How The IMS09 Kindle Died & New Uses

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My kindle fell off my book wall yesterday. It met a sad fate. It fell off a weird wall we have in our house - the wall is about 40 inches tall and has a small ledge. Just about every book we own has spent some time on that wall - and many have fallen off. The kindle fell flat - the drop was really nothing monumental. There was no twirling, no flipping, no dance...just a simple "splut".

I want to note a few things - I mention that I'm too broke to replace the Kindle. Please do not think I'm fishing for a new one. I'm well aware of the warranty I can purchase from Amazon to get it replaced. I don't think it's a good use of my money because (as I also cover in the blog) I have a 2 year old. She's way too interested in the broken Kindle. I'm sure I could purchase the warranty, get the one time dropped Kindle replacement and it would soon be broken again.

I did love the Kindle while I had it, it was a shiny new object. I was an uninformed owner and had NO CLUE just how fragile it is. Had I any idea, I WOULD have purchased a cover before I bought a single book

My apologies go to the folks at dna13 since they actually paid for the Kindle. I was thrilled to win this prize at the Inbound Marketing Summit 2 weeks ago. I wish the Kindle had gone to a better home.

I want to send a special thanks to Steve Garfield. He and I talked at the Inbound Marketing Summit and I never would have used video in this blog were it not for the inspiration he shared with me. So this is my first video blog update - maybe I'll do more - I'll just try to make sure they are more celebratory.

Branded by Proxy

I'm very proud of my husband. He's got a hard job, works long hours and doesn't get paid a huge salary to do it. He works in the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston cooking for The Bristol Lounge. He has been working for the hotel for over 10 years. He's recently been working his tail off and has been working 12 hour days. He's an amazing cook to say the least.

This is just a little dinner Scott whipped up in honor of my Aunt's birthday - it's straight from the French Laundry Cookbook.

What does this have to do with branding?

Well, this upscale dining experience has rubbed off on me. I have no idea how to cook and I'm pretty freakin psyched when I make something that is not a catastrophe - especially when it requires that I use the oven and/or the stove top.

This is a sad example of what happens when I cook. Usually I can bake some yummy desserts, but on this particular attempt, the cake fell apart out of the oven. At least it was still very tasty - we just had to serve it in a non-traditional manner.

What I do know is food. Terms such as Amuse-Bouche and that it's a teaser served at the beginning of the meal to 'delight the mouth' of the guests are commonly discussed in my house. When we have a date night, almost anywhere we go will have an Amuse-Bouche. And if we're really looking for a special night, the restaurant will serve Mignardises. This is all part of our daily dialogue and a secret weapon in my marketing arsenal. While I live a laid-back life and spend most of my days in denim, I can clean up and play in an upscale world as if I had a bank account that made me part of that world.

Thanks to my husband's skills, the friends we have made along the way, I have learned an amazing skill for understanding fine-dining and an essential part of fine-living.

However, I am a down-to-earth girl. I hate it when people freak out over inviting us to dinner. We both love a good simple home made meal. We're laid-back people and don't eat tuna tartare on a daily basis (although I really could eat it daily - yum.) What does all this mean? I have been branded due to my marriage to a chef. And while I love that world, it does not paint the complete picture of me - I have a well-rounded palate. So bring me a Five Guys burger any day - I'll enjoy that just as much as I enjoy a Bristol Burger - probably more because I can finish one!

Reversal of ROI - Kudos to Dunkin Donuts

This summer I went to visit my Father-in-Law at the Canadian border where there is one Dunkin Donuts within a huge radius. On our way out of town, our order was bungled - horribly - to say the least. I usually take mishaps with a grain of salt and I'm especially forgiving when someone owns up to the situation. However, this fine day we were met with complete and total apathy. The story does not end here.... I was totally annoyed. So I filled out the consumer survey and checked off that I did want to be contacted. Then I waited...and waited...and waited.

Then I sent Dunks this tweet:

We sent DMs (Direct Messages: private messaging between people following each other on Twitter) to exchange contact details and I sent an email to them at the end of the day. The next morning I had an email in my inbox from both Dunkin's corporate customer service and the owner of that location. I talked to the owner of the location and when I make the 6 hour trek back to almost-Canada, he's going to buy us breakfast.

