Still, there was an unmistakable cry for more, and being the reader-pleasing whore that I am, well… here are some more innovative billboard ads

So for the copywriters out there, here are a few examples where great copy/message beats clever design and visual puns:

Ouch!  Starbucks can’t be happy with that one.  Doesn’t get much more powerful that that.

And then there’s this:

I love the anti-testimonial on this one.  Compare that to the typical church billboard you might see.

What I love about this one is that it doesn’t focus on making you “aware” of the problem; you’re already aware of the problem, for crying out loud.  It focuses on making you square with your indifference as indicated by your lack of action.  This one probably won’t win any awards, but it IS very likely to spark action by those who read it.

Cheeky Ads: Harnessing the Power of (visual) Scandal

Now compare the previous “power of message and copy” examples to the following billboards and outdoor ads aimed to make maximum use of visual scandal by adding in some plain ol’ scandal into the mix.  Nothing like a hint (or more) of taboo to snag the attention of passers-by.

If you like these ads, I snagged more than a few of them over at billboardom.com and there’s plenty more worth browsing.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

I asked the question: did Fastmac.com bury this information on its site to increase conversion? Well, the folks at Fastmac.com read my story and sent me their official response.

Hi Bryan,

I saw your recent post and wanted to let you know that I’ve updated our site to make it clear that the item is currently sold out.

It was not our intention to mislead anyone.

If you have any other feedback just let us know…we do listen.

The change they made is clearly a step in the right direction. Take a look.

When they finally made the change, it looked good and it will serve Fastmac.com better than its previous version of this page. On the back end, in the account order status section, Fastmac.com could use “back order” as an additional status instead of the “in-process” status that I got.

Fastmac.com could have done worse. We’ve all had much more unsavory buying experiences.

It also could have done much better.

In showing the follow-up e-mail around the office, some of my colleagues were more angry about Fastmac.com’s short and almost defensive response. At the least, Fastmac.com should have tried to save the sale, with some sort of offer to put a battery on hold for me until after they were in stock, or even offer a small discount if I came back. (Keep in mind, I’d still do business with Fastmac and continue to recommend the site to others. It’s just that I would like to share lessons learned from this one hiccup.)

Readers also felt Fastmac.com should have done more on its site and in its response to the situation. Readers (many of them retailers) shared an assortment of opinions; most agreed that Fastmac.com should have done more and that I wasn’t asking too much.

Here’s a spattering of the responses:

I agree completely that the information about it being out of stock should be next to the add to cart button or in the shopping cart. However even if that information is presented, not all customers read it anyway. We put stock info right above the add to cart button, in the shopping cart, and give them an estimated ship date in the shopping cart and on the checkout confirmation page and the purchase receipt. In this situation you described it definitely should have been more clearly labeled, that is just misleading. — Keith Winter

While their placement is certainly not choice, they did provide you with this information before you plunked down your $99. You simply chose not to read the whole page of info, so the burden really rests on you in this case in my opinion. — Rick Dendy

I realize companies would still prefer to take the order even if it’s out of stock but why not make it clearer and add alternatives. Change the call to action language to “backorder” and add options to reserve without purchase or be notified when back in stock. This would probably save many of the sales they would have lost through being more transparent and, more importantly, it would not risk the brands reputation. — Brian Bond

Though I would consider having availability status clearly posted a best practice, what bothers me most about your experience isn’t the lack of clear out of stock posting but the bad customer service. In a situation like this an email stating out of stock and estimated delivery time could have saved you waiting the week out in vain. — Karen Daniels

Sure you can get a few conversions here and there from less than stellar service, but in the long run you lose. — MobyMom

I was a little underwhelmed with the dry response you received from the customer service representative. It may as well have been written by an android. — Molly Martinez

And finally Pat, an online retailer, shared what his company does and why:

We’ve set up all product pages to show either the quantity in inventory or the ‘product is out of stock’ message right next to the add to cart button. If a customer tries to add the items to cart, they get an out of stock message. We don’t allow backorders but we are working on adding functionality to ‘email me when this item is back in stock’.

I feel kinda strongly about this after placing an order last holiday season — it was for items that had to be personalized so the order took me forever to complete. Not once did the Web site mention that the items were all on back order. I happened to see an ‘estimated shipping date’ on the emailed invoice and called to find out about the backorder.

That was sleazy.

The interesting thing about Pat’s story is what motivated him to make this a policy on his product pages — his own experience and ability to empathize for those in a similar situation on his own site. It’s a wonderful place to start optimizing. Think of the worst things you’ve experienced on other sites, and then make absolutely sure you aren’t committing the same crime on yours.

I’ll wrap up with more of reader Molly Martinez’s comment:

Transparency is definitely a quality customers appreciate. And if companies don’t catch on to that, they are bound to lose customers in droves at a time.

Can I get an amen?

Even with his over the top UI fixing skills, Patrick recognized the value of an outside opinion. He is a real advocate for our services. He was recently recommending OnTarget to a colleague and the person responded that before he started with OnTarget he wanted to “get with his programmer” and work out their own to do list of what needs to be fixed on the website. While he applauded the do-it-yourself initiative, Patrick explained the challenge with doing that in an email that he allowed me to share:

Speaking from my own personal experience, I think it would be unwise for you and your developer to make a list of “obvious changes” — uncoached — for several reasons:

1) Both of you are new to this.  You cannot underestimate experience.

