None of them really care about you or even pretend to care. And honestly, you don’t have any loyalties to them. You’re shopping with whomever has a sale this week. It could be that one today and this one tomorrow. Whichever one is more convenient at the time.

There are some exceptions. Trader Joe’s comes to mind. I like Trader Joe’s. But, they’ve never wow-ed me.

When you are someone who reads Seth Godin‘s books and blogs, you come to believe that phenomenal customer exists but, you’ve never really experienced it. Almost frustrating.

That purple cow is really more like a unicorn. You’ve heard about it. Heard great things but, you’ve never actually seen one. You’ve seen horses but, not really a unicorn. Similar but, not quite there.

It’s hard to find but, once you find it there is no going back. Nothing else compares. Not having it will make you irritable; you curse out the morons who just don’t do it right. Much like the once-common disease known as female hysteria. Symptoms included: faintness, nervousness, insomnia, irritability, and “a tendency to cause trouble”. The treatment was simple: orgasm.

Let’s be honest, that does solve many problems.

So how do I know that this thing with FreshDirect might just be real? FreshDirect has a lot going for it. The food is amazing. Shopping for locally grown produce is exhilarating. Knowing that you could have driven to the small family farm where your food came from is oddly assuring.

Lab coat wearing scientists can say that the nutrition content is identical to traditionally farmed produce. I’d say their tests are obviously flawed. The food tastes different. It looks different. It is not identical. They can take their conclusions, turn it sideways, and stick it straight in their filing cabinets.

And if 2012 really does bring the end of the world, I’d like to know that there are farms around me. Apocalypse or not, I still have to eat.

You’ve probably also seen Food, Inc. I have. If you haven’t, you should. We can grow healthy, high-quality food without factory farms. Those who say it’s impossible are contradicting the fundamental way in which agriculture and factory farms came to be: the free market. People demanded food and we found a way to grow more of it using less and less space. Awesome.

Today, we want good food. The market will find a way. It always does. And it won’t destroy the planet as we know it because it’ll take 1000000x–guesstimate–the land to raise all these cows, chickens, pigs, etc. humanely and organically. Like I said, the market will find a way. If there is legitimate market demand, it will happen. For now, prices will be sky high. This is how the market works.

But, this love is not just about the food. I love the food. I do. But, there’s more. It’s Katie and Allie at FreshDirect.

My FreshDirect order was scheduled for the 11 – 1PM time slot. I got up at around 10. I was out last night but, not that late. I slept in anyway. I like doing that. It’s a Saturday.

I did my Saturday morning stuff: shower, breakfast, Facebook, etc. I was expecting a delivery any time between 11AM and 1PM so I took that as an opportunity to catch up on some blogs and other readings. I also let my Roomba do it’s thing–I’m delegating.

1PM came and went and nothing. No FreshDirect delivery. I figured they were running late. Then it was 1:45. Well, that’s quite late–I think that can be considered being stood up. So I checked the website and their FAQs. Late deliveries usually result in a call to notify you. Well, I didn’t get that. Maybe there was an issue? I sent Customer Service an e-mail.

They respond to e-mails in roughly 1 – 3 hours according to their site–in reality, they did it much fast. I took the wait time to clean my kitchen. I had to do it eventually so might as well do it while I’m in a holding pattern anyway.

I got a reply shortly:

I am very sorry to hear that your order #XXXXXXX did not arrive between the 11-1pm delivery timeslot you requested.

I have contacted the delivery team and they informed me that your order was scanned as delivered at 10:34am. Since the route is done for the day we were unable to confirm this with the driver. I suggest checking outside your door or with your doorman if applicable. If you are still unable to locate your order please call us at 212-796-8002 so we can investigate this issue further or set up a re-delivery  for another day. I am very sorry for the inconvenience.

I’d like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to help solve your problem.  If, for any reason you’re dissatisfied with how we resolved your problem, or need further assistance, please feel free to e-mail us directly by responding to this e-mail or call us at 212-796-8002.

Your satisfaction is our number one priority!

Sincerely,

Katie

The response was timely and personable. I can tell there’s template customer service copy but, a real person also wrote some of that. Unlike when I send my Senators a message and they send me back a blanket response of bullshit. Not so fond of that.

So I read that and went to check my door. I may have been in the shower at 10:34AM and if they got into the building without buzzing me then I would have never known.

