Zapped by Zappos !
I first heard of Zappos from a colleague that attended a seminar on Social Media Marketing a few years ago. At that seminar, they were one of the examples mentioned – the ones that got it right, not the other variety of example. Zappos is known for selling premium shoes ; that’s the product category they began with though they’ve now expanded to many others. While that’s the primary product they sell, they figured out early that the benefit to women buying premium shoes is the boost it gives their confidence. So they used Facebook to identify themselves with that benefit, not just with the product they were selling – their Fb page spoke about female confidence and boosting this through corporate dressing, apt make-up for work, etc. and shoes were just a small part of it.
Heard of them again recently from another colleague who’d just moved back to the U.S. This time it was their amazing customer service that impressed both of us; this is a company that actually lives up to the ‘powered by service’ tag-line.
Prior to a hiking holiday, the colleague and her husband had bought hiking shoes on Zappos, but realised on delivery that the shoes didn’t fit. They needed to return two pairs of shoes and the Zappos team erroneously mailed them only one return label. So the couple rang the call centre and explained the problem to the rep – since they were travelling soon they didn’t even have time to select another pair on the site and have them delivered, and hence it had to be a return, not an exchange. As I said earlier, this company actually lives up to their promise of good service, the problem was promptly resolved.
But after that, in contrast to a usual call centre’s robotic “thank you for shopping with us. We hope you choose our services again” dialogue, the friendly Zappos rep asked the couple where they were headed and chatted about the trip, the national parks they were visiting etc. When he found out that they were landing in Vegas before driving to the Grand Canyon, he actually invited them to drop by and visit the Zappos factory which is in Vegas – a gesture that totally wowed them and made them Zappos loyalists for luife.
This article mentions some of the reasons that Zappos reps are so different from typical call centre reps. Some excerpts below :
Most companies who rely on phone centres to do business have time limits – they want their staff to process a certain number of calls per hour. But not Zappos – they field over 5,000 phone calls per day, and there no time limits.
As CEO Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) says, they actually want to talk to their customers. He believes the telephone is one of the best branding devices out there. The way he looks at it, you have your customer’s undivided attention for 5 or 10 minutes – and what smart marketer doesn’t want that??
He also firmly maintains that every phone call is an opportunity to WOW their customers.
If an item is out of stock, Zappos staff will search out three other competitor’s websites and direct customers there. Even though they will lose that sale. But there is a reason they do that: They are not trying to maximize the transaction, they’re trying to build a lifelong relationship.
For more on Zappos customer service, you can also read this article.
- Zenobia Driver
With inputs from Roshni Jhaveri and Gunjan Bhatia
Technology – Age No Bar
A few months ago we ran this post on how toddlers are adapting to the latest technology and how it is changing their interaction with other common things.
But it is not only the young ones who are adapting but also the elderly, especially so with the arrival of grand children (or in some cases, great-grandchildren) in their families.
Example A, 83 year old great-grandmother of 4 toddlers now, lives in Mumbai with her family spread across Dubai, Europe and the US. When she first became a great-grandmother 5 years ago, she switched from a regular Nokia phone to a Blackberry “so that my grand daughter in Dubai can send me pictures everyday over BBM”… not only did she pick up the lingo, but also familiarized herself with using it very proficiently, and loving the fact that now she could not only get her great-granddaughter’s pictures but also “check updates on the rest of the family through BBM updates”.
Two years after this, she bought an i-Pad to “…. to Skype with my growing babies…. how else would they be able to see me and hear me… I tell them stories and sing songs to them and they love it… I love seeing their reaction.” Last year, she was mighty impressed with her daughter’s iPhone5, and decided to move from Blackberry to iPhone5 because “all my grand children have now moved from Blackberry to iPhone, they are all on What’s App now, no one BBMs, so I thought why not move myself. Plus iPhone allows me to Facetime with them all instantly.”
Moving from a Blackberry to an iPhone is not always easy, the interfaces and interactions are completely different and she always manages to surprise me with her willingness to try and readily adapt new technology.
Example B, 65 year old grandmother to a 2 year old now, lives in Mumbai, but daughter and grandchild live in Dubai. She only got a phone a couple years ago, a regular no-fuss Nokia, only on the insistence of her daughter who worried about her. But as her grandchild was growing up, she felt the need to be in touch, so she learnt to use a computer and found it very cumbersome and complicated, but still managed to somehow use Skype after some struggle with the poor internet connections, high start-up times of computers and the need to coordinate times with the grandchild and daughter to actually talk over Skype. Frustrated with this, she decided she needed an easier way to be able to see her grandchild when she wanted, so she went to the market on her own, explained her problems to the mobile dealer and came home with a fancy new Samsung phone, with all requisite apps downloaded and ready to use! Surprise surprise to her daughter! She now uses What’s App very well and is happy to just get photos and video clips of her grand child instantly. She recently self-taught herself to record audio and video clips herself and send them to her grandchild as well, and she is mighty proud.
