remarkable communication

Things to Do Before You Get Famous

By Sonia Simone

Last year, internationally celebrated violinist Joshua Bell tried an experiment. He took his violin (a Stradivarius built in 1713, worth about $3.5 million) into the Washington, D.C. Metro and played for about 45 minutes.

If you want to get cheap seats to hear Joshua Bell perform, expect to pay at least $100.

So who stopped to listen to him play Bach and Schubert? Nearly no one. Thousands of people marched past, avoiding Bell's eye so they wouldn't feel guilty about failing to throw a quarter or two into his case. (He made a little over $32 for the day.)

Music did not soothe the savage breast. Music failed to even register in the savage breast.

(I was fascinated to read about exceptions, like a three-year-old named Evan. Evan knew there was something special going on, and tried to dawdle so he could check it out. But Evan's mom was in a hurry to get him to daycare and herself on to work and hustled his curious little butt right on past. I don't blame her, we've all been there. As the Washington Post story reported, "The behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.")

Evidence, if we needed it, that kids are smarter than grown-ups about some things.

Context matters more than ability

So what can we learn from this slightly depressing little story?

For one thing, it's a stark illustration that talent and ability are not enough. The moral of the story is probably not that Joshua Bell is a mediocre violinist.

Remember the famous coffee commercial, where they substituted crummy supermarket instant coffee for the coffee in great restaurants? Of course people loved the crummy coffee. When they ordered it, they expected to pay $5 a cup for it. It was delivered in a delicate china cup. It came after a great meal. It was brought by a snooty waiter.

It's not that talent and ability don’t matter. They do. But no one can begin to see talent or ability until they're put into the right frame.

Some people never see past any frame. Not much we can do for them. But for you, we can make sure you're choosing the frame that sets you off.

Success is a brand

You don't need mass appeal or millions of customers to be a success. But your definition of success needs to be a keystone of your brand.

You decide what success is, then show the world how magnificently successful you are by that light.

No one is going to notice your amazing talent and elevate you to fame and fortune. You've got to create the fame and fortune in your own outlook first. Claim your position.

This stuff takes time to gel. You might have to be patient. But keep your vision of yourself as a success clearly in your mind. Pretend you're deposed royalty from some forgotten (but elegant) country. Don't let your crummy apartment or 20-year-old car make you think of yourself in small terms.

Be your own fan club. Other fans will catch up to you eventually.

You can make your own context

Joshua Bell's story is also a great lesson in the art of finding what you look for. If you expect to hear not-very-good musicians in the subway, even the world's greatest violinist will sound like nothing special.

Could anything like that be happening in your life now?

We could try to be a little more aware as we move through our days--leave a little room open for the possibility that something extraordinary could happen. Let's face it, when human beings are involved, there's always room for the extraordinary.

But beyond that, we could try to expect better out of our lives. We could expect greatness from our work. We could expect passionate fanaticism from our customers. We could expect personal lives and professional lives that nourished and enriched one another, and brought us joy.

Hell, we could start by expecting to get paid what we're worth. Baby steps.

Choosing a new frame for Remarkable Communication

I've decided that, comfortable though this cozy little joint has been for the past year, it's time for me to move my voice to a frame that's better suited to it.

Remarkable Communication is going to change some things--to a new domain name and a spiffy new theme. (My profound thanks to Men with Pens for helping me out with this.)

I am very happy and grateful to have found so many readers on this little homegrown blog. I did everything you're not supposed to do--I used an uncustomized template, didn't use my own domain name, was too cheap even to spring for the Typepad plan that would have let me use custom style sheets.

It's always been about the words for me. But I think it's time for me to get those words into the right frame. Not every reader is as perceptive as you are. I'd like more people to be able to see this blog clearly.

There might be a few bumps and lumps as we get moving, so I hope you'll bear with me. I'll keep this Web address going for a few months so my occasional visitors will know where to find me.

And I'll let you know what I learn along the way, so you can benefit from the boneheaded mistakes I am sure to make.

Read the original Washington Post article about Joshua Bell's stunt

If you found this post useful, subscribe to my free email class on creating better content!

The Three Bears of Social Media Marketing: Part 2 (Papa Bear)

By Sonia Simone

OK, the Mama Bear of social media marketing is the customer conversation model. It's about connection, warm fuzzies, community, all that good stuff.

The Papa Bear model isn't quite so fuzzy. I call it Papa Bear because it's the model that makes the most sense for gigantic organizations, but it can also be an important social media strategy for individuals or smaller companies. It has a common sense side and a potentially creepy side. So let's get into it.

Their eyes and ears are everywhere

Let's say there's a gigantic packaged food company. Now let's say the gigantic company has a program to listen in on public blogs and forum discussions, and learns about a novel use for one of its products. Maybe they make a chewing gum that's particularly good at clearing dust from your throat. That might not be a feature anyone in the marketing department has ever promoted, but customers have noticed it on their own.

Maybe, then, people are chatting in forums and military support blogs about sending that gum to their family members fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, to alleviate the choking dust that soldiers are facing there. The idea turns into a modest craze, with earnest volunteers coordinating sending cases of the stuff to soldiers deployed overseas.

Armed with the knowledge of this interesting new use of their product, the gigantic company now has all kinds of options. They can create ads around this particular feature, to reinforce the conversation that's already taking place. They can put special displays in supermarkets, saying that for every package of gum sold, the company will send a package to the military. Or the company could get their PR agency busy pitching the story, maybe coordinated with making a massive donation of the gum to the troops.

None of these has the gigantic company actually sending a representative to the online forum and chatting with the folks there. But it is still communication. The customers talk, the company listens and responds. It responds with action rather than literal conversation, but does that make it less meaningful?

Remember that adage, you have two ears and one mouth? You should therefore . . .

