.  Attempts to shortcut the “permission and participation” part usually meet with dismal results: we’ve become extraordinarily good at concentrating on the active window while ignoring banner and right-hand column ads. That means great creative stands very little chance of grabbing attention from an Internet user’s task at hand.

Other than adolescent boys staring at Lamborghinis and viewers of the rarely successful viral video, people who aren’t in the market for what you are offering have no interest in voluntarily exposing themselves to your ads.  And, for a participatory medium like the internet, that leaves only people actively interested in your market/offer.  People who, I don’t know, might indicate that interest by, say, typing keywords into a search engine or something…

Nor is the Internet a medium where there’s usually any significant space or time between being engaged by an ad to buying the advertised product.  If I click on a search-generated ad, I’m pretty much already at some stage of the buying process.  You don’t have to repeat the ad to make it sink in or design the ad so that its message is memorable; you just have to make it salient to my task-at-hand and I’ll click.  This is why ad relevance or “scent” has generally displaced the importance of “great creative” for PPC ads.

Yes, it helps to make more concerted efforts at grabbing people earlier in the buying process, but they still have to BE in the buying process to begin with.

So despite his protest at the misapplication of reach and frequency models to Internet advertising, I suspect that IAB President Rothenberg wants to similarly misapply an interruption-based model of branding to a permission-and-participation-based medium.

Brand builders plan around reach and frequency because reach and frequency are intrinsic to the mechanics of branding. You might be able to do branding on the web through viral videos or other entertainment-based efforts, but you’ll still have to ensure you reach a large number of people with enough repetitions to make your message sink in.

Will a fully engaged audience require less repetition than a more passive one?  Sure, but less might mean 5-15 times vs. 156 or more repetitions.  Other than planes hitting the World Trade Center or your wife saying “I Do,” very few messages are burned into your memory the first time your experience them.  And I don’t care how “great” your creative is, your actual business message (vs. the novelty you wrap around it) will never reach that level of impact.  This is why viral campaigns work better than single videos.

And this brings me to my last point and what bothers me most about the IAB’s push for “great creative” over “performance based” advertising:

They never once said that performance based advertising wasn’t making the wisest and best use of their clients’ ad budgets. They never seemed to indicate that their clients would be selling more and gaining more market share if they were actively branding on the web.

What they said was: “it was time for online publishers to reclaim some of the premium advertising turf vs. general market media, especially network television.”  Followed up by a statement that the Internet’s emphasis on performance-based or direct response advertising, “does little to elevate the perception of online’s premium communications value.”

Hmmm.  Does this sound like Randal and the IAB are most concerned for what’s best for clients or in what’s best for Internet Advertising Agencies?

Well sports fans, here we go.  Black Friday.  Soon, Cyber Monday.  (Forgive me for the brief digression, but did you know neither Black Friday nor Cyber Monday typically deliver results, in the form of conversions, er, sales, mainly just delivering traffic   Unsurprisingly, retail numbers thus far have been bleak, to say the least.

Retailers are hopeful however, and doing everything they can to jumpstart the economy and try to turn a profit this holiday season.  Amazon got my attention with their personalized email, touting deals exclusively for me, but really failed to deliver on the promise.  Uber-disappointing when you consider how much insight they have into my buying process, not to mention my personal as well as holiday gift time purchase history.  Yes, even the market leaders sometimes miss opportunities. Perhaps they need some help harvesting the insight from their customers’ past purchase behavior?  [*Update* CNBC documents Amazon's strategy.]

Naturally, many retailers are using price cuts to try and attract attention.  Even brands who rarely do so, like Apple for instance, give kickbacks to customers this weekend.  Who says Politicians should be the only ones to prosper?!  [Don't say we're not in the giving back mood either- deal hunters should stop by Gizmodo for a rundown of all the best deals this weekend.  *Update* NY Times has a good rundown too.]

Not every retailer is up to the same old tricks though.  Sears, through a partnership with Yahoo is trying to capture the holiday spirit, and capitalize on the web sense of community to spur sales.  Of course, they promise exclusive deals as part of the promotion .

If history is any indicator, each of these efforts will result in traffic spikes (not only on websites but highways and mall parking lots as well!) of highly motivated would-be customers. These potential prospects certainly have a list of products in mind, or if they’re earlier on in the buying process, an idea of what type of product they’re shopping for.  Everyone hates to be sold, but loves to buy. Buying is about the experience, above and beyond the “right price”.  What will you do to convert those could-be customers into delighted customers?

Plato said, “necessity is the mother of invention.”  If Plato were faced with a marketing budget coming under fire to pare costs and brace for a long dark winter, I respectfully suggest he’d get focused on “inventing” some ideas around Optimization.  Your traffic is coming to your website for a reason, and if your conversion rate is in the single digits, perhaps it’s time to consider what your audience is telling you, and do something about it.  After all, you won’t have the same luxuries to keep spending $$ on driving an overabundance of traffic.  Perhaps now is the time to capitalize on opportunity: the web is your home to listen not to what they say, but rather to what they do! We’re always here to help you listen, and turn your audience feedback into actionable (and continuous) website improvements. 

Tomorrow we’ll start to see a harbinger of things to come.  Will Santa’s little elves be out in full force?  Most definitely.  But the larger question we want answered is, will the experience be enough to overcome the last stage of the buying process- reevaluation. So, in the name of research, go out and enjoy the deals… but let us know about the experience.

Do you see more sites this weekend who deliver on their promises, or are your expectations continuing to outdistance the experience they provide?  We want to know!  Our audience does too, so please sound off in the comments.

• Established his own (very successful) ad agency
• Launched the Dodge and Chrysler brands
• Hired and mentored Leo Burnett, creator of the Marlboro Man, Tony the Tiger, Pillsbury Doughboy, and many other advertising icons that made his clients rich
• Turned positioning into a fine art form half a century before Ries and Trout even coined the term.
• Helped establish Cadillac’s pre-eminence among early automotive marks
• Wrote “The greatest ad of all time,” as voted in 1949 – an ad still listed in the top 50 of Ad Ages Top 100 Advertising Campaigns.

Interesting, but why should you care?  Because MacManus’s – and by extension Burnett’s – approach was the yin to Hopkins’ yang, and because MacManus’s approach still works today.

And what was that approach?

In a word, it was to position the client while dethroning competitors in the minds’ of the audience. He wanted to create, in the mind of the public, a deep-seated prejudice towards his client’s brand.