I open my door and 4 FreshDirect boxes were staring at me. Awesome! I brought them in and unpacked everything. I then went to send a reply to customer service to let them know that it all worked out fine.

hey Katie (or whomever this reply gets to in customer service),

My order was stacked outside my apartment. lol, thanks. I was just expecting to be buzzed and all that. My building door hasn’t been functioning correctly recently so I should have guessed.

Anyway, thanks a lot! Came in perfect condition as usual!

So, I was totally fine with what happened. I’m not new to deliveries. UPS and FedEx screws up every once in a while. USPS screws up about as much as they successfully deliver a package–standard government quality.

So I thought that was that. I wanted to let them know that everything was fine since Katie actually took time to give me real suggestions. I figured someone would probably read it and file it away. That’s not what happened. And that’s how you wow a customer.

A while later, I got another reply from FreshDirect customer service saying this:

Thank you for emailing FreshDirect. I am sorry to hear that your order was left unattended.

Upon reviewing your account I see that your order was delivered at 10:45am. I have issued a store credit in the amount of $5.79, for your delivery fee. You will receive an email regarding this credit once it has finished processing and ready to use.

I’d like to thank you for letting us know what occurred and giving us the opportunity to help solve your problem. If, for any reason you’re dissatisfied with how we resolved your problem, or need further assistance, please feel free to e-mail us directly by responding to this e-mail or call us at 212-796-8002.

Your satisfaction is our number one priority!

Sincerely,
Allie

Honestly, I had no expectations. I thought my order was fine. What I ordered arrived in a condition I expected. All was well. FreshDirect didn’t need to do anything more and this blog post would have never been written.

Any marketing student who paid attention in their CRM class can tell you about perceptions and expectations. This is classic exceeding of expectations. It’s simple and it works.

I’m pretty confident Katie and Allie didn’t go to work today expecting to be written about in a blog later that day. But it happens when you wow your customers. Zappos is the classic case study of delivering happiness. I have never shopped with Zappos so I can’t attest to anything. Certainly, if Zappos does an even better job that FreshDirect then I don’t know if I can handle it.

(Okay JetBlue, I like your customer service too–just in case you were getting jealous there. And Virgin–I like you too.)

Aren’t we all just used to terrible customer service? The person tasked with servicing you is either a robot or is reading a script as if they were a robot. You know, “unplug your modem, wait 10 seconds, and plug it back in”. That kind of customer service. You’d think that after all the years of telling customers exactly that, they’d figure we probably already tried that one before waiting 40 minutes.

And so for all those reasons, I think I may be falling in love with FreshDirect. Can you blame me? :)

Some of us are of the  mindset that things will get back to normal once we hit that corner–back to being employed to do almost nothing and to do it only slightly better than the lowest common denominator. That is never coming back. That way is over.

People need to wake up. We aren’t. At least, not all of us are. I recently saw this on my Facebook feed:

This is the mindset that you just need to ride out the recession. Spend the minor effort now when nothing is going on anyway to put things that look good on your resume. This is an “easy job, looks good on resume”. Doesn’t say anything about what you would learn–if anything. An internship that nets you no new knowledge is about as good as doing nothing.

I’m not criticizing the person offering this position. I’m criticizing the attitude behind it. This attitude is too prevalent. There are a lot of people who believe that things will return to the way they were. But it won’t. The resume is dying.

In a time not too far from now, a resume will be useless. It is almost useless today. I see plenty of people who look good on paper but, can’t do any real work to save their lives.

You don’t need to build up your resume with activities that aren’t too different from wasting time. You need to build up your Google-ability. Do work that can be found. Do work that is meaningful. That you can point to and be proud to say that you were a part of it.

You don’t need an easy job that looks good on a resume.

And this isn’t just a matter for guys. There’s a popular book titled Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office. I haven’t read the book but, the title pushes the idea that being nice is a negative.

I think the problem lies in how we define “nice”. That word has been used to describe me countless times at countless ages. I’ve heard it a bit often recently. And it’s probably true, I am nice.

But then, there’s those who are “nice”.

There are people who are “nice” because they want something from you. I never want anything from you. Whatever I do, I do it because I want to do it. No strings.

There are people who are “nice” because they have no opinions of their own. They’ll do whatever you say. They aren’t nice, they are weak. I’m thoroughly opinionated and possibly hardheaded. I’ll listen and try to understand where you are coming from but, I will not change my mind simply because you don’t like my point of view. Tough luck.