Example C, 58 year old who recently became a grandmother, in the past always argued with her children about buying her a simple phone when they’d get her phones with a camera or with a radio or with a touchscreen, etc. But as soon as she had spent one month with her granddaughter and it was time to go back home, she knew she had to find a way see her grand-daughter when she pleased. So she asked around amongst her friends and after having figured everything out, asked her son to get her an Android phone! Android phone! Son was shocked to know that she even knew that there were Android phones, leave alone what an Android phone was!!! Promptly she asked for What’s App to be downloaded on to it and voila! she could get pictures of her granddaughter on her phone. Not only that, now she can proudly show her pictures to her friends, family, trainer, beautician, anyone who asks, cause it’s right on her phone!!
I don’t know if its the love and affection that a grandparent feels towards their grandchild that has made them adapt to new technology, or whether we owe it to the developers who’ve created interfaces which are so simple to adopt and so intuitive that even people, especially women who’ve hardly ever used calculators and computers in their prime, are so quickly and deftly adapting them.
- Roshni Jhaveri
A Placement Puzzle
This week we bring you a fun post, an interesting twist to a well-known sales and marketing funda.
If you’ve read ‘Why we Buy : The Science of Shopping’, Paco Underhill’s classic on the retail environment and how to influence consumers to buy more, you already know a whole lot of interesting facts. You know that products meant for the elderly should not be kept on the lowest shelves as they find it difficult to bend down and pick up products, and sales of these products end up being lower than they ought to be. You’ve also read about the ‘butt-brush’ effect (really apt naming here) – in narrow aisles people get jostled and brush against one another, nobody really likes this and hence they spend less time browsing these aisles and rush out of them as soon as they can. ( If you haven’t read the book yet, do get your hands on it, it’s well-written, fun to read and a lot of what he observes is fairly intuitive and gives the reader a sense of ‘aha, this sounds so logical, why did I not notice this before’.)
You’ve also probably noticed certain products being stocked next to each other or on adjacent shelves at the grocers; for instance, shampoo next to conditioners, moisturisers and face-wash and creams together, all cosmetics together. The logic here is fairly obvious.
So, using that as the base to begin from, here’re two questions for you.
Q1) In some shops in Gujarat, why do shelves stocking a certain brand of fruit juice also have yeast packets stocked ?
Q2) If you look closely, you’ll see that yeast is stocked next to packs of only a certain brand of fruit juice, not all; why is this ?
(Disclaimer : Cannot take credit for working hard and noticing this in the retail environment myself, I heard this at a party this weekend ; am yet to visit Gujarat and verify this for myself, would be glad to hear from any reader who visits or has visited Gujarat too)
And here’s the answer :
Two hints first, so you can try figuring it out yourself. One, Gujarat is a dry state ; two, grape juice, though the answer applies equally to other juices too.
Didn’t get it yet ? Fermented grape juice…wine ! In a dry state, one easy way of making your own alcohol is to buy fruit juice, pour it into a glass bottle, add yeast and wait for it to ferment.
And, to help you out, retailers even keep the juice and the yeast together on the same shelf.
And the answer to the second question is that this doesn’t work with all brands of fruit juice, some have preservatives that kill the action of the yeast. Hence, not all brands of fruit juice have the yeast packets stocked next to them.
[ Additional info courtesy a reader's comment (Thanks, Rohit). Apparently the grape juice and yeast trick was fairly common during the prohibition era in the U.S. and has been mentioned in this documentary too. Even more interesting is that the write-up mentions that 'with a wink and a nod, the American grape industry began selling kits of juice concentrate with warnings not to leave them sitting too long or else they could ferment and turn into wine'. Yes indeed, something to really worry about and avoid, I'm sure.]
- Zenobia Driver
Updates – on brand bloopers, gold and vitamin water
What more could you ask for in terms of variety, eh ? Well, let’s dive right into our topics.
Brand bloopers
In Feb this year, we’d mentioned how we felt that a Gillette campaign seemed to be milking a tragedy in India while ostensibly trying to express a higher moral position. And in March, this post commented on the Ford Figo ads that caused such outrage at the time. The post pointed out that something posted publicly on the internet can be replicated in a very short amount of time, and once something is out it’s impossible to contain it. Brands are now being built in real time, but they can unravel just as quickly, especially if they respond / communicate inappropriately in times of social or national tragedy.