2) You’re going to end up with a LONG, unprioritized wish list.  Been there, done that.  And it causes paralysis.

Again, experience after seeing the results of hundreds of tests and using that to list out first ONLY the low hanging fruit cannot be underestimated.  Again, each month that you see even the slightest improvement to conversion rate means that you’re seeing and increase to the top line.

3) I have tested ideas that I was *sure* would improve conversion.  After traffic went by, I saw I was wrong.  But “enough” traffic can takes a month or more depending on the page/scenario.  A coach is going to use their experience to focus on what they’ve seen work most often.

4) I always say that each resource in every company costs $100/hr.  It’s a rough estimate, but it seems to work.  So the two of you spending 5 hours each working on the list costs the same as the experts telling you precisely where to start in the first month.

5) Part of the OnTarget engagment is to determine what your developer can’t touch without extensive work.  So that conversation will have to happen no matter what.  The total risk is $3000 (there’s a 3 month minimum), but the upside is almost without limit.

I say all this because I don’t want you to get lost in the weeds going down a “do it yourself” path. Thoughts? Patrick

How many DIY projects do you have waiting to get done?

If you would like to talk to Patrick about this or any other related questions, feel free to email him at Patrick at editweapon . com  or send him a tweet at @editweapon.

I’ve noticed from many of my marketing colleagues that money for nothing is the order of the day; maybe it’s the hard times. Seth Godin blogged yesterday about getting rich quickly, Brian Clark blogged about making money from blogs, and just this week I saw and replied to Mary Schmidt’s status on Facebook say “Mary is working on a fun client project – how to grow/get the word out without spending any money? Hmmm…”

The common thread is that some companies are just begging marketers/ vendors / consultants etc. to lie to them. We get that too, demands we guarantee 100%+ increases in conversion rates without them having to invest hardly any time, resources or money.

There are NO magic bullets. When things come fast and easy they leave even easier more quickly.

Isn’t word of mouth (”WOM”) free? WOM isn’t exactly free, but it can be. If you want to generate WOM do something remarkable for your customers. After all, WOM is driven by things people can remark on, hence the term remarkable. Focusing on how your businesses can be remarkable rather than creating remarkable marketing campaigns is way harder but it produces permanent long-term results.

There will always be new shiny object peddlers and marketing guru charlatans who entice desperate, greedy or ignorant people with happy talk. I wish that wasn’t so, but it is. Please take my advice; if something sounds too good to be true then it is.

=======

P.S. Would you like to know what I tell potential customers?  You might consider it self promotional so stop right here if you don’t care to read it.

I’m going on record to say that if you want to increase your conversion rates There will be no gimmicks, no empty promises, no broken budgets and no illusions.

 I won’t guarantee a thing. I won’t blow smoke.

 I won’t even try to convince you. FutureNow has the track record, the skills and the experience but it could be useless to you, unless you commit your time, money and resources.

That may sound harsh but if you are still determined to improve your conversion rates then you can set the pace, the budget and your goals. FutureNow will help you stay on target.

If you’ve ever shared office space with colleagues you really liked and respected, you’ve already twittered.  You’ve already gotten a “feed” of interesting thoughts, updates, recommendations, etc.

Twitter simply allows you to do that with people in other offices/cities/countries.  Think about what you would and wouldn’t share with your office-mate before sending it out on twitter:

• Participating in a group conversation?  Yes, but try to make sure the conversation has value to the rest of the people on your feed and/or make the conversation private.  If I’m your office-mate, I don’t want to listen to your full volume phone conversation with someone else – unless of course the conversation is really that relevant or interesting.

• Occasionally letting people know about cool stuff you’ve created?  Yes, but don’t make it all about you all the time.  No one wants to hear a constant stream of chest thumping at the office.

• Sharing cool websites, blog posts, online articles, etc?  Sure, but don’t flood my twitter feeds with them.  Do the winnowing for me so that I know a link from you will really kick butt.  This doesn’t mean shy away from tweeting offbeat links you think are really cool (let you’re freak flag fly high, baby), just refrain from forwarding on links that you don’t consider must-reads.

• Posting cool or motivating or thought provoking quotes?  Meh.  Every now and then, isn’t too bad, if the quotes are striking, rather than just “inspiring,” but don’t get either too “successories” nor too Despair.com on us.  No one wants to share an office with either a relentlessly upbeat Pollyanna or a “life sucks and then you die” cynic.

• Sharing passing thoughts?  An interesting thought a few times a day is welcomed.  A thought an hour clogs my feed – unless of course your thought has some real substance behind it, which brings me to…

• Sharing insightful comments that (sort of) cohere into a big idea?  Hell, yeah!  If you’re not already following her, Kathy Sierra does this, and it’s her twitters that I look forward to reading most.  Imagine sharing an office with a consistently prescient or incisive thinker who generously shares her perspective.  Who wouldn’t want that?

Of course, when the whole twitter-sphere is your water cooler, you can do more than just impact the conversations that pop up within you “office” – you can seek out people who routinely tweet on the topics that most hold your imagination captive, and, with a bit of tact, introduce yourself and join their twitter conversations.  Here’s one way to do it:

Step 1: Go to a tool like http://search.twitter.com/ and search on frequent topics of conversation for you (or you can use the built in search in an application like TweetDeck)

Step 2: Scroll through the results till you find an insightful comment.  Then check out there twitter page, see if the keyword represents a common topic for them, and introduce yourself and add meaningfully to the thought or conversation.

