This took me to The Guardian and The Times, who both offer fully downloadable versions via a months free trial, followed by a rolling charge of £9.99 per month. Such a fee may well be attractive to committed mobile users, who are comfortable with an e-device as their preferred choice for reading. It also makes sense to make online editions free for those already subscribing to print versions, which makes access more versatile and so likely to increase frequency of use.

In short, my experience of these media brands is that the Telegraph and New Yorker reached out to me with flexible, pay-as-you-go offerings that made access both affordable and suitable for my needs. In contrast, subscription media had the feel of a mobile phone monthly commitment – buying more than you need, largely in order to avoid even higher one-off costs.

• “It’s tough to win new business” = Celebrate and WOW new customers – yes, it’s never been easier for customers to shop around and compare your product or service to your competitors. With web access not just super fast but also increasingly accessible on mobile devices, shoppers can make carefully judged buying decisions wherever they are, based on reviews, price, availability, and so on. But this also means that when a new customer does make a purchase, such a hard-won sale is a bigger triumph than ever before. So don’t let that pass you by….or the customer. Surprise them with an unexpected extra benefit, treat them with an extended warranty, incentivise them to buy again…soon. By working harder to improve repeat sales and the lifetime value of the customer, you can help offset some downturn in overall customer volumes.

• “My marketing spend gets me less these days” = customer advocacy and word-of-mouth is free! Well, OK, not quite free, as you’ll have had to impress them with your proposition to start with, but I’d view that kind of proposition effort as an investment, which pays dividends many times over. The key point here is that, unlike traditional media spend which is increasingly fragmented and cluttered, earned media activity like customer recommendations, positive stories and comments are both influential and poignant. Customers’ own accounts of their experience of a business are seen as more authentic than advertising of course, even if not everything is flattering to your brand. And where negative comments ARE made, it’s an opportunity to seize the moment and show how your firm both listens and acts on feedback.

• “My customers only want to tighten their belts” = so be the brand to help them! It’s hardly surprising that buyers (that includes B2B as well as B2C) are seeking ways to save money right now and make existing purchases go further. One of the foundations of experiential marketing thinking is to recognise this desire in the context of their lives and business, rather than your own. In practice, this means proactively offering ideas and tips for extending the value of your goods and services in customer terms. For example – is your product perishable? Then offer ways to extend its shelf life, or ideas to to use up those last few portions to avoid it going to waste. What about the packaging? One ‘rule-of-thumb’ is that the more your firm spent on the packaging in the first place, the greater the opportunity it could be re-used for something else. And if that extends the life and visibility of your brand on that packaging, so much the better. Be imaginative – remember that great ideas tend to end up getting shared by their proud owners and users these days in social media..

In tough times, it’s easy to get despondent, especially when some of the tried-and-tested marketing techniques you’ve used for years are no longer as effective in today’s economy. But brand marketers can seize the initiative, by embracing some of these challenges in a fresh way.
Most of all, be positive – if you can win and delight customers (new and existing) in these austere times, just think how much potential there will be to extend their loyalty as the economy starts to improve. Think of it as priming the marketing pump with time-release activities that will still be benefiting your bottom line when your competitor’s short-term media blitz is long forgotten….

Sadly, the review shies away from the ‘elephant in the room’ – that the High St proposition simply isn’t compelling anymore to very many people. We like the convenience, the multichannel access, the pricing, the range and the freedom that out of town, internet and mobile shopping offers. Unsurprisingly, we prefer not to sit in traffic approaching clogged High Streets, (buses are just as affected by this too), or pay parking charges for items that could just as easily be delivered. Home delivery is greener too, and slicker delivery windows are removing the need to wait in all day. Instead, we can make a trip to somewhere that’s rewarding, that offers a distinctive, valuable and desirable experience. This could be located where the High St is now, but Mary’s ideas (such as a National Market Day) simply demonstrate how piecemeal her proposals are. It has the rose tinted ambition of a Jubilee Street Party that feels good for a couple of hours, but really changes nothing.

