Feed: Church of the Customer Blog - AggScore: 40.3

Playbooks and visual explanations

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By the time the New York Giants and the New England Patriots took the field Sunday for their Super Bowl matchup, the players on both teams had read, re-read and rehearsed their respective game playbooks dozens, if not hundreds of times. They'd studied each play via multiple diagrams and photographs, stats and descriptions of assignments for every player on the...

People trust people

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[Click on chart to see larger version.] The latest edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer study just came out showing CEO's in the dog house when it comes to being trusted. Who do people trust? Academic and tech experts, sure. But the biggest movers in the study are "a person just like me" and "regular employee." Look at your 2012...

FedEx's apology: expertly delivered

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We've seen this before: 1) company makes an egregious service mistake and is outed by a customer via a YouTube video, 2) video goes viral, 3) mainstream media picks up the story and amplifies it, 4) PR nightmare begins. This week's culprit is FedEx. A California FedEx driver is caught on a security-camera video flinging a package containing a computer...

The simplest definition of word of mouth marketing

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Nice video from WOMMA on the basics of word of mouth marketing. Tweet

14 new statistics about word of mouth marketing

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The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has a neat infographic detailing the latest stats about word or mouth marketing, online and offline. Source: WOMMA Note: the WOMMA Summit is coming up November 16-18 in Las Vegas. It's a great conference to learn the latest WOM marketing techniques from leading brands and agencies. Tweet

How Nordstrom creates word of mouth around the holidays

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Retailers are scheduling holiday promotions earlier than ever this year, including Costco which started selling Christmas items on September 1. Nordstrom has a long tradition of bucking this trend and promoting their holiday wares after Thanksgiving. Result: people talk about this suprising stance offline and online. (This sign is from 2009 but it is getting alot of play on Twitter...

Steve Jobs

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If you have never seen this video of Steve Jobs's commencement speech at Stanford, today is the day to watch. RIP Steve.

Where do most people talk about brands?

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If you said Facebook or Twitter, i.e. social media, you would be incorrect. With all the (continued) hype about social media, it's still in face-to-face conversations where people discuss products and services the most. As you can see from this survey, even mobile and landline phone conversations (ear-to-ear?) rank very high. Lesson for marketers: have an integrated approach to your...

Creating word-of-mouth for a cause, the Innocent Drinks way

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How do you get your customers to rally behind a cause? Build in a word-of-mouth factor. Innocent Drinks, a UK-based smoothie and juice company, donates 10% of their profits to charity. One way they do this is their annual "Big Knit." They ask customers to knit little hats for their bottles that will be displayed for two weeks at large...

Kicking out unwanted customers, Alamo Drafthouse style

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Two years ago, we wrote about the best theatre chain in the country: Austin, Texas' Alamo Drafthouse and how it clearly warns customers to not talk or text during a movie or "we'll kick your ass out." (Their actual words.) The Alamo maintains its policy with their own funny PSA's that run before the previews. This week, the chain launched...

Hamburger love

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Two new In-N-Out Burgers just opened in the Dallas area and the burger faithful came out in droves. People camped out for two days to be the first to sample the goods and the drive-through line stretched for 2 miles at lunchtime. Check out the video for a woman who was in tears when asked about her love of the...

Your most valued customer

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Ms. Linda may not be the mayor of your coffee shop, but she is one of your most valued customers. My nearby Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf sported this sign inside the store the other day. The barista told me that Linda comes in every day for her small mocha ice blended and her warm oatmeal raisin cookie. I love...

How to buy and sell fans and followers

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It's a lot of work to build a fan base for any person, company or brand. There's listening, ongoing conversation, support, empathy... so much work. We've been thinking there must be a simpler way. Today, my colleagues at Ant's Eye View are proud to announce FanAuction, a marketplace for buying and selling fans and followers for your social media channels....

Top 5 brands that rawked SXSWi

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With a whopping 36% increase in attendees over last year (and 30% increase the year before), the 2011 SXSW Interactive conference was by far the biggest and hottest technology event in the country. Last year was the first year in the history of SXSW that the interactive portion topped the attendance for both music and film portions of the festival....

Two must-read books: Poke the Box, Enchantment

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I'm not sure if it's coincidence but two of my favorite authors of all time just released their new books recently: Poke the Box, by Seth Godin. The first book from Seth's new imprint with Amazon, this book is a manifesto for action. His Baldness implores us to stop talking about what we are going to do and instead just...