PROMOTIONS

The power of pricing and the power of quality. Everyone would want a Jaguar for $500 but no one in their right mind would purchase one at that price.

Just as it’s reasonable to spend $300 on a pair of Michael Khors jeans—unless they’re from DI.

What I’m trying to say is that even though on paper it looks like a great deal, those ones that are too good to be true, people generally won’t accept, because they’re seemingly the definition of fraud.

BYU-Idaho’s newspaper, Scroll, published an article on the DI and students who purchase things there. The interviewed only girls. And one of them bought her wedding dress form the DI. I hope it was a good dress. Because for many the wedding dress is worth more the $30.

Valpack savings come in a blue envelope encasing smooth paper ads. Jamba Juice turns to feel to sell their smoothies. In a Valpack promotion, Jamba Juice substituted a coarse paper insert.

The average rating from an online reviewer on a five star scale is 4.4. For some products it’s higher, and for others it’s not much lower.

While the internet allows many outlets for consumers to reflect on products or services and companies even base their business by hiring critics to analyze the options provided by brands and Websites, the input presented in Website comment sections and critiques aren’t very insightful.

Amazon.com’s customer reviews are some of the most often visited of product reviews. A quick look at the randomly selected product, Britany Spears’s new album Circus, showed an overall four star rating out of 184 reviews. 104 of those ratings where five out of five, and the featured negative review was three stars and said the songs were simple but that it was still a good album.

Another search, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, yielded a 4.5 stars overall out of 576 reviews.

A final search, Sayno Eneloop AAA batteries had 4.5 stars out of 815 reviews.

Either these products are amazing or the online criticism is skewed.

The marketing research firm Keller Fay Group predicts the largest contributor is human nature.

“There is an urban myth that people are far more likely to express negatives than positives, ” says Ed Keller, the company’s chief executive. From surveying 100 consumers per week to determine which products they mention to friends, the Keller Fay Group found on average that 65% of the word-of-mouth reviews are positive and only 8% are negative.

Based on that conclusion, the majority of consumers only return to comment on products they really liked, and consistently, a much smaller handful will return with those negative reviews.

Likened to gambling by Andy Chen, the chief executive of Power Reviews Inc., as the wins distract people, they forget the aggravating losses. Consumers likewise forget their losses.

The FTC is looking into the possibility of banning bloggers from accepting gifts or products from companies. Some businesses have found a way to sway popular bloggers to be there advocates in hopes that the blogger in turn will write about their company favorably or pitch a product.

With the mission to protect consumers in mind, the FTC argues that in these sorts of situations bloggers reviewing companies or products should be treated as journalists. It is widely understood among the journalism community that it is unethical to accept “gifts” from anyone or any organization involved in whatever way with their work.

Believe it or not, badvocates aren’t all bad.

Without criticism how else would companies determine where they’re lacking?

The key to being successful with the alteration in public relations for companies through modern social mediums presented by the Internet is to take preventative measures.

Big companies need to monitor what is being said about them online, and from that, take the negatives and change them into positives. They need to adapt and enhance their companies through constructive criticism online.

In particular, businesses who are online and monitoring what going on, will be better able to address potential badvocate consumers and convince them that they’re a smart business by asking how they could improve and what they can do to help the consumer.

People are generally understanding and know that if they witness a company responding to criticism well, that it’s a genuine and good company. Consumers will go those businesses, because they listen and improve themselves.

United airlines has attempted to do just that. They took the bad situation and tried to flip to benefit the business they conduct in the future.

After the YouTube video, they contacted Carroll hoping to settle the issue quickly. Carroll still launched the second video, but never the third. United now uses his movies as a portion of their employee training on what not to do.

They attempted to make badvocate an advocate, but they could have avoided a lot of heartache by listening in the first place.

Social media tools give smart brands a real edge because they can make fixes quicker. Some shy away for fear. Some think social networks are bad. But many people understand that some brands mess up and we’re willing to forgive that.

Proven as people still fly on United, they’re just a little wary of checking their $1000 guitars.

In March of 2008, the lead singer of a band called the Sons of Maxwell, Dave Carroll, flew with United Airlines while on tour. Along with him, he checked in a $3500 Taylor Guitar. When the plane landed for a stopover during the trip, passengers reportedly saw a loading crew vigorously handling several luggage items, among such was a guitar case.

Upon the arrival of the flight to Omaha Nebraska, Carroll retrieved his guitar. It was broken.