High Streets in need of a raison d'etre

We need a High St proposition that works every day, not once a year. For me, the starting point for achieving this is a foundation on what our towns really desperately need: affordable and environmentally friendly housing. This is precisely the kind of redevelopment that could rejuvenate central town locations. It’s a far more radical solution than the Portas Review, but it makes more sense. If future community space was anchored around modern housing, the ‘retail’ mix would include restaurants, bars, entertainment, creches, gyms – all the things that Portas fleetingly mentions in 2 pages at the back of her report, but set in the context of peoples’ real lives, rather than dreaming up a reason for it all to exist, based on a romantic return to Victorian shop-keeping.

And whatever the redevelopment at a local level, it should be designed to complement major shopping malls, not belittle or undermine them. Janice Turner, in last weeks’ Saturday Times, offers a real world example of this, when going Christmas shopping at Westfield with her mother: “an ordinary town centre would have been impossible, with its distances, crowds, no parking. But in the London shopping centre, we had lifts, loos, we could borrow a wheelchair. My Mother bought plenty, whilst I shopped in my new modern way – making a mental note of things to buy, ignoring the queues and going home to order them online.”

The irony is that Mary Portas is clearly FULL of ideas for retail. Anyone who has watched her TV shows will realise the imagination and intuition she has for this industry. But rather than take pity on the High Street, by artificially propping up its out-of-date infrastructure, I’d rather see her report used as evidence that our town centres need to be primarily places to live, not shop.

Regular visitors to this site will know that we have a particular interest in Gen Y or the Millennial Generation, so we’ve been out in the run-up to Christmas, watching them shop, both in High Streets and malls, as well as on-line.

What have we learned? Here are a few clues……..

1. We’re here anyway – unlike the Baby Boomers who have made special, dedicated trips and plans for gift buying, Gen Y tend to meld their Christmas shopping into what they were already doing, and where they already were. For example, gift ideas and requests for suggestions came through friends on Facebook, often surfacing ‘in-the-moment’, rather than as a task to be tackled in social media. (Owners of  ‘sponsored’ ads in Facebook, take note.)
2. Find An Item, Find a deal – once a gift idea appeals, Gen Y expect immediate choice and availability to buy. Even whilst continuing with other on-line tasks, they will quickly find a retailer, assess options – colour, size, ability to personalise, payment & delivery options. But again, less like Baby Boomers or even Gen X, many will then happily add in a price comparison or voucher-code site afterwards to make sure they get “the kick-back I deserve”. Loyalty to a retailer is hard-won from this generation. They tend to identify more with brands than where to access them.
3. Get It On Display – in physical stores, we were struck by how Gen Y expect all product availability options to be on-shelf. Whilst older people might ask store staff whether additional stock is in the stock room, Gen Y are more likely to simply go somewhere else. We quizzed this with them afterwards and found a simple reason: they have grown up with the transparency of web shopping, and the idea of having to fight to find their size, their colour, etc. is very unappealing, almost unnatural. Unless they want that item really bad, expect them to find alternatives. Oh, and don’t be surprised if they vent their irritation on social media too.
4. Why Call when you can Tweet? – back in the virtual world, we found that when Gen Y have questions about an item, they much preferred to tweet their followers (or even a retailer direct) than call a Customer Service line. In particular, they like the fact that they can hold multiple conversations this way whilst carrying on other tasks at the same time. Compare that to a telephone call, often being held in a queue, navigating IVR and paying for the privilege and you quickly see why Gen Y is such a smart shopper. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Gen X are catching up here, with as many as 1 in 4 now using online communities too to gauge product suitability (Source: BIGResearch)
5. Wishing and Hoping – Gen Y may be a savvy shopper, but many don’t have the disposable income to actually make a purchase. We saw a lot of window-shopping (on and offline), having a real affinity for a brand, and perhaps longing for someone to buy them this item. The reality of today’s economy is that across Europe and the US, jobs for Gen Y are scarce. Retailers and brands need to take a long view with this generation, and to be patient with their attempts to woo a sale. Lead indicators of brand loyalty with Gen Y will be positive sentiment in social media – likes, re-tweets, followership and so on. Brands should be rewarding and nurturing this Gen Y crowd, not always for today’s purchase, but for future affinity and Christmases to come!