Listen twice as much as you talk

Papa Bear knows how to keep his mouth shut. He listens to what's going on. He finds out where his customers are hanging out. If he's really big, he might engage a company like Collective Intellect to analyze what's most significant about the conversation. (Subscribing to Sonia Simone in Google Alerts is pretty darned manageable to follow. Subscribing to "Coke" or "Mercedes" or "iPod" is not.)

Papa Bear watches the conversation and looks for themes. What are people upset about? What do they get really jazzed about? What's bugging them? What problems aren't getting solved? What great stuff are people saying about Papa Bear's competitors? Are Papa Bear's support people doing the right thing by customers, or are they prompting near-AOL level rants?

If Papa Bear isn't a multinational conglomerate (or possibly even if he is), he might be able to morph into Mama Bear and enter the conversation on a human level. But it's a good idea to spend at least some of your time in Papa Bear mode. People will always speak a little more freely about you if they don't realize you're in the room.

Is it too sneaky?

Online media have an unappealing word for this behavior: lurking. It conjures up a picture of some creepy guy hiding in the bushes outside your window.

So what do you think of Papa Bear? Is it sneaky and deceptive to listen quietly on the public conversation? Should we always step out of the shadows and make our presence known?

And is listening (and following up with action) "real" communication, or just eavesdropping?

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Next in the series, of course, is Baby Bear. He's adorable, cuddly, and . . . not actually a bear at all. Subscribe in a reader or by email so you don't miss him!

Flickr Creative Commons image by thelearnr

They're breaking my heart

I have a love-hate relationship with Levenger. Whoever writes their catalog copy has some kind of secret window into my psyche. Who else knows how much I want 3x5 cards that won't feather when I write on them with a fountain pen? Who else would dare dream I would pay $8 for a pad of paper? Or that I have a deep-seated passion for grass green fountain pen ink?

The Levenger catalog is one of my many guilty pleasures, on a par with ABBA and the Supernanny. Dreaming about owning Levenger's products is such a pleasure. If only actually placing an order was as enjoyable.

Do not love
Over the years I've had different issues with Levenger. I bought a few fountain pens from them, none of which worked very well. (They've since quit carrying any pens other than their own.) For a couple of years they were constitutionally incapable of keeping my customer data in their shopping cart system—I think that one has been worked out. Just this week I was ready to order something—only to find that it's significantly more expensive on the Web site than it is in the catalog. But my longtime favorite is their shipping and handling.

We'll start with the fact that I'm always slightly appalled by what I'm paying for shipping, especially if I've ordered an item that isn't physically large. I'm willing to pay 5-10 times what a keychain should cost—don't penalize me further by charging me $15 to ship it to me.

But I would forget about the pain of their expensive shipping in two seconds if they got the rest of it right.

If you're in the mail order business, the bar has been set very high. Companies like Amazon and Lands' End ship immediately. If there's something that will prevent them from shipping the next business day, they let you know before you place your order.

That standard of service is just a fact, and it's been a fact for at least ten years. If you run a mail order company, you don't have a lot of room to redefine that expectation.

Levenger, on the other hand, has rather old-fashioned ideas about preparing items to ship. Three or four or five days, whatever. Let's call it a week-ish. Even if you pay for overnight shipping.

Folks, if I'm paying you double or triple shipping charges for overnight shipping, the expectation is that you're going to, you know, step on it.

No one cares that what you do is hard.
Is it really hard to ship the next day? I'm sure it is. And if you're a tiny family-run organization like Dharma Trading Company, you could probably get away with shipping in a couple of days.

Except, guess what, Dharma routinely ships the same day if you order before 10:30 their time. Next day otherwise. When you're a multimillion dollar mail order company with a well-established brand and you can't execute as well as a busy mom-n-pop shop that sells tie-dye supplies, you have a problem.

Also, Levenger uses FedEx Ground. Now I love FedEx Air without reservation. They do a complex job unbelievably well. But FedEx Ground is approximately one million times less good than FedEx Air. It's also one million times less good than USPS Priority Mail, which, frankly, is hard to beat.

FedEx aggressively pursues business by granting highly competitive rates for bulk commitments. I get that, but I don't really care. A premium product needs to deliver their desirable little pleasures to their customers in the best way possible, not the cheapest way. (All the more so when they're charging a fortune for it.)

The love part
Here's what's interesting. I still buy from Levenger. (Although I try to hold my purchases until I'm in a city where they have a retail presence. When you sell things people don't need, they can wait a long time for them.) There's something their story I love. The idea that my words flow so much more smoothly in a lab notebook with a red leather cover. The appreciative looks I get when I lend out my one rollerball—a TrueWriter Kyoto—which is beautiful and hefty and feels expensive. The sexy little blank card holders (in several iterations—one's integrated with a wallet, another with a keychain, etc.) so I can always write myself a note on really swanky paper.

But how much more would I buy if I didn't get an angry sinking feeling every time I added something to their shopping cart? (And because I expect problems, I always get them. Always. That's part of how stories work—we see what we think we're going to see.)

Your story is made of more than words
Are these nitpicks? Yes. The quality of Levenger's products is mostly good. But the story they tell with their actions, the emotional quality that arises when customers order from them, isn't good. An individual problem may be small, but systematic and repeated problems like this communicate a lack of respect for your customer.

Just like in your relationships with individual human beings, what you do always carries more weight than what you say. If your behavior is consistent and positive, people begin to trust you (and will forgive the occasional lapse). If your behavior is inconsistent or disrespectful (or both), customers will start to associate you with that bad taste you leave in their mouth.

It's brutally simple. If you make people feel bad, they will avoid you.

On the other hand, I guess I should love Levenger's approach. Over the years, my anticipation of frustration and annoyance has saved me a hell of a lot of money.