Your customers don’t believe you because you lie to them every day

Dave

I recently got a robocall call from a home security company, offering me a free system so they could get a foothold in my neighborhood. I considered it for a moment, and then hung up, even though I want a home security system. Why?

Because I assumed they were lying. Do they really mean free, or are they just waiving some fee? Do I really think it’s going to end up costing me nothing? Clearly not.

Every time I get on an airplane, the pilot lies to me.

If there’s anything we can do to make your flight more enjoyable, please don’t hesitate to ask.

I’ve rung the call bell exactly once in all my miles of air travel, to ask a flight attendant to throw away a half-full cup of water. I had a two-year-old on my hands and nowhere to put the cup. She glared at me as though I had asked her to disrobe and sing show tunes.

How do you think your boss would react if you went into your next performance review and said, “I did everything I could possibly have done as well as anyone could possibly have done it. I am flawless and perfect.”

Yet that’s what most companies do with their marketing and communications. And when a real issue comes up, only then do they admit there might be something possibly that could maybe be ever so slightly better, and now that it’s been raised to their attention, they’ll address it immediately.

Your customers and prospects, especially the ones you want to attract and keep, know as much or more about your products and services as you do. They know the flaws as well as the benefits. They know how you stack up against your competitors. They know if you’re cheaper or more expensive. They know if you’re easier to use, or provide more value.

In every industry I’ve ever worked in, our prospects were extremely intelligent and well informed. When they came to us, they had done their research. They didn’t want a sales pitch; they wanted an honest exploration of whether or not our products could meet their needs. And I’ve been fortunate enough to work for companies who felt confident responding honestly, knowing that we would prevail.

Why is “We’re only human” an excepted tenet of life, but a last resort and an admission of failure when a company says it?

What’s the worst thing that could happen if you admitted to your customers that you know the truth as well as they do, are sincerely working to make things better and value their input in the process?

Could that really be a bad thing?

Now you’re talking my language

Dave

Me: “We’re having a yard sale and we thought we might sell some of your old toys.”

The Boy: “Nooooo! Don’t sell my old toys!!! I still want them!!!”

Me: “If we sell your old toys, we can make money to buy new toys.”

The Boy: “I think maybe we should sell my old toys.”

Are you ready to get simple?

Dave

I don’t consider myself a particularly trendy person, but I do live in a funky little town on the edge of a college town. I walk all over the place for exercise, walk through campus a lot, and I keep my eyes open. I’m also spending a lot of time on Pinterest these days, planning a future wardrobe for when I hit my goal weight. All of these things are causing me to see a trend. Simple is in.

“Forgive me if I’m the 9 millionth person to say that, but I’m trying to look at the larger implications here.”

I live less than a mile away from one of the best farmers markets in the country. All of the food is organic and grown within 50 miles. We’ve been written up in The New York Times, in fact. The man I buy my green beans from was quoted in the article.

The trend in bicycles among the urban hip is for simple, single-speed bikes called “fixies” that don’t even have brakes. Major manufacturers, inevitably, are copying the style, but the coolest looking people in my town are riding bikes that look like they were pulled from a dumpster.

One of the most sought-after sneakers among the cognoscenti is called the GAT “German army trainer”. A plain white style issued by the German army, they have obviously influenced trendy sneaker design for the last few years. You can hunt them down online cheap, or you can buy a designer’s version for $500.

I’m wondering what it is in the Zeitgeist that is causing people to return to the simple, unadorned and honest. It may just be a natural pendulum swing, and I’m sure the economic decline of the last decade played a huge part. When no one has a lot of spare cash to throw around, price and value obviously become a much bigger consideration. But I think it goes deeper than that.

Social media also embodies a more personal and honest style of communication that goes hand-in-hand with this attitude. Whether social media helped cause it or evolved at the right time to benefit from it is something we probably can’t figure out, nor do we really need to.

How does this affect your marketing and communications efforts? It’s no secret how I feel about transparency and openness, and the role social media plays. But are you too complicated for your customers? Does your corporate brand feel simple, honest, personal and valuable? Or complicated, insincere, distant and self-centered?

Are you offering the $50 product that offers real value, or the $500 product that is mostly show? And of course I mean that metaphorically. “Unless you’re in the sneaker business.”

$1 billion for Instagram was a bargain

Dave

There’s been a great deal of controversy about Facebook’s purchase of photo sharing site Instagram for $1 billion. As always, people are heralding it as a harbinger of a new social media bubble.

How can a site like Instagram possibly be worth that much, and how can it add to Facebook’s share value? But that’s the wrong question. The real question is, “How much is the future worth?”

Facebook is in the same league with Google and Apple as a company that transcends commerce and is defining how we live digitally. Steve Jobs didn’t make decisions based solely on immediate gain, as anyone who has read his biography knows. And I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg is making decisions based on share price. “I don’t claim to know anything more about him than anyone else who saw that movie, but I bet they have some interesting board meetings.”

Instagram has changed the way people share and engage around photos, and has brought together photography and mobile in a way that nothing else has. I’ve waited patiently for a good Flickr app for the iPhone. I finally got it with Instagram. I would go so far as to say Instagram is helping define a new visual paradigm for communication.

Facebook has so much money, that, like Google and Apple, they can afford to spend it on buying things that make sense, that are cool, that work, that define the future. Whatever Facebook does with Instagram, they own it now, and no one else will. In Zuckerberg’s mind, I’m sure that sounds like a bargain.

Now, when will Amazon buy Pinterest, and for how much? 2 billion?

What I want in a blogging platform

Dave

I’ve had a self-hosted WordPress blog at dbthomas.com for several years, because I wanted to have control over my content for the long haul, and because, frankly, I thought as someone working in social media, it imparts at least a little bit of geek cred.

These days I find myself using Facebook more than anything, along with a new fascination with Pinterest and a lingering obsession with Instagram. I also find myself coming across a lot of excellent and interesting Tumblr blogs. In fact, when I designed this blog on the Thesis framework, I intentionally wanted it to have attributes of a Tumblr blog. I wanted to be able to post quick photos and thoughts, and share images and videos.

I suppose I could do that, but I seldom do, except for the Daddyblog posts. It just occurred to me this morning what’s missing:

When I go to a Tumblr blog or a Pinterest board or an Instagram photo, I see items that people have shared from other sources, and shared items from people in that network I haven’t yet discovered. Often that leads me to those places and those people, and I find a new source I want to follow. When I do that, those new sources show up, for instance, in my Pinterest or Instagram feed.

That doesn’t happen for me anymore with blogs, because I just don’t get any pleasure out of using Google Reader. I have a lot of blogs loaded into Flipboard, but I don’t read them as much as I used to.

I want a blogging platform that is:

1. As easy to post to “desktop or mobile” as Facebook.

2. As easy to follow people “and be followed” as Twitter.

3. A good bookmarklet and mobile app that makes it quick and easy to grab and share images from the web and photos I’ve taken.

4. Allows for serendipity.

5. Treats images as well as Pinterest does.

6. Allows me to share posts directly to Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. “I know Facebook doesn’t want me to do that.” And not a plug-in that does those things; I want to be able to pick and choose. That’s a check box in Instagram that asks where you want to share your photos, why can’t it be one in a blogging platform?

7. Let’s me easily export my content, or maybe archive it to this blog. Or something. I still have a hard time getting over the idea that any platform I pick other than this one is likely to be gone in five years.

What do you suggest “other than medication for OCD”?