Demanding though Gen Y can be, the good news for retailers and brands is that, by meeting their needs for customer service, you’ll be impressing and exceeding the expectations of older Gen Xers and Baby Boomers too. It’s true that some of the on-line services may not be utilised that much by these older groups yet, but that is changing fast.

Want to find out more about how to attract Gen Y to your brand? Contact rick@customerfaithful.com

So now it’s time to make some broader comments about app function and the user experience. Here’s my 3 tips:

1. Get In My Mind, not my face – apps are not a web browser. They should have a specific purpose, and the brand behind them should be humble enough to realise you have other things going on in your life besides the application! A good example of this is MapMyRun. Its task is simply to track your route (run, bike, whatever) and capture some key stats about it like time, pace, elevation and so on. Once it’s switched on, you don’t need to look at it, or play with it. You simply get on with your workout, and check in again at the end. It doesn’t bully you for attention, beep or chime for interaction. Brands should decide what the end outputs are for the user, and the benefits they will bring. It’s akin to Seth Godin’s wise words on permission marketing – don’t interrupt unless you have to and certainly not without asking first.
2. Integrate social media, theirs and yours – many apps today (and other online platforms) provide ways to ‘publicise’ user activity via Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and a heap of other communities. For example, Amazon enables you to tell the world which book you’ve just bought. I can ask MapMyRun to tweet my followers with my workout achievements. Offering this in-app integration is useful as it saves time for users, and there’s usually a branded tagline within the tweet to promote the provider too. So far so good, but too few providers integrate their own Twitter service. For example, the excellent Argos app includes its own Twitter feed, chirping out deals and promos, but doesn’t enable the user to directly communicate with it. Such customer enquiries are valued within a website environment, why not an app too?
3. Ease My Burden – one of the great things about smartphone apps is that they take up no more (physical) space in your pocket, whether you’re carrying 5 or 50. That’s important when it comes to user experience in the wider context. Every loyalty card I add bulks out my wallet, each additional key on my fob drills a bigger hole in my pocket. So if an app can ‘hold’ something inside it, that saves the user having to carry it physically, that’s a real plus. A good example is mobile boarding passes, launched in late 2008 by a handful of airlines like Air New Zealand and American Airlines, and now adopted by over 30 carriers. Another favourite is the SBB Swiss railways app, which removes the need to ever carry a timetable ever again (lots of imitators in other European countries but none quite as good I think)

The things that people carry are important to them – if your app can become part of that set, with the added advantage of weighing nothing extra, it will become an indispensable part of their lives. For apps, that’s heaven!

Of course, we’re happy to oblige, by introducing Peter Mac. We discovered his portfolio at the beginning of 2011, and were drawn to the style and composition shown in some of our favourite examples here (the cover of The Citroenian still our fave!).  In early summer this year, we commissioned Pete to reflect the work we do in retail, healthcare and insight, in particular by picking out the subtle interaction between people, places and products.

Readers may be interested to know that Pete’s illustrations have been used in a recent animation for Bob Geldof’s Charity, “One”, as well as being exhibited as part of Images 35: Best of British Illustration 2011 at the Bankside Gallery London, next door to the Tate Modern.

To find his website and more work from his portfolio, check out http://www.peter-mac.com/

Steve Jobs led Apple for the better part of 30 years.  Jobs consistently promised and produced more and better technological devices, without looking backwards or worrying that there might not be ‘enough’ (technology, demand, disposable income) for his next big thing.  Capitalizing on the Internet’s reach and countless individuals with a knack for developing apps, Jobs’ devices tap lifestyle needs for connection and upgrades.