• While it goes without saying, for clarity’s sake, let me emphasize that you should never, ever promote yourself or your business when doing this.  If you can’t join the conversation for the sake of the conversation and NOT simply as a front for self-promotion, then forget about Twitter altogether.

Step 3: If a good dialogue develops, you can add them to your twitter feed, subscribe to their blog etc.

Step 4: You have now expanded your grapevine network while enjoying interesting and intelligent tweets.  Just like the offline world, great conversations rarely happen by accident – it’s up to you to seek out and surround yourself with intelligent people of shared interests.

My colleagues at FutureNow have an eclectic love for music and are always on the hunt for next best thing to listen to.

What would you be listening to? What would help you plow through your work?

Please share an unusual favorite song, artist, album or even a playlist. Also please indicate what you do to pay the bills.

Oh, and by the way, since several of us received an iPod Touch this holiday season. That is the item that topped our list of gifts for web geeks. I even got these cool Etre Touchy gloves that will keep my hands warm this winter, but let my fingers interact with my touchscreen. While we are at it, what is your favorite app for your iPod Touch (it seems ours is Wurdle)?

*This post was inspired by my friend Daniel Waisberg on the Web Analytics Discussion group and Apple’s new DRM free music.

Check out the video.

Editors Note: While we are talking viral videos, have you seen possibly one of the best “experiential” ads online?

So why would I want to read reviews when I could examine the stroller first hand?

Because I was a yet-to-be-first-time parent and I knew that what really separates good from mediocre strollers are the things that only become apparent with longer-term use and/or at least some parenting experience.  I wanted to know things like: does the stroller hold up to continued use; how easy is it to load in the car; are there things that start to come in handy that I might not already know about, like one-handed operation, extra cargo room, tight-turning radius, etc.  In short, I wanted to know the kind of things I’d be more likely to read about in reviews than I’d be likely to see or think about by taking a 5-minute stroll down the Babies”R”Us aisle with no baby in the stroller.

As it turns out the persuasive appeal of long-term thinking isn’t new to the internet age.  In Breakthrough Advertising, Gene Schwartz specifically advises copywriters to “Stretch Out Your Benefits in Time.”  But while product copy can do an adequate job of that, it’s nowhere near as credible as a customer review that mentions a product’s enduring or longer-term benefits.

So it was with an overpowering sense of deja vu that I read Holly Buchanan’s post on gender differences in product reviews.   Seems men are more likely to mention the product’s immediate usefulness and performance while women are more likely to talk about a product’s longer-term ability to fit into her lifestyle, which might explain why the stroller reviews leaned heavily towards long-term benefits.

My question and suggestion is this: what is your company doing to solicit / elicit long-term product reviews from your customers?

Seems like this would be especially important if your product is in the higher-quality, higher-price-point part of the curve.  If your product shines best in long-term performance, what are you doing to ensure those traits and stretched-out-in-time benefits are showing up in your customer reviews?

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.

Joe Nocera lists 14 books he likes in no particular order in “The Best Business Books Ever?”

“Liar’s Poker,” by Michael Lewis (even though I’ve since become convinced that the anecdote that gives the book its title never happened).
“The Devil’s Candy,” by Julie Salamon. (Greatest dissection of the movie business ever written.)
“The Box,”, by Marc Levinson. (Hard to believe you can write a great book about the rise and importance of the shipping container, but he pulled it off.)
“Indecent Exposure,” by David McClintick. (Published in 1982, it single-handedly created the business narrative genre).
“The Go-Go Years,” by John Brooks. (The best book by the most elegant writer to ever make business his subject.)
“The Kingdom and the Power,” by Gay Talese. (Yes, the subject is The New York Times, but how can you leave it off any list of great business books?)
“Titan,” by Ron Chernow. (Chernow’s magisterial biography of John D. Rockefeller.)
“Do You Sincerely Want To Be Rich,” by Godfrey Hodgson, Bruce Page and Charles Raw. (Hard to believe that this committee of authors could write a sensational narrative about the rise and fall of Bernard Cornfeld, but that they did.)
“Disney Wars,” by James Stewart. (”Best corporate psychoanalysis I’ve ever read,” says John Huey.)
“The Informant,” by Kurt Eichenwald (Forget his Enron book, “Conspiracy of Fools.” This book, about the strange saga of Mark Whitacre and Archer Daniels Midland, is his masterpiece.)
“Father, Son and Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond”, by Thomas J. Watson and Peter Petre (The only great ghost-written C.E.O. autobiography ever written. No one else — not even Lee Iacocca or Jack Welch — even comes close.)
“When Genius Failed,” by Roger Lowenstein. (Another one of those “how-did-he-do-it?” books: this account of the fall of Long Term Capital Management, which by all rights should be a tough slog, is crackling good read.)
“Greed and Glory on Wall Street,” by Ken Auletta. (This book, about the crack up of Lehman Brothers, has a great cast of characters, starting with Steve Schwartzman.)
“The Smartest Guys in the Room,” by Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean. (O.K., O.K., they are former colleagues of mine, and I was deeply involved in editing this book — but I have to say, I think it turned out pretty well!)

I like this list a lot. Now I’ll check if the books are available in Kindle format yet.

It’s time to engage in some word of mouth marketing. Do you have any other business fiction books to recommend? Please let me know.

