Talkin' Bout a Revolution

My friends will tell you one of my annoying, though helpful characteristics is I'm always praising my favorite brands and ranting about my least favorite. Once you get me started, I can't shut up about, say, In n' Out Burger (and I'm not alone on that one).

This quality makes me a perfect fit for the new consumerism which is word-of-mouth marketing through online forums like Facebook, Twitter, and StumbleUpon. Online word-of-mouth recommendations generally can't be bought. They are genuine and spontaneous and sometimes we don't even realize we're essentially advertising when just observing something is cool enough to tell our friends. A book I read recently on this topic (Groundswell) writes, "Face it. Marketers no longer dictate the path people take, nor do they lead the dialogue. Social technologies have revved up [the] word-of-mouth dynamic, increasing the influence of regular people while diluting the value of traditional marketing." Indeed the term "word-of-mouth" is even outdated, since most of what we share these days comes from a keyboard or mobile keypad.

A recent viral video on YouTube about the Social Media Revolution flashes one jaw-dropping statistic after another, including the statistics that 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations (and the video's footnotes state it's grown to 90% in 2009) and only 14% of consumers trust advertisements.

Not everyone is as particular or verbal a consumer as me, but with the recession bankrupting and laying off Americans of all ages, most people are being more careful with impulse purchasing, using the high school math they thought they'd never use to compare price savings in the grocery store. You'll see folks (including me) staring at price tags for 10 minutes in a daze and counting quietly out loud to themselves "that's 19, carry the 1"... so we tell our friends whenever we see a deal, even a little one.

A few weeks ago when 6 of my friends simultaneously forwarded me a Baja Fresh free burrito coupon that was posted on Facebook on a Tuesday afternoon, and then I witnessed as my neighborhood descended upon the Baja Fresh parking lot, families brought six copies of the coupon for each member of the family to get one, the single line cook could not even keep up with the orders that evening, but no one seemed to mind waiting an hour for a free burrito...I knew Baja Fresh was on to something.

For me, though, a recommendation takes more than just being free or tasting good or delivering on an expectation. I live for my iPod but don't have any kind of devotion to Apple as I do some other companies who have interacted with me, treated me well, and asked for my feedback. There's a good reason consumer surveys always end with..."How likely are you to recommend us to a friend? Very likely? Somewhat likely? Neither likely or unlikely? Somewhat not likely? Not at all likely?" To be a word-of-mouth-worthy brand, it takes some random acts of incredibleness as well as personal interest in your consumers' voices, and I'm very pleased to see many companies are getting this and seizing the opportunity.

Here's a simple example. Last week I went into Whole Foods to pick up a bite to eat for lunch. I noticed one of my favorite brands, Izze had a new flavor called "Birch" which happened to be "two for 6 dollars" and also had a coupon attached to the package. I snooped around the label to see if there was any description of what Birch tastes like, didn't see any description, and decided to ask an employee. Couldn't find an employee. Spent about 30 seconds walking to the checkout, debating whether to risk the $3 on this product or not. At the checkout, I asked the clerk if he knew what Birch was, and while shrugging casually, he answered "No but if you're not sure if you'll like it, you can try it on us," and proceeded to put it into my reusable bags without ringing it up. What impressed me about this act was not even that it was free, but that the employee did it with such ease. He didn't have to ask a manager, didn't need a special coupon, didn't need my email address, didn't have to think twice before offering it. And I'll tell you, that's the kind of customer treatment that makes me remember, talk about it, and go back.

Some of the brands I not only mention in daily conversations, but would give my left arm to support because they are so consistently great include Frontier Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Newman's Own and Newman's Own Organics, Pixar, Google, Netflix, Target, Izze (Sparkling Juice), Papa Murphy's, Sunflower Market, Chipotle, Oprah and The Angel Network, Toyota, Costco, In n' Out Burger, Mad Greens (salad lunch spot in Denver)... I'll add to this post as I think of more.

Some of the brands I have had ruinous experiences with, not surprisingly to most of you reading this, include United Airlines (that's another whole post), Ticketmaster, the Post Office, the Unemployment Office, JP Morgan Chase (I called to say I was thinking of leaving their bank, they responded "OK, your account is now closed, is there anything else I can do for you?"), Qwest (it takes a lot for me to hold a grudge but they were so bad in 1999, I swore off ever using them again), Best Buy (numerous employees there have told me they don't bother to carry much selection of cd's anymore -- their logic was, why bother when you can buy them online or download -- which is fine with me, I'll go support Twist & Shout Records instead)!

I'm always listening, what are your favorites and least favorites?

G n' R is back (well, in my life)

I have been totally abandoning my blog for twitter lately, and I feel bad... By the way, a stretch goal / resolution next year is to ban "totally" from my vocab. It's a bad habit, I use it about 40 times a minute. It's filler and probably worse than "um", but I've grown so accustomed to it. I'm thinking most of you wouldn't recognize my voice without it, but it's time for it to take a hike. Totally. (Sigh).

