Sorry, ya'll, been super busy, but wanted to chug through some backlog of posts to get to fresher content. Below are my penultimate notes on brand management.

Age of consumer capitalism

• Focus on customer first, not shareholder value
  
• Managerial capitalism
  
• Customer-driven capitalism
• Maximize customer value subject to minimum shareholder value

Grow: Evaluate progress and people against the ideal

• Brand contribution to market value has risen heavily
  
• Quarterly brand index
  
• KPIs in terms of ideal
  
• Toyota: dedication to people
  
• Link ideal to employees' daily work plans
  
• Design performance reviews by focusing on how and ideal
  
• Reward time spent with end customers
  

MillwardBrown Brand Database Speaker

• Apple #1 brand in world by brand value of BrandZ Top 100
  
• China Mobile only Chinese one in top 10
  
• Measuring the effectiveness of super bowl advertising
  
• Sales effects
  
• Equity effects
  
• Turned out that super bowl ads had good ROI
  
• 1.       Iconic brand
  
• 2.       Top league of advertisers
  
• 3.       In mind of consumers, this has big impact
  
• Using measurement to create business case
  
• Great brand examples: Apple, Starbucks, Method, LVMH, Chandon

Week 6 was about a lot of the touchy-feely stuff which makes a big difference in getting a brand's ideal to ring true with customers. The speaker from GSD&M was extremely eloquent and taught about the importance of leadership to run a business that makes an important difference in people's lives; this message definitely jived with me, and the talk was quite engaging.

Grow: Must do #3: Communicate the ideal to engage employees and customers

• Model human loving relationship
  
• Keys: active involvement in advertising and viral potential
  
• Genuine intent to improve people's lives
  
• Innocent fruit drinks impacting society
  
• Walk the walk in other communications
  
• Funky labels
  
• Relevant and interesting, not sales 
  
• Unity of voice
  
• Good writers critical
  
• Brand ideal creative brief guides new communications projects

Delivering Happiness: Platform for Growth: Brand, Culture, Pipeline

• Culture book, party
  
• Ask anything
  
• Customer service as core loyalty
  
• Culture is brand
  
• Core values

Communicating your ideal

• Everything we do is media
  
• Everything communicates
  
• Engaging w/ people
  
• High standards for communications
  
• 1 to 1 always the best

GSD&M

• What is real underlying problem that needs to be solved?
  
• What do we have that consumer really wants that competition can’t deliver?
  
• Be a hugger
  
• 10 hugs of life
  
• Have to hug yourself
  
• Hug your family, ALL of them
  
• Hug friends
  
• Hug receptionist
  
• Hug where you come from, hug your flag
  
• Hug your fears
  
• Go in front of mirror, say “I’m afraid XYZ” and let it go
  
• Hug your failures
  
• There’s a difference between coming up short and failing
  
• Failure is lying or hurting someone; coming up short is just not winning business
  
• Hug your future
  
• Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something
  
• Hug your “first”
  
• First time rode bike
  
• First time felt important
  
• First time something special happened to you
  
• Hug your finals
  
• When parents pass away
  
• 4 types of hugs
  
• Mind hug: just think nice things of them
  
• Heart hug: hold thought in heart
  
• Touch hug
  
• Bear hug
  
• Power of purpose in business
  
• “Capitalism”
  
• Conscious capitalists in business to improve people’s lives
  
• Croney capitalists about improving own life
  
• What’s the purpose of business?
  
• Create value for all of our stakeholders
  
• 5 fundamental human values
  
• 4 kinds of companies
  
• The good: purpose to serve others
  
• The true: the people who explore, those who are looking for the truth
  
• The beautiful: great ad agencies, Apple
  
• The heroic: business model to improve the world
  
• If someone helps you out, you need to help them out
  
• Take the competition seriously, but not yourself
  
• Have fun, enjoy people
  
• Stay humble, stay hungry
  
• Never miss a kid’s birthday
  
• Are you improving someone’s life today?
  