How can we market better by learning from the attraction principles of fireworks and how it has been anchored to July 4th? What if anything can we apply to our businesses.

A friend recently sent me a link to “The Breakup” on Geert’s blog, where I discovered that they released the sequel just a couple of days ago. Check it out for yourself: “Inspiration, anyone?”

I still have to ask how this ties into Microsoft Digital Advertising. Don’t get me wrong. I love the sequel. I love the message. I’ve watched it a dozen times already.

Sure, most of us can connect the proverbial dots, so long as they reside on the same page. But if you watch this video out of context (which is how we watch most viral videos), what is your next step? Sure, they tell me where to go at the end of the film, but how about a few more clues? What should I expect when I get there? The minimalist approach to messaging might work for some, but folks with money to spend need a bit more incentive than just a trail of clever breadcrumbs, don’t you think?

. .

UPDATE: Jeff Sexton explains 3 Things Viral Videos Must Do to Make Money.

Seriously, the oceans are in horrible shape, and it’s your fault. You did it, Supply, Demand, Pollution and Overfishing. And if we don’t take ownership now, our brands, our children, and our collective appetite for seafood may never forgive us.

I’m not trying to bum you out, but the next time you feel the need to impress clients or co-workers with your sushi-ordering skills, you should at least know whether you’re eating sustainable fish. (Either way, you’ll have to kiss your Chilean Sea Bass goodbye.)

Perhaps you’re wondering, “What’s all this hippy, save-the-Earth stuff got to do with online and multi-channel marketing optimization?” Great question, and I’m glad you asked.

By now, you’re familiar with the environmental catch-all term “green marketing,” but what you may not realize is that “blue marketing” is a relatively untapped way to differentiate your brand while raising awareness for an urgent problem that affects everyone. Besides, it’s not easy being green, because, when everyone’s doing something “green,” it loses meaning fast. (Seth Godin has a great post on the coming backlash over green marketing.)

A quick anecdote to make my point: The other week, I saw two containers of soy milk — original flavor, same brand, same size — sitting next to each other in the fridge at my corner store. One of the containers had a green cap, the other didn’t. I picked up the container with the “green caps for green energy” promotion, turned it around, and saw that they were promising to donate 30 kilowatts of “green power” (solar power?) if I entered the number from under the cap into the database on their website. Pretty smart, right? Well, yeah, but when the first words I read are, “Can one little green cap change the world? Just maybe.” I have my doubts. Even if their campaign is a great idea, it’s lost amid the over-branding of “green.”

It’s sad, but as much as we care about the planet, Broca is tuning out.

Making Waves

World Ocean Day happened on June 8 and, if you’re like me, you didn’t think to commemorate it. Still, I have been paying attention. Did you know that if we don’t curb overfishing, pollution and global warming trends, there will be no more (edible) fish in the sea by 2048?

It’s true. Here’s how I found out:

The URL at the end caught my attention, so I went to Oceana.org/matingseason.

Oceana is the world’s leading ocean conservation group, and their website is full of blue ideas. You can become a WaveMaker, tell your grocer to buy sustainable fish, find out why you should say no to shark fin soup, and you can even download a pocket seafood guide so you always know if you’re ordering something sustainable and low-mercury.

Not concerned with saving the fish? How about saving the humans? As the climate of the ocean changes, so goes the rest of the world. Anyone who’s lived through the East Coast heat wave these past several days will find it easy to believe that 11 of the warmest years on record have happened in the past 13 years and ocean temperatures are rising.

How to Avoid Drift Net Marketing Tactics

Whether your eco-friendly marketing initiatives are focused on land or sea, here are a few ways to build trust, encourage word of mouth, and keep it financially sustainable (read: the other “green”):

1.) Be specific — What’s the exact dollar amount you’re trying to raise? What’s the exact percentage you’re donating, and to whom? Why are you donating to that cause and that specific non-profit?

2.) Campaigns are best — It’s so much easier to track and manage special promotions at the campaign level than it is to track it across the entire organization. By focusing on campaigns, you can see very closely how and why your customers and clients are responding to your environmental marketing efforts at each touch point across channels.

3.) Don’t guilt trip — Nothing is a bigger turn-off. People donate because they want to, not because you’ve nagged them to. Be careful not to come off as holier-than-thou about whatever cause you’re promoting. (I was at an event to raise money for drinking water in sub-Saharan Africa the other night, and the CEO of the company that was hosting the event was yelling into the microphone, acting as though attendees — who’d already donated $100 just to be there — were being cheap if they didn’t raise their hands to sponsor a $5,000 well, and literally shushing the crowd like they were in a grade school library. Whatever the online equivalent of that is, don’t do it.)

If Sharks Were Marketers…

Ideally, giving to a great cause should be the icing on the cake that encourages fence-sitters to convert to happy customers. Whatever you do, don’t go the drift net route and merely advertise your brand’s inner green- or blue-ness as though it’s self-evident. Each year, tens of millions of sharks are killed by drift nets while marketers like us roam free.

Hmm… If sharks had better marketing support, maybe we wouldn’t have an irrational fear of them.

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.

According to MediaPost,

…a new study from Canadian research firm Pollara, self-described social media users put far more trust in friends and family online than in popular bloggers, or strangers with 10,000 MySpace “friends.”

Of more than 1,100 adults polled in December, nearly 80% said they were very or somewhat more likely to consider buying products recommended by real-world friends and family, while only 23% reported being very or somewhat likely to consider a product pushed by “well-known bloggers.”

