Pork Council believes people prefer fairy tales?

Intellectual property disputes have always been one of my greatest passions, as well as frustrations. So many complexities taken into consideration to decide who has rights to what brand name or tagline. It can be exhilarating if you're into that sort of thing. Other times it can be downright frustrating. Then other times it can be hysterical.

ThinkGeek, an online marketer of technology accessories, comical shirts, and other hysterical parody products, posted an April Fools joke product for "Canned Unicorn Meat." Anyone with an ounce of common sense would know this is a joke, and curious parties who attempted to purchase the product got a message that they had just fallen for an April Fools gag. Everyone got a good laugh out of it, everyone except for the National Pork Board.

In the advertisement for mythical meat product, ThinkGeek used the phrase "The new white meat" and several sites referred to the product as "the other white meat." The National Pork Board had their lawyers send a cease & desist letter, pointing out that THE OTHER WHITE MEAT is a registered trademark of the National Pork Board and ThinkGeek's use of the term is an infringement and dilution of  their trademark rights.

Trademarks are a way to distinguish that the product in question comes from a unique source. That way, we know whether we're buying Hormel's authentic SPAM product, and not an off-label spiced ham meat byproduct. Trademarks are important to help consumers know they are buying the authentic product that they prefer. If another company attempted to call their spiced ham canned meat SPAM, Hormel could interject and bring legal action against the offending company.

I don't believe any consumers saw the canned unicorn meat and truly believed it was a viable replacement for pork. This was not a true threat to the National Pork Board, nor was it something damaging to the public's love of pig-derived meats. The real threat to the National Pork Board are the counselors to the board who thought it would be a good idea to pay thousands on the drafting of a legal document asking ThinkGeek to stop using the similar taglines to sell their competing meat (which never existed in the first place). Instead, they spent a lot of time and money to provide comic fodder for the masses so we could mock the National Pork Board and Faege & Benson, the attorneys who sent the C&D letter.

Before you react to what you believe is a trademark violation, take a moment to consider whether there is a real threat to your business. It's probably wise to consult with someone other than your trigger-happy lawyers before you dump dollars into starting a fight that doesn't really exist. I'd gladly save you the several thousands of dollars and embarrassment.

User-review sites, when shills go wrong

Urbanspoon, the user review site and social network for foodies, has been running a contest to find the "most romantic restaurant" in cities across America. Great idea with Valentine's Day coming up, this could guide a lot of people to try new restaurants they may not be aware of. The problem is that many of the results across the nation are indeed not at all romantic.

I first noticed the problem in Salt Lake, where a bar was leading the vote for several weeks. Not a romantic one by any means. After discussing with many of Urbanspoon's prime members (users who make significant contributions in each city) it was discovered that the problem was very widespread, and frequently due to restaurants inflating the votes themselves by encouraging customers and employees to vote for them. Now I totally condone restaurants asking customers to make their vote, or write a review on these sites. But employees are definitely crossing an ethical line, and asking for a vote that is truly undeserved is not only unethical, but it will backfire on the restaurant, the site, and the credibility of the users.

Shill reviews are always a bad idea. A shill is a positive review for your own business, or posting a negative review for a competitor. People often take advantage of the anonymity of the web, thinking they can say whatever they like with no consequence. The problem is that it is really easy to spot a shill, and once discovered you will feel a worse fate than just a few bad reviews.

In regards to this Valentine's Day contest, if someone looked to this poll to make a decision on a date-spot, then found themselves at a very unromantic place, it's not going to sit well in their minds. There are few experiences in life that carry worse feelings than a failed date. When a restaurant is a factor in a bad date, the customer typically won't give that spot another chance because of how disappointed they were on their visit. The total experience matters when customers are trying a new business, and a bad first impression is a lasting feeling that is not easily cured.

You may think it's all out of fun, or believe that some good attention may get you new customers, but if you get customers under false-pretense the backfire can spread quickly and will turn that target audience against you.

Amazon has a deal you cannot refuse

Amazon is yet again shaking up the world of books. To promote sales of electronic books to the Kindle, they are offering a 70% royalty to authors. For those unfamiliar with how much authors make, this is a huge increase. Of course, accepting the new 70% terms come with a catch.

The terms to accept this benefit are not what most would guess. Amazon is not trying to force writers into only distributing through them, but is trying to make Kindle purchases more attractive to buyers. To receive the increased royalty, the book must be priced between $2.99 and $7.99, and must be priced 20% less than the listed price for the physical book.

Faced with the same circumstances, many other companies may have tried to force exclusive deals to make their device more attractive. But this plan makes the product more attractive to both customers and suppliers of the content, which should pay off in the long-term for Amazon. When customers and suppliers are happy, it makes a much better business.

Is Google a big evil empire to fear?