• Artistotle: where your talents and needs of the world intersect, therein lies your purpose
  
• Don’t be average at what you’re bad at; hire someone; spend all of your life doing what you're good at
  
• You get burned out doing what you’re supposed to be doing but what you’re not good at
  
• Great creative briefs important
  
• Southwest brief: “Our purpose is to give people the freedom to fly.”
  
• Harley: “We fuel freedom.”
  
• Their goal: create compelling and contagious work that builds the business
  
• Having purpose statement sets creatives free
  
• Singing
• Gotta know the words to the song
  
• Gotta sing when it's your turn
  
• Gotta listen to each other
  
• Sounds good when you sing together
  
• Nice when you have a good song to sing
  
• Good versus piercing insights
  
• Do purpose piercing work with anthropologists
  
• When you live your life with purpose it opens the heart

Week 5 of brand management was all about design thinking as applied to marketing and company culture. Below are my notes on our readings and the class discussion. Hot Topic itself has been in a big transition recently, focusing way more on music as the core driver for people's identification with the brand and having success in partnering with artists to co-promote.

Change by Design: Returning to the surface, or the design of experiences

• A good idea is no longer enough
• Consumption to participation
• Design thinking, experience engineering
  
• To change behaviors or not to change
• Experiment blueprint

Change by Design: Spreading the message, or the importance of storytelling

• Designing in the 4th dimension (time)
  
• Think of the sequence of events for the customer

Grow: Deliver a near perfect user experience

• Apple stores as promoting their ideal
  
• Digital arts classes
  
• Genius bars and employees restoring relationships
• Netflix
• Zappos
• Core values
• 5 takeaways
• Start with the ideal
• Make innovation personal
• Collaborate widely
• Have a portfolio of innovations
• Establish a process for innovation

Class

• Ideals driven product/experience design
  
• Super Bowl ads that were ideals-based
  
• Chrysler/halftime in America
  
• Budweiser GE ad
  
• Budweiser optimism and opportunity ad
  
• Honda CRV
• Ideal (enjoy): freedom, experience, fun
• "No Pepsi for you”

Design

• Execution of expression
  
• Hard to quantify
  
• Logo and bottle shape
  
• Method: Understanding people at the friend level
• Latent behavior
  
• Lexus: Winning people over daily in small ways
• Airline service sucking, everything being charged vs. Virgin differentiating on providing more service (order on monitor, first class suites)
• Experiences: Sense, Feel, Think, Act, Relate
• Toyota minivan swagger wagon ad
  

Hot Topic

• Teenager dress code matches music tastes
  
• People got a lot more diverse
  
• What is the brand going to stand for (our purpose)
  
• The experience: Core values / purpose, Physical elements / the look, Connection / the feel (social elements)
• Independence
  
• Connection
  
• Looked into world of teen in depth
  
• Purpose first, sales second
  
• "Everything about the music"
  
• Got band signings in stores
  
• Organized concerts
  
• Moving over to licensing/movie characters (Draco Malfoy)
  
• Interviews: require people to declare passion in first day of work
  
• Teens reading less and less
  
• Buyers out in night clubs 3 times a week
  

We had Nordstrom's CMO visit our class, and it was interesting to hear about the "Nordie" culture and what that means for their marketing efforts. My personal experiences with the stores haven't revealed to me anything special about their culture, but maybe that's just the LA stores.

Grow Must-do #2: Build your culture around your ideal

• One team, one dream (Saatchi)
  
• Largest P&G ad agency
  
• Lovemarks (brands that elicit love)
  
• Be clear and explicit about what ideal is what stand for
  
• Stand for something
  
• Cover Girl coming back to ideal
  
• Use every opportunity to train and do post mortem after each ad meeting (what learned, what could be done better, how excited)
  
• 10 culture builders
  
• Reveal brand ideal and operationalize it
  
• Be clear about what you stand for
  
• Design your organization for what it needs to win
  
• Get your team right quickly
  
• Champion innovation of all kinds
  
• Set standards very high
  
• Train all the time
  
• Do a few symbolic things to create excitement about what is important
  
• Think and act like a winner
  
• Live your desired legacy
  

Grow: How Pampers changed the world

• Slowdown globally
  
• Focus on dryness
  
• Missed Pull-Ups
  
• Male-dominated, engineering culture
  
• Disparate, international leadership that didn’t cooperate
  
• Sought answers from moms themselves to rediscover brand ideal
  
• Pampers Baby Stages of Development line of diapers
  
• Created useful website for moms

Method (company)

