Toying with customers: promotions for puppets

Back story here and here.

I've no problem rewarding loyal customers with free goodies. In fact, I love giving stuff to customers--and Customer Advisory Boards--who give us their time, attention,feedback and loyalty. Pre-releasing products, or giving out product samples, to a targeted set of top customers/enthusiasts is a great reward...but only when we're truly rewarding them.

That's why I like the Sci-Fi Channel blogger relations program. It rewarded top sci-fi bloggers (i.e. customers)--who ALREADY blogged about their programs--by bringing them on-site to their studios for a week to meet Sci-Fi show writers and stars. After all, a show is nothing without its fans so that reward made a ton of sense...and offered further value to the bloggers' audiences because the bloggers could share their experiences--in their own words--with their readers. Yep, that program was truly relevant and rewarding (and long overdue).

Now, do we marketers hope that when we reward our customers we'll keep those customers? Absolutely. Do we hope they'll give us feedback so that we can optimize our products in the near and far terms? Absolutely. Do we hope those treasured customers...who treasure us...will spread the word to their colleagues, family and friends? Absolutely.

So should we provide them with "here's messaging points for you to use when you help spread the word about this product"? Absolutely NOT.

Why praytel? Because then we've gone from reward to to manipulation. That's not caring for customers and fostering brand evangelism. That's using your customers to be your talking-point puppets. WOM and evangelism flow naturally, these acts can't be forced.

And toying with them is no way to treat valued customers.

Net/net: One cannot create brand evangelists or manufacture WOM. Companies can only encourage evangelism by providing exemplary products, services, programs and experiences--and delivering on these fronts consistently.

So if you're gonna give then give. After all, you're already getting their time, attention, feedback and business. Alas, so many want shortcuts (and puppets).

Shout: This post was inspired by David Berkowitz who gave me an email heads-up on this program. Btw, David actually nudged me into blogging in the first place, not sure if you folks know that. Actually, I'm not sure if David knows that. So blame him if you don't like my blog so much (but if you like it feel free to tell me ;-).

Comments

[Mario Vellandi]

These freebie programs are going to become more common - unfortunately it also means misperceptions of easy solutions. Impatience and quick judgments will lead to brand inauthenticity and moochers. Which will lead to perhaps a mistrust among the masses if they learned someone got it for free.
WOM is going to see an interesting evolution over the coming years; I see it mostly as good, but there will be pockets of abuse which will be written up.

[David Berkowitz]

I'm happy to take the blame, CK! And I knew if you had a chance to comment aloud on that link, you'd mine it for something sage we all can learn from. Great recap.

[CK]

@Mario: Thanks. It's not the freebies for valued customers that are the problem. It's good to recognize our customers' loyalty--especially when we're able to get feedback on current and future products/services. It's the arrogance of those who think they can use those valued customers as selling agents. You can't force evangelists, just encourage them through doing our jobs (creating exemplary products/services/experiences).

@David: Yep, all this blogging is all your fault my friend...when I started reading your blog I knew I needed to start participating :-).

[Mario Vellandi]

I understand the part of not wanting to treat loyal customers as puppets; it's lame.

What I'm pointing to is the coin's other side: teasing a bunch of indifferent mice with free cheese, then conditioning them to act out in specially-designed promotional activities in return for a little more nibbles. Sure it's an age-old strategy, but generally it isn't sustainable as the loyalty runs dry and new "cool" (authentic or hot air-injected) is found elsewhere anyway.

[Gavin Heaton]

Great post, CK! It is too easy to think that evangelists are a captive audience and treated poorly.