Topics can sometimes grow organically as you write about them and do a little research.  The topic here was to throw out a challenge to develop the best 125px x 125px ad since I had developed one today that I thought was pretty good.  I still would be interested to hear whether you can do better than the ad on the right here.  However there’s more to all this than meets the eye.

The History Of 125 X 125 Pixels Ads

I always like to do a little research to flesh out any blog post.  It appears that the 125 X 125 Pixels Ad was invented by Nik Cubrilovic of TechCrunch probably in 2006.  That comes from a very recent blog post of Michael Arrington,  founder of TechCrunch, who should be an authoritative source.  Hat tip to Todd Garland for that.

That ad format was a real winner as you can see in a 2007 blog post that Darren Rowse wrote:

Over the past 6 to 12 months the 125 x 125 pixel advertisement has emerged onto the blogging scene as a fairly common means of advertising.  I don’t know who did it first – but there are hundreds (if not thousands) of blogs using it. Some of the more prominent ones include TechCrunch, Read/WriteWeb, CopyBlogger and John Chow – but there are many hundreds others. In fact over at b5media we have them on all of our 250+ blogs.

The ad format is so versatile that it is not surprising to see the explosive growth that has occurred since then.  It provides a reasonable amount of visibility for a more economic price than larger display ads.

What A 125Px X 125Px Should Do For You

The ad may be economic but the challenge is how best to use such a small space. It is interesting to consider that question in terms of that simple marketing view of how sales occur.  You may have heard the acronym, AIDA.  That stands for:

  Awareness >> Interest >>  Desire  >> Action.

Prospective customers must be moved through these different phases as they change from ignorance of the product through to making the purchase.

The 125 x 125 pixels ad has a link attached so the action is clear.  How far up the AIDA scale can that small parcel of screen real estate move the visitor?  If done well, as the visitor clicks through to another web page, ideally there is a desire to buy.  Does your 125 x 125 pixels ad achieve that?

Post from: BPWrap

125 x 125 Pixels Ad Challenge

Technorati Tags: 125 pixels, 125px, ad, TechCrunch

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The Google Quality Guidelines Violation

The penalty for violating Quality Guidelines occurred when Google hired two top marketing agencies to promote the Chrome web browser using video content. 

Google reportedly bought online video ads from a digital media agency called Essence Digital. Essence then reportedly hired another company called Unruly to carry out Google’s video ad campaign. The end result was that a number of blogs wrote positive posts (with the video embedded) about Google Chrome for compensation – the reward was apparently Amazon gift cards.

These blog posts were of inferior quality, said little about Google Chrome but did include links back to Chrome web pages.. Google then issued a statement that addressed the issue:

Google never agreed to anything more than online ads. We have consistently avoided paid sponsorships, including paying bloggers to promote our products, because these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users. We’re now looking at what changes we need to make to ensure that this never happens again.

The Google Wrist-Slapping

Google has now slapped its own wrist over this Chrome pay-for-blogging flap. It is downgrading the search result ranking of the company’s own Web browser, Google Chrome, for 60 days.  The punishment imposed on Chrome will significantly lower the results ranking of the main download page for the browser.

According to Matt Cutts, Google’s head of webspam, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days. After that, someone on the Chrome side will need to  submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would. During the 60 days, the PageRank of www.google.com/chrome will also be lowered to reflect the fact that we also won’t trust outgoing links from that page.

The Irony of this Google Wrist-Slapping

Ignoring any Google internal politics that may be involved here, there is a certain irony in the events here.  This involves the following steps:

1. Google builds a search engine based on an algorithm that puts weight on the number of back links to web pages
2. The Online world reacts to this as everyone tries to create massive numbers of back links to their web pages sometimes by paying
3. Google attempts to stop this tsunami of back links by adopting quality guide lines to ‘outlaw’ paid links
4. Google inadvertently violates its own quality guidelines as many others innocently do
5. Google penalizes itself to set an example

Google is behaving like King Canute here and its action will have no long term effect.  Better by far than taking step 5 when step 4 occurred, would be to rethink step 1 when step 2 occurred.  Google continues to promote the PageRank concept as if it has marketing effectiveness.  Most knowledgeable observers of this scene suggest it should be buried.  That would be the way to avoid embarrassing wrist-slapping incidents like this.