A few years ago, you didn't hear many people speak poorly about Google. Now it has its critics who argue they have too much power.

It wasn't too long ago that people were singing praises about a new operating platform that made the personal computer approachable. After several years and a high rate of adoption, people began fearing and criticizing Microsoft.

There's a lot of sentiment for people to shop local and support their small hometown businesses. The people of Arkansas did this in the 1960s, which gave their hometown store the foundation to eventually open over 8,000 stores around the globe, only for the general public to frequently call Walmart "the evil empire."

Are these businesses evil? They are just successful, and when you become the biggest and best at what you do it puts a target on your back. Everyone is always aiming at the top. If you ever get there with your business, be sure to keep in mind that everyone is after you. Use your power for good, and do everything you can to keep your fans engaged and in love with you. You will always have critics, but don't give them more reason to fear you.

Does Redbox exist anymore?

Of course I am kidding. But there is definitely a lot less talk about the DVD rental kiosks lately. It is still a household word, but could it be that like all new retail concepts, people have gotten used to it? Or, could this be an early indicator of another business destined for the declining revenue train?

Right now, Redbox kiosks are still being installed everywhere. It is the best deal in movie rentals in nearly every city across America. But recent changes to their promotions are not only causing increasing frustration among customers, it has also stopped the conversation about the brand.

Customers subscribed to receive emails and mobile updates so they could receive free rental codes every Monday. The codes worked for every customer, which prompted people to forward the SMS messages to everyone on their phones, post on Facebook, and post to Twitter. The codes were spread so quickly and frequently that you could count on Redbox as a trending topic on Twitter each Monday.

Then the free Monday rentals were cut-off. Redbox announced it would only offer their mobile subscribers one free code each month. Shortly after, the codes became personalized, so that each code could only be redeemed once, not just once per customer.

Understandably, it can be hard to make money when giving your product away. The problem is that Redbox cut off too much, too quickly. Then they followed that up by eliminating their best advertising program when they made the new codes unsharable.

Customers can understand when prices increase. We are not happy about it, but we know it happens. However, Redbox needed to find a way to increase revenue without throwing this many disruptions into their customers' behavior. Especially considering that they are in a business that is increasingly threatened by new technology.

I'm sure Blockbuster could tell them what happens when the customer base is no longer talking about them.

Trust: desired by you, required for you

When you have a problem with Amazon, they send you a replacement before they get your returned item. They trust you.

Zappos does the same, if the shoe doesn't fit, they replace it immediately.

Popular retailers are the ones who treat their customers with respect, and trust. They don't give them problems or hassle them when a return is being made.

Would you let an issue of trust destroy your reputation and lead you out of business? Instinctively, everyone would say no, but more often than not their behavior does otherwise.

When you have a disagreement with a customer, do you send them away upset? I have been watching the unfolding of a dispute between a local restaurant and a group of disgruntled customers who believed they were lied to, then subsequently treated poorly. At issue: a $60 cover-charge added to the bill for a pay-per-view event. What that $60 got the restaurant: a horrible rating on UrbanSpoon, Yelp, and throughout the internet; also 12 former customers who will now tell everyone they encounter to avoid the restaurant.

Is it the end of the road for this establishment? Probably not, but would they be better off today by forgiving the customers and making everything peaceful? Definitely. There are situations when customers are truly taking advantage, and you have to walk away, but your business needs to establish trust with your customers to become the business everyone loves. Especially today, where every upset customer can reach more people, faster than ever.

You've built a monster, please don't feed it

This is my open letter to Ted Gilvar - CMO of Monster.

Dear Ted, you've made it about 18 months in a big role and continue to have an even bigger challenge ahead of you. Unemployment is high, which means a couple of things. You have a lot of potential users who need your service. But, there are fewer opportunities for those people to find on your site. So what do you do when there are too many customers looking for too few products? You need to make it the best damn experience those people have ever had.

You've already built a monster, please don't feed it anymore.

As someone who has frequently utilized Monster and many other job search boards, we hate them. For the most part, job boards are just a necessary evil that we endure. Painfully gnashing our teeth and cringing as we type every letter of the URL. To be fair, Monster is infinitely better than CareerBuilder, and I do prefer it over HotJobs. But no one is getting excited to use your site.

We don't need any more advertising. We don't need clever promotions. We don't need banner ads, search ads, a social media presence, or interface updates. We don't need a logo redesign, website refresh, or anything like that. We need a brand we can trust.

Why does a marketing executive of over 10 years get search results for a "home health nurse," "finance & accounting manager," or "administrative assistant," all of which could be disastrous. But even worse, there are somewhere around 2,000 ways to say "door-to-door commission salesperson who will never earn $1" and you have them all wonderfully camouflaged as legitimate job listings that we have to sift through to find something that may even be remotely relevant to us.