There are people who are “nice” because they want to known as being nice. They are about as fake as it gets. They are nice and cheery on the outside and plotting your demise on the inside. They’ll resent doing that favor for you but, show you nothing but smiles while doing it.

Who would like to deal with any one of these “nice” people in business or in personal relationships? Let’s be honest, no one likes a con-man, a push-over, or a fake. Whether they want to disguise themselves behind a veil of “nice” is irrelevant. They aren’t what they seem.

There are the truly nice. The truly good. Those who do good things because it’s a good thing to do. Those who believe in themselves and are perfectly okay with others disagreeing. Those who will tell you like it is because that’s what it is. They won’t con you, bore you, or lie to you.

And they do get ahead. In every aspect and with a clear conscience.

No great ideas came about by themselves. Individuals are credited with being the first to invent or discover something but, that ignores all the work that had gone before to make it possible for this one individual to get there.

It is impossible for the first man to invent a pencil on his own no matter how smart he was. Firstly, he wouldn’t have any time left to invent after he’s done hunting and gathering. The sole effort of getting enough to eat takes up most of the daylight hours. The rest of the time is used to ensure that wild animals don’t kill him at night.

The only way for him to get time to do things other than find food and have a safe shelter is to cooperate with another person. One person finds food and the other builds a shelter. At the end of the day, both have food and shelter in half the time it would have otherwise took them to do it alone.

This is no new revelation. Economists call this comparative advantage. You trade one thing for another. In this case, these two primitive humans are trading food for shelter and vice versa. Both are better off.

In fact, there is no other way for humans to prosper.  There is nothing as uniquely human as trade. Trade is why we are the most dominate life form on the planet. It is why other species of upright apes are no longer with us. They didn’t trade. We did.

No other creature on the planet trades like we do. You never see a dog offer another dog a bone for a rope. It is an idea that is inconceivable to them.

Modern society is built on top of the idea of trade. Everything from our computers to our food is made possible by trade–the trade of goods, services, and ideas.

This blog software that I use came about by the contributions and ideas of thousands of people. Most of whom I will never know. The design, the technology, and the architecture has been built over time little by little. Idea by idea.

They are then glued together by a much smaller group of people to create a tool that has enabled millions of people to write about the mundane to the world changing.

This happened because a lot of ideas had a lot of sex.

The trend from 2007 show a steep decline in employment for college graduates. In 2007, 51% of college graduates who applied for a job had one in hand by graduation. That number went down to 26% in 2008 and stands at 19.7% in 2009. With another year of graduates joining the prospective workforce, I can’t imagine this number getting any better.

Unemployment for college graduates is officially determined to be 19%. That really isn’t the situation I see on the ground. When we account for those who have given up, taken part time jobs, or taken jobs that have nothing to do with their intended career, the number is much higher.

Then there’s the reports of recent college graduates seeing lower salaries for years to come. There’s really no good news anywhere. But, you didn’t need me to tell you this. You aren’t reading this because everything is rosy.

What to Do?!

The situation isn’t entirely hopeless. The pipe dream that a lot of us had has been shattered into a million pieces. We now know that a college degree isn’t going to guarantee us a job. That piece of paper is only slightly better than meaningless.

We need to change our mindset. The economic ground isn’t shifting beneath us just because of the Great Recession. It has been shifting for a while now. The economic crisis just made it more apparent.

It would be misguided to believe that all will return to what it once was if we just ride out this recession–or possibly depression. The world as we knew it is gone. That college degree won’t guarantee you’ll get the job you want making the money you want.

The great game changer isn’t the recession. It’s social media. You hear about it all the time and how it’s changing the landscape for businesses. What you haven’t heard is that you need to adapt to this landscape as well.

The traditional resume is on its last breaths.

It’s About Google-ability

For many years now, employers have Googled prospective employees and we’ve Googled prospective employers. It did not used to matter as much if we couldn’t find each other online. That has changed drastically. If you can’t be found online, you might as well not exist.

At the very least, you should have a LinkedIn profile. There’s no benefit to not having one unless you intend on being invisible.

People are networking online. MeetUp.com is used to arrange offline networking events. How would you even know about these events if you aren’t up to speed?

YourName.com

You should own it. It costs about $10 a year from GoDaddy. It’s even cheaper from some other places but, GoDaddy is a brand I trust. One of the ways to have your name come up first or within the first 10 results in a Google search is to own yourname.com.

If you’ve got nothing to put on your website, redirect it to your LinkedIn profile. The idea is just to own yourname.com. You can find real use for it later. For now, just get it before someone else does.