Carroll attempted to get some sort of compensation for his beloved guitar by speaking through the chain of command at the airline.

He spent the next year trying to civilly communicate his dissatisfaction with the airline to no avail. Though he spoke with several of the airline employees none were able to help due to what he felt was flawed policy on the company’s part.

Taking the run around for only so long, Carroll decided to attempt another venue to get the attention of the company.

Carroll sent United Airlines a message detailing his plan to release the first of three videos he created embodying the poor service he experienced with that flight on YouTube.com.

He then launched the first of the three music videos.

The single titled “United Breaks Guitars” premiered on YouTube July 6, 2009, and had 3 million hits within its first ten days on YouTube.

According to the British newspaper The Times, United Airlines’ company share price “plunged by 10 percent costing shareholders $180 million” only four days after the song’s release.

It should be interesting to see how companies manage responses similar to this for the next couple of years as people adjust to the Internet as a popular mode of expression.

This one catastrophic instance proves the need for companies to be aware of the concerns and comments consumers and clients have for them.

But with the age of the Internet, these badvocates can have more of an impact than ever before.

Through posting on blogs, submitting online consumer reviews, tweeting on twitter, and updating their status on Facebook, consumers publish their thoughts to a community wider than just their own circle of close friends. They’re telling co-workers, relatives, acquaintances and strangers about any experience they want–good or bad.

Weber Shandwick found that 20 percent of the global adult population is represented by the people they define as badvocates. On average a badvocate will tell 14 other people about their experience in detail. This number is far beyond the average of telling around 5 people of a good experience.

And how easy is it to create a site targeting a company and their incompetency? The Internet swung open the doors for consumers to easily respond both kindly and critically of any business.

According to the Weber Shandwick’s Risky Business: Reputations Online™ study conducted with the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2009, “Nearly four in 10 global executives fear that a dissatisfied customer or critic will launch an online campaign against their company.”

An example of such a campaign is the CNN reported public relations “nightmare” for United Airlines in the spring of 2009.

Badvocacy? It may be a new term, but definitely not a new concept. Whenever a product or service is produced, people will give feedback. This feedback is generally from either good or bad.

In a little booklet  called The Good Book of Badvocacy produced by Weber Shandwick, one of, if not the largest global public relations firms in the world, the company with the “Advocacy starts here” slogan defined advocacy and its opposite, badvocacy:

“Today’s world is filled with advocates…people who talk or act on behalf of companies, organizations, issues, brands, causes and products. Sometimes quietly and sometimes loudly. They do it among friends and families. They do it at work. They do it in chat rooms and on blogs. They do it in their communities. Some have broad-reaching platforms; some are reaching just their own circle of friends. And some Advocates are simply BADVOCATES—people who passionately criticize or detract from companies, brands or products in all the above ways.”

A badvocate is the advocate’s counterpart, the villain, the antagonist. It is a displeased customer that makes their displeasure known.

Naturally, many companies have long since feared the badvocate, those customers willing to do anything to keep that company from progressing or even functioning for whatever reason whether it be poor service, poor products, or a bad experience.

However, it wasn’t that long ago that is was hard for consumers to even let a company know they weren’t satisfied. Comment cards only go so far—like from the cashier’s counter to the cashier’s garbage can.

More and more people are turning to twitter for news up to the minute. I also feel that many of Twitter users believe the messages channeled from citizen journalists and various twitter users as fact nearly $100 percent of the time. Twitter can certainly be used as an excellent source of up to date news. But with unregulated users, people could present whatever information they please and others could willingly accept these 140 character statements as fact. I believe there is a great need for social responsibility with this issue. People need to be willing to fact check and turn to a variety of sources.

The article goes on to discuss how twitter can improve product image and company brands. I certainly believe that Twitter will become a great tool for businesses to make connections with consumers and audiences.

Who would have thought we’d be turning to social media for breaking news?

View the article here: 10 Ways Twitter Will Change American Business

Who looks at the back of the box? Cake is cake, it’s sold by the picture on the box right?  Wrong. Cake mix boxes prove to have just as much value on their back as the front.

Today is my birthday. And my husband went out to purchase a cake mix to make a little birthday treat. He chose the party mix cake, rather reluctantly, I think . He’s more of a chocolate far. However, one impressive thing about this particular cake is the neat little cone cake idea on the back of the box.

The importance of product design. It’s more than a colorful picture.

The general Mills Betty Crocker cake mixes attempt to award consumers and gain consumers by simple recipe suggestions posted on the back of the box.