Who Should Stay At The Graybar Hotel?

A question of fairness.

Whether the financial crisis of 2008 ate a chunk of your liquidity or a goodly portion of the value of your 401(k), or even if you came away relatively unscathed, chances are you’ve been waiting ever since for justice to be served. With the trillions of dollars of wealth that disappeared, with the shady dealings of mortgage-backed securities and bundled sub-prime amortizations, surely there’s a guilty party somewhere who must be made to pay.

Four years later...and we’re still waiting. No major criminal cases have been filed, few fines have been paid, none but a handful of mid-level executives lost their jobs. If there’s a scale somewhere representing this vision of justice, then someone’s thumb must be firmly planted on one side.

So you might take heart to learn that the New York Attorney General’s office, with the blessings of the Justice Department and several other states, has filed a civil fraud suit against JPMorgan Chase & Company, alleging misrepresentation of the values of mortgage securities sold in 2006 and 2007. The case won’t result in anyone spending time in the ol’ Graybar Hotel, but it’s a start, right?

Actually, no.

Looking closer at the suit, we see that JPMorgan isn’t actually accused of any wrongdoing (nor is Chase, for that matter). Who sold the fraudulent securities? That would be the now-defunct investment bank Bear Stearns, which JPMorgan acquired at fire sale prices — $2 per share — in 2008.

But fair is fair. When you buy a company you also buy its liabilities, including responsibility for its criminal wrongdoings. That’s clearly why JPMorgan is on the hook here.

Maybe so. But as long as we’re introducing the concept of fairness, let’s give JPMorgan a fair shake. If you cast your mind back to those dark days of March 2008, you’ll recall the impending failure of Bear Stearns was sending shockwaves throughout the entire financial system, bringing it to the very precipice of collapse. JPMorgan certainly wasn’t looking for acquisitions just then; they were pressured into it by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department, with the argument (which still holds up in hindsight), that the economy just might depend on it.

We want justice too, and if justice is served by criminal and/or civil prosecution of the Big Banks, then we’re all for it. We just don’t think justice — or even common sense — is served by going after JPMorgan in this case. Because all JPMorgan is guilty of, in this case at least, is saving our collective necks.

The C4:

1. The financial collapse of 2008, which has been convincingly tied to the housing bubble and the introduction of sub-prime mortgage-backed securities, has to date resulted in very little in the way of criminal prosecutions or civil liability.
2. This has led to an understandable, yet not-always-rational yearning for justice. We get that. We’d also like to see the guilty punished. We just want to make sure the innocent aren’t swept up as well.
3. Is that what’s going on with the civil fraud case against JPMorgan? The suit alleges fraud committed by Bear Stearns, which JPMorgan acquired after the fact. The law is clear: a company is liable for the transgressions of any entities it acquires.
4. But sometimes fairness is more important than the law. Our nation’s financial regulators begged JPMorgan to buy Bear Stearns, and when JPMorgan did, they just might have saved our economy. Should they be punished for it? We don’t think so, but we’d love to hear your opinion. Please log in and let us know.

Are You Complaining About The Complainers?

Be careful when responding to online reviews.

How do you deal with an unhappy customer? Unfortunately there’s no one right answer for that. Factors like your business model, their specific complaint, even the current economic climate all go into determining how you can best put the gruntle back into the disgruntled.

But there are plenty of wrong ways to do it, and plenty of object lessons in how not to behave.

Not surprisingly, these lessons are all Internet-related. There’s danger inherent in the Internet, in that illusory degree of separation and in the way your impulsive typing-and-clicking can spread ‘round the world, and never be taken back.

Customers complain online. We have to accept that fact. Services like Yelp and Epinions make it as easy as can be for consumers to log their good and bad buying experiences. Alas, it’s been proven again and again they’re far more likely to talk about the bad than the good. And as bad as that might seem, it’s often the merchants’ reactions that really do the damage. Consider the evidence:

A one-star Yelp review for a Chicago-based wine-paring class resulted in dueling blog insults, and finally a half-million dollar defamation suit against an internationally renowned oenologist. In an email he accused his customer of acting like a child, but the resulting publicity hurt only him.

In Canada, a restaurateur responded to negative reviews by creating a fake sex site profile for the reviewer. She’s just been convicted of two counts of defamatory libel and will be sentenced later this year.