Post from: BPWrap

The Irony Of Google Slapping Its Own Wrist Over Chrome Paid Links

Technorati Tags: browser, Chrome, download, PageRank, penalty, quality guidelines

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The biggest rage in the world of social media is Tumblr. People equipped with smartphones are taking to the streets, collecting images, and posting them to the specialized blogging service – all while gaining massive amounts of followers.

The use of visual marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach consumers and Tumblr features everything. From cinemagraphs to infographics, what you post on Tumblr has the potential to reach millions of people almost instantly. Here are some ways to make your Tumblr marketing attempts more effective:

Create a Brand Based Meme

In genetic terms, a meme is an idea or learned behavior that quickly spreads from person to person within a society. An Internet meme acts in the same way by catching on with a certain group and then making its mark on the rest of society. Tumblr is one of the best ways to create memes and get them to go viral quickly.

Quirk it Up

Some of the most popular Tumblr pages are “Kim Jong Il Looking at Stuff,” “The Comic Sans Project,” and anything that has to do with a meme. Attention spans on the site are miniscule and if you do not stand out no one is going to give your site the time of day. Just like the rest of your marketing, make your Tumblr efforts interesting and creative.

Seek Elsewhere for Authority Links

The major drawback to posting marketing content on a Tumblr blog is the fact that no one takes it seriously. According to Huffington Post, Tumblr is the least authoritative blogging platform on the Internet. This means that the site should be used for fun and novelty instead of serious discussion and debate. Leave the heavy topics to your own personal website or blog.

Don’t Get Caught

If you get caught marketing on Tumblr, you’ll probably be ostracized and blackballed from the community. Tumblr acts as an open sourced place for the dissemination of information. If paid advertising is present and not fully disclosed, you could end up receiving a tribute page just like this guy made.

Manage Your Resources

While you may think that it is an effective strategy to get your brand onto as many social media networks as possible, sometimes your efforts can be better in other places. If you do not have the time to effectively manage a Tumblr account, put the time you do have into other social networks. That way you will remain effective and not spread yourself out too thin.

The best thing about Tumblr is that it is fun, sharing, and entertaining by nature. If you feel that your brand can contribute to the openness of the social network, then get yourself an account and start adding to the massive database. 

Author Bio: Sam Peters is a blogger who frequently writes for entrepreneurial and tech blogs covering topics from online marketing to the newest gadget and mobile web news.

Related: The Other Bloke’s Mini-Blog – ramblings and rants from a Brit in British Columbia (a Tumblr blog)

Post from: BPWrap

Effectively Market Your Brand With Tumblr

Technorati Tags: brand, gif, tumblr

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Many may find this title, Social Media Forces Customer-Centric Marketing, somewhat puzzling.  To understand what is meant, we should look at a few definitions.

Social Media Are

Here are a few definitions:

• The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue.
• A Dictionary Definition of Social Media – forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)
• Social media has clearly set a higher standard in people sharing and discovering each other. Think of it as a cross between sociology and technology, transforming one way broadcasting into comprehensive two way communication. It’s personal. It’s human.

In summary, social media provide a venue for one-to-one dialogue between persons.

Social Media Are Not

Social Media is a bit of a misnomer since it does not fit the traditional definition of media.  It could encourage marketers to regard these as additional channels of communication with customers and prospects.  In other words, new tools that parallel the existing media such as newspapers, TV and print magazines. 

There is partial truth in that but the arrival of social media signals a much more profound change. This notion has major implications for the way companies do business.

What is Marketing

In times past, the word marketing was synonymous with mass marketing.  It was concerned with beaming out messages about products and services by whatever means would get brand awareness among potential customers.  Some of the more powerful channels were expensive, such as TV or luxury magazines, but they were cost-effective in getting the message across.