What enables some service providers like Bear to transform process, technique and hope into a tangible product?  And what enables a producer of consumer goods like Jobs to enhance the flow of information in such a way that the tangible devices are an expression of the consumers’ value for intangibles such as curiosity, connection, and cool?

Aside from talent, my guess is that both share a commitment to building something, something ambitious, despite forces that might tear it down.  There’s a fierceness and a fearlessness to that.  But moreover, there is no room for scarcity.  You can’t provide a safety blanket if your efforts are limited to a 50 minute therapy session.  And you probably won’t outpace your competitors if your smart phones cut corners and leave customers looking elsewhere.

Atul Gawande

The healthcare industry has its share of inspiring leaders too.

In his essay “The Bell Curve,” Surgeon and writer Atul Gawande explored what makes some hospitals and doctors more successful than others.  He visited the Minnesota Cystic Fibrosis Center, amongst the best in clinics treating this condition .  What he found when observing Dr. Warwick, the Center’s director of 40 years, was “intense drive and constant experimenting.

Gawande reports that Warwick “believed that excellence came from seeing, on a daily basis, the difference between being 99.5-per-cent successful and being 99.95-per-cent successful.”  No scarcity of consistency or ingenuity allowed.  Gawande extrapolates,  “Many activities are like that, of course: catching fly balls, manufacturing microchips, delivering overnight packages.”

All of us have to deal with bottom lines and deadlines, where scarcity (in terms of time/ money) is real enough.  But those who push to be the best stay relentlessly focused, never doubting that they are sufficiently empowered to build something that will last.

It wasn’t so long ago when a new mantra came to dominate the manufacturing industry across the globe. At the time, Total Quality Management (TQM) was viewed as a way to improve the productivity of a process, by involving everyone in the value chain to pay close attention to each detail. TQM recognized the balance between each link in the chain being a potential risk to achieving the desired quality, but that also the resulting TQM culture inspired a positive step-change in consistency that consumer brands could leverage to drive customer confidence and loyalty.

The same concepts, when applied to healthcare, can achieve similar results, as proved by the work of Dr. Atul Gawande, surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and author of ‘The Checklist Manifesto’.

Gawande was all too aware that, with the complexity of modern surgery and as many as 4000 medical procedures being conducted annually, the sheer volume of knowledge required is huge – too much for an individual and so usually delivered by surgery teams.

And by their nature, such surgery procedures often throw up unpredictable events, adding risk to the operating theatre and the patient outcome. So, to try and manage such risk, Gawande sought out an industry whose whole existence depended on dealing with such occurrences.

Boeing Everett Factory

He went to the Boeing aircraft factory, where they operate over 100 checklists a year to help pilots handle unpredictable situations whilst flying. They focus on ‘critical killer items’ and create lists to help prevent them from happening.Inspired, Gawande started creating similar checklists for surgeons, based on this thinking, including basic things like “introduce everyone in the theatre to each other by name before incision is made” and “make sure an antibiotic is given, and that blood is available”

He also added team communication checklists such as describing to everyone in advance “the objective of the surgery” and “the expected blood loss for the procedure”. He called it “a recipe for making a group of people think ahead, and only afterwards, proceeding.”

Gawande believed such team lists were essential, as today’s operating theatre typically has at least half a dozen people in the room, from biotech to anesthesia. Yet, most patients (and their families) are largely unaware of the human complexity of the operating room, the roles involved, and the people issues that are key to successful patient outcomes.

The results of Gawande’s checklists speak for themselves – after implementing in eight hospitals, surgery complications were cut by 36 per cent and deaths by nearly 50 per cent. (Source: HBR, Jan 2010)

Such checklists are not about a ‘tick box mentality’. In healthcare, as in manufacturing, these simple actions can help isolate risk, improve consistency, and remove error. And at a cultural level, checklists encourage respect and communication for who is the specialist (not always the leader or most senior) and how broader goals and objectives can be distributed for all team members to act upon successfully.