• Keeping culture weird
  
• Hiring question: how will keep it weird
  
• Open workspace, wikiwall post-its
  
• Wacky job titles people pick themselves
  
• Culture book
  

Southwest

• “Don’t try to learn your job. 1st priority to get to know your people.”
• Rapper for GAAP rules at Southwest annual meeting
  

Zappos

• No call times tracked
  
• No sales-based goals for reps
  
• Culture book
  

Nordstrom

• #1 goal at Nordstrom: deliver excellent customer service
  
• Relevancy really important (close to what customers want)
  
• Story of finding diamond ring that customer lost
  
• Everyone is about the customer (including security, janitors)

We had the CEO of Taco Bell speak to our brand management class a few weeks ago, and it was fun to hear about their brand ideal, how they dealt with the beef lawsuit (and spun it to their advantage), and how they're positioning themselves in a health-conscious 21st century. Some of my notes on the class and presentation below.

It’s not what you sell, it’s what you stand for

• What is purpose
  
• Jim Collins: core ideology
  
• Core purpose
  
• Purpose is a definitive statement about the difference you are trying to make in the world
  
• Purpose drives everything. It will drive all major decision making and become the determining factor in how you allocate resources, hire employees, plan for the future, and judge your success.
• Purpose is a path to high performance. It fulfills a deep-seated need that people have and will drive preference for your company.
• Purpose fosters visionary ideas and meaningful innovation. It provides the motivation and direction necessary to create meaningful innovation.
• Purpose moves mountains. It can rally the troops to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.
• Purpose will hold you steady in a turbulent marketplace. It will see you through when times get tough and the road seems unclear.
• Purpose injects your brand with a healthy dose of reality. It is not something you can fake. It's genuine. It's real. And it's something that your customers honestly appreciate about you.
• Purpose recruits passionate people. It will make your organization more attractive to value-based, passionate people.
• Purpose brings energy and Vitality to the work at hand. It provides meaningful and sustainable motivation for employees.
• Purpose contributes to a life well lived. Work is no longer a 9-to-5 job to be endured but a meaningful source of fulfillment and satisfaction.
• Discovering purpose
  
• Revisit your heritage
• Hedgehog concept
  
• What deeply passionate about
  
• What best in world at
  
• What drives economic engine
  
• Revisit Your Heritage. Explore the genesis of the organization. Talk to the founding fathers, review the founding documents, and find the motivation that's been present since the inception.
• Review False Starts. Review the "inspirational" initiatives that have been undertaken only to peter out for any number of reasons. The seeds of a great purpose might reside within the rubble of a historical initiative that was given up on too quickly.
• Contrast Your Successes and Failures. Takethe time to deconstruct your successes from your failures. Move beyond obvious variables to find both the tangible and the intangible factors that are present when you are at your best.
• Start Asking Why? Look at all the major initiatives under way at your organization and start asking why, to what end, for what purpose, to make what difference.
• Notice What Occupies Your Mind. Take notice of where your natural energy and attention tend to gravitate. If enough of your best and brightest people share this natural passion, the universe may be trying to tell you something.
• Transcend the Generic Mission Statement. A great purpose statement goes far beyond the modern-day mission statement that is often no more than a basic category description wrapped in corporate performance goals. Be clear and definitive about the difference you are trying to make in the world and leave the category descriptions and sales goals for the annual report.
• Remember, This Is Not a Tagline. A great purpose statement errs on the side of clarity over creativity. It is intended to inspire your internal constituents by giving them a clear sense of purpose for all they do. Leave clever taglines for the branding process.

Grow

• How well do we understand the ppl most important to our future?
  
• What do we and our brand stand for?
  
• What do we want to stand for?
  
• How are we bringing these answers to life?
  