I understand that you don't create the jobs, and there is a natural urge to not turn down money from advertisers. But a bit of quality control and categorization to help users find relevant jobs would make you the uncontested number one job site and make your brand the one and only household name anyone would ever think about using when they need a job. It is time to improve your product. It's called brand management. Make a product that people won't stop talking about. If every user was able to upload their resume, fill in a profile, and see nothing but relevant opportunities, hiring managers and candidates alike would love you forever.

You've got $250 million to spend. Certainly it would take a lot less than that to make it happen, and you'd never need to advertise again. It is time to improve the product in a big way. It's not as if we don't know what Monster is, we just don't want to use it.

Are consumers gaining power?

A report from the Chief Marketing Officer Council states that out of the 91% of consumers who opt-out or unsubscribe from email marketing, 46% are driven to brand defection because the messages simply are not relevant. Don't worry about those who unsubscribe? Perhaps you should be a bit concerned about those people who hit the unsubscribe button. They may be opting-in to your competition permanently.

A blog post from Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, provides additional interesting insight into the future if you read between the lines. Facebook originally created networks by region and school. While the community was small, this worked to achieve what people wanted. It connected those students who wanted a way to connect and communicate to others around them. Now that seemingly everyone is on Facebook, people do not necessarily want to share their information with their bosses, family, and advertisers. The connection of living in the same region is not necessarily relevant to all consumers.

What do these things have in common? Consumers exercising their voice to make real changes in new media. This is not a new concept, it is likely that consumers have been defecting due to irrelevant messages since the first time a cobbler hammered an advertisement on a lamp post. This puts some information in our hands that we need to use in communicating.

Traditional wisdom was to create a message and broadcast it to the largest number of people possible. It was known that not every person would react positively (make a purchase) to the communication, and only in the event of accidentally insulting people would that communication result in negative reactions. What this information shows is that a very large number of consumers may actually gain a preference for the competing brand if they feel your communications are irrelevant.

Putting it all together now. Facebook is an example that shows people want to communicate and belong to a community. They are willing to become "fans" of their favorite brands, join in discussion groups about products and services, but that does not mean they want to connect to everything. Consumers who actually opt-in to communications from a brand they use, then defect to a competitor because of irrelevant communications shows that what we say and do can have positive and negative effects. Even if the communication was simply an offer that was not relevant to that consumer.

What you say matters. A lot. It is not safe to assume that you can bombard people's inboxes, television sets, Facebook pages, Twitter streams, etc. with any message, as often as you want. People watching may not just unsubscribe or change the channel. You may be sending them right into the arms of your competition.

Every time you communicate with your customers, think carefully about what you want to say. Make an offer that people will appreciate. Be relevant.

We don't want to hear from you

Companies have been communicating via e-mail for over a decade, so why do customers get so excited when they are contacted via twitter? Why do we crave companies with a social media presence? Because we are not used to getting a response, and we have been trained to believe email is a one-way street from companies.

One simple mistake: Do-not-reply@CompanyWhoWillNotAnswer.com

First things first, if you email customers you need to dump the "Do not reply" addresses. Also, you must make it easy for customers to contact you, and you need to reply to them.

When a company has an active Twitter account or Facebook fan page, it makes them approachable and customers like to feel like they are on even ground with the company they do business with. When they see Do Not Reply in every email, the message they receive is "we want to talk at you, but will not listen if you have anything to say."

With that said, if your social media plan is just to "build a Facebook fan page" or get on twitter, please don't. Your plan should be how you plan to communicate with your customers. Not just set a page, and forget it. Customers will either learn that you don't listen there either, or they will just forget you are there.

Just like with all advertising and marketing, why spend money telling people about your company if your potential customers will just feel disappointed once they find you.

Everyone says they hate it, but...

Spam is universally hated. Not only is it hated, despised, and otherwise frowned upon by everyone, but it is also the topic of a $712 million lawsuit. Facebook sued spammer Sanford Wallace and was awarded the second largest settlement in a spam case. The infamous "Spamford" as he is known was also fined $230 million in a case with MySpace last year.

So why are there so many spammers out there willing to take this risk? Because unfortunately, it works. As much as people claim to hate spam, they sure do make it valuable for the spam dealers. A recent investigation showed that pharmaceutical spam can generate more than $4,000 per day in sales.

Further, the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) reports that 52 percent of email users have clicked on spam, with 12 percent of those doing so "because they were actually interested in the product or service being offered." Think of how few people redeem coupons or act on legitimate emails from companies they subscribe to, and these are outstanding numbers. That level of response is enough to keep the spam industry in business.

So who are these rogues who open spam? Considering it is 52%, it must include people that you speak to and who you have heard complain about spam. Another example of people's behavior being counter to what they say.