If, in the words of the legendary Gary Halbert, the biggest key to success is to sell to a starving crowd, then MacManus aimed to persuade the consumer that only his client’s product would fully cure their hunger, and then wait for the more-cheaply-persuaded and much larger mass audience to get hungry as their individual circumstances dictated.  This would be in contrast to targeting only hungry people and then selling to them via direct mail.

And so the two poles of advertising continue on to this day, as is clearly seen in the following comments by an extraordinarily successful brand builder, Chris Maddock.  Chris was responding to my request for his opinion on Google’s recent attempt to track the effect of offline advertising upon online sales/conversions.   Here’s what he had to say:

Jeff,

I think Google’s traditional ad analytics are interesting, sexy, and certainly useful on some level.  But I think the program could also be dangerous, in that it could give some folks faulty impressions of what is actually happening – or what is right – because it assumes advertisers know things they probably don’t.

Let’s say a local hardware store runs some print ads, and compares the online response to another time they’ve run radio ads.  If the print ads were for a short term offer, and the radio ad of a more institutional bent, the print ad could drive more traffic to the website and have the hardware store owner thinking that print’s the ticket.  The reality in such a situation is that the print advertising is impressing and motivating a tiny, albeit palpable, percentage of the market to respond and go the the website, while the time-sensitive nature of the offer makes the advertising all but invisible to the bulk of the market.  On the other hand the radio advertising is likely creating greater long-term top of mind awareness, yet probably not motivating as many to go the website.  Mr. Hardware likely thinks that the radio campaign was less effective, when in fact most category dominant businesses are those that eschew short-term sales, offers, promotions and the advertising tools that make them work, while leaning on intrusive media such as radio and television to push long-term awareness.  Over time, radio could likely drive many more visitors to the website – visitors who will likely buy.

So my worry is admittedly Hamiltonian.  Years of interaction with average business owners and traditional ad people has revealed a startling blindness to things like buying cycles, differences in long and short-term strategy, and proper media selection.

So these new Google analytics are cool.  I just hope the good people using them understand what they’re trying to make happen, and what the numbers returned really mean.

-    Chris

Do you see how Chris picks up the standard of Theodore McManus, Leo Burnett, and Roy Williams?  Although I think it is possible to intelligently and rigorously compare media, I can’t help but agree with Chris’s larger point.  Creating a prejudice in the mind of the customer before they’re hungry is often a more effective strategy than trying to only target hungry customers.*   But it requires a longer time horizon.  So if you are only measuring on the short term, you’ll likely come to the opposite conclusion and then deem your position to be “scientific.”  It’s a perfect example of one of the deadly sins of Web Analytics.

So what’s your time horizon?  And have you implemented a measuring/analytics system that will enable you to measure accordingly?

* To be fair, there are certainly also times when it pays to directly target hungry customers, rather than engage in a lengthier branding campaign.  I’m not necessarily advocating one over the other; I’m arguing that you shouldn’t base your decision on skewed metrics.

I clicked the nice, big, obvious “Add to Cart” button to dive headlong into the conversion funnel.  ERROR.  Some gobbledegook that only a developer would understand.  No phone number.  I did what anyone in the mood to buy would do – I clicked the back button and tried again.  ERROR.  I clicked back again, and luckily for this eTailer, the toll free number was prominently displayed in the active window, AND I didn’t have any of their competitor sites top-of-mind.

Rep:  Welcome to [store with error-ridden website], how can I help you?

Me: Well, I’m trying to buy [Item X] on your website, but I can’t, so can you start by checking whether it’s in stock.

Rep: OK, I can help you buy [Item X] no problem.

Now, let me imagine that conversation as it should have been…

Rep: Welcome to [store with error-ridden website], how can I help you?

Me: Well, I’m trying to buy [Item X] on your website, but I can’t, so can you start by checking whether it’s in stock.

Rep: Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear that!  What happened?  Can you describe what you were doing when our website failed you?  Did you get an error message?  What browser were you using?

A little empathy would’ve been effective and memorable…maybe even blog-worthy. Don’t sound matter-of-fact that your website blew up, or I’ll never use your online channel again, and your brand has been damaged.

And I’m sure the technical team behind that website would’ve LOVED to get their hands on the error code that I’d written down and done some tinkering.  And they should’ve, because that website was bleeding money yesterday.

While other companies have featured real-life success stories in their advertising, Jenny Craig has chosen another route: the celebrity spokesperson. While I’m not a big proponent of celebrities as an effective marketing tool, Jenny Craig has applied the use of personas (either consciously or unconsciously) to their campaigns and is experiencing a surge in revenue.

Consider the last three Jenny Craig campaigns, and how they’ve followed the persona business model:

Kirstie Alley: A Spontaneous type if ever there was one. While annoying to some consumers, other Spontaneous types were drawn to her quirky delivery and “it’s so easy to do” mantra about the Jenny Craig program. Throw in her effusive comments about the different kinds of dessert you can have, and you’ve got the Spontaneous dream of what a diet should be.

Valerie Bertinelli: A born Methodical, Valerie’s ads were all about the structure of the program. She cited statistics about obesity and facts about the nutritional value of the Jenny Craig foods. She was straightforward, dependable, and encouraged other Methodicals to apply structure their eating habits. That, combined with regular, specific updates on her progress cause membership to surge amongst Methodicals.

Queen Latifah: This is the woman who’s reaching out to the Humanistics that know they need help but are fearful of specifics and possible failure. The advertising program for Queen Latifah has moved away from previous messaging and started talking about “just feeling better.” She’s telling others that for her, it’s not about numbers on a scale but rather living a healthier, happier life. And, most importantly, she not only talks about how a healthier body feels better, it also means you can do more with your loved ones. That hits the “hot button” for a Humanistic – it’s often not about her, but how she can have a stronger connection with friends and family.

It will be interesting to see if the next celebrity spokesperson for Jenny Craig completes the persona cycle by using a Competitive type. Hmmmm. I wonder who it will be. Who would you like to see in the spotlight?

Review the Jenny Craig campaigns when you can – they are an excellent case study for success using personas, and good examples of how you can apply them to your own marketing and advertising.

Editors note: If you’d like help with your personas and planning campaigns for them please let us know.