But what if your friend happens to be a “well-known blogger”?

When Bryan swings by the office between conferences — as he did this morning, after speaking at eMetrics Summit last week in Toronto — there’s always some new website, product, blog or book he’s recommending. This time around, he had a stack of books. “Pick one,” he said. So I grabbed a copy of Evgenii “Geno” Prussakov’s Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes.

“It’s a quick read,” Bryan insisted. “Lots of great research in there.”

I haven’t read it yet, but the first page I flipped to had a chart, illustrating that “86.6% of online users would actually follow recommendation links/advice sent to them by their friends and peers.”

Before I had a chance to share that with Bryan, he was already onto the next thing.

“Have you seen TripIt.com yet,” he asked. “It’s brilliant. You can upload your entire trip itinerary — not just flights, but everything — and email it or text it out to friends and family in one step.”

Sure enough, I put down the book and went to TripIt.com to check it out. (Sorry, Bryan, but I researched it because you’re a friend, not because you’re a “well-known blogger.” )

UPDATE: More interesting stuff on this topic from MediaPost.

Bryan Eisenberg bought the camera last year and was so happy with its performance that he’s been spreading the word around the office ever since. After doing a routine Google search, we noticed — unsurprisingly — that there are a lot of bidders for the term “Sony DSC W80″.

What we soon found was that, much like Dell, the landing pages these other e-tailers were taking visitors to illustrated everything from the good, to the bad, to the PPC-ugly.

Plenty of options…

Looks like there’s a lot of competition for this search term. If a searcher clicks one link and doesn’t find what they’re looking for, it will be easy for them to hit the Back button, to see if the competition makes learning about it — and eventually buying it — easier.

When customers have this many options, getting your link on the front page of Google isn’t enough; you have to bring them as far into the buying process as you can with the information you are given. Lets take a look at how well the different options presented here do at bringing the searcher closer to the purchase.

Make sure the Landing Page works

Walmart.com had one of the top 3 paid search results. When we click their link, we assume we’ll be taken where we’ll easily find the product that was advertised. Instead, the customer is brought to a non-working page (curiously titled “walmart9.com”), forcing them to click the Back button.

Obviously, Wal-Mart needs to update this URL. While it may have once led somewhere, it now only brings frustration to the camera-seeking masses. They’re losing sales and paid search credibility with anyone who clicks it.

Walmart.com surely has a massive PPC budget to oversee, and updates like this can slip through the cracks. But it serves as a good reminder to keep tabs on your paid search ads. If you notice one is converting poorly, or not at all, you should at least make sure the landing page works.

Give us a Brand or Category Page (at least)

Thankfully, Vanns.com doesn’t give us a broken link, yet it merely brings us to the homepage. This won’t do.

Since I typed in a specific brand and model number, I expect to be brought to a Product Page — or, at the very least, a Brand Page or Category Page. They have exact information about the product I’m looking for and they just drop me off on the homepage? Leaving it up to the visitor to first find a tiny “Digital Cameras” link, then navigate through the site to find the Product Page, is an unnecessary gamble, especially since the paid search link promised “Sony DSC W80 in stock!”

Why not take me directly to the Product Page instead of making me scan the homepage just to find a Category Page?

Sony’s word against Bryan’s?

You’d think the company that made the product would have something to say about the camera, even if it’s discontinued — which, apparently, it is. At this point, the halo from Bryan’s positive word-of-mouth is beginning to crack. (”Thanks a lot, buddy. Does this camera really exist?”)

SonyStyle.com is missing out on an opportunity here. Although they no longer make the camera, they could provide links to similar cameras, especially if there’s a newer versions of the same model — which there is. They could use this page to show improvements that were made to the newer model. This page provides visitors with nowhere to go besides Back.

• Manufacturers: It takes time to get the word out about your products. If you don’t take advantage of it, you’ll lose some sales from late adopters (a huge chunk of the market).

• Retailers: Don’t forget to capitalize on positive word-of-mouth from older model numbers. Turn would-be customers for those older products into buyers of the newer ones. If you still offer popular discontinued products, leverage that advantage with targeted Pay-Per-Click ads and Landing Pages.

Unscramble the Search

Finally, the product I’m looking for — and it’s right on the landing page. NewEgg.com has it down. They even show visitors the newer model on the same page!

NewEgg removes all the obstacles a visitor might go through to find the product (they’ve already clearly told Google) they’re looking for. They place visitors in the perfect place; this is where customers are in the buying process when they search for “Sony DSC W80″. It was a little harder to find this camera than it should have been, but ultimately, NewEgg shows how to get the most out of your PPC ads.

New research shows that fewer people are clicking Pay-Per-Click ads on Google. In past discussions on this blog, readers have expressed that they no longer use PPC ads because of numerous bad experiences. Perhaps that’s why so many companies out there aren’t optimizing or paying attention to their PPC ads, which — soon enough — affects how useful they are for consumers.

If Pay-Per-Click is part of your online strategy, make sure your ads are optimized. Otherwise, you’re leaving money on the table. PPC can be very valuable when used properly. But if you neglect it, and the experience isn’t useful for customers, these campaigns can negatively effect your business.

To be truly PPC- and Landing Page-savvy, here’s how to appeal to all buying modes.

. .

[Editor's Note: Want to convert more customers with your Pay-Per-Click campaign? Contact us.]

