PRESS RELEASE

Companies Don't Love Customers Like They Could -
says Tom Asacker

CARSON CITY, NV - Acclaimed author Tom Asacker, who regularly keynotes on business topics focusing on brands and branding, tells teleconference listeners, "I would say to a CEO who says to me, "How come they don't love me anymore?" - because you don't love them like you should be. You think that business is a simple transactional process where you develop products and services and blast out persuasive messages and everything will be OK. And it's just not like that anymore. It's a much more complex environment."

Asacker is a special guest on Console Call's February Webinar Series. 

 
In a preview interview conducted Friday, Feb. 12, 2010, Asacker also concluded that companies who fail to understand what customers need, run the risk of wasting time and money on failed advertising and promotional campaigns.

Here is Asacker in a nine-minute long interview with Console Call owner Gary Jesch, who took on the role of a frustrated CEO who insisted that Asacker help save his failing business.

For more from Tom Asacker, join our teleconference on Thursday afternoon, Feb. 18th at 1 p.m. Pacific, where attendees will be offered a chance to ask him their questions after the 30-minute dialogue with Jesch is concluded.

Click on this arrow to hear Asacker's comments from Friday:

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TRANSCRIPTION OF INTERVIEW:

Gary: You read my little query about brands vs. branding - what did that make you think?

Tom: It just made me think that the concepts are still very confusing to people. The ideas behind brands and branding conjure up all kinds of different thoughts and images, and most of them happen to be wrong today - the things that people think about.

Gary: Why isn't it OK for me to be confused, as a business owner or manager? What are the consequences of me being confused?

Tom: The two big consequences - one is you spend money wastefully, and capital is obviously limited today. And the second big point is - that money you do spend doesn't do anything to attract and retain customers, get word of mouth going, so basically, you are wasting time, you are wasting money and you are not fulfilling your objectives. I can't think of anything more damaging than those three things.

Gary: OK, so say I'm an old-school CEO, and I'm looking at my business and going, "You know people don't love me like they used to." What am I missing?

Tom: You know, I've heard this a lot, that customers aren't loyal anymore. That seems to be what the old school leaders like to point out, in meetings with their people especially. And the fact is, there was no such thing as loyalty, ever, in the marketplace, right? It was always an exchange of value. It just so happens that today's idea of value is much more complex. There are a lot more things to go into the nature of value in the marketplace, because, as consumers in a modern marketplace, we are pretty much fulfilled with the basic stuff. We have everything that we need, in essence, so what we are looking for is more than simple transactions in the marketplace.

We're looking to be fulfilled in a certain way. We're looking for meaning and excitement and engagement and happiness. And so I would say to a CEO who says to me, "How come they don't love me anymore?" - because you don't love them like you should be. You think that business is a simple transactional process where you develop products and services and blast out persuasive messages and everything will be OK. And it's just not like that anymore. It's a much more complex environment.

Gary: So you are saying that there's all these kids out there, and it's Facebook, this - and My Space that, and LinkedIn, and all these social things that my staff keeps telling me about. Well, aren't - don't I have customers in that group and how do I reach them? How do I go after them?

Tom: Listen - this is the thing, right? Customers are everywhere today. It's not that there are kids on Facebook and somebody else over here. They happen to be everywhere. The question is - are you where they spend most of their time? So if they're spending most of their time on the street corner, I would suggest to you that that is where you should hang out, too, on the street corner. So that you can understand what they are saying, what they're thinking, what they're feeling. If they are hanging out in Facebook, you should be hanging around with them, to find out what's going on there.

Now I'm not saying, "Go there," - you wouldn't go to a street corner wearing a sandwich sign, right? You go to the street corner and you hang around, listen and you join the conversation, and you try to develop some insights into how you can help these people. It's the same thing with all these other platforms.

You know, you go in there, curious and empathetic and try to figure out - "How can I participate and help these people achieve what they are trying to achieve, and get what they are trying to get out of life?"

Gary: OK, I've got a great company, you know, and people have known about my company, my sales team goes out and they call and they work their butts off, and they bring in business and that. So my marketing people come to me and they say that my company and the products just aren't relevant anymore, or we are losing our relevancy. So what the heck are they talking about?

Tom: Well, listen, first of all, it shouldn't be your sales people that are telling you that, because they are the ones that are closest to the people that can benefit from your product and services, the things that you actually provide that add value. So if they're not out there, looking in somebody's eye, saying, "Listen, what can we do to make this more valuable to you? Or "Is it valuable to you?" "If it's valuable to you, do you think it would be valuable to people like you?"

It's really pretty simple, right? I mean if you look at Intuit, and you look at Quicken, and you ask yourself, "How can this little company develop this piece of software, this simple money management software, and beat a behemoth like Microsoft, it's really simple. It's because Microsoft develops products and then blasts out messages. And Intuit develops products, and then follows the person home with the product and watches them use it, looks at the frustration in their face when they are using it, and then makes a giant list of how to improve it. And they just keep doing that and staying ahead of everyone else.

So that's really what I'm saying. I'm saying - you should be constantly improving the experience, the product, the services, the tools, and the connections. That's how you improve your brand - not by changing the logos and colors on the fonts or anything else, but by making significant changes that improve everybody else's experience.

Gary: OK - pretty interesting - let me just ask you this - what happened to Kodak, for example? Big brand but their product just got obsolete, you know? That's happened to a lot of companies. What can you say about that?

Tom: Well, you have to realize that the most difficult thing to see is what is right in front of your eyes. And with companies that are highly successful, they become wedded to that success model, whatever it is. It's difficult for them to really break out. There's a concept called "active inertia," which means that you're doing things, it's achieving things for you, so you do more of these things, even in the face of change in the external environment.

You become so used to doing things that you continue to do those things, because you believe it will continue to bring you success.

Somebody once said, or somebody quoted Einstein, saying that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well, listen to this, I think the definition of insanity in a changing world - is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting the same results, because the world is changing - you've got to change with it.

Gary: All right, so put it in terms of your "Sandbox Wisdom" and can you set me up with an example from that perspective?

Tom: Well, I mean - look at kids. Kids are just 100 percent curious, right? When they see something, they try to understand it. They don't push it off. They don't typically get upset by it. If they step in something and it's sticky - why is it sticky? They look at it and say, "Why is this sticky? Let me take a look!"

Same thing with the invention of Velcro, right? The guy's walking with his dog through the woods and a bunch of these little sticky burrs get stuck on his dog and on his socks. Instead of getting angry about the situation, which most executives do, he looked at it. He looked at it under a microscope, and he saw little hooks and little burrs, and he said, "Well, wait a minute." And he invented Velcro.

So I would approach the marketplace with these really curious, simple eyes, very clear perspective, and don't get upset by what you see. Look at what you see and then try to figure out - what does that have to do with how the marketplace is evolving and how I can best fit in to that, and move along that evolution?

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