And that makes sense, right? No matter how tightly integrated your business message is with the premise of the video, prospective customers will probably require more than one exposure to remember that business message right?In fact, there’s even an equation for it:

Retention = Salience * Repetition

Salience can be seen as roughly equivalent to emotional impact – and remember we’re talking about the emotional impact of the message, not the video itself. If the video is really cool AND is tightly connected with the message AND the message is important, salience will be high enough to stick in prospects’ minds with only one or two viewings.

But most viral marketing efforts never achieve that level of salience. Either the video isn’t all that astounding, or the business message is only weakly associated with the videos premise, or the business message itself is irrelevant to most people. In those cases, marketers will need to ensure more repeat viewings than the average prospect is likely to give a single video. You might watch a cool video once, maybe twice, but not much more than that. After all, how many times did you really watch “The Conversation” (excluding showing-it-to-others bystanding).

On the other hand, if a video is part of a series, like the Blendtec videos, you’ll probably watch 5-7 of the videos before tiring of them (assuming a half-way decent starting premise and execution). That’s enough viewings for a weaker business-to-video connection to sink in and be remembered or acted upon.

So I’m happy to say that I can add another viral marketing effort to the Blendtec example, and that this effort is indeed part of a campaign: please welcome the “Penny Pranks” series of videos from Office Max.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, the premise of the videos (retailers reluctance to accept payment in pennies) is only weakly matched to Office Max, and only then through a special promotional back-to-school campaign. But even still, on your 2nd or 3rd video, the idea that Office Max will let you buy stuff for just a penny has certainly sunk in – especially for parents of school-aged children!

Click here to view the embedded video.

And that’s EVERYTHING when it comes to creating viral videos that will actually accomplish a business task. If Office Max had only done the one video in the restaurant (it’s most watched to date), it would have been a cute one-off that was forgotten and the business connection would have been utterly forgotten by most viewers. But through serialization, the campaign strengthens the business connection in the mind of the viewer.

• On the first video it’s a funny video. Ha Ha.
• On the second video, it’s not just one funny video about the guy paying with pennies, it’s the “Penny Prank” series.
• And by the third or fourth viewing, it has become Office Max’s penny prank series. The idea that Office Max has school supplies for 1 cent per item has finally sunk in.

Better yet, even in terms of just number of impressions, the campaign crushes the highest single video: 448K views for the restaurant video compared to 1.38M for the series. Which would you rather have? And who is to say that, had they gone with a stand alone video, they would have produced their most popular video on the first try?

Click here to view the embedded video.

While there is some controversy whether anyone can actual design a viral video – the viral part is an effect rather than a design feature – it’s a pretty sure bet that a serialized campaign has a much better shot of both achieving it’s business goals AND in going viral.

Seems I’m not alone. A recent study provides more evidence of the online/offline buying connection.

Media measurement company, Nielsen Online, conducted a survey to examine the relationship between online research and offline purchases. They found that 80% of participants who had recently bought consumer electronics from a brick and mortar store whose site they visited first.

• 53% bought from the site where they spent the most time.
• 58% would choose the internet if they could only use one channel to conduct product research on consumer electronics. Only 25% chose the brick and mortar store.

It’s certainly not breaking news that customers do research online before they buy. But how much that online experience affects offline purchases may have been underestimated.

Are you answering your customers questions?

I was in Petsmart the other day stocking up food and gourmet snacks for my pups. I’ve been considering changing dog food. But was that a decision Petsmart’s brick and mortar store could help me make? Maybe, if there had been a doggie nutrition expert standing in the aisle, or they had a “food tasting” aisle where I could let my picky Boston Terrier sample different foods and choose his favorite. But no such help was provided.

The Neilson Online study found this about pet food purchasers:

Here’s the percentages of pet food survey participants who would use the internet to research each topic.

48% Learn about nutritional specifications

45% Learn about product ingredients

45% Learn about recalls

40% Learn more about safety issues

40% Find sales/promotions

This works both ways. Find better ways to answer your visitors’ questions on your website, but also look at better ways to answer their questions in your brick and mortar store.

Defining & Measuring Success

With the average conversion rate under 3%, it doesn’t mean that 97% of visits fail.  How do you determine if you give your visitors what they want, whether you communicated effectively with them and whether you influenced their thinking and buying behaviors as well as those of their social-media-connected friends.

Defining success or failure, not only through your metrics but also through measuring the perceptions and actions of your visitors is challenging but possible if you understand the value of qualitative metrics and of quantitative metrics using Persuasion Architecture; just ask us how.

Now that Borders has total command of its site and controls its customers’ online experiences, I have some questions:

What does it expect? What is it trying to do?

Of course, we can’t discuss selling books online without talking about Amazon’s dominance. Does Borders expect to go head to head with Amazon? Or does it have a different strategy?

While we don’t know all the answers to these questions, we can make guesses, even learn, as we look at the new Border’s site.

We see some exciting selling and marketing opportunities for Borders.com.

Amazon’s Vulnerability

Borders shouldn’t take on Amazon head to head, at least not now.

Readers of this column are aware of my regard for Amazon’s optimization culture. And there’s no doubt it does many things right, as evidenced by the company’s consistently high conversion rate.

But as you dig an inch beneath the surface of its success, you’ll discover Amazon has some weaknesses. While it’s the master of selling to those who know exactly what they want, it offers a horrible experience for anyone browsing for books and hoping to discover something new and unique.

This is no surprise. Amazon owns the search on unique identifiers, but with unique identifiers you deal with mostly middle- to late-stage buyers who know approximately or exactly the item they want. Amazon does a more than respectable job making product suggestions and increasing average order value (AOV) through up-sell, but it’s practically impossible to enjoy an experience if you are just browsing, looking to discover new books or authors.

By creating an unparalleled experience for book browsers, Borders can create a strong niche. Already Borders has changed tactics in stores, reducing shelf inventory, featuring more books face out, and allowing customers to see and discover more books. This change has increased brick-and-mortar sales by double digits. Our senior persuasion architect, Anthony Garcia, shops at Borders stores almost exclusively because he claims he has found dozens of new book and authors he had never considered before.

Borders needs to take this mojo online. If its new site is any indication, it’s already making that attempt.

Borders, King of Book Browsers

All of us at my company are book junkies. We buy more books than we can read, and we are always looking for unique business and history books. Many of us are on a never-ending hunt to find great new (or unfamiliar) fiction authors. With that in mind I gave Anthony a handy sum of Borders Bucks to see if he could find a few new books or authors using the new site.

Overall, he gave the site a solid “C” grade and came away buying nothing. But he did report some promise.