Frank Eliason, Director Global Social Media at Citi, gives a real-time example of how quickly social media shines the spotlight on any online fumbles that a brand makes. The article includes pics of the ridiculous tweets from Epicurious, an online mag for foodies, after the Boston tragedy.
This post by David Armano – Managing Director of Edelman Digital – has a simple but useful checklist for how to handle branded content online during sensitive times. Even if you didn’t click on the other links given in this post, suggest that you click on this one and read David Armano’s post.
Some attitudes towards Gold as an investment
This article in today’s paper reminded me of some posts we’d run late last year; in those, we’d written about the dilemma faced by Mahesh, a friend’s driver who wanted to invest his meagre savings wisely (see posts here and here).
In our earlier posts, we’d written about many commonly held beliefs and attitudes – for instance, like many others, Mahesh believed that gold prices only went up and it was a good hedge against inflation. Within the options in gold, he’d rather invest in gold jewellery than gold coins; in his words, “I will buy gold coins once I’ve bought enough jewelry; kuchh pehenne ke liye bhi hona chahiye naa (there should be something to wear too)”.
Other interesting facets of these beliefs relate to gold and loans. A lot of Mahesh’ friends and neighbours were against buying gold jewellery on EMI schemes and would much rather buy whatever they could afford to with their annual savings; after all, “Yeh tho udhaar hua, aur Lakshmi ko udhaar ke paison ke sahaare ghar kaise laa sakte hain (this is like a loan, and how can we bring Lakshmi – the Goddess of wealth – home on borrowed money)”.
And since this gold jewellery is associated with Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth, and it is a symbol of the household’s prosperity and status, pawning it is absolutely the last option; though firms such as Mannapuram Gold Loans, Muthoot etc. have gone some distance towards removing that stigma and making the transaction reliable and transparent.
Vitamin water – Danone B’lue’s National launch
In Dec 2011, we’d blogged about seeing Danone B’lue banners all over Pune. This month, we noticed in news articles that B’lue has now been launched nationally. With the launch, this beverage opens a new segment in the Indian Ready to drink beverage segment. Tarun Arora, Country Head, Danone-Narang Beverages said that B’lue was launched as a pilot in Pune followed by a soft launch in Mumbai, and that the beverage was very well accepted in the market.
Will be interesting to watch how the brand fares, and whether the vitamin water market becomes a viable niche in the Indian beverages market.
Compiled by,
Zenobia Driver
Creative Activation
To break through the clutter and to gain a lot more eyeballs, companies are adopting some innovative approaches.
Lifebuoy: Reminder for Hand washing
At the recently concluded Maha Kumbh Mela, Lifebuoy implemented a unique activation to spread the message of hand washing. Over 100 million people reportedly attend the Maha Kumbh Mela and Lifebuoy used this apt opportunity to highlight the importance of hand washing to its attendees. While Lifebuoy created awareness through the usual street hoardings and banners, it also utilized another innovative intervention to remind people to wash their hands before eating.
Lifebouy created special heat stamps with the message “Lifebuoy se haath dhoya kya?” (Did you wash your hands with Lifebuoy?) and put this impression on fresh rotis at 100 dhabas and hotels across the mela. Roti is a staple with every Indian meal and typically eaten by hand. What better place and time to remind people to wash their hands! Their target was to reach over 2.5 million visitors over a month long initiative. What an innovative way to reach a large small town and rural audience, and that too at a fraction of the cost.
Chennai City Traffic Police: Drink & Get Driven
An initiative by Zara Tapas Bar and Chennai City Traffic Police brought about a very novel idea to discourage drunken driving. Cause for 70% of accidents in India is attributed to drunken driving. Capitalizing on the god-fearing nature of most Indians, they created a short video featuring guests drinking and having a good time at a bar and when its time to leave, on receiving the car from valet, they are shocked to see Yamaraj (the god of death) himself, sitting in their car. Yamaraj warns them by handing over a “Drink and get Driven” information leaflet about hire-a-driver service.
Ever so often we see posters or signs about ‘Don’t Drink & Drive’ across streets in our city but we fail to pay heed to it. But this video is sure to make you remember. The video was posted on Feb 15th 2013 and it went viral. It now has over 4.5 lakh views on Youtube and has been the matter of chatter on several social networking sites as well as newspapers and news channels picked up on it within a couple of days of being posted.
Have you seen any such innovative campaigns? Do tell us about them, we’d love to hear from you.
- Roshni Jhaveri