Rarely was this permission marketing where the target prospect could refuse to hear the message.  It was one-way communication.  The hope was that once the seed had been planted in this way, prospects would wish to sample the product and then buy on a repeat basis.

The Internet is a massive change agent

The big factor which changed all this is the Internet and the relatively modest costs for users to have access.  It is still possible to beam out messages but they must be welcome and convincing.  However this overlooks  one aspect of the Internet which is that it can support two-way communication.  People do not wish to be talked at but may be willing to enter into a dialogue with a company.

This dialogue is now made much easier by the entry of social media.  The most popular of these is Facebook and Twitter has a sizable following too.  The new one on the scene is Google Plus which seems to be growing rapidly.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing, a name dreamed up by Hubspot, focuses on earning, not buying, a person’s attention, which is done through social media and engaging content, such as blogs, podcasts and white papers. This content is interesting, informative and adds value, creating a positive connection in the eyes of the consumer, thus making her more likely to engage your brand and buy the product.

It is interesting how this is expressed.  There does not seem any attempt to establish a two-way dialogue.  Rather the aim is to create content which is so appealing that customers will wish to see it and accept its message.

Social media at its best provides a stage on which genuine person-to-person communication can take lace.  Inbound Marketing seems to work on this same stage merely with the intent of getting attention.

Customer Expectations

What is missing in this explanation is the realisation that consumers now feel more empowered since they can make their voices heard via the Internet.  Given this new power, they expect that businesses will be more welcoming and less controlling than they used to be.  Customers expect that products and services will be provided with better customer service than was provided in the past.

Customer-centric Marketing

Given these heightened customer expectations, it is more effective to try to envision how the customer is seeing what is on offer from the company.  In other words to see things through the customers eyes.  That process is described as customer-centric Marketing

The Customer Experience

One definition of customer experience runs as follows:

the sum-totality of how customers engage with your company and brand, not just in a snapshot in time, but throughout the entire arc of being a customer. 

Ensuring that the customer experience is optimal so that they will stay loyal to our brand and make repeat purchases is very challenging.  Customers may interact with many members of the organization, some of whom may not realize the importance of delivering the best possible total customer experience.  This requires a new rallying cry for all members of the organization.

We’re All Marketers Now

The McKinsey Quarterly suggests that new rallying cry: We’re All Marketers Now.

We’ve entered an era where customers no longer separate marketing from the online, in-store or face-to-face sales experience – it is the experience. In this era of engagement, marketing is the company and it’s far too important to be left to the marketing department. You’ve likely heard this before, but it’s never been so true, real, and in your face as it is today.

The process suggested involves 3 steps:

1. Design – Designing a great customer-engagement strategy and experience depends on understanding exactly how people interact with a company throughout their decision journey.
2. Build – Once a company designs how it will engage with customers, it needs the organizational capabilities to deliver: adding staff, building a social-media network infrastructure, retooling customer care operations, or altering reporting structures.
3. Operate and renew – Digital technology has upended the engagement expectations of customers, who, for example, want one Web site to visit and a relationship seamlessly integrated across touch points.

This involves a new look for the marketing organization, involving initiatives such as:

• Distribute more activities around the organization
• Promote more councils and partnerships
• and most important of all, elevate the role of customer insights

In other words, they too are promoting the notion of customer-centric marketing.  The customer is Queen (or King) and you must make sure you give them the royal treatment.

Marketing Right Now

The advice to apply Customer-Centric Marketing is not new.  The term was first used in 2000.  SMM has a free e-book, Marketing Right Now (PDF), that spells out the implications of this approach.  As social media become ever more important, marketing right is essential and that means customer-centric marketing.  The book is relatively compact and well worth reading.  You may well find it brings out some aspects of marketing you have never considered before.