His first encounter was with the “Magic Shelf,” which turned out to be a little more than eye candy. His attempts to edit the shelf to better reflect his tastes proved difficult. He was repeatedly sent to his account and given a few radio buttons to choose categories. If there’s a way to place specific titles on his shelf, he couldn’t find it. And the books on his Magic Shelf were difficult to navigate or drill down into for more information. We are optimistic this feature will improve. When it does, it will be a powerful browsing tool, as it introduces more relevant new books and authors based on the visitor’s taste.

On listing pages like this one, the visitor is presented with two ways to display lists of books. The default list is an icon view that displays nothing but thumbnails of book covers. When you mouse over a thumbnail you get a box with more details on that particular book. We like the idea because book covers can be interesting and intriguing, but the thumbnails were too small and we had difficulty seeing the titles. Borders should increase the thumbnail size and offer at least a little detail underneath it, like the title, author, price, and availability. What would be even better would be an ability to “pick up the thumbnail,” thereby enlarging it and possibly even being able to flip it and see the back side. It would also be great if we could just drag and drop books onto the magic bookshelf.

The other listing option is more traditional, along the lines of an Amazon listing page.

There were also no clear calls to action (e.g., add to cart, add to wish list) on each view. The listing page offers a “want it?” action, but it’s a vague call to action and visitors will be unsure what happens when they click it.

Product detail pages also need some work. We found it hard to find the review tab, and once we did several of the books had measly and unhelpful reviews. We assume this will change as the site generates more traffic and sales. The book descriptions themselves were skimpy in comparison to Amazon’s. Compare the description for Scott McClellan’s book “What Happened?” on Borders and Amazon. Which page gives you more buying confidence? (It would be interesting to hear your thoughts here, list the reasons and send them to me.)

Some Tips for Borders

Borders has clearly done an amazing amount of work, and the site looks great. Our guess is it knows it needs to do much more. Here are few things it can do to outflank Amazon and own book buyers who are early in their buying phase:

• Continue to work on the magic bookshelf. Find ways to make it easier to navigate and customize so the books on the shelf are more relevant to the visitor.
• Make it easy to engage the magic bookshelf from anywhere on the site. Right now, we constantly had to go back to the home page to see it.
• Continue to leverage the cross-channel opportunities using Borders Rewards.
• Introduce more social Web 2.0 elements: allow visitors to share lists, chat, and discuss what they’re reading. Allow visitors to communicate with each other on your site about books they have read or are considering. In short, turn visitors into a de facto sales force.
• Introduce a user tagging system that will allow visitors to tag books using their own terms. This will allow visitors to sort and interact with items on their terms, not just the terms/categories you’ve assigned. Is Heller’s “Catch-22″ a classic, fiction, or both?
• Improve Borders Rewards e-mail marketing. It shouldn’t be about offers but about real content.
• Partner with or acquire Facebook apps, like Visual Bookshelf, and become active in social networking forums.
• Don’t spend time on long-tail strategies. You’ve too far to go to catch up with Amazon.

We’ll continue to monitor Borders and its unique opportunity. We hope you will, too. In the meantime, tell us what you think about the site and what you’d do to help it.

. .

Cross-posted on ClickZ.

Were they doing this purely by word-of-mouth, as a “thank you” to loyal customers who would then tell their friends about it?

I decided to go to DunkinDonuts.com to see if they were at least promoting it on the homepage.

Yes! I knew I could count on them to follow through on the homepage. This may seem obvious to many of you, but not following through on the homepage is the curse of many cross-channel campaigns (GoDaddy is a good example).

Alright, so they’ve got the homepage covered. Now let’s see how they’re doing on search.

What? No iced coffee!? “Stay tuned for our new Free Iced Coffee date”? Ouch. Let this be a reminder to us all that, the next time someone tells you to “Google yourself,” it might not be a bad idea. They could have easily updated this page with new details.

Oh, well… This campaign is still a winner.

Ten years ago, if you ordered an iced coffee at a Denny’s restaurant in suburban Detroit or a Waffle House in Nashville — and I have — the waitress would look at you like you were crazy. “Um, we’ve got iced tea,” they would insist, forcing me to explain the complex artistry that goes into creating creating iced coffee (i.e., take coffee, pour into glass filled with ice).

Sure, iced coffee has been a staple of the New York City diet for as long as anyone living can remember. And, yes, Starbucks did get even the most unlikely customers hooked on “grande” iced lattes. But Dunkins never tried to convert working class folks into latte-sippers. Coffee and donuts, that’s their game; so iced coffee was never much of a stretch.

What else might they have done to sweeten up the campaign? If the Dunkin Donuts free iced coffee promo is it a hit in your area, leave a comment to let us know if you plan on stopping by to get a cup.

. .

Time to make the donuts? FutureNow can help you caffeinate your campaign by planning it from the customer’s perspective.

Although the company used last week’s announcement that they’re seeking a buyout as an opportunity to blame a tight credit market and competition from discount chains like Wal-Mart, Borders‚ disappointing performance stems from a failure to take e-commerce seriously.

For Borders not to have an exclusive online presence in this day and age boggles the mind. The homepage is a drab catchall for store locations, gift cards, and company information. The coupons that Borders Rewards members receive via email are good for in-store purchases only. And if you do decide to shop Borders online, type in “Borders.com” and see where it takes you to an Amazon.com boutique, complete with “amazon.com” in the URL.

Why brand your biggest competitor (which, despite market conditions, grew by double digits last year)?

Borders does have a beta site that they’re testing and promoting on the current homepage (Bordersstores.com, not Borders.com), assuring visitors that “whole new Borders experience is coming.” The beta site is very attractive and conducive to buying — except for one minor detail. You can’t buy anything. There’s still no e-commerce attached to Borders, only the ability to “save” a book for pickup at the store nearest you.

To ignore the ways in which online shopping has permeated the lives of untold millions of customers is one of the biggest business failures of this decade.

. .

[About the author: Michele Miller is a guest contributor for GrokDotCom. Michele is co-author (with FutureNow's Holly Buchanan) of The Soccer Mom Myth "Today's Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys". You can buy it online from Amazon.]

Right there on the lid was this note:

“Profits for the Planet — You can’t have healthy food or healthy people without a healthy planet. That’s why we give 10% of our profits to efforts that help protect and restore the Earth.”

Wow, what great messaging! It was right there, front-and-center on the top of my yogurt. There was no way I could miss it.