According to Advertising Age, 26.4 million people spent a total of 2,600 years at ElfYourself.com, turning themselves and unsuspecting family members and coworkers into virtual dancing elves. But chances are that unless you’re a marketer, blogger, or anyone else who might have bothered to notice in the first place, you’ve likely forgotten that OfficeMax was behind the “Elf Yourself” campaign.

Don’t take my word for it. Ask anyone who’s aware of Elf Yourself — and pronounce it carefully when you do — whether they can recall who sponsored the campaign.

Most of the answers I’ve gotten thus far (”Starbucks?”; “Barnes & Noble?”; “Wasn’t that Staples?”) have been guesses.

As OfficeMax VP of Marketing and Advertising, Bob Thacker, sold it to AdAge,

“We were looking to build the brand, warm up our image. We weren’t looking for sales. We are third-place players in our industry, so we are trying to differentiate ourselves through humor and humanization.”

Really? Not even looking for sales? Wow. If that’s the case, why even bother linking the campaign’s site to OfficeMax.com?

The article goes on to suggest that since many of those who searched for Elf Yourself around the time used the phrase “OfficeMax,” that must somehow mean their branding effort paid off. And that makes sense — so long as you ignore that it seems most people discovered the dancing elves via email and instant messenger, not search.

Get Elastic’s Linda Bustos sparked some debate about all of this, asserting that,

“Brand awareness is extremely valuable and important, especially in OfficeMax’ competitive industry. It might not result in immediate sales, but it should impact long term market position. Social media marketing (including blogging, podcasting and interactive viral campaigns) is a long-term strategy. It’s not a newspaper circular, it’s not PPC advertising, it’s not email marketing. Like celebrity endorsement or a Super Bowl ad, it won’t necessarily drive sales during a specific time period.”

Absolutely. But should the successful use of cute gimmickry — so long as it attracts a large, albeit random, audience of people who aren’t in buying mode, to a site that links to homepage, for a business that sells office supplies — be considered an automatic win?

So, millions of people go to a site that has little (no offense, elves) to do with the brand. No attempt is even made to engage would-be customers in a buying scenario (”Elf Yourself and save 10% on last-minute holiday treats when at OfficeMax.com”). No… nothing? That’s branding!?

One of the folks who commented on Linda’s post makes a telling point about the SEO logistics at play:

[...] this is search engine dynamite! The domain elfyourself.com (which is linked to by nearly 30,000 other websites) links directly (and only) to the officemax.com homepage. Conventional internet marketing dictates that this will have a huge impact on officemax.com’s ability to rank in Google on competitive terms. I’d love to see their stats – I bet it’s a big win.

Rank well on “competitive terms” — for whom? Elves? In a lot of other circumstances, this would be a great point, but in this case, it’s yet another example of why “conventional internet marketing” wisdom is misleading. Getting the extra traffic feels nice — and often impresses the boss — but there’s one thing that always feels better: Money.

Still, let’s see how much traffic Elf Yourself is driving to OfficeMax.com:

Not much of a traffic boost, is it?

But, hey, this wasn’t about traffic or revenue — it was about fun, right? Not for Toy New York, the agency that developed Elf Yourself. Nope. As Linda pointed out to me in the comments on her post, they’re the ones who are probably benefiting the most from this.

Looks like she’s got a pretty good point…

How about shareholder value? Kevin Horne points out that this is the second year in a row that the elves stuffed coal in the OMX stock price:

[...] in 2006, the company actually reported a decline of some $7 million in retail sales in its fourth quarter, 11 million “elf visitors” notwithstanding. Or notwithclicking either, apparently. Talk about squandering an opportunity. Two years in a row.

Oh well, at least OfficeMax got some national press coverage out of this. Let’s see what happens in this clip from Good Morning America:

Don’t get me wrong. I like the elves. It just seems that, since they’re already such hard workers, why not put them to work? (Even Santa’s got that figured out.)

Before you elf yourself out of millions in missed revenue from a viral marketing campaign, ask yourself: What good are millions of visitors if they don’t buy millions in goods?

Sometimes it takes better planning.

Here’s just a small excerpt:

In the past few years, Watts–a network-theory scientist who recently took a sabbatical from Columbia University and is now working for Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) –has performed a series of controversial, barn-burning experiments challenging the whole Influentials thesis. He has analyzed email patterns and found that highly connected people are not, in fact, crucial social hubs. He has written computer models of rumor spreading and found that your average slob is just as likely as a well-connected person to start a huge new trend. And last year, Watts demonstrated that even the breakout success of a hot new pop band might be nearly random. Any attempt to engineer success through Influentials, he argues, is almost certainly doomed to failure.

“It just doesn’t work,” Watts says, when I meet him at his gray cubicle at Yahoo Research in midtown Manhattan, which is unadorned except for a whiteboard crammed with equations. “A rare bunch of cool people just don’t have that power. And when you test the way marketers say the world works, it falls apart. There’s no there there.”

And this is not, he argues, mere academic whimsy. He has developed a new technique for propagating ads virally, which can double or even quadruple the reach of an ordinary online campaign by harnessing the pass-around power of everyday people–and ignoring Influentials altogether.

Not everyone appreciates the mind bomb Watts has tossed into their midst. He says one music executive pronounced his work “bullshit” on the spot. But a growing group of marketers believes Watts is radically altering the way companies attempt to produce trends. “He is changing the way people think about the way we communicate,” raves Robert Barocci, president of the Advertising Research Foundation. “He’s one of the best thinkers in the industry today.” But is Watts right?