And perhaps the worst: the owner of an online eyeglass retailer has just been sentenced to four years in prison for stalking, harassing and intimidating critics. He would routinely email and even telephone reviewers, threatening them with his knowledge of their personal information such as home addresses. Amazingly, he was apparently courting bad feedback, under the theory that any online mention at all result in higher search-engine rankings.

How shortsighted. In business, your only real currency is your reputation. Your reputation utterly depends on how you deal with the most challenging situations. Can you win back every unhappy customer? Probably not, but you can certainly extend the effort to try to make things right. In the most extreme cases you can just ignore them. But engaging in a very public war of words (or worse)? That’s something you can’t win, and can never undo.

The C4:

1. Try though you might, you can’t make every customer happy. Unhappy customers complain, and in our digital age there’s a very good chance they’ll complain online. Do yourself a favor and accept that fact.
2. Resist the urge to engage. Yes, it burns inside to see your business publicly disparaged, especially if you don’t agree with the reviewer’s version of facts. But do you want to play “he said/she said” with the whole world watching?
3. Instead, consider your alternatives. Can you turn a negative into a positive? Can you swallow your pride, say Mea Culpa, and make some kind of public effort at reconciliation? It might not feel good, but it’ll look good.
4. Failing that, just walk away. Readers of online reviews are willing to take outlying gripes with a grain of salt. Prove your critic wrong by giving stellar service to everyone else who walks through your door. If you engage and say the wrong thing you’ll be tarnished forever. Treat your reputation as currency, and never risk it on a sucker’s bet.

Let Your Fingers Do The Walking

...and clicking.

First, a couple disclaimers here: Yes, we know the Yellow Pages have never really gone away. Just like you, we receive ours every year — they clutter the porch then plop into the recycling bin, often without ever being opened.

Second: No, we don’t want to wind back the clock. We love today’s technology, and we’re awed by the fact that in lieu of letting our fingers do the walking, we can type and click and within seconds find the businesses we’re looking for, get a synopsis of consumer reviews, and map out detailed driving directions.

But — the Yellow Pages! From a marketing perspective there are things about the Yellow Pages unmatched by anything online.

For instance, say you’re a plumber. Ask yourself, what is it you offer your customers? You might answer: fast service, free estimates, and satisfaction guaranteed. Great.

Now flip open the Yellow Pages, and see what every other plumber in the city offers. It’s a quick reality check, and a prod to get busy differentiating yourself from the competition.

Nowhere else can you get such targeted business intelligence about your local competition, their strengths and weaknesses, and what they’re saying to lure away your customers. It helps you hone your message and define your Unique Selling Proposition — that pithy description of why you and you alone should be their provider of choice.

So as long as businesses are still advertising in the Yellow Pages (and they are), so should you. And you should be using it as a resource, too.

In fact, go get it right now. It’s probably still there, waiting on your porch.

The C4:

1. The Yellow Pages — not yellowpages.com but the old fashioned annual phone directory. It’s become something between an anachronism and a punchline by now. But it still exists, businesses still advertise in it, and consumers (much fewer but still notable numbers) still consult it.
2. For local businesses, it’s an intelligence tool. Within a few conveniently alphabetical pages you can check out all your competition, and see what they’re saying they offer.
3. And that should influence what you say. To win over customers you differentiate yourself. Let your Yellow Pages perusing help you figure out what you offer that they don’t. Then let that become your Unique Selling Proposition.
4. Market accordingly. Build a marketing communications strategy around your uniqueness. Emphasize it in all your consumer-oriented messaging. And yes, that includes your ad in the Yellow Pages.

Let Go of the Past, Embrace the Future

Open wide your windows of opportunity.

Not exactly controversial advice, right? But when that past includes equity and proven success, it tends to make an alternative future that much more uncertain. And this makes letting go of the one and embracing the other all the harder.

Still, it happens. We’ve seen it happen twice in recent weeks, with both Microsoft and Avis bidding farewell to iconic marketing elements, and moving on to something new. This was brave of them…but was it wise?

In Avis’ case, they’ve stopped using a marketing slogan that has for half a century defined them as a determined rental-car underdog. “We Try Harder” was their 1962 answer to their second-place status to Hertz. All these decades later Avis is still following Hertz, but has at last ceased advertising that fact. Instead, they’re concentrating on their core market, business travelers, by adopting the position “It’s Your Space.” They’re attempting to tout all the amenities they offer busy people on the go, which is probably a smart strategy. But “We Try Harder” has been around for generations; Avis is mistaken if they think their customers will forget it anytime soon.

Then there’s Microsoft.