Post from: BPWrap

Social Media Forces Customer-Centric Marketing

Technorati Tags: customer experience, customer-centric, hubspot, inbound marketing

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Inbound Marketing Versus Outbound Marketing

One of the latest buzzwords is inbound marketing, which is contrasted with outbound marketing.  Outbound marketing is the old traditional approach which is to ensure that people will see your advertisements and messages by spending large sums of money to get their attention.

Inbound marketing on the other hand has become a two-way dialogue, much of which is played out in social media such as Facebook or even Twitter.

Inbound marketing focuses on earning, not buying, a person’s attention, which is done through social media and engaging content, such as blogs, podcasts and white papers. This content is interesting, informative and adds value, creating a positive connection in the eyes of the consumer, thus making her more likely to engage your brand and buy the product

The link above shows an infographic created by Voltier Digital, which highlights the differences between the two kinds of marketing.  Here is the lead-in to that infographic.  The infographic is of course another device used in inbound marketing to earn the viewers interest.

Inbound Marketing Is The Future

The term Inbound Marketing was created by Hubspot and they are persuasive on its merits as the way of the future.

Instead of interrupting people with television ads, they create videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying display ads in print publications, they create their own business blog that people subscribe to and look forward to reading. Instead of cold calling, they create useful content and tools so that prospects contact them looking for more information.

Instead of driving their message into a crowd over and over again like a sledgehammer, they attract highly qualified customers to their business like a magnet.

Companies Should Look In Before Looking Out

That  all sounds fine but others are raising a warning that getting involved with social media may be opening a can of worms.  Social media are just that: social.  Whatever surfaces is there (for ever) for all the world to see.

The advice here is to look inwards and make sure that there are no skeletons in the cupboard.  Products and services should be ones that customers find satisfactory and indeed might wish to recommend to their friends.  Only when a company is operating at this level can you expect that individuals in social media such as Facebook may share details of new promotions with their friends in a way which will be helpful to your future growth targets..

The Outside In Look Is The Best

Looking inwards is fine but we would urge you to go one step further.  The important view of the products and services is not what company employees believe but more importantly what customers and potential customers may believe.

They are on the outside looking in.  They also compare your products and services with similar offerings from the competition.  It is worth investing time and effort in getting honest feedback from potential customers as to how your products and services really stack up against the competition.  For over ten years, this approach has been around and sometimes is labeled being customer-centric.

Perhaps even better is to listen to those dissatisfied customers and hear what they have to say about the company and its products and services.  They are certainly on the outside looking in but they may provide the most honest appraisals you will get.

People in general do not like to complain and there is also the factor of cognitive dissonance.  When someone has bought a product they may not choose to comment on slight dissatisfactions they may feel because they really want the world to know that they were astute purchasers.  Those who decided not to buy may give much more revealing comments.

Certainly that outside in look may well teach you something about your products and services that you had never realized.  With that information you can be on a path to improvement and to success.  Without that information you may be attempting the impossible in getting potential customers to test out your products.

Post from: BPWrap

Inbound Marketing and Marketing Outside In

Technorati Tags: Facebook, hubspot, inbound marketing, Outside.in

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The social networking tool Twitter can be instrumental in expanding your business’s presence, whether you want to bring your enterprise online or diversify an already existing online portion of your business. By setting up an account with your business, you will have access to the hundred million-plus people using Twitter every day for casual and professional purposes. If you follow the right people and cater your tweets to your potential online clientele, you’re bound to build a sizeable following.

How to use Twitter: the Basics

To set up a profile for your business, simply go to Twitter’s website and follow their instructions, filling out your company’s information when prompted. Remember that you don’t need to share any information you don’t want to share; your company’s Twitter can be as spare as you want it to be. At the very least include a link to your business’s website (if you have one) so people who follow you know where to go for more information.