Demographics, useless to marketers?

As we gain more insight into consumers we find that many of the age-related assumptions we made in the past are incorrect. Apparently there are people in their 60s who love candy, just like those who are only 6 years old. Just as there are bloggers and Facebook users who are in their teens, as well as those who are grandparents to teens.

There is value to knowing who your consumers are, but the typical "demographics" research typically falls short of drawing important correlation to who consumers are, and what motivates them to buy. Does being 32 lead someone to purchase Crest toothpaste versus Colgate? Moreover, some demographic categorizations do not even make sense. 18-49 is often used to describe a consumer group. Aside from "people who most likely have jobs" this age range has very little in common simply because they are within an age group. Of course you will find 18 year olds who buy the same products at the same store of 49 year olds. How does that help you better position your product?

There are times when an age group is an important factor to consider. The important thing to remember is to question those demographics rather than jumping to a conclusion and alienating your customers because someone showed you a statistic.

Small business doesn't get social media

Small business does not find value in social media. Does this mean there's no value, or simply that many small business owners (or large businesses for that matter) just don't understand how to use it?

According to a recent poll by Citibank / GfK Roper survey of 500 small business executives across the United States, 76% have not found social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to be helpful in generating business leads or for expanding their business during the last year, while 86% say they have not used social networking sites to get business advice or information. Maria Veltre, Executive Vice President of Citi's Small Business Segment, concludes "... small business owners are still feeling their way into social media... many... may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them." This is the bottom line, it is about the time and manpower rather than a reflection of the media.

If a business bought television advertisements at 3 am, and did not see a return, does that mean TV advertising is worthless?

What if an advertisement was run in print newspapers and magazines, but the company forgot to put contact information in the ad? Does that make print ineffective?

These examples may seem obvious to many, but that is because this media has been around for a long time and we have gotten used to what works and what does not.

Social media is something that takes time to understand, and most small businesses do not have a lot of time to devote to learning and connecting in this user-generated media. There is value, it will just take some education on the media, and time to connect with your community. Furthermore, if small businesses turn to social media for advice they are connecting with the people who matter most: the customer. This is why so many businesses fail, they are trying to interpret business advice from Forbes magazine rather than connecting with the people who will keep them in business. You will never find the secret to success published in a book, magazine, or newspaper. The secret to success is listening to your consumers.

Nothing just happens for free, that's why it is called work.

The bigger the company, the bigger the blunder

Toyota stumbled into a mess with a launch of their new 4-Runner website. (I imagine this site link will soon be broken, since they're going to need to rectify the situation). To set the mood of wildlife for their SUV brand, they looked to photographers on Flickr to provide photography for the microsite. They found several great photographs which were used, unfortunately they never asked the photographers for permission.

Michael Calanan (a talented photographer & friend) posted his concern on Twitter the evening of Tuesday, November 3. The conversation towards @Toyota must have got their attention, as they promptly tweeted Wednesday morning to the photographers involved.

This is why your company needs an experienced marketer on staff. Real marketing directors have an understanding of intellectual property laws. Photographs, fonts, illustrations, and other design elements found online are not free for you to use, especially for commercial purposes. Further, marketing personnel are meant to understand consumers. First and foremost, the responsibility of marketing is to know what motivates people, and how they will react. Not knowing that professional photographers would certainly notice the increased traffic on their Flickr pages, and be upset about someone using their work without contacting them is a fatal mistake. If they fail to understand this, do they understand what Toyota customers actually want from their vehicle? There may not be a correlation, but it begs to be asked.

If I was to guess, I would say it was not malicious intent of Toyota to steal these photographer's work, but was a lack of intellectual property understanding. That does not excuse what they have done. Ignorance of the law is not a valid defense. Whether you are a multi-billion dollar company, or a small boutique, you need to respect the property rights of others. If you are unsure of what you can or cannot do, ask for help from a real expert.

Will you pay for an online newspaper subscription?

I am actually not going to enter the debate over whether newspapers should or should not charge for access to their online material. In the end, some will, while others will not.

Online subscriptions will provide revenue for some newspaper companies. The restriction of access will cause some newspapers financial grief.

What I will say is this, if the management of a newspaper company is too preoccupied with this decision of whether to charge or not, they will fail.

Why will people pay for information from one source versus another? Content and reputation. Otherwise known as their brand. If we know the brand of the news source represents the very best information, and what they provide enhances our lives, we will pay. But if your paper is just kicking out basic information that was covered by a dozen other sources, you lose.

Rather than debating "do we charge, or don't we," it is time to evaluate how your media source is different and what value can you provide the readers that they cannot get elsewhere. When you have a valuable, trusted brand, you can more easily find your income.