A while back, I wrote a post about companies I’d had experience with on Twitter – the good, the mediocre and the bad. I got some feedback from three of the companies I mentioned, plus a comment from a guy named Adam Waid with a much worse experience. Now that I’ve had another interesting interaction with a company on Twitter, I figured it was time for another post.

I bought myself a new Bluetooth headset about a month ago, after losing my previous one. I probably use it for a total of 1 hour a week, at the most, and I don’t walk around the mall with it on my ear as a fashion statement. So I went to Best Buy and found a low-end Jabra (BT2070) for $29.99, I think. After getting it home and trying it for a while, I just couldn’t get it the speaker part to stay in my ear. It kept falling out so I had to hold it in with one hand to hear people, which kind of defeats the point of a Bluetooth headset.

Not feeling like driving up to Best Buy, I posted a message @Jabra_US asking if I was doing something wrong or if they had any tips. Within an hour or two, I was trading messages with Wayne (part of the @Jabra_US team). Wayne did some research, asked me a couple questions, and finally sent me this DM.

Effective, friendly, personal communication - perfect.

So I sent him my address, not sure what I’d be getting. We traded a couple more messages, including one after 11 PM (Wayne, you work too hard!). And then a package arrived with a brand new, Jabra BT2080 arrived at my door – a much nicer headset that costs almost twice as much at Best Buy. Wow. They sure didn’t need to do that. They could have apologized and recommended I take it back to Best Buy, and I would have thought that perfectly reasonable and been fine with it. But instead, they went above & beyond with fast, friendly service, they took care of my problem, and they’ve now got a customer who will recommend them to others and probably not buy another brand in their category ever.

To the @Jabra_US team (especially Wayne), I say, as a consumer, thank you! And as a marketer myself, I say, thank you for another example of a company that truly “gets it.”

Jabra did not ask me to write this post or do anything in exchange for the replacement headset; I’m posting this because I’m suitably impressed.

Like 95+% of blogs out there, I’ve been sporadic at best with updates. Though I consider myself a pretty good writer, I’m not phenomenal like my good friend Paige Worthy so great ideas to write about don’t always come to me. Figured it was time for a few reflections though, now that I’ve hit my five-year milestone at ER Marketing.

Five years ago, I had just finished my 90-day full-time “trial” at ER. I interned throughout second semester, graduated in late May and started on the trial then. My first day was July 17, 2005 and I already realized that I’d just graduated from a highly-rated school of journalism and I knew…next to nothing. But thanks to Rachel Hack, my former boss during my internship for AAF-Kansas City (it was the Ad Club then), I’d landed at a perfect spot to start my career, with two bosses that gave me the opportunity to learn, succeed and grow…as well as failing when necessary.

I failed big time in May of 2006, enough that I met with my two bosses on that Monday morning and told them I couldn’t meet the higher expectations they’d set, and I left the company. For the next eight weeks, I searched for jobs, sat around being lazy far more than I should have (short-term vision and a generous severance will do that to a foolish 23 year old) and, eventually, started thinking about what I really wanted to do next. About that time, desperation began to sit in as the new opportunity I thought was just around the corner didn’t happen. I stayed in touch with my former bosses at ER throughout those eight weeks, and when they asked me to return to the company, I was relieved and optimistic that things would be different this time around.

For the past four years, they have been different. And as my sixth year at ER Marketing begins, I’m excited for what comes next and I know that, when/if I ever leave ER, telling Renae Gonner and Elton Mayfield I’m leaving will be harder than anything I’ve done so far. The respect & admiration I have for them is tremendous, and continues to grow. Thanks Elton & Renae.

With that, I’d like to share ten things about this business I wish I knew five years ago:

1. You know nothing…and that’s ok.
2. Be curious, every day.
3. It’s ok to raise your hand and say, “I can’t do this” or “I don’t understand this.”
4. Yes, we have the Internet, iPhones and social media, but the business hasn’t changed that much since David Ogilvy penned this classic guide to advertising – the core truths still hold true.
5. Find a way to measure it, whatever it is, whenever possible.
6. Ask somebody to grab a beer and learn something new – your peers are always ready to help.
7. Big clients & big agencies aren’t the only way to have fun in this business.
8. B2B can be as fun as B2C.
9. An internal campaign that unites a company can be more valuable then the greatest Super Bowl ad you’ve ever seen.
10. Manage Expectations of your peers, your bosses and your clients…every day.

Here’s to the next five years – cheers.

In the mail today, I received a box from Gillette, containing its newest razor – the Gillette Fusion ProGlide; I found a free razor offer on one of my favorite sports blogs, All Left Turns (a NASCAR blog), and signed up to try it out. When I got the box (seen below), it brought back memories of the fall of my senior year of high school, soon after I turned 18.

Nicely done packaging with a coupon offer, just what you'd expect from P&G

What does every boy in this country do at age 18? Register for Selective Service, just in case we ever need to bring back the military draft. It’s sort of a rite of passage, though not as exciting as voting, buying cigarettes or going to a strip club. And soon after that registration, all those boys receive a new Gillette razor in the mail – for me, it was a Mach III but I’m assuming they give Fusions today. What a brilliantly simply piece of marketing.

All Gillette does is buy that list of boys, and send them a product sample. Once they try that razor, they’re customers because it’s a great product, at a premium price, that’s truly worth the extra cost.

It’s just my opinion, but I bet this ongoing initiative drives more business for P&G , with better ROI, then any broadcast campaign with Tiger Woods/Roger Federer/Thierry Henry, silly NASCAR YoungGuns promotion or any social media strategy they run. I wonder if Gillette has any idea what percent of those samples get turned into additional cartridge sales, and how many are regular customers 1, 5 or 10 years down the road. Other than following a sample audience and projecting those numbers nationwide, I’m not sure how they could track it. But then again, they’re P&G and have a marketing budget bigger than the GDP of some countries, so maybe they have more precise numbers.