But they missed a real opportunity. I’d like to know more about what they’re doing to help protect and restore the planet. Why not have a link to the website? Alas, it was a dead-end message.

How much more powerful might this have been had Stonyfield Farm considered the tops of their yogurt container to be a driving point. What if they included a call to action to visit their website to find out what they’re doing to protect the Earth?

If I weren’t in marketer-Holly mode, I’d have likely never thought to go to Stonyfield Farm’s website, but there’s lots of great stuff there that could engage consumer-Holly.

Are you missing opportunities to drive customers to your website?

[Editor's note: Join "copywriter-Holly" at our Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar on March 28th in San Francisco.]

In this screencast, we’re going to show you how two brands — Tide to Go and Under Armour — continue to miss out on converting browsers into buyers, even after the post-game traffic surge is over. Depending on who you ask, these sponsors’ ads (”Interview” for Tide and “The New Prototype” for Under Armour) were pretty decent. The products don’t seem to be the problem, either.

Nope. What we have here is a failure to convert. So, much like the New England Patriots are doing right now, let’s see what we can learn from some video analysis:

Let’s take a look at some post-game stats from Reprise Media’s Search Marketing Scorecard:

• 6% of companies included a call to action, asking viewers to visit their websites–a decrease of nearly two thirds from last year

• 93% did not buy search placement for concepts relating to their ads, including spokesperson names, slogans and taglines. Among the brands that failed to buy featured stars’ names as keywords were Bridgestone Tires (Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons) and Sunsilk (Marilyn Monroe, Shakira and Madonna). Unfortunately, notes Reprise, given that the celebrities are often the only thing that viewers remember about an ad.

• 74% still neglected to include a call to action on their Web site landing pages, leaving users “directionless.”

These figures are important because they illustrate a common misconception among multi-channel marketing campaigns: While the TV ad’s success can be measured by the traffic it drives to the website, the traffic alone is meaningless. When visitors can’t convert, you lose.

Want help converting online? Download “10 Tips to Start Optimizing Your Site” for free!

Once again, GoDaddy saved its biggest ad blitz for the Super Bowl. And once again, the goal was to drive as many viewers as possible to the end zone: GoDaddy.com

This year — as they did in ‘06 and ‘07 — GoDaddy had to make an adjustment after having their original commercial rejected by the network censors (a Super Bowl tradition for them). But unlike the past two seasons, they didn’t run a watered-down version of the rejected ad. This time, in lieu of the “too hot for TV” ad, they ran two spots meant solely to hype the uncensored ad, which, of course, is ONLY available at GoDaddy.com.

If you missed the super-tame teaser ads, here’s one example:

As it turns out, the censored ad is only cheeky in the figurative sense, but according to GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons, the teaser strategy worked:

Our Web site has never been busier!
Before the game was over, we received right at 1.5 million visits to our Web site. We had a whopping 2 million visitors for the day. This compares to last year when we had less than 1/2 million visitors.

We spent a lot less money!
During last year’s Super Bowl, we purchased and ran 3 spots — two spots during the game and one during the post-game. This year we purchased only 1 ad, which aired in the 2nd quarter. So for a fraction of the cost we generated 4 times the action. Not shabby, when you can do it.

Sounds great, Bob, but did you get four times the revenue?

A year ago to the day, Parsons responded to pundits — most of whom hated GoDaddy’s 2007 ad — asserting that although the ad drove HALF the traffic of his ‘06 ad, it generated DOUBLE the revenue. As Parsons wrote at the time, “Traffic was down. Sales were up! How can that be?

Since he asked so nicely, we explained.

GoDaddy hasn’t posted any 2008 Super Bowl revenue figures — yet — but I’ve asked Bob to share them with us and, if and when he does, we’ll be sure to offer some analysis.

In the meantime, consider this haiku from Ponder Marketing…

Super Bowl Sunday.
Go Daddy girl will jiggle.
What is it they sell?

…and let us know what you think about GoDaddy’s Hail Mary pass.

Score one for supply and demand.

Indeed, prohibition was the best 21st birthday present our government could’ve possibly given to Al Capone. The mob made a killing on illegal booze. Lucky for them, too. Back in those days, all a wise guy had to do was open a speakeasy, grease a few coppers, and boom — even bathtub gin sold itself.

It’s hard to believe that if it weren’t for Dewar’s, this momentous occasion that is the anniversary of Repeal Day would be no more than another missed opportunity to market legal booze. Honestly, though, what a great thing to toast to! Not only can they make an honest buck selling it, but I can go spend an honest buck to drink it. (Must… finish… blog post… )

Take a peek at how Dewar’s brands Repeal Day on this newfangled internet TV the kids use…

Apparently, founder John Dewar didn’t have his son Tommy’s charisma. Fair enough. Might as well use Tommy’s words instead. Regardless, this is a great ad. (YouTube, on the other hand… They’ll never make it. Online movin’ pictures? No way. Vaudeville, that’s the future!)

Dewar’s could definitely do much better with their Web strategy. Both the Repeal Day micro-site and their main website are WAY too dependent on Flash animation, the usability stinks, and there’s just too much friction in the experience. But that’s fancy business-talk, straight from ROI City; conversion rate, cash-on-the-table stuff, see. The marketers at Dewar’s have already done the hardest part of their job: They’ve reminded me that I’m free to give them my money.

And I will.

[Now, before I hear anything from you scotch snobs about how Dewar's doesn't compare to your brand, don't say a word unless you've tried their Aberfeldy reserve batch.]

Isn’t it bad enough that my people can’t even agree on how to spell the holiday?

One might expect Balducci’s, the fine food emporium, to know better. After all, they wrote the we’re-not-taking-sides-but-you-should “holiday” menu(s)*:

Balducci’s has everything you need to create a magnificent holiday meal, no matter which holiday you celebrate. Whether it’s an informal Chanukah get-together, an elegant Christmas feast, or even a glamorous New Year’s Eve fete, with our Holiday Entertaining Menu and Ordering Guides you’ll find all the ingredients for a memorable meal.

Ah, but that just shows how thoughtful they can be online. What about when NancyKay Shapiro goes into one of their stores to shop for the “holidays”? Apparently, the product doesn’t match the persona.

Okay, so it’s not like they were marketing this for Ramadan. And maybe I did have a prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich for lunch, but that thing was good. (Don’t tell my rabbi.) Besides, a stock room clerk — not a marketing manager — probably made this mistake. Still, it’s important for marketers to be careful with those “holiday” promotions.