Ideally, you’d want to be a thought-leader in your chosen field or niche. Realistically, this isn’t going to happen overnight. But, you have to start somewhere! Set up a blog at yourname.com and start sharing your thoughts on your field.

If you don’t have anything to say, perhaps, you need to do more reading about your field?

Keeping Up With the Blogs

There is likely to be a wealth of information for your field online right now: blogs, YouTube videos, Wikipedia entries, news articles, tweets, and more. If you aren’t keeping up with any of that, you need to get started.

Blogs are easy to keep up with. Instead of reading the daily newspaper with yesterday’s news, subscribe to a bunch of blogs in your field on Google Reader. You might not be able to differentiate the good blogs from the bad ones if you are completely unfamiliar but, subscribe anyway. You can always unsubscribe once it becomes clear any particular source is no good.

Google Reader will also recommend sites to subscribe to so as long as you can pick a few on your own, Google will help you out. Make it a habit to catch up on what the blogs are reporting and talking about daily. Things happen quickly on the internet.

Ship.

This is a term that Seth Godin has been pounding in. And it is damn important. You need to ship. Being fresh out of college, you probably have no practical skills to speak of. So, what are you shipping?

Start small.

Publish a blog post. Make it a blog post about research that supports a point you want to make. Or just make it about the research. Everyone can use research. You did just graduate from college so, at the very least, you can do research. Right?

Get A Skill

Whatever it is, find one. Preferably a skill that relates to the field you want to pursue.

Get some technical skills too. You are competing for jobs with dinosaurs. Okay, not really dinosaurs but, older people. They’ve got a ton of experience. Now, they find themselves jobless too. But, they have skills. They’ve been there and done that. You haven’t.

You do–or at least can–have an advantage. You’re young. You know the technology better than older folks. You can’t compete with them on sheer experience. You just don’t have much. But, you do have a natural understanding of how technology works. You practically grew up with it and use it daily. Advantage: you. Sharpen that advantage and exploit it.

Go Do It

Now you know what to do. So, go do it. Don’t stop sending out resumes. You never know which one might stick but, that shouldn’t be your only strategy. Do the other things mentioned above. It can’t hurt and besides, what else do you have to do?

Look for internships. In this economy, there’s going to a lot more unpaid ones than paid ones. Now is no time to be picky. Internships are less likely now than before to result in a job afterwards but, you won’t gain any more experience rotting away at home.

Yes, this is a lot harder than you thought it would be. Unfortunately, you graduated alongside the worse economic crisis in modern history. It’s sad but, it is what it is. Time to get to work. :)

UPDATE: There’s a ton of job hunting sites like Monster, CareerBuilder, etc. SimplyHired has just enabled a feature that helps you find jobs at companies from within your social network. While you’re busy building or already have built a strong social network, you can use this tool to help you find that job! Welcome to the future.

The one on the right just recently opened. It had opened after I had moved here. I’ve only been here for a little over half a year. The one on the left appears to be established. It was here before I got here so, it appears old to me.

It is always imperative to know where the pizza places are in a new neighborhood. You need to know the coffee shop, the supermarket, the bank, the gym, the liquor store, and the pizza place. At least, those are the establishments I visit most.

I tried the established pizza place and I liked them. When the new pizza place opened up, I tried them. Their pizza wasn’t really to my liking but, they are open until 1AM. They were also very nice. I had heard the people working there talking about superior customer service during a late night pizza run. I didn’t think much of it, every business thinks they provide or want to provide “superior customer service”.

I continued to go to the old pizza place. I liked their pizza better. They were nice enough. They weren’t rude. Nothing extraordinary. Just pizza that I liked.

One day, I was walking home and passed one of the guys from the new pizza place on the street. He smilingly nodded at me acknowledging that he knew me. I nodded back–it’s only polite.

When I walk home from the gym, I have to pass the old pizza place. One night, I walked past the owner of the old pizza place as he was locking up. He saw me and looked away as if he didn’t know who I was. We’ve briefly chatted and I’ve been to his pizza shop enough.

I really didn’t think much of this either. It’s New York. No offense taken.

Tonight, I bought pizza from the new place. They have a special $1 regular slice of pizza on Wednesday. I didn’t really want pizza but, for $1 a slice, why the hell not? It gave me the crave.

The man behind the counter was as courteous as ever even while I was spending no more than $2. He was also very nice to the other customers in the shop. As I left the shop, I remembered when this place opened and how often it was empty. That has changed. It’s rarely empty now.