• Great brands know when to say no
  

Customer-based brand equity (CBBE) model

• Differential effect: Because we know something about the brand, it changes how we react to identical programs.
• Brand knowledge affects taste test results (New Coke disaster)

Taco Bell

• Marketers good at what and how but not why
  
• Functional, emotional
  
• Don’t sell top 3 fast food items
  
• Chipotle not after same customer
  
• House illustration for brand plan
• Foundation: How
• Floor 1: What
• Floor 2: Who
• Roof: Brand (heartbeat/soul, insight, mindset)
• Mission

(Sorry, fell behind on class notes blogging. Trying to catch up now!)

(Reading notes above, class notes from guest speaker from Budweiser marketing below)

The Global Brand CEO

• Focus on global brands
  
• Market is globalizing
  
• World is really flat
  
• Connected customer
  
• Globally converging consumer needs
  
• Cost of differentiation has exploded
• Story of Johnnie Walker campaign

What keeps global marketers awake at night

• Consumers are taking control
  
• Brand consistency across markets
  
• Story of Dove / real women beauty campaign

What global brands do best

• Universal Consumer Truth
  
• Global “end/inherent values” all consumers respond to
  
• Johnnie Walker: universal appeal of progress
  
• Using a common language
  
• Purposeful positioning: brand stands for something, a belief, pursues strategy that leverages brand’s reach and impact
• Understand difference you’re going to make in customer’s life
• Top: purpose: The brand's contribution to the world
• Proof: Hard evidence to substantiate the brand promise
  
• Discriminator: The unique differentiator versus competitors
  
• Personality: The brand defined in terms of human characteristics
  
• Benefit: The functional and emotional benefits the brand offers
  
• Insight: The universal truth, the human need and the friction the brand is built on
  
• Target: Demographic and psychographic description of the target consumer
  
• Market: The market the brand competes in
  
• Total brand experience
  

Drivers of global marketing effectiveness

• Connect: foster interdependency in organization
  
• Inspire: ignite organization
  
• Focus: align priorities and targets
  
• Organize: clarify roles and responsibilities
  
• Build: develop and leverage marketing capability
  

Grow

• Brand ideals drive the performance of the highest growth businesses.
  
• The brand ideals of the highest growth businesses center in one of five areas, or fields, of fundamental human values.
  
• Eliciting Joy: Activating experiences of happiness, wonder, and limitless possibility.
  
• Enabling Connection: Enhancing the ability of people to connect with one another and the world in meaningful ways.
  
• Inspiring Exploration: Helping people explore new horizons and new experiences.
  
• Evoking Pride: Giving people increased confidence, strength, security, and vitality.
  
• Impacting Society: Affecting society broadly.
• The highest growth businesses are run by business artists, leaders whose primary medium is brand ideals.
  
• Business artists excel in similar practices that constitute an operating system for generating and sustaining high growth
  

Ideal tree framework

• Trunk: competition
  
• Points of difference
  
• Points of parity
  
• 5 branches
  
• Discover an ideal in one of 5 fields of human values
  
• Build your culture around your ideal
  
• Communicate your ideal to engage employees and customers
  
• Deliver a near-ideal customer experience
  
• Evaluate your progress and people against your ideal
• Story of Method
• Mantra: keep it weird
• Male founders had to clean up room and wanted non-toxic cleaning products that had a great user experience; didn’t find any
  
• Ideal: be a catalyst in a happy, healthy home revolution that improves human health
  
• Impacting society
  
• Convinced famous bottle designer to do design on rev share basis
  
• Did some initial testing with stores in their area
  
• Cold-called Target buyer
  
• Phone call from mom whose son drank bottle; told her it’s safe and to relax
  
• Ops trucks using biodiesel fuel and telling marketing story on the side
  
• Building culture around its ideal
  
• Hiring critical
  
• Someone designated as hiring manager
• Assembles cross-functional interview team of 7-10
• 1-3 invited back for another interview
• Have to do homework assignment to address a current business challenge, strategic and tactical; must also answer how they will keep Method weird
  