Happy Chanukah/Hanukah/Hanukkah**!

(*Which, for some reason, you can only download as a PDF. It looks good, but why not host it on the site? That way, customers could have the option to download, print, or email to a friend.)

(**To anyone for whom that’s relevant.***)

(***Now do you see why George Costanza recommended we all just celebrate “Festivus”?)

[Hat tip to the Good Experience blog.]

One company empathizes with your predicament. Not only do they help you prevent those can’t-hold-it-in situations, they’ve created a great public service that puts public restrooms on the map and at your fingertips. Just go to http://imodium.com/page.jhtml?id=/imodium/include/3_5.inc

“That was page-dot-what?” Yeah. See a major mistake here that’s just flushed a, um, boat-load of word-of-mouth marketing right down the toilet?

Of course you can awkwardly type this gibberish into your portable device and bookmark it. I would. But where do you really want that link living, on the road and off the computer? In memory!

When you’ve really really got to go, the only words going round and round in your head are: I need a bathroom! No “include-slash-three” about it! So use a domain name that reflects the need and helps market your product.

Give people – especially desperate people – something easy to remember and share. Here’s a compassionate, useful reference tool that is also a perfect place to promote a brand. So make it easy to share when the need is crucial. What a way to help people remember you were there when their need was … pressing.

I’ve registered NeedaBathroom.com. The nice people behind the bathroom finder can contact me, and I’ll gladly transfer the domain. No cost. As a thank you, because you’ve done something good for the public. Whew!

Time and again, I read and heard reviews about the Snowbird resort having some of the most challenging terrain, coated by the area’s best powder. So when I finally got a chance to ski Snowbird’s Cottonwood Canyons trails for myself, I quickly turned into a raving Snowbird fan.

I was set on getting a season’s pass for the this year. And after reading reviews like this one from CitySearch, my excitement about the upcoming ski season reached fever pitch:

Depending on the characteristics of — or our level of attachment to — the must-have thing du jour, we all buy in different buying modes to match our feelings about it. I typically purchase commodities in a more Spontaneous mode, but I take my ski season very seriously, and my search for a good deal on a Snowbird pass turned into a Methodical review of various resources to find the ultimate deal. I took my time and I read everything I could before I pounced.

Although I knew I wanted a season’s pass, I had a hard time justifying the steep price Snowbird was asking ($1,149). If the season let me down with only a few big snow days, I could be kicking myself for risking that much money.

As the summer came to a close, I got a little anxious about my upcoming purchase. Around this time, I heard a radio ad about “Sniagrab,” an annual sale run by the Sports Authority a local sporting goods chain called Canyon Sports. They were offering discount season’s passes to Snowbird. I don’t recall them specifying a sale closing date, but when I called Canyon Sports (shortly after hearing the ad), I was let down when I heard I’d missed the sale by one day. Maybe it’s my fault that I missed their sale, but the ad was vague and I had still acted quickly. It made me feel stupid — as dumb as that sounds.

Chances are you won’t catch me in a Canyon Sports any day soon.*

Unwilling to give up my quest for a deal, I searched for “snowbird seasons pass” at Craigslist. Believe it or not, there was a woman who posted a 10-day pass because she’d recently broken a bone and wouldn’t be skiing this season. She was selling it at a discount because she obviously needed to give the buyer an incentive to purchase from her, rather than go directly to the source. But since I was planning on skiing more than 10 days, I continued my search.

I sent an email to my local friends, asking if any of them had a connection to help me out. To my delight, I received a reply from a snowboarding friend. He encouraged me to join the Velocity Sports club in order to get a discount at Snowbird. Velocity’s an exclusive club, so in order for me to join, my friend had to sponsor me. He was only allowed to sponsor one person annually. There was also a $40 membership fee that I had to pay upfront. I signed up and paid my dues but this still didn’t guarantee me a discounted season’s pass. Before I had a shot at one, they made a limited promotion available to existing members who have been members for over a year. So I waited and waited for a reply.

After two weeks without a reply, I sent them a follow-up email. They told me I would hear back from them in a couple of weeks. When three more weeks passed without a reply, I decided to email again. That same day, I received a phone call from Velocity Sports, telling me that the promotion was now open to me but I had only two days to take action.It’s a good thing I didn’t miss the promotion (like I had with the Canyon Sports promo). It would’ve been nice to have gotten periodic updates from Velocity about the promotion. Then again, maybe I would have never even heard from them had I not been really good at nagging! Regardless, they came through for me in a big way, and I got my season’s pass for $799; a $310 savings (after membership fee) over buying directly from Snowbird.

No matter where they decide to buy a product, 64% of customers regularly do their research online before they go for it. In this case, there were a few multi-channel influencers (i.e., the radio ad, craigslist, Snowbird.com) in my buying decision process, but only the consumer-generated media (i.e, the customer reviews and word-of-mouth) had a positive influence on where I actually bought the thing.

The bottom line: It seems the local skiing/snowboarding community is more involved in finding and offering good deals for Snowbird customers than Snowbird is itself.

What do you think? Am I just griping, or should Snowbird consider being more involved in the community in order to better harness their marketing potential?

[Editor's Note: See comments below. Our sincere apologies go out to everyone at Canyon Sports. Although it seems the Sports Authority chain -- not Canyon Sports -- has the Sniagrab Sale, there's too much confusion about who Melissa called. Did she call Canyon Sports, and they answered her about a different sale that just ended? Who knows? Still, it seems there's a whole lot of ski marketing fog to break through in Utah. Either that, or Melissa needs to stop multi-taking when she drives. ]

We’re a tad biased, but this really is a great city to play host to ad:tech’s 10,000+ attendees (if you can believe it). For better or for worse, New York is a giant fishbowl of advertising messages. It’s everywhere — from the subway, to entire sides of buildings, to the Men’s room. It’s a place where multi-channel campaigns take shape in an instant. And when the message is off, you don’t have to be a marketer to notice.The result is sometimes inspiring, often annoying, and — for those who grok — a never-ending source of marketing do’s and don’ts.

If you’ve ever wondered about what it takes to keep NYC’s low:tech ad world moving, take a peek at this cool video from the aptly named Good Magazine.

If you’re in town for the conference, drop us a line in the comments to let us know what you’ve enjoyed or what you’d like to see covered, and we’ll try to accommodate.

