The Essential Marketing Secrets that Amazon Forgot

March 30, 2008 · Filed Under Branding, Branding Boo Boos · 20 Comments 

Amazon has made a SERIOUS mistake in the way they conduct business and may be the mother of all Branding Boo Boos!
First, you need to understand a term to understand the gravity of the situation for Amazon.

POD stands for Print On Demand. Instead of printing thousands of copies of a book and hoping they sell, these publishers can print only the number of books that actually are sold. That’s a great business model, however Amazon has decided that the only POD books they want to sell on their site are the ones printed by their own POD service: Book Surge.

Angela Hoy is the publisher of the Writer’s Weekly which she uses to promote her POD publishing business, Booklocker.com. Last Friday, Angela launched a firestorm when she reported that Amazon is putting the squeeze on POD publishers.

FIRST MARKETING SECRET THAT AMAZON FORGOT: Customers are the life blood of any business.

Angela Hoy reports spending over $1500 with Amazon last year. Sure, that’s just a tiny drop of income in the Olympic sized pool of profits generated by Amazon… but she’s a customer none the less and their bullying tactics really rubbed her the wrong way. They’ve lost her as a customer… but wait … that brings us to Marketing Secret Number 2.

SECOND MARKETING SECRET THAT AMAZON FORGOT: A satisfied customer will tell 3 friends… a dissatisfied customer will tell 16.

In Angela’s case, she’s the editor of the largest ezine publication for freelance writers in the world, so instead of telling 16 friends she’s using her newsletter to tell over a hundred thousand. She’s ignited quite a firestorm.

THIRD MARKETING SECRET THAT AMAZON FORGOT: People hate doing business with a bully.

Apple’s agency recognized this secret when they created those memorable Mac vs PC spots. The Ladders.com also capitalized upon this marketing secret as well. Not only are these strong arm tactics not going to play well with POD authors… they’re not going to play well for MANY “regular” book buyers as well.

The firestorm ignited by this illustrates an important truth about the power of Web 2.0. While we are all seeking a way to ignite a firestorm like this to build POSITIVE buzz about a business… it seems that human nature tends to reserve such passionate “pass along” power to injustice that incites rage and indignation. It’s unfortunate, but the positive afterglow of a positive customer experience rarely inspires such a viral campaign.

Less than 48 hours after the newsletter went out, there were more than 60 online references to this story. Slashdot picked it up, so that number will increase.

In the spirit of Web 2.0, I’ve included a list of sites reporting this story. Feel free to grab the list below and add it to your own blog. If you want to add your post to the “cause”… the post a comment to this post. The more links to these posts… the more “traction” this cause will get.

Amazon began by providing a superior book buying experience to their customers.  Buying a book from Amazon is BETTER than buying a book in a physical book store because a reader can access other reader reviews and read excerpts online.  Amazon is about to discover that hell hath no fury like a customer scorned.

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The first three seconds at your web site….

March 23, 2007 · Filed Under Branding Boo Boos, Web Sites · Comment 

GREAT article at IMedia Connection by Joseph Carrabis entitled Websites: You’ve Only Got 3 Seconds

Carrabis does an EXCEPTIONAL job of breaking down the visitor’s first 30 seconds at your web site into three manageable chunks, providinig insight to the web site owner of what’s REALLY going on in a visitor’s mind. Read more

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The rules of branding

February 13, 2007 · Filed Under Branding, Branding Brags · Comment 

James Montier is an economist and global equity strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, a German-owned investment bank. According to an article at Fast Company,  Montier claims that analysts shouldn’t bother meeting with top management at the companies they cover since analysts only ask questions that encourage the answers they want to hear.

Montier may be considered a financial heretic, but he’s a genius at creating a brand.  Early in his career, he became intrigued by the role of human emotions in markets.  He theorized that prices were moved as much by psychological factors as by earnings reports, a view that can only be labeled contrarian.

In a world where "great instincts" or  knowing which direction the markets are heading is viewed as the Holy Grail…. Montier has developed a following, despite the fact that he does not play by the rules of the game.

"Montier has a substantial following because he focuses on things that are fundamentally different from the rest of the stuff I get in my inbox," says Curt Custard, head of asset allocation at Schroders in London, one of Montier’s clients. "He is next to useless when it comes to telling me what the markets are going to do. But he has been incredibly helpful in leading us through self-critical examination of what drives our internal decision making at Schroders."

Talk about creating a Unique Selling Proposition…. Montier doesn’t say, "I know what’s going to happen."  Instead he says,

Every fund manager who comes to one of my presentations takes a 20-question test that convinces them they suffer exactly the same biases as everyone else. People respond to that in one of two ways: The first is to say, "Now I understand it, I’m smarter than everyone else, so I can outthink everyone else." No, you can’t! You’ve just failed behavioral economics 101, which explains that we are all overconfident in our abilities. The other response is, "Okay, I understand my biases. Now help me develop processes to spot where they are most likely to occur, and minimize the scale of these biases."

He also touts the message that wealth does not equal happiness.  But that’s yet another contrarian view in a world where bonuses are spent buying Ferraris and island get aways.

Montier may be a pioneer in behavior economics, but he’s following the hard and fast rules of successful branding.  He’s carefully carved a niche and has the full attention of those within that niche. 

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