There are some things that are just too long to twitter though, and here's one of them (unless you have a 140 character suggestion):

A few weeks ago I visited Monterey and since rental cars don't usually have iPod adapters, I brought along some cd's, which is always an interesting change of pace. Who listens to full albums all at once anymore? It reminds you of all the tracks you forgot about that your iPod doesn't lean toward frequently.

Since I was visiting high school friends, I brought some cd's that remind me of those olden days (92 - 96) including Guns N' Roses Use Your Illusion I & II, which if I had to pick just one album that brings back memories, it would be... well, I still can't pick one. It would be UYI 1 & 2. Alanis Morrissette was the album of my senior year whether anyone liked it or not, but before that, I was hooked on G n' R like any rightful angst-ridden teenager in the 90's, and I can't remember ever being tired of listening to them. I didn't give up appreciating G n' R as road trip music over the years, but for some reason in the transition to iPod-dom, I only uploaded about 3 songs from each UYI cd (possibly the reason was storage space, my 30 Gig iPod nears capacity every time I add something) so listening to the cd's in full in the rental car while doing 90 on the highway (wondering why everyone else was driving so slow) was great, and I was really taken aback by a few things:

1) I still know most of the lyrics by heart, having not heard these songs in at least 10 years, especially the F-laden ones ("Double Talkin' Jive Get the Money Muthafucka 'Cause I Got No More Patience" just comes right back to me like it was "Row, Row, Row your boat").

2) The songs seem just as good and in fact, as relevant as they were then (I truly expected they would seem lame, dated, and overindulgent now)

3) Axl sure had a hell of a lot of anger built up. Not just one album's worth, but two full albums and 30 total tracks of hatred, bitching, cursing at, and dissing people behind their back? It's a testament to his (now forgone) artistry that he was able to translate that into 30 tracks of decent music, in fact, at least 20 tracks of amazing music instead of buckling down and killing someone.

It's no wonder G n' R will never top these. I personally was not looking forward to Axl's "comeback", Dr. Pepper induced or not, since he was always 4 hours late for concerts. Although Velvet Revolver (Guns n' Roses without Axl) kicked ass, I somehow doubt Axl without Guns n' Roses would be worth waiting 4 hours for.

Anyway that's my non-twitterable musing about music that's probably not seen the light of day, let alone a flash of airwaves, for the past 10 years. In fact it's nearly 20 years since the albums were first released!! Now that, I must say, is the most $#%&*! shocking of all.

College Essay (BU)

I just found my college entrance essay! Totally amusing, especially how cynical I was for a 17 year-old, but I must say I agree with myself and in fact, the state of the TV programming and "news" is much worse 13 years later. This is it, unedited:

As the decade of the nineties has progressed, the American public has consistantly grown obsessed with malice, dishonor and deceit. A little boy growing up in this generation will not eagerly watch the television and dream of flying for NASA or becoming an all-star athlete. Today's little boy is more familiar with VanDamme and Stallone movies than Disney cartoons and if he plans to follow the footsteps of any of his heroes, he will have to wonder how many divorces he will have by the age of 40. Monsters who haunt a little girl's dreams at night aren't fictional anymore, but actual figures and images of whom today's children are constantly warned about--strangers, kidnappers, abductors, rapists, molestors. Most adult awareness has also warped into constant suspicion these days, as many people would have more faith in the Psychic Friends Network than in any politician.

The justification for this lack of trust lies not in the reality of today's world, but in portrayals of reality. Even in strictly news magazines, headlines tend to reek of scandal and covers tend to bear bloody photographs. Television networks are littered with talk shows and many programs considered "journalism" report inaccrate rumors, pollute the public much like tabloids, and accuse and exagerate so excessively that they make the McCarthy trials seem mild. Although the media tends to portray everyday life as a soap opera, they can't be blamed when they are merely appeasing the public's insatiable appetite for violence and scandal.

It would seem the most that can be done for this problem is to encourage awareness in both children and adults. To attack this modern mentality of distrusting and discrediting everything, society would have to begin an almost revolutionary change in what children are exposed to. It is not sheltering that we need to install, but just the opposite. Children need to understand and believe in reality instead of developing confusion and ignorance from false images they are blatently shown all their life. The excessive amount of television viewed by Americans validates the conclusion that what is viewed can filter one's perception of the world to the point of sheer ignorance. Although programs that focus on gossip (such as those titled "My Mother Slept with My Ex-Brother-in-Law's Gay Lover") contribute to common misconceptions, it would not be practical to suggest that the programs be prohibited or ignored.

A feasible approach would be making education of current issues a requirement for children in school and incorporate factual news programs or periodicals as part of homework. Also, news programs should try creative styles of broadcasting or advertising to create an image different from the boring or undesirable reputation a typical couch potato may associate with the news. As a potential journalist, I feel the media is obligated to portray reality accurately, for journalists are the most responsible for creating or at least contributing to public knowledge (and opinion).