[Special thanks to Steve Hall from Adrants for inviting me to guest blog with ad:tech.]

Remember those commercials from the 80’s (”I don’t wanna grow up, because if I did, I wouldn’t be a Toys ‘R’ Us kid”)? Well, a lot of those kids grew up to be parents — and the thrill, as they say, is gone.

In our upcoming 2007 Online Customer Focused Excellence Study, ToysRUs.com fared well below average. The study, which tracks 300+ online retailers, found several giraffe-sized disconnects in the customer experience; things that seem inexcusable for a click-and-mortar retailer with the budget and brand recognition of Toys ‘R’ Us. And with the holiday shopping season upon us, the company presents a feeling of doom for many parents who’ve come to rely on the store to pacify beloved, nagging children.

But they’re not just making things difficult online. Toys ‘R’ Us has a fundamental business problem. They’re scaring customers away — and not just because it’s Halloween. Joseph Jaffe explains the disconnect:

See, here’s the problem. Toys R Us spends all this money on silly 30-second spots with talking giraffes designed to “persuade” kids to nag their parents to take them to the store, but the stores themselves are largely warehouses, void of life, talking giraffes and any experiential quotient whatsoever. If you’ve ever set foot in a Toys R Us, you’d know exactly what I’m talking about.

[...] Here’s the scary part. From what I was told, this (customers returning toys without gift receipts) happens roughly 12 times a week and when it happens, it’s typically Dad doing the returning; it’s typically on a Saturday and it’s typically a shouting match that ends in frayed nerves, expletives and threats never to set foot in a Toys R Us store again.

Try and do the math. 12 x 52 = 624 x 836 (according to the number of stores in the US) = 521,664 unsatisfactory returns per year.

But wait, there’s more….

Now attempt to factor in “lost revenue” associated to a) frequency of transactions (conservative guesstimate of 4 x a year), b) dollar value of average transaction (let’s say $35) and c) word of mouth (let’s say an ultra-conservative pre-social media factor of 15), and you might just be looking at a number of $1.09bn which is either in play or at risk. fyi – Toys R Us’ 2005 revenue was $11.28bn, so my numbers aren’t exactly Monopoly (or Linden) equivalents.

The sad thing is that the staff at Toys R Us really wanted to help me, but “their hands were tied”. The real sad thing is that had a suit from Corporate been in the store (a sighting equivalent to Hailey’s Comet), they would have whipped out their “key” and saved the day on an ad-hoc and unscaleable basis.

Whether Jaffe’s math adds up is another story, but it doesn’t really matter. When you kick mothers out for breastfeeding, ruin kids bikes, let kids eat lead paint, and upset people by not letting them buy what you advertise, you’ve got a brand that clearly doesn’t wanna grow up.

Ahh, the good ol’ days…

If you’re an avid skier who lives in North America, like me, you’ve probably seen a Warren Miller film. He was one of the first to harness ski culture enthusiasm for commercial purposes — way before the Internet.

For years, I’ve been a big fan. I hadn’t seen any advertising for this year’s Warren Miller film, but — knowing that it just wouldn’t be a ski season without one — I was proactive about not missing a second year in a row. I don’t watch much television and I rarely listen to the radio, so unless I’m lucky enough to see an ad for the film, it’s easy to forget. Luckily, I went online to see when and where his film would be featured and was able to buy my tickets directly from his site.

Warren Miller’s loyal fans are passionate about skiing and snowboarding. His crowd acts differently than most moviegoers. It’s a bonding experience between strangers who are all there for the same purpose; they’re looking for an adrenaline hit from powdery, snow-covered mountains. Everyone is very vocal and outwardly excited, sharing the experience that gets them stoked for the upcoming season.

Still, I’m left scratching my head. Why didn’t they collect my email address when I purchased my ticket online? Had they specifically told me that they’re collecting my information in order to inform me when next year’s film will be released, I would’ve been perfectly happy to cough up my email address. After all, I would rather not have to think about when the Warren Miller flick is playing next year. They would be doing me a favor by telling me when and where it’s playing in my area, and just letting me click to purchase directly from an email.

Something I found interesting at this year’s film was that the majority of attendees had pre-purchased their tickets. In fact, there was hardly anyone purchasing tickets at the box office. Each year, and at every screening, the audience receives a free (or discount) ski pass to the local resort. But this year, the tickets weren’t handed out at the event. Instead, the audience was given a piece of paper with a ticket number where they were asked to go online to redeem their free pass.

Wouldn’t this be the ideal opportunity for the Warren Miller team to collect email addresses with the sole purpose of nurturing their loyal customers?

By the way, the film rocked! It wasn’t the best year ever, but it definitely pumped me up for what’s ahead this winter. After seeing the flick last week, I purchased my season pass at my local ski resort. I may even want to purchase the DVD when it comes out. Too bad they didn’t collect my information. I’ll probably forget about the DVD and I probably won’t be proactive enough to buy it later on when I’m skiing (read: not just daydreaming about skiing). If I received an email about it when it comes out, chances are they would make another sale. This is why it’s often a good idea to ask for an email address after you’ve made the sale.

Oh well. Maybe they’ll catch on next year.

So how does one go from AIDA to ROI (return on investment) without action? And isn’t there another important element for the consumer? How about “satisfaction”? After all, that’s what keeps customers coming back — and telling their friends — isn’t it? Assuming Hatch is right about the action bit, it seems there are really two letters missing.

A.I.D.A.S. — not to be confused with Adidas — is what Nike (NIKE) hopes to achieve with its Nike+ campaign. And apparently, it’s working. Last week, The New York Times ran a piece about Nike’s novel approach to customer relevance. By teaming up with Apple (APPL) and it’s ever-popular iPod, the company engages runners directly, allowing consumers to meet running partners and track their own results online.

”It’s a very different way to connect with consumers,” says Trevor Edwards, Nike’s corporate vice president for global brand and category management. ”People are coming into it on average three times a week. So we’re not having to go to them.”

The success of Nike+ is bad news for the traditional media companies that have long made money from Nike’s television commercials and glossy magazine ads.

Last year, Nike spent just 33 percent of its $678 million United States advertising budget on ads with television networks and other traditional media companies. That’s down from 55 percent 10 years ago, according to the trade publication Advertising Age.

”We’re not in the business of keeping the media companies alive,” Mr. Edwards says he tells many media executives. ”We’re in the business of connecting with consumers.”