• Fast prototyping of candidate, design thinking
  
• Open floor plan, writing on walls
  
• Communicating Method Ideal
  
• Viral videos
  
• No traditional advertising
  
• 4 pillars
  
• Surface design
  
• Premium fragrance
  
• Efficacy
  
• Sustainability
  
• In-store marketing and word of mouth
• Deliver a near-ideal experience
• Design thinking, attractive design like Apple’s
  
• Evaluate progress and people against Ideal
  
• 4 metrics
  
• Style
  
• Substance
  
• Advocacy
  
• Gross margin
  
• Weekly product council meeting
  
• 1-page monthly scorecard and longer quarterly scorecard
  

Class

• Hard to have a common culture w/o common framework
  
• Beliefs from organizational history
  
• Go back to start and look at writings of founders
  
• Values help a brand choose what to do
  
• Zappos culture video
  
• J&J Credo (order of priority): doctors, employees, community, shareholders
  
• Explaining complex products: start w/ high ideal, then get into how do it through product
  

Budweiser

• “Driven by image”
  
• Dream: to be the best beer company in a better world
  
• “Best” through KPIs
  
• “Better” came from needing to hold on to something from growth
  
• Dream-People-Culture platform
  
• Never complacent with results
  
• Love competition
  
• Hire people smarter than you
  
• 200 brands through M&A
  
• 14 billion dollar brands in 1 category (beer)
  
• 80% of profit from 20 brands; give these most focus, and those outperform market
  
• Consumer empathy
  
• People as people, not people as beer bottles
  
• Power of personal relationships, physical, 1 to 1
  
• Video: history of beer and connecting people
  
• Beer = original social network
  
• Physical + digital social network of today
  
• 2 pyramids: consumer attitude (how much you love me) + consumer behavior (how much you drank me)
  
• 24 modules measured yearly of brand performance
• Bud is 2nd largest brand for ABI (after Bud Light)
• American icon
  
• 20+ years of Bud share and volume decline
  
• Global icon under pressure, can’t do global strategy w/o fixing US
  
• Root cause analysis
  
• Lack of perceived presence, less relevant
  
• Average age going up
  
• Consumer base perceived low class
  
• Bad drinking experience
  
• Used consumer collages
• Good images of American icons, military, rebels, American cars
  
• Global Budweiser dream: 1st and only true global beer brand
  
• 5 critical segments (types of drinkers and occasions)
  
• 3 perspectives: way they see themselves, the way others see them, the way they want others to see them
  
• Roper values / global map: pleasure, people, tradition, tradition axes
  
• VBB: values-based positioning model
  
• Consumer benefits
  
• Functional: flavorful, balanced, reminds of first sip
  
• Emotional: promise of great camaraderie
  
• Reasons to believe: care and quality, ingredients, crafted since 1876
  
• Brand personality: inspirational, heroic
  
• Brand essence: brand ideal celebration and optimism in a bottle
  
• Brand ideal: exists to inspire people to champion opportunity and achieve their dreams
  
• Consumer values: authenticity, freedom
  
• Demand segment: loyalists, experimenters
  
• One compelling, unifying creative idea
  
• "Celebrate anticipation"
  
• One global look and feel
  
• Reality TV
  
• Can redesign
  
• Packaging redesign
  
• Baseball
  
• Nascar
  
• American flag on can
  

This quarter, I'm lucky to be taking a class taught by Jim Stengel, the former Global Marketing Officer of P&G (the "UCLA CMO Experience"). I wrote about this class in my admissions essay, and I'm excited about finally experiencing it.

Below are my main takeaways from this week's readings and lecture.