This is truly marketing at its core – identify the target audience and get the product in their hands. It doesn’t require celebrity endorsement, over-the-top promotion, YouTube videos or any silly consumer research about “online conversations.” To quote The Ad Contrarian’s blog post from earlier today, sometimes, “marketing people take the obvious and make it incomprehensible.” Gillette, thankfully, hasn’t let that happen – brilliantly simple.

When I’m thinking about clients and our next strategies for them, I’m going to try and keep this example in mind – hope you do too.

Since my blog is titled “Managing Expectations”, I thought I’d share a perfect example of mis-managing expectations by Foursquare, a favorite brand of mine. First of all, some context; I’ve been a Foursquare fanatic (though I use Gowalla too) since October 2009. For proof of my fanaticism:

• I’ve done enough additions, updates, etc. to be a Superuser Level 1
• I’ve used that privilege to make sure every Lowe’s, Home Depot, Sonic and Ford dealer in the Kansas City metro is listed perfectly.
• Anytime I see someone enter a venue’s name incorrectly (using lower case letters, put a location descriptor in the name of the venue (i.e. Home Depot – Gladstone), etc., I fix it.
• I’ve talked to countless people about the service and know that a minimum of 10 have signed up soon after talking with me about it.

I would venture to say I’m in their top 5% of users, in terms of active engagement with the brand. ad2 Kansas City (part of AAF-Kansas City) is hosting its 12th annual Ad Wars event on May 6th at The Cashew. It’s an advertising trivia contest attended by 150 or so members and other professionals.  Tons of fun and a great opportunity for Foursquare to gain more highly-influential users, since most of us are talking to clients every day that could potentially be part of the service.

Using Foursquare’s official support function, I sent the following message on March 25:

Hi Foursquare,

Like what’s happened in most cities, I bet, the creative/advertising community have been the early adopters and driven lots of growth for Foursquare. I’m a member of the American Advertising Federation – Kansas City (AAF-KC), and we’re one of the bigger chapters of AAF. Within our AAF chapter of about 600 members, we have a group called ad2 for members under age 32. Every spring, we put on an event called Ad Wars, which is an advertising trivia contest for teams of up to 10 people. Total event attendance is about 150-200 people. The event will be on May 6th and take place at the Cashew (http://foursquare.com/venue/209819).

I’m telling you this because this year’s Ad Wars will be the 12th annual and we want to get Foursquare involved. I’m thinking it’d be awesome to get a custom badge made and available only to people that check in at the Cashew during our event. We’ll be tweeting, Facebook-messaging/posting, emailing, etc. about the event and this would be a fun added reward for coming. Plus, I don’t think anyone has organized a Swarm event in KC and this is our chance for that too.

So can we make this happen? I hope so – it’d be a fun way to reward users in KC and get even more signed up. Thanks in advance for your help!

It’s now been over 30 days and this is the status update I get on the support page:

I gave it some time, knowing how busy they must be with SXSW, app updates, etc. and posted follow-up messages on April 1 and April 14…nothing.  I posted a message on Foursquare’s Facebook wall and have been posting Twitter messages @foursquare on a regular basis…nothing.

Let’s sum this up – I’m one of their best customers and I had a simple idea to help them generate more business at little to no cost to them.  I used their official support system to contact them, as well as their two prominent social media methods.  It’s been over 30 days since I initiated contact. And I’ve got NOTHING.  Talk about your mis-managed expectations.

I was going to ask Gowalla for the same type of thing…then they added that exact functionality available to everyone – check that out here so I guess Ad Wars 2010 will be featured on Gowalla and not Foursquare.  Highly disappointing for this Foursquare fanatic.

I’ve decided it might be fun to do an ongoing series of short posts whenever I learn something interesting, during the day – could be about politics, marketing, history, etc.  So here goes…

The Kansas City Public Library does a fabulous job of putting on free community programs at lots of their locations. Just about every day there’s something going on, whether a kid’s program, a concert or a lecture on a serious topic. Check out the events calendar here. Tonight, I went to a program at the Central Library (10th & Baltimore – downtown) about the cultural, theological and historical roots of terrorist ideology.

I thought I’d share just a few bullet points I learned, along with links to more info.

• The two most-cited Muslim scholars, by terrorists today, are:
  • Ibn Taymiyyah – gained notoriety during the Mongol Invasions in the 14th Century
  • Sayyid Qutb – mid-20th century Egyptian author of 24 books, also known for his intense disapproval with American life
  • According to Bill Braniff (tonight’s speaker), each of them believed Islam had lost its way with God and could gain favor again by returning to the core tenants of the Quoran.
• There’s a difference between “Islam” and “Islamism” (great article on differences here).  Islamism is a belief that just about everything in life should be strictly governed by Islam. It’s becoming a primary ideology in the Middle East today, according to Braniff.
• The term Salaf – it means “pious predecessors” or, basically, founding fathers (more on it here)
  • A sect of Islam today are “Salafists,” who, according to Braniff, ignore the last 1,400 years of research, study and interpretation of the Quoran.  Basically, they’re fundamentalists.
  • Within the Salafist sect, there’s “Salafi/Jihadists” that take the Salafist beliefs to the extreme
• Al-Queda used to be a large, bureaucratic organization with corporate structure and even benefits plans/vacation days!  And now, there are less than 400 full-fledged members of Al-Queda in Pakistan right now.

If you’d like to read more, check out the Combating Terrorism Center - I learned a lot and I’ll be doing some follow-up reading for sure.