I'm sitting in Customer Service is the New Marketing, an event hosted by Getsatisfaction. Robert Stephens, Founder and Chief Inspector of The Geek Squad is giving a talk on "Marketing is a Tax You Pay for Being Unremarkable." This is a rough impressionic transcript.
Robert speaks of the origins of Geek Squad, the purposeful choice of a non-technical brand for a technology company. Companies want to spoon-feed the plot of the movie, and are afraid that you will think of them in ways that are off the plot. You have to dare your company to be authentic enough so you won't have to waste money on Superbowl ads. Its interesting how Robert made conscious detailed decisions such as what car to have for the business. The French believe that when all currencies and trademark laws in the EU, you loose differences, so they have a Ministry of Culture and perhaps wine and cheese are more important than competing in the auto market. It became a game, one guy with a car and a service showing up at places rich people hang out like the opera. Those rich people may not have a computer problem at the moment, but its a kind of time-released marketing. The faith you have in your brand and message to employees, that its okay to do the right thing, is extremely powerful.
Do a little weirdness. In business you have what you do and how you do it. And you have to continually do things that don't make sense so you can continually do new things and make it fun.
Picasso said great artists steal. But don't look in your industry. If you steal an idea from a different industry, the people in it will tell you at great length how they do it, because they aren't competitors. From watching Nick at Nite he got the idea to get his fashion sense from the government, a consistent branding to apply on all kinds of cars. Companies know what they want to do, but they reach for a cliche. Get the foundational stuff right. Instead of t-shirts and jeans, or a damn polo shirt, I saw Apollo 13 and found NASA images that were public domain -- the engineers didn't realize they were wearing a uniform, they were just geeks. NASA was an ultimate model to co-opt, but even more, beyond doing something weird, it was something no competitor would do. Yes I give them die-cast badges, but we show up in people's home and need to present identification. I want to get attention and stand out and not have to pay for advertising, but need other people to convey it -- the founder's dilemma.
Saddam Hussein was quite creative if you think about it. Had people dress like him with the same mustaches, so you couldn't tell if he was dead. Is the quiet leader that enables people to innovate and a company that could survive without him is perhaps better? You can control the employee experience, with the skills they bring to the company and the skills you add to them. Marc Andreessen says to hire curiosity, drive and ethics. Curiosity is that enthusiasm that gets people to solve problem, drive gets the company going and ethics are critical with all the transparency we have today.
So how do you keep the culture going? Your companies are closed social networks, not open to everybody. You don't friend everyone on Facebook. Part of it is who you allow in and who you don't. There should be a 2 year waiting list to get into your company. Like social networks, the more people that join, its possible to get stronger. Everyone has something to contribute to the culture, you have to set up rituals to get people talking to each other so in the future they will reach out to each other. In between LAN gaming, they are talking about the budget. Every intranet should be a damn wiki.
All small companies want to be large, and large ones want to be nimble. Large companies are here to learn from the small ones. With Best Buy we can help people that can't access the internet in a different way than telling them to go to our website. You can grow a company by raising money, but they will want to sell it. But when you are talking about the intangibles that matter, that takes real bravado and you have to be careful about ownership. You can't franchise great customer service. There was a fourth way, with Best Buy we let them be differentiated. There is no accident that Dell is in Best Buy. Flat screen TVs you have to see to buy.
I started researching what happens to founders in acquisitions, they usually get kicked out or leave after 12 months. Are all corporations evil? It seems to be too obvious to be true. There is a lot to contribute if you are creative, especially in tech support. Nothing about this is being perfect, it is about letting your customers know you are human and trying. Try to train agents to never say I don't know, and to say, I'll find out. We aren't the same as we used to be, but it is getting better with Best Buy and I stay up later than my competition.
What has happened to our jocks in society? Its much better to be cool later in life. The metrosexual has given away to the technosexual. I try to fake my own death to ensure the survival of the company. An initiation ritual that emerged is agents getting their driver's license photos in uniform.
Question from the audience: what are you doing to engage with the blogosphere?
I'm here because a blogger invited me to participate in the conversation. Bloggers are great, but don't behold themselves to the same thing as journalists. I have 25 people who we call public defenders, who get emails and calls, sometimes they are negative. I'll scan podcasts and posts and give people who have bad experiences a call. They don't expect it. Respond to every single one. I've given my mobile number to most of the bloggers you are talking about. KNBC did another sting operation last week and we were the only ones without a problem and I'll be sending letters out to everyone in that store saying to keep up the vigilance. Companies are stronger when public on privacy, nobody sued YouTube until they were bought by Google. The media is predictable and we will pretend every computer that doesn't come in with a hard drive cable connected it came from Dateline.