• Firms of Endearment
  
• It's not share of wallet anymore; it's share of heart
  
• Freeman: customers are best served by companies that enjoy good relationships with all their stakeholders-employees, suppliers, the communities in which they operate, and of course, their stockholders (SRM = stakeholder relationship management)
  
• Aging population => search for meaning in life
  
• Characteristics: Endearing companies are enduring companies; Align interests of stakeholder groups; Executive salaries are modest; Open door policy at executive level; Greater employee compensation; More employee training; Lower turnover; Employees empowered to ensure customers satisfied; Hire people who are passionate about company and products; Humanize the company experience; Genuine passion for customers; Lower marketing costs and higher customer satisfaction and retention; Suppliers as partners; Honor spirit of laws; Corporate culture treated as greatest asset
• An increasing number of companies are behaving in ways that mirror the growing influence of self-actualization needs and processes that derive from our aging society.
• Effective communication: 4 principles: Principle 1: Establish a Positive Relationship (or Reinforce an Existing One) Before Getting Down to Business; Principle 2: Show Willingness to Be Vulnerable; Principle 3: Foster Reciprocal Empathy, Whereby Stakeholders Reciprocate the Company's Empathy; Principle 4: Conduct Conversations with Genuine Reciprocity
• Ideals as the ultimate growth driver
• Ideal: A business’s essential reason for being, the higher-order benefit it brings to the world; the factor connecting the core beliefs of the people inside a business with the fundamental human values of the people they serve; Not social responsibility or altruism, but a program for profit and growth based on improving people’s lives.
• Discover a brand ideal of improving people’s lives in one of five fi elds of fundamental human values.
• Build organizational culture around the brand ideal.
• Communicate the brand ideal to engage employees and customers.
  
• Deliver a near-ideal customer experience.
  
• Evaluate progress and people against the brand ideal.
  
• Coke is a happiness brand.
  
• Steve Jobs was one of the top 3 business people ever, and he was a marketer.
  
• Pampers: instead of focusing on product function, focus on what mothers actually care about
• If your ideal is high enough, it’s universal, and you just need to find a way to bring it to life around the world.
• Goal of brand: strong relationships which lead to strong loyalty
• Take what works for you in building a human relationship, and use that to build your business.
• Hardwire relationships into your business
• Marketing influences life, and life influences marketing
• 5 ideals fields of fundamental human values: joy, connect, explore, pride, impact
• Build your culture around your ideal
• Brand as culture, culture as brand
  
• Every communication is about the ideal

Noah Kagan is the founder of AppSumo and has worked on marketing for 4-Hour Workweek, Facebook, and Mint. You can watch the video above, and the main things I learned are below. He's a funny, straightforward, and brutally honest speaker, and it was cool to hear about many of the specific tactics he used to get AppSumo off the ground in a lean fashion. He even included a couple deep life lessons in here as a bonus.

• Started AppSumo ("Groupon for software") with just a landing page
  
• Only had registration system at first
  
• Paid an outsourced developer in Middle East $50 for PayPal payment system
  
• Needed a deal, so sent an email to head of imgur (main site for images for Reddit)
• "The most valuable resource is your time."
  
• Just use email to solve your problems.
  
• Learn how to do things with just email lists.
• Took out guy from Reddit for breakfast and got free exposure on their site
• Do something nice and unique for someone.
  
• Sent running shoes, running magazine to someone who runs
• When someone sees something you give them everyday, they remember you and will listen to you.
• Send cookies to people
  
• Initially had ugly designs, just trying to validate as quickly as possible
  
• He emailed every single person manually their discount code by hand.
  
• After the business was validated, they started building the back end and then getting deals.
  
• "There's no way to optimize shit; it's still shit."
  
• Before you get 1000 unique's per day, you can't AB test.
  
• Focused on emails initially to get users
  
• "There's only 1 metric and 1 goal of your business."
  
• At Facebook, the only metric that mattered was growth.
• Only 1 metric at AppSumo is "# of emails"
• They have a daily goal and a monthly goal.
  
• This month's goal: 550,000
  
• Each day have a target of # of emails they need to hit
  
• Used Google Website Optimizer
• Hired an engineer whose sole job was AB testing
• Their view: profit and revenue today is short sighted
  
• Just focused on growing emails for later
  
• If they asked for email up front before showing deal, people were more likely to buy deal than if didn't ask for email up front.
  
• 5% difference in conversion at top of funnel makes huge change.
  