That company has stirred up both tech and design observers — two opinionated groups if there ever were any — by replacing their 25-year-old logo and branding. The “wavy windows” look is gone, but what’s in its place is eerily familiar. We now have a bold, sans-serif rendering of the company name, next to a symmetrical four-color window grid. In terms of branding updates, this one is more like baby steps.

That hasn’t quieted the sounding-off, though. Some are saying that the placid, 2D windows look like an antithesis of technology. Others say the design is clean, simple and memorable. What’s probably a win from Microsoft’s point of view is that people are talking about it.

These sorts of updates are never easy, in that they’re a letting go of often beloved elements of a company’s history. On the other hand, such elements almost always eventually date themselves, and must be let go (take a look at Microsoft’s original 1975 logo if you don’t believe us). Either way, it’s a gamble.

And like all business gambles, these ones will ultimately be settled in the marketplace.

The C4:

1. In business theory, the idea of letting go of the past and embracing the future is a no-brainer. In practice, it’s trickier. When do you let go of something that’s served you well? When do you try something new? Often the right answer only becomes clear in hindsight, often when you realize you’ve chosen poorly.
2. Nevertheless, Avis and Microsoft have both moved boldly, relinquishing tried and true marketing elements and replacing them with something brand new. Avis, in focusing on service to business travelers, risks the question, “Aren’t you guys trying harder anymore?” And Microsoft has raised the scorn of logo critics, who say the simple new design ill represents one of the world’s leading tech companies.
3. Those reactions are worrisome, but what were these companies to do? They’ve both broken with decades-old traditions—something most of us would argue has to be done sooner or later. Whether their decisions are smart or self-damaging perhaps is just a matter of timing.
    
4. So did they time it right? Or did they shoot themselves in the foot? The answer is entirely up to the customers of these companies. The jury’s out, and deliberations are underway.

Jump On The Blog Wagon

There's a logical explanation for your organized thinking.

What if we told you there’s a single tool that can support all your marketing efforts, enhance your management and internal relations, improve your communication skills, and sharpen your critical thinking?

Already it sounds too good to be true. So just wait until we add: This tool is absolutely free.

The tool we’re speaking of is the blog, and if you don’t have one already you should start one right away.

What can you do with a blog? To begin with, you can explain yourself. You can provide the detail behind your decisions — to your customers, to your employees, to strangers…maybe, if need be, even to yourself.

That’s because the act of writing, of blogging, forces a focus in your thinking and an examination of your procedural logic. In sitting down to write the 500 or 1,000 words on whatever’s relevant to your business this week, you’ll find yourself delving into why it’s relevant, and what that means, and what it foretells.

You’ll support and amplify your marketing campaigns by providing a longer-format appeal that just isn’t possible through any other outreach. You’ll humanize yourself and the voice of your company, by supplying the ongoing narrative that explains why you’re in business and what makes you tick.

You can spend money on blogging, to be sure. Spend as much as you want. But you can get started, and you should get started, right now, for nothing. And similarly, you’ll probably get started with few or no readers. That shouldn’t stop you either. Every blog you write, whether it’s read widely or not at all, sharpens your mind and hones your ability. Every entry makes you a better writer and a better thinker. And rest assured, the better you get the more attractive your blog gets. The readers will come.

This is a tool that’s loaded with potential. Your potential to start a conversation, to introduce yourself to an unlimited audience, and to begin explaining why you’re doing what you do starts with the gentlest of efforts.

We urge you to make that effort at once.

The C4:

1. The blog is the definitive format of twenty-first-century electronic publishing. It is open and available to all and is equally serviceable for business, for art, for pleasure, and for no particular reason at all.
2. From a business perspective, there’s probably no comparable tool that can reach so many people, that can explain or justify so ably and thoroughly, and can elicit such critical thinking, for so little outlay and effort.
3. Your earliest efforts at blogging might attract little notice. Your first few blogs might be choppy or rambling. Soldier on. You’ll get better with practice, and your practice will attract attention.
4. Blogger and Wordpress are free hosting services that can have you up and running with a beautiful, dynamic blog in just a few minutes. With Tumblr, you can create a more visual-oriented and stripped-down yet still great looking blog even faster. With Wordpress you can download the open-source Wordpress software and host it yourself. You can buy a domain name for a few bucks and redirect it to any blog, anywhere. The point is you can spend a little, a lot, or nothing — and still create a blog that lets you speak with your customers like never before. Why not get started today?