Whether you agree or not, the article is worthwhile reading for every marketer. Sneeze all over us and let us know what you think about Watts’ ideas.

Does it change your mind at all about how viral marketing works?

He understood that, in an increasingly transparent environment, being truly customer focused would matter more than telling customers about how great your service was.

Recently, Joe Nocera of The New York Times told millions of people that Amazon puts customers first in his part article, part testimonial, part morality tale, “Put Buyers First? What A Concept.” You should read it in full but here are a few excerpts:

“They care about having the lowest prices, having vast selection, so they have choice, and getting the products to customers fast,” [Mr. Bezos] said. “And the reason I’m so obsessed with these drivers of the customer experience is that I believe that the success we have had over the past 12 years has been driven exclusively by that customer experience. We are not great advertisers. So we start with customers, figure out what they want, and figure out how to get it to them.”

Anybody who has spent any time around Mr. Bezos knows that this is not just some line he throws out for public consumption. It has been the guiding principle behind Amazon since it began.

[...] Amazon says it has somewhere on the order of 72 million active customers, who, in the last quarter, were spending an average of $184 a year on the site. That’s up from $150 or so the year before. Amazon’s return customer business is off the charts. According to Forrester Research, 52 percent of people who shop online say they do their product research on Amazon. That is an astounding number.

[...] Indeed, in a presentation to analysts in late November, the company’s chief financial officer, Thomas J. Szkutak, showed one slide that read, “Over $600 Million in Forgone Shipping Revenue.” And that was just for one year.

Wall Street, however, has never placed much value in Mr. Bezos’ emphasis on customers. What he has viewed as money well spent — building customer loyalty — many investors saw as giving away money that should have gone to the bottom line.

[...] There is simply no question that Mr. Bezos’s obsession with his customers — and the long term — has paid off, even if he had to take some hits to the stock price along the way. Surely, it was worth it. As for me, the $500 favor the company did for me this Christmas will surely rebound in additional business down the line. Why would I ever shop anywhere else online?

Clearly, it was worthwhile for Amazon to cancel its advertising.

Am I advocating that you cancel your ad budget? Perhaps. How are your products, service and customer experience doing?

Your customers’ delight matters even more tomorrow than it did yesterday, especially online.

When a visitor comes to your website, will they brag to their friends about what they bought and who they bought it from, or will it be somebody else they rave about?

Can you tell me why they shouldn’t brag about you, your products, and your service? After all, it’s the customer experience that matters. So why aren’t they buying?

Do you need help figuring out why they don’t buy from you? We can’t fix your products or services but we can help you improve your online customer experience, increase your conversion rates and help you understand your customers better.

I asked, “How is traffic trending? Are we ahead of last year?”

“Roy, I don’t measure traffic.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Last week one of my salespeople made 63 sales presentations and closed only 24 of them. That tells me 39 people bought somewhere else. And right now they’re telling all their friends why they bought where they did. They’re showing off their purchases and explaining why they didn’t buy from us.”

“Good point.”

“That salesperson is no longer with us.”

“You’re really serious about this.”

“Today’s close rate is the most reliable indicator of tomorrow’s traffic. When close rate is high, traffic increases. When close rate begins to slide, traffic soon begins to slide as well.”

The same applies online.

When a visitor comes to your website prepared to buy — not everyone will buy right away, of course — and isn’t converted by your sales process, they are likely to buy from one of your competitors. When they brag to their friends about what they bought and who they bought it from, it won’t be you they rave about. It’s the customer experience that matters.

Can you tell me why they shouldn’t have bought it from you?

(Do you need help figuring out why they don’t buy from you? We can help you increase your conversion rates and understand your customers better.)

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. ]

Taking a moment to answer a few questions between demo requests, here’s what Agency Fusion CEO Brett Derricott had to say about the campaign:

We’ve been working closely with designers and agencies for over 5 years now. Although we’re a technical company, we love being involved with creatives and our success has come from understanding their needs, tastes, frustrations, etc. So, this campaign is something of a tribute to designers for all of the headaches they experience at the hands of their sometimes-clueless clients.

The campaign is only 6 days old and we’re already over 100k unique visits (most of that traffic has been since Monday). We’ve had more than 350 demo requests and t-shirt sales are really picking up as well.

Agency Fusion hit on a very sticky topic among their target, designers. (A web designer friend sent me the link to MakeMyLogoBiggerCream.com yesterday, L’ing OL via instant messenger.) But they didn’t stop there. No, they kept using magic words to delicately switch the topic to how they can help the real problem.

Exhibit ‘A’

Exhibit ‘B’

Congratulations to Brett and the rest of the Agency Fusion team. You’ve given us all a great example of how combining a great concept with spot-on web copy and calls to action can fuse into a truly persuasive experience — without the big logo.

[*Results may vary. If bigger logo lasts more than four hours without boosting your conversion rate, seek marketing help immediately. A bigger logo may not be the best way to treat limp persuasion. Be sure to test your assumptions before insisting on "no white space," or using a ridiculously big logo, fluffy web copy, or fluorescent colors in general. Other rules and regulations may apply.]