I still don’t prefer their pizza but, I prefer their service. And I think I prefer it enough to go there instead from now on. Great customer service does count for something.

There was a third pizza place across the street from these two. It is now closed. They must have had mediocre pizza and mediocre service.

This might make sense for music where a CD traditionally cost $15 – $20 so the average price per song is about $.99. Take away the cost of producing CD’s, cases, and the label’s cut and the artist is probably better off. Games have traditionally had double digit prices depending on it’s platform and scale. PopCap sells Plants vs Zombies as a PC downloadable for $19.95. The same game on the App Store is $2.99.

When Super Monkey Ball was released on the iPhone, it came with a $9.99 price tag. It is now $3.99 and the price range for high quality premium games have settled to around $6.

While the low expected price of games on the App Store is a problem for game developers, there is little good in complaining about it. The initial rush to iPhone game development was spearheaded by hobbyists and small game companies that had low costs and seemingly infinite upside. Almost any game could have succeeded by just being available on the App Store. Times have changed and the pricing strategies have to change with it.

The $.99 price point is not going to work for 99% of game developers. The quality bar has been raised so high that it is impossible to break even at $.99. Losing money on every game you make is the fastest way to no longer be in the business of making games. The App Store is not exempt from traditional pricing strategies.

Virtually every pricing strategy that has ever been developed in marketing apply to the App Store as they do to the sale of all products and services.

Competitive Pricing

The simplest and most logical pricing strategy is competitive pricing. This means you are going to set a price similar to or exactly the same as competitors in the market. This has been the predominant strategy applied across the board in the App Store.

Smart marketers who use this strategy don’t apply it across the industry. You will notice that not every beer is priced the same or every shampoo, detergent, orange juice, deodorant, etc. This is because each product is not the same. There are some products that are virtually identical and in those cases, you either need to differentiate or you match prices. Generally speaking, when a customer has to choose from two identical products, price is going to be the determining factor.

Cost/Economy Pricing

Cost pricing is coming up with a price based on your cost to produce plus a suitable mark up. This is a strategy that generally ignores the prices set by competitors in the market and is derived solely based on the company’s cost structure and goals. If each product costs $5 to make and you want a $2 profit on each sale, you would set a price of $7.

Loss Leader

A loss leader is a product that sells at a loss to spur customers to buy other higher priced items. This is usually done to bring customers to a store hoping they will also buy other things. Big chain stores do this often in their circulars and usually only have a limited amount of the advertised product.

Penetration Pricing

Penetration pricing is usually used to break into a new market or gain market share. Prices are set lower to attract customers and then raised later once significant market share has been gained. This happens a lot in cable TV where companies offer a low price for 6 months and then changes to the regular price thereafter.

Premium Pricing

This is the general pricing strategy for high end luxury items. This is also the most desirable pricing strategy as it has the highest profit potential. It is also the hardest to achieve because the product needs to be seen as highly unique in the eyes of the consumers. This also happens to be the traditional pricing strategy for Apple. Their products are built with a unique design and experience that can command generally higher prices.

Price Skimming

Price skimming is the act of releasing a product at a relatively high price where only a small percent of the market is willing to afford it. This is usually because it is the only product of its kind at the time and competitors have not yet entered the market. Once more competitors offer the same or similar product, prices start to come down. This is the general pricing strategy in technology and electronic products like flat screen televisions.

Determining Price

There are literally tons of other pricing strategies and hybrids of each other. These are the basics for a general understanding of pricing. The best pricing strategy for the App Store is going to depend on the company and the products. EA’s pricing strategy is not going to be the same as a five man game company.

It would be safe to say that you do not want to price at $.99 as there is no where left to go after that and as more premium titles are released, $.99 is going to come to mean low quality. When you don’t know much about two similar products, the higher priced one is assumed to be the better one.

A pricing strategy should fit within an overall marketing strategy. It is impossible to come up with a good pricing strategy without knowing what the marketing goals are. Prices that are too high or too low can derail an entire marketing plan from achieving business objectives. Poor pricing can also make or break a business.

Luckily, in the App Store, prices can be easily and quickly changed. A poor price may not be terminal but, there are still lost profits at stake.

Know your product, marketing objectives, and then determine a price.

Brands are like people. They take on personality traits and we like those traits or we don’t.