Once you’ve set up a fitting handle and profile for your business’s Twitter account, start sifting through Twitter’s website for potential followers. Click the “Who to Follow” tab at the top of the website for tips on what big names to follow in your industry. Type keywords that describe the nature of your business: “shipping” or “retail” if you run a wholesale business, for example, or “insurance quotes” if you’re in insurance and so on. The search engine should produce a list of people who post frequently on the term you entered. Make it a point to follow as many people as possible so you can get a feel for what type of tweeters best benefit your research-remember you can always unfollow people later. These followers could be potential customers, other businesses with networking potential, or news outlets related to your business’s field. If your business is solely local, enter the name of your city/state in the search bar to find tweeters specific to your area.

Tweet Etiquette/Tweeting Well

Make your business’s Twitter a hub for all things pertaining to your business; imagine that you’re explaining your business to people who’ve never before heard of it and tweet from that perspective. Tweet helpful and informative tidbits about your business; whatever it is, keep your content short and interesting. Before you send tweets out, write down methods you might capture the attention of followers who would be interested in your business. Ask yourself how you market your business offline and how you can translate that into 140 characters or less? If you need inspiration, there’s a twitter for Top Business Tweets that features daily tweets from top business tweeters!

Once you accrue a healthy following, try to respond to people who RT (retweet) your tweets or those who send you a DM (direct message). You may have difficulty distinguishing genuine questions from those asked by spam twitter accounts, but over time you’ll learn how to tell between the two. It’s important to maintain a dynamic report with your followers so as to stay engaged with your audience. Above all, make sure that you keep a professional tone on your tweets. Don’t be drawn into petty arguments fomented by spamming/trolling tweeters, and certainly don’t start any tweet-brawls yourself.

Hashtags

Be sure to take advantage of hashtags when you tweet. Hashtags in a nutshell increase the visibility of your tweets to those who might not otherwise find your tweets. They provide a tweeter the means of categorizing their tweets. For example, if you tweet “Check out our site for the latest figures on summer gas prices,” you could add the hashtag “#gasprices” or “#transportation” to give your tweet some categorization. This way anyone looking for tweets relating to gas prices or transportation will come across your tweet. You can also search out similarly themed twitter accounts using hashtags that you’d expect to be used by businesses in your industry.

License for photo: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

By-line: This guest post is contributed by Lauren Bailey, who regularly writes for best online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: blauren99 @gmail.com.

Post from: BPWrap

Marketing and Business Networking With Twitter

Technorati Tags: follow, hashtag, social media, Twitter

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Small is the new big only when the person running the small thinks big.  Don’t wait. Get small. Think big.

And indeed he was quoted as believing quite the contrary in a recent Interview on Marketing 2010.  Mark Barrett of CIMarketing Sydney discussed the current marketing environment with the world’s foremost marketing author and multi-time New York Times best-selling author.  Seth Godin suggested that:

You will succeed when you have something to say, just as your Yellow Pages ad will work once you have something to offer. Bigger isn’t better. Better is better.

However measured on another scale, Seth Godin is clearly going for big.  His score is 25 when even the White House only scores 10.

If you are scratching your head on what this dimension could be, then let me add that Darren Rowse also scores 10 while Brian Clark scores only 6.  The more well-informed may realize that these two latter gentleman are very famous bloggers, and that is the clue to what we are talking about.  This is the number of posts that appear on the Home Page of each of their blogs.

Copyblogger has 6 posts on its Home Page, Problogger has 10 posts on its Home Page, the White House Blog has 10 posts on its Home Page while Seth Godin has a somewhat staggering 25 posts on his Home Page.

As we are discussing elsewhere, these long Home Pages cause problems for Google.  In search queries where a recent post might be appropriate it will often be outranked by the Home Page.  However the link to the Home Page may be displaying current content where the particular item of interest is way down the screen or may even have been displaced from the Home Page by more recent content.

Thus we have a major search engine problem here.  In addition, I really question whether this is the best way to serve up this content to your readers.  How many readers will patiently read through the whole blog from the most recent post right through to the last one displayed on the Home Page?  I would hazard a guess that almost no one does this.  Why then serve up the content in this long scrolling format?

I believe many have not thought sufficiently about how best to present their blog.  The default format of showing a series of posts is in my opinion not reader-friendly.