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…

But all that’s changed. Today, they have a brand-spanking-new fleet of mid-sized jets staffed with would-be friendly people who, bound and gagged with corporate red tape, can’t do much to help the customer even when they want to. Sure, the fares are lower than ever, but even with off-peak flights for as low as $1 (yes, really), it’s still not worth it. Why? Because, according to their current CEO, Ben Baldanza, the customer is always a cheapskate — and wrong.

Maybe it’s time to put a dimmer on those red light specials. They say that “a fish stinks from the head,” and if there’s ever been any proof, its this email Mr. Baldanza sent to a customer by accidentally hitting “reply to all” on his BlackBerry:

“Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.”

But, wait! There’s more!! Here’s their Director of Communications, Alison Russell, on a separate incident where blogger Alex Rudloff told readers, “Do Not Fly Spirit Airlines“:

“We wouldn’t respond to a blog post. This goes back to the larger question of the veracity of everything you read on Internet blogs. Our customer service is great.”

Oh, really?? More on my horror story with Spirit 2.0 in a moment. But first, let’s see what Google has to say about the company:

Here’s what Rudloff had to say in his blog post:

“So, instead of losing $5 on a customer who has every right to be angry, I’ll write this blog post and tell all my traveling buddies to add Spirit Airlines to their growing list of airlines to avoid,” Rudloff wrote on Aug. 4. “If Google works their magic like they usually do, at least one of the 4,931 daily searches for “Spirit Airlines” will turn up this result and save someone the headache (and hopefully end up costing Spirit Airlines $6 or more).”

Rudloff later told the Orlando Sentinel that:

“I think ultimately that customers have to speak out and they have to engage in word of mouth . . . That’s what the market responds to.”

Cool! What a great segue…

All Spirit, No Soul

Last May, I was flying from New York (LGA) to Detroit (DTW), as I often do for Memorial Day weekend — my favorite time to vacation in Detroit. I was running late. The car service was half an hour late, and traffic wasn’t moving, thanks to jackknifed truck on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. After paying top dollar to sit in a car for two hours, it was clear that I’d miss the 30-minutes-before-departure check-in deadline. So, I called Spirit Air’s 1-800 number, only to find there was no “customer service” option. So I waited on hold for, say, 20 minutes until I eventually hung up and called back, pressing a random — and incorrect — selection in hopes of reaching a human who could tell me what to do about the situation. When I finally reached a customer service rep, she told me to go to the airport and speak to the agents at the check-in counter — where I waited for (you guessed it) another 30 minutes.

After all of that, I got to the airport just before the 30-minute mark, but there was a line — a long one — and not enough agents to serve it. When I got to the front of the line, the agent told me that nothing could be done. If I wanted to book another flight, there was one leaving in an hour, but it would cost as much as my entire round trip. I kindly informed this person that I’d be willing to pay a charge — as is typical with other cheapskate airlines — to switch the ticket, but that buying a whole new one, just for a one-way leg of a round-trip flight was absurd. Then, when I asked for a number for customer service because I wanted to complain about the event — after all, I’d been a customer for 10 years — the guy hands me a card with the same freaking number I’d used earlier to get someone who couldn’t help me! When I brought that to the agent’s attention, he said, “I’m sorry, sir, there’s nothing I can do about it” — a common refrain at today’s Spirit Air.

So, Northwest Airlines to rescue (for once), and I was on my way to Detroit with a pounding headache and the world’s dumbest $200 missing from my bank account.

On the way back to New York, I was actually looking forward to flying Spirit. “If this isn’t a good trip after that nonsense,” I thought, “I’m so going to blog this.” Checking in with a smile, I handed the agent my ticket. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gorell, but we don’t have a seat with that name on it for this flight,” he said. I told him that was impossible and that I wasn’t imagining the ticket in my hand. Then it hit me: They’d canceled my entire round-trip ticket because they couldn’t serve me in time!

Turning beet-red, I calmly told the agent of my snag in New York. As I retold the story, one-by-one, all four agents at the desk came up to me, visibly upset by what I had to say. I let them know I was a blogger for a company that specializes in planning and optimizing the customer experience, and that I couldn’t believe the airline had tied their hands from doing anything of value for its “passengers.” Then a crazy thing happened. They actually encouraged me to blog about it! As it turned out, everyone at the counter seemed upset with the company’s new policies, too. I could tell they were biting their tongues, until…

“We used to be #1 in customer service,” said one agent. “Now we can’t help people.”

Her co-workers looked me in the eye and nodded. It was such an honest moment that I actually bought a one-way ticket from them… for the flight I’d already, supposedly, booked. (Oh, and since this was a last-minute one-way flight to NYC, you can be sure I got red flagged for security screening.)

For months, I let it slide. After speaking with the good people at Spirit in Detroit, I worried that blogging about the experience might put their jobs at risk. That is, until I saw Mack Collier’s post, which hipped me to the fact that a lot of other bloggers out there are also convinced that Spirit’s CEO — and not its employees — is what’s putting their jobs at risk by causing this fish to stink:

Alex Rudloff

BL Ochman’s WhatsNextBlog

Bold Interactive

CEO Smack

Darwin PR

Gadling

Jaunted

Josh Hallett

Lawrence Salberg

Perpetually Befuddled

Propeller

Reality Bites Back

Sarah and the Goon Squad

Search Engine Guide

Stuck on the Palmetto

The BOOT

Transmission

Upgrade: Travel Better

Sorry, Mr. Baldanza, but you can’t fly faster than word of mouth (or blog).