• Spent $6K for 4 iterations just on landing page
  
• Were bringing 3000 to site
  
• Biggest spammer in America: Facebook (recently changed policy)
• No one talks about them as big spammer
• People complained about Facebook but it increased retention and engagement.
  
• Now that Facebook's big, they turned off emails.
• "You'll get some backlash from 1% but will grow the 99%."
• When you travel, you remember just the abnormal stuff; no one remembers the normal stuff that happens everyday.
• Created AppSumo Golden Ticket ($100 credit for no reason whatsoever)
  
• Golden Ticket just emailed by a customer service girl daily
  
• If you're average, customers will never remember.
  
• Think Zappos customer service.
  
• Unsubscribe email sends sad photo that's just something different, memorable.
  
• At Facebook and AppSumo, they put Easter eggs everywhere, fun stuff people will remember.
• They have 3 developers.
  
• If they don't need to build something, they don't.
  
• Instead of building a 404 page, they used a Google Doc.
  
• Do minimal work and if result worth it, do it nicely later.
  
• Did first educational video to actually teach how to use the tools they were selling.
• Did it ghetto with minimal editing
• "Your business should look like shit in the beginning."
  
• Now have full time content and video people
  

Gary's audiobooks are extremely hilarious, filled with so much energy and personality that really rubs off on you. After enjoying Crush It, I decided to give his latest, The Thank You Economy, a shot.

It did not disappoint. It seemed to be somewhat of an extension to Crush It in that it focused on social media marketing. However, it took it one step further and one level deeper by honing in on the concept of customer engagement and WOWing customers, a la Zappos. It made the bold prediction that companies who do not fully embrace a customer-centric culture will be extinct within 5 years.

I did enjoy Crush It as a book more. CI seemed way more specific about actual actions and recommendations, while TTYE was more about trends and philosophy.

Just like with CI, in the audio version of TTYE, Gary went off script many times, which were often my favorite little bits of the entire experience, updating the readers based on what has gone down since the book went to press and adding in various ad libs and funny non sequiturs.

Below are my main notes and takeaways. I do think Gary's right in his predictions, and my personal philosophy has always been to treat others (especially anyone who's a "customer") as critically important. Finding unique ways to wow them like Gary has written is a great way to show this respect.

Preface

• Customer satisfaction is key
  

Part 1: Welcome

Ch. 1: How everything changed except human nature

• When people go out of their way, you feel inclined to reciprocate
  
• Business use of social media
  
• One to one relationships
  
• Word of mouth
  
• Remember the time when caring meant business
  
• Small town business versus quarterly earnings and stock options
  
• Internet could isolate
  
• Dark ages of customer service: phone hold, outsourced customer service
  
• Social media reconnected people
  
• Search changing to incorporate social features
  
• Customer complaints quickly shared and spread
  
• Business can't ignore complaints
  
• Better to be proactive
  
• Only companies who authentically follow old-style manners will succeed (I'm happy I read all those 15th century etiquette books in the Rare Books collection!)
  
• Value every single customer
  
• Social media equals business
  

Ch. 2: Erasing lines in the sand

• People always skeptical of new tech 
  

Ch. 3: Why smart people ignore social media and why they shouldn't

• (I was one of these people for a while until I decided to dig deeper and found the immensely interesting connections with psychology.)
• Intent matters
  
• Some doing it wrong
  
• Need to be fully committed
  
• Can't rely on ROI
  
• Excuse 1: there is no ROI
  
• What is the ROI of customer care?
  
• Nielsen proved trust drives sales
  
• Book: Satisfied tell 3, unsatisfied tell 3000
  
• Excuse 2: metrics aren't reliable
  
• Nielsen measures online like TV
  
• But only measures ads, not engagement
  
• Excuse 3: social media still too young
  
• Entering earlier makes big difference
  
• Excuse 4: social media is just a passing trend
  
• Already has changed the game
  
• Excuse 5: we need to control the message
  
• No one can control the message
  
• Here you have the chance to reply
  
• Excuse 6: no time to track random users
  
• Random users are who matter now
  
• Excuse 7: fine without it
  
• Was fine without fax, cell phone, etc.
  