In addition since many people will come to the blog via a search engine, only a single post that relates to their search query is what they wish to read.  Following that logic, the Home Page should contain only a single post.  Or if you have the boldness to go where few others have gone as yet, you may abandon your Home Page and present only the most recent post.  It’s what we call the LMNHP approach.

If you try it, you may be pleasantly surprised at how much those search engines may rank your blog posts more highly in relevant keyword searches.

Post from: BPWrap

Seth Godin Thinks Bigger Is Better

Technorati Tags: Copyblogger, Google, problogger.net, Seth Godin, White House

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Outside.In for example is a new way of looking at what is going on around you using what has been called a hyper local news aggregator.  It aims to tell you: What’s happening. Where you are. Right now.  It is a much more evocative name than its major competitor EveryBlock from MSNBC.   EveryBlock is one of scores of competing services including Nozzl, Outside.in, Fwix and more that serve up public records, social media content and local announcements on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood, or in this case block-by-block, basis.

There are even more mind-blowing examples of that Outside In duo.  There is even a movie, Outside In, made by IMAX, which will show on massive screens and concert-level surround systems with a synchronized light show to audiences in planetariums, museums, galleries and limited IMAX release.

Using hundreds of thousands of still images manipulated to create full motion, «Outside In» takes the audience from the big bang to our present day. With visual and audio mashups & photo-motion collages, the camera journeys into the zeitgeist of our age of mass media but music carries us to Saturn. There, we soar around, into and through the incredible photographs of Saturn taken by Cassini using an «2.75D» photographic fly-through technique created using Adobe Photoshop and After Effects.

That stunning example of Outside In should not blind us to more interesting examples of these contrasting words.  The Outside In social service agency is dedicated to serving low-income adults and homeless youth. It began in 1968, and has continually revised services to meet changing client needs. Current programs include a community health clinic, a homeless youth program designed to help homeless youth obtain independent living, and risk education.  It has had outstanding success helping Portland, Oregon’s homeless youth transition off the streets and into stable lives.  80% of youth who go through their transitional housing program never return to the streets.

The final example of the Outside In contrast could well the one of the most powerful.  Many companies have bought into the notion that they should be more customer centric.  They interpret that as trying to focus on the customer and provide what customers need.  However this often results only in lip-service to the concept.  Indeed they often assume that they know best what customers should have and then strive hard to deliver that.

Cartoon originally appeared on CustomersAreAlways

HBS professor Ranjay Gulati, suggests a better way is to adopt an Outside-In Approach to Customer Service.  This is an excellent way of describing what is involved in becoming a more customer-centric selling organization.  The alternative is to remain a product driven company that nevertheless tries to make sure it produces high quality products.

The term Outside In makes a clear distinction that we are talking about what the customers on the outside see in the products and services the company delivers. Professor Gulati, an expert on leadership, strategy, and organizational issues in firms, believes that companies must evolve through a series of major transitions on the way to becoming more customer-centric. He covers this in his book, Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business. Key.  There are many examples of where this process has brought success such as Best Buy, Cisco, Target, Starbucks, and Jones Lang LaSalle.

In a way it all goes back to that quotation from Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, on customer service:

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.

That customer is on the outside looking in.  It is important that she or he is enthused by what they see.

Post from: BPWrap

Outside-In For A Different Perspective

Technorati Tags: customerservice, EveryBlock, Outside.in, Sam Walton, Wal-Mart

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Scalable was a word introduced in the Information Technology world but it raises some interesting questions in applying it in other contexts.

In IT it is a popular buzzword that refers to how well a hardware or software system can adapt to increased demands. For example, a scalable network system would be one that can start with just a few nodes but can easily expand to thousands of nodes. Scalability can be a very important feature because it means that you can invest in a system with confidence you won’t outgrow it.

Now we see it applied more generally to a company that many customers would rate very highly for customer service. Toyota Failure Proves Quality Isn’t Scalable.

A small operation can bootstrap itself into a medium or even a reasonably large company, via either organic growth or acquisition, and still maintain the quality which was the basis of its initial success.