Responding to the Times article, The Copywriting Underground’s Tom Chandler has some great advice on how to borrow some of Nike’s mojo and apply it to your own web copy. Maybe you can’t use “Just do it!” for your own campaign, but if you’re looking for a multi-channel role model, it may not hurt to be like Nike.

Is viral marketing the same as word of mouth?

First of all, yes, viral marketing does exist. But it’s a combination of tactics that, hopefully, eventually, enable positive word of mouth to spread. (In a moment, I’ll share a remarkable story of one family-owned e-commerce shop that saved a network TV show from extinction with a few viral marketing tactics, a strong will, and 20 tons of nuts. But first… ) Let’s take a look at how Godin explains the difference between viral marketing and word of mouth:

Word of mouth is a decaying function. A marketer does something and a consumer tells five or ten friends. And that’s it. It amplifies the marketing action and then fades, usually quickly. A lousy flight on United Airlines is word of mouth. A great meal at Momofuku is word of mouth.

Viral marketing is a compounding function. A marketer does something and then a consumer tells five or ten people. Then then they tell five or ten people. And it repeats. And grows and grows. Like a virus spreading through a population. The marketer doesn’t have to actually do anything else. (They can help by making it easier for the word to spread, but in the classic examples, the marketer is out of the loop.) The Mona Lisa is an ideavirus.

Word of mouth expert Andy Sernovitz sees it a (slightly) different way:

Word of mouth marketing is the big category. Viral marketing is one of the many techniques used to help word of mouth travel (usually by email).

Think of it this way:

• “Advertising” includes TV, print, billboards, etc.
• “Direct Marketing” includes catalogs, mail, telemarketing, etc.
• “Interactive” includes web, search, email, etc.

and

• “Word of Mouth Marketing” includes viral, blogs, communities, etc.

Are these two very smart people that far apart in their thinking? If not the category itself, it seems both would agree that word of mouth is the ultimate goal of viral marketing. So, when Godin calls word of mouth “a decaying function,” what he means is that it’s an effect that can be nurtured with various marketing tactics (e.g., blogs, video, remarkable PR). The surest key to successful viral marketing is having a great product. But the other key is having that something extra, that, je-ne-sais-quoi that, as Godin likes to say, makes a company a purple cow.

When the CBS drama Jericho was canceled earlier in the year, the folks at NutsOnline.com saw a chance to sell — literally — tons of product by rallying a wave of new customers to send nuts to the network’s midtown Manhattan offices. Using viral marketing tactics to attract fans of the show, NutsOnline bombarded CBS with 40,000 pounds of nuts from Jericho fans around the world. But here’s the amazing part: The network listened, and pledged to return the show to its schedule.

This video shows how it all came together:

Not only did NutsOnline save their favorite show by selling $55k worth of nuts, they gained tons of positive word of mouth — and new customers — in the process. (Read the letter from CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler or watch this video for details.)

As a matter of disclosure, both NutsOnline and CBS are clients of Future Now. We weren’t involved in the Jericho campaign, but we remain very proud of the outside-the-shell thinking from both companies; NutsOnline for seeing the opportunity to save the show (they got the idea because one of the characters says “Nuts!” a lot at the end of the show instead of surrendering*), and CBS for being savvy enough to respond so gracefully and smart enough to use existing grassroots support to attract viewers. (I had never even heard of the show until it was off the air!)

In a nutshell, viral marketing is only as good as the concept it promotes — something granular enough for people to grok instantly. Otherwise, the result is difficult to digest, let alone share. Don’t you think?

Seth is right, by the way. Momofuku is a great restaurant — but don’t take my word for it. As far as the 3 triggers of word of mouth are concerned, Momo is both kinetic and generous. And apparently, you might run into famous people like Jodie Foster or Seth Godin.

[*UPDATE: My colleague Jeff Sexton informs me that "Nuts!" really is taken from The Battle of the Budge Bulge -- easy now -- in which U.S. General McAuliffe gave the response to the German Commander's eloquent call for surrender. Sorry for missing the tie-in, Jericho fans. Please don't send truckloads of peanuts to my alma mater. ]

With a heavy sigh, she heads toward the subway, back to Tetris Land, when something catches her eye. Is it? Could it be? Nintendo is walking straight toward her. Does Nintendo actually . . . see her? Nintendo strides right up, makes eye contact and, (gasp!) starts a conversation.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Don’t you just love a good love story? (Sniff.) The best part is that this is no fairy tale. According to Advertising Age, The Nintendo Wii ended the summer selling 403,600 units in August, compared to 276,700 units for Xbox and 130,600 for PlayStation 3. Wii unit sales to date have topped 9 million. And, to top it all off, Ad Age recently crowned Nintendo “Marketer of the Year.”

While everyone seems to love the Wii, women have been especially vocal with their praise. Nintendo specifically reached out to women early on to enslist them as ambassadors for the Wii.

Nintendo executives and designers conjured up a new target. And it began to look like, of all people, a mom. They settled on the household power purchaser — or at least the one with veto power.

“When Nintendo contacted me, I said to them, ‘You must have the wrong person; I don’t even know what Nintendo does,’” says Tracey Clark, a mom, photographer, and blogger who was one of the first Wii Ambassadors.

The “ambassador” title, though lofty sounding, basically meant hosting a Wii party for 30 or so like-minded friends. Ms. Butler’s, “Moms Night Out” drew 27 maternal units — no kids or dads — and was a “huge, smashing success,” says Ms. Butler, mother of a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old. “Everyone who came who didn’t already own a Wii … ordered one or two. Plus a lot of them are bloggers, and they all blogged about what a great experience it was.” Ms. Clark says the same thing happened at her party.

So what is it about the Wii that women love so much? Karen Bennett has some thoughts:

The revolutionary Nintendo Wii launched in late 2006 has introduced an new concept in video gaming and has seen more and more women getting involved. The physical nature of the game play with the Nintendo Wii has the added appeal of ‘achieving something’ – maybe the thinking is that you can get fit and lose calories while having fun, and all from the comfort of your front room! It would certainly be more cost effective than going to the gym. The social side of gameplay with the Nintendo Wii creates another plus point also, as the whole family can get involved, removing the ‘isolation’ factor of other video games consoles.

Looking for the perfect holiday gift? The Wii ranked 8th on the women’s top 10 list, receiving 9% of the vote and beating the likes of a new Apple laptop and TiVo.

And the Wiimen lived happily ever after.

The End