• Excuse 8: tried it but didn't work
  
• Didn't commit and do it right
  
• Excuse 9: legal issues too thorny
  
• Change must come from top, not from legal
  
• Excuse 10: long-term benefits hard to measure
  
• Traditional media too expensive
  
• Ads are one time
  
• Social media continuous
  
• Excuse 11: only works for tech or fashion
  
• Works for all
  
• Even if you're not in a sexy industry, people are talking about it online
  

Part 2: How to win

Ch. 4: From the top, instill the right culture

• Amazon bought Zappos for its culture
  
• Culture is the next playing field
  
• No "vacation policy"
  
• Let employees run themselves as adults until found they can't be trusted
  
• Chief Culture Officer
  
• Begin with the top
  
• Commit whole hog
  
• Culture of super-sized caring
  
• Set tone
  
• Invest in employees
  
• Trust your people
  
• Be authentic
  
• Empower people
  
• Social media department
  
• Give a damn department
  

Ch. 5: The perfect date: traditional and new media

• Social media allows conversation to continue like a good date after a traditional ad
  

Ch. 6: I'm on a horse, Old Spice commercials

• Ping ping between traditional and social media
  
• Old Spice was huge win across both media
  
• But failed to keep engaging new followers
  
• No such thing as social media campaign; marriage, not one night stand
  

Ch. 7: Intent, quality versus quantity

• Not about numbers of fans and likes
  
• Depth of follow up and engagements
  
• Let your reps be themselves and not go on script
  
• Don't hire a PR company to do social media; do internally
  

Ch. 8: Shock and awe

• Give gifts randomly to engagers
  

Part 4: Thank You Economy in action

Ch. 9: Knowing where people want to go

• Tech company
• Tech support monitors social media and interacts
  
• Won $250k contract for telecom supplies by responding to a tweet
  
• Power of just showing up
  

Ch. 10: Interacting with the community

• Milwaukee burger joint
  
• Let customers determine the brand and operation of business
  
• Tweet Up events
  
• Foursquare specials
  
• Engage online and offline events
  
• Swarm event
  
• Spend money on customers, not ad networks
  

Ch. 11: Caring about the big and small

• Hotel chain
  
• Art of customization
  
• One on one shock and awe
  
• Dreammaker award for employees who wow customers
  
• Random acts of kindness
  
• Word of mouse (clicks)
  
• Regular investments and attention to social media training
  
• Twitter Tuesdays
  
• Facebook Fridays
  
• Message comes from top
  
• Few tweets pushing deals and most pulling in through engagement
  

Ch. 13: Pushing social media

• Dentist differentiates through social media
  
• Offered Groupon
  
• Able to re-earn trust when make mistakes
  
• Got articles in TechCrunch and journals
  
• Early social media adopters get huge earned media
  

Ch. 14: Attorneys who tweet

• Lawyers usually risk averse
  
• Requires trusting law firms
  
• Good intent
  
• Give startups advising services and work like they do
  

Conclusion

• Marketing getting harder
  
• Attention getting smaller
  
• Information generation harder
  
• All the data created by humans for all time until 2003 is now created every 48 hours
  
• Landscape won't stabilize
  
• Can't wait for it
  
• Have to run marathon with new tools, not sprint/campaign
  

Part 4: Sawdust

• How to start conversations
  
• Fear impending innovation
  
• Hidden agendas by traditional media
  
• Nielsen ratings cover a tiny sample; paper diaries sent through the mail inaccurate (most filled out wrong)
  
• People surfing the web and using multimedia devices while watching TV
  
• No one watching billboards because of mobile phones
  
• Surveys subconsciously filter people's replies
  
• Social media often less filtered
  
• Ad Age: most brands still irrelevant on twitter
  
• Problem is it's used wrong (press releases instead of conversations)
  
• Hsieh/Zappos acquisition email to employees full of personality and intention
  

Part 5: How to win in the Thank You Economy: Care

• Hire and create culture with the right DNA
  
• Tactics in this book will self destruct in 3 years; marketers will beat new platforms to death
  
• Must act now