At some point, though, whether you’re talking an automaker or a technology firm, size breeds insularity, which in turn fosters risk aversion. I haven’t even mentioned the corner-cutting mentality which occurs when making numbers becomes a (the only?) priority.

The author, Alexander Wolfe, points out that in the more open world created by the Internet, the quality stakes are very much higher.

Toyota might not have so fortunate a fate, and thus a swifter fall, because we now live in Internet time, where seismic shifts occur in timeframes too tiny for rational thought to stop that Twitter/Facebook/Cable TV train from running the business off the metaphorical track.

I believe the author identifies exactly why this problem occurs.

It’s true that the scalability doesn’t seem to be a limiting factor for manufacturing, per se. It’s not the manufacturing which is at fault in the Toyota crisis. It’s a management failure brought on by an inherent inability of human beings to scale up, beyond a certain point, the social interactions which grease the wheels of a smoothly running society. (And, in a very real sense, a company is a society writ smaller.)

The real reasons for the Toyota problems have yet to be pinned down, however a clear message is that Toyota was not willing to accept that customer satisfaction is determined by the customer. Undoubtedly the final bill for Toyota will be very much greater than if they had accepted that if a single customer is dissatisfied, you have to make it right. Of course there is a very small proportion of the population that are never satisfied. However unless you do as much for them as most people would accept is right and fair, then you may well be storing up problems for yourself.

Insularity is not an acceptable or justifiable company trait. There must be full two-way communication that both parties find acceptable. Setting that up and providing adequate resources for that is not somehting that is easily scaleable. However the hoped-for economies by providing less than satisfying customer service are completely outweighed by the market penalties when customers feel ignored.

On a personal note, I have been a most satisfied customer of Toyota for many years and will gladly pass on the word to friends and acquaintances. However my voice and the voices of other satisfied customers are lost in the huge noise created by those who it would appear have reasons to claim that Toyota just did not listen.

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Post from: BPWrap

Quality is not infinitely scalable

Technorati Tags: customer service, Information Technology, Toyota

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Although you might assume we are about to discuss that new Ford Focus automobile, that is the resultant of what we really want to talk about.

The word focus is what Peter Drucker felt so strongly about that he emphasized it three times: focus, focus, focus. Although it is clearly essential advice for small and mid-sized companies, it is equally applicable in mega corporations too.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, that is what Ford’s Renaissance Man is now pushing.

Alan Mulally, an engineer from Boeing, arrived three-and-a-half years ago when Ford seemed on death’s door. It suffered a $12.6 billion loss in 2006, when industry-wide car sales were strong. But in 2009, Ford became the only U.S. car company to avoid bankruptcy, and posted a $2.7 billion profit. After plunging below $2 a share a year ago the company’s stock is now bumping $12.

“Improve Focus, Simplify Operations,” is for Mr. Mulally a sacred mantra. Soon after his arrival Ford began shedding brands – Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin among them – that the company couldn’t afford to support. Volvo will be next to go. Meanwhile, the core Ford brand got an investment infusion to replace aging cars and revive a model lineup that had been heavily tilted toward gas-guzzling trucks.

In the process, Ford cut its number of global platforms, or chassis, to eight from more than 20, and the number of nameplates to 25 from 97. Each platform and model involves hundreds of millions of dollars of engineering costs, which translated to billions of losses when Ford couldn’t sell enough of each model.

Product-development chief Derrick Kuzak is methodically implementing the “One Ford” strategy of developing cars in a single region (say Europe, or North America) and selling them globally, instead of developing slightly different cars in each region at enormous extra cost. The first of these, the subcompact Fiesta, was engineered in Europe and will arrive in the United States this summer. In 2011, we will see a new version of a slightly larger car, the compact Focus, also engineered in Europe and designed as a global car from the start.

It’s all another triumph for that KISS principle. As Albert Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

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• Ford’s Bet: It’s a Small World After All (nytimes.com)

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Ford Focus

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