If Gawande’s application of checklists can be successful in the operating theatre, there seems little reason why similar achievements could not be realised in hospital wards, outpatient clinics and even care homes.

Inspired? So how could you or your business use checklists to drive consistency, quality, risk reduction and a focus of what really counts?

If you’d like to give check-listing a try, this pdf download provides a template for creation, developed by Gawande himself, along with Dan Boorman of Boeing.

Further links:

To hear Gawande describe some of the insights above, follow this link to an interview on the HBR website

Boeing also published a document last year on this issue.

When Customer Faithful launched in 2009, we outlined a clear Sustainability policy which covered a range of objectives, from stationery materials, recycling and electrical appliances.

But it is in our travel activities that we have the biggest opportunity to reduce our carbon footprint, specifically by using public transport instead of car/taxi, or simply removing physical journeys altogether, replacing them with virtual meetings.

We set ourselves a challenging target that two-thirds of all return trips by Customer Faithful employees would be non car-borne (bus, rail, walk, cycle…we even managed two by micro scooter, albeit to bemused glances from kids!)

Having just completed our audit for the period Sept 2010 – Aug 2011, we managed 70.6%, which we’re pretty thrilled with. In addition, we also calculated that these same trips represented 88 per cent of our total spend on travel, which reflects that those car journeys that we did make were relatively short (often taxi trips covering the last few miles, having travelled most of the way by train). Note: we exclude air travel from these figures on the basis that we made no domestic flights at all, and we chose to carbon off-set all our international flights.

Encouraging though this result is, it simply makes us determined to do even better next year. We’re going to stick with our 66% non-car borne target, but are actively looking to see how we can make our use of taxis more environmentally friendly. We know there are some taxi firms that use only hybrid vehicles, and of course taxi sharing is an option.

Any other ideas? Please write to us with suggestions, using the comments box below.

According to the Booksellers Association chief executive Tim Godfray, the problem lies with…. well everyone really, for not appreciating them enough.

“This is not just an issue for our members. We know that maintaining bookshops on our High Street is vital to literacy, the future economic prospects of the UK and the cultural health of our nation” he decreed.

On top of British citizens apparently failing in their duty to support his members, he also blames local government for hindering growth by refusing to ease planning regulations for store extensions or support free town parking initiatives.

It seems Mr Godfray is more interested in being a special case in the High St than addressing a more fundamental truth – that bookshops are simply less appealing to modern British society than in the past. Busy consumers value the price, range and convenient home delivery of on-line bookshops, leaving the traditional on-shelf browsing in-store to a shrinking shopper segment. Add to this the rise of digital books that can be instantly downloaded to mobile devices and the bricks-and-mortar store concept begins to look more ‘antique’ than ever.

Yet all this need not be the death knell for the industry.

Just as pubs and cinemas have undergone major rationalisation, bookshops too need to learn from their example, by creating new propositions and experiences that are engaging for today’s shoppers.

For all the despairing cries over the closure of local cinemas, revenues are at record highs. Innovation such as surround sound, 3D screens (27% of total box office takings), greater film choice and more flexible screening times have made the threat of movie home rental seem overstated. (Source: BSAC Film Conference: UK Movie Market Update 2011)

By comparison, bookshops seem only to have added in-store coffee shop concessions and yet more book signings to attract the crowds. No wonder their business is ailing. There’s been far more innovation at my local library (despite struggling with shrinking funds), with kids workshops, free Internet access and ethnic diversity programmes to name but a few ideas.

Bookstore environments can be enticing

There’s still something vaguely timeless and romantic about a bookshop, for young and old alike. But no retail business is an island, and looking around for others to blame will get retail booksellers precisely nowhere. Instead, their salvation lies in going out and genuinely listening to shoppers, talking to them about what they value, learning from their needs and emotions, and then innovating and experimenting for growth.

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Further links:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15149546