Within 5 days of that tweet I had a care package from the corporate office - 1 lb of their wonderful coffee and a $5 gift card. Estimated total value - $12....also the approximate expense of our bungled misadventure.

Since then, I've spent $50 re-upping my gift card....and counting. (That would be about a 416% ROI on just the gifts sent to me. I'm not sure what the hourly rate of the employees is, but I'd estimate they spent roughly 1 hour working on my 'case'. Estimate an annual salary of $40k, that breaks down to an hourly salary of roughly $19.23.)

So total expenses on Dunkin Donut's case: $31.23 (divided by $50 (money I've spent with Dunkin Donuts since) gives a ROI of roughly 160%.)

(The last time I reloaded my gift card was several months prior to this interaction.)

I'm back in love with Dunkin Donuts and it feels so good! This is just the start of my ROI value to them. I never 'quit' Dunkin Donuts to begin our story, but that little element of showing me they care quickly brought them more revenue out of my pocket, good will from all the people I told and I'm also plotting some Dunkin' love Christmas gifting to the family!

Moral of the story:

Social Media ROI does exist.

Inbound Marketing Summit - Steve Garfield's video gathering

During his presentation at the Inbound Marketing Summit, Steve Garfield called for all the people with recording devices to gather with him on stage.

I talked with Steve briefly after his presentation. While I typically upload my videos directly to blogger, this file was too big for the parameters of blogger. So I created a blip.tv account and still managed to get this out for the world to enjoy!

Twitter Grader - Something Made Me Go Hmmm!

So I'm pitching a potential client tomorrow. This is a company with an extremely high brand recognition and brand equity. I've been spending the past few days researching their social media brand.

As a HubSpot fan, of course, I ran them through the grader. Stunned that their twitter grade is, in fact, 1.5% higher than me. I was hoping to be able to go into the meeting tomorrow and shuffle the grader printout in front of them and use it as a tool to educate them. I would have been able to use a tool backed by another highly recognized and respected brand. But now I'm just going to quietly redirect my approach.

So what went wrong?

Honestly, the twitter grader is just an algorithm fed machine and it can be tricked. My "customer" (let's think positively that I'm going to win this account) has a rapidly growing number of followers on Twitter. This is due to two things - instant brand recognition and the fortune of having people easily 'retweet' (also known in English as repeat) their comments. That immediately gives the algorithm a, lets call it, 'false positive'. The customer is currently using push marketing techniques to promote product offerings. All they are saying is: Check out our special thing/event/product. Due to the brand equity, other people are retweeting these comments. This is not necessarily due to the fact that what my customer said was so interesting, but the fact that retweeting my customers comments will give the one sending out the message a more 'upscale' look. It's not savvy at work here, it's someone piggybacking on someone else's brand equity. At the end of the day, the people retweeting are not going to be a high percentage of customer conversions.

More algorithm mayhem:

From the article cited above and written by HubSpot I quote:

2. Power of Followers: If you have people with a high Twitter Grade following you, it counts more than those with a low Twitter Grade following you. It’s a bit recursive, and we don’t get carried away with it, but it helps.

Again this is a little algorithmic smoke and mirrors with this account. This account is a chain. It is only following its own sister-locations and two individuals. (The sister locations are reciprocally following my customer.) The instant brand equity of the chain artificially inflates the value of the follower power noted in HubSpot. Each location has a number of followers - creating an 'infinite loop' of power for increasing your Twitter Grade. Again, a misleading trick (without being intentionally deceptive) resulting in a way throw off the calculators.

Next, and I don't know what is happening here with this one, but the Follower/Following ratio is way out of whack with my customer. Customer is following a few dozen twitter accounts and is being followed by a few hundred people. The number of followers is more than 12 times greater than the ones they are following.

There are a few other points I can make, but like the brilliant Dharmesh Shah, writer of the algorithm and article - I don't want to give away all of my know-how either!

At the end of this day, my customer is not using twitter to engage, they are still pushing content. They are not following people within their 'sweet spot' (the local twitter-using potential and existing customers) and they are barely listening to their followers. I see a lot of opportunity for this customer to become the next case-study darling in Social Media Marketing. Hopefully they want this for themselves as badly as I do!