This means you are a brand. You evoke certain feelings when people think of you. The entirety of who you are, is your brand. Your beliefs, likes, dislikes, attitude, personality, style, etc. are all things that create you. These same things make up a company brand.

We all have distinct feelings about each of the top ten brands in 2009. Some brands you know better than others; some brands you like better than others. It’s no different than friends compared to acquaintances. Being everyone’s best friend is being no one’s best friend.

Building a brand for a game company is the same as for a car company, beverage company, restaurant, or any business. The major game companies don’t need a lesson in the importance of branding–they already spend millions a year doing it. That’s why their games sell so well. Consumers know their product. We know what to expect from a game with the EA logo on it.

When your target audience sees your game with your logo, do they know what to expect? They should. A company name should sell itself. That’s the power of a brand.

Your company needs to have a brand as much as you need to have a personality. It doesn’t matter how big or small: a one man show or a thousand man spectacle. You need a brand.

Your customers will develop feelings about your company based on points of contact. These experiences can be influenced or the chips can fall where they may. There are brands that people want to evangelize and tell their friends about. That brand makes a top ten list. That’s a brand you want. That brand didn’t happen by accident.

A strong brand allows for competition on more than price. Competing on price is the weakest competitive advantage. Anyone can lower prices until they go out of business. That’s not smart business. Smart businesses create their own market with few competitors. You can’t achieve this without a brand.

thatgamecompany, the makers of the popular flOw, has a distinct brand. Their games are truly unlike any others in the industry. Their games won’t be a fit for everyone and that’s okay. They call their games “core games”. They are in their own market with few competitors.

So how do you build a brand and benefit from it? First, your company needs to know Who am I?

You have an identity. The people who make up your company have an identity. What are they? What makes you tick? What makes your employees tick? Why are you in business? What do you do? Why do you wake up every day? What is your passion? What do you offer your customers?

Don’t try to hide your identity. It is a fools errand to pretend being someone else. Take the example of Superman and Clark Kent in their quest for Lois Lane’s affection.

Clark Kent hides his identity. He pretends to be someone else. He is not a run-of-the-mill small town boy looking to make it in the big city. Clark fails miserably to court Lois. On the other hand, Superman knows who he is. He doesn’t hide his otherworldly origin or his super powers. He saves people from danger because he believes he should. It’s not an act, it’s who he is. Superman wins.

Clark Kent and Superman are exactly the same person. One is true to himself and the other is not. A brand that attracts people is like Superman.

A small game company with a few employees should not be ashamed of being small. That is who you are. Don’t pretend to be bigger. You cannot build a brand on a foundation of lies.

A large game company shouldn’t pretend to be an indie shop. It isn’t you. People will see right through it. No one likes a liar. No one wants to do business with a liar.

The goal of a brand is not to be a fit to everyone. Not a single successful brand does that. Successful brands are like successful people. They know who they are and believe in their work. People are attracted to them because they are real. Not everyone will like them but, those who do will make a real connection. That’s a fan for life. Lifetime profitability is the lifeblood of long term success.

Every point of contact with customers need to be congruent with your brand. The only way to do that is to be able to communicate who you are to your employees. Your brand starts with your employees. You can’t communicate that you are a friendly, loving, smile-flashing company and have employees who are rude to customers.

The people responsible for direct interaction with customers should exemplify your brand. If your brand is fun, social, helpful, and out-going then you need people who have those qualities. Best Buy’s Geek Squad needs technology and gadget lovers working for them or there will be a brand disconnect.

The quickest way to communicate your brand to employees and customers is with a tagline.

A good tagline is essential. Potential customers should know what you do and who you are in a blink of an eye. Your tagline needs to tell them everything they need to know in a few words. A tagline is like a signature, it should be distinctive. Once you come up with a good tagline, use it on everything. There is no point in having a tagline if you aren’t going to use it.

Take the time and effort to come up with a great tagline. It may seem useless to put so much effort on a few words but, you need those magical words that eloquently consolidates everything you are. It’ll help keep everyone in the company focused and on the same page. That is priceless.

Everything about your company needs to be congruent with your brand: company logo, mission, employee attitudes, website, advertising, story, etc. All of it. Every inch of your company needs to reflect your brand.

Building a brand takes time and effort. Two people can’t become great friends in one sitting. It takes a series of meetings, activities, conversations, cups of coffee, pints of beer, etc. Every contact builds the relationship. Every contact provides more information about each other. Showing up as a different person at each contact will never create a strong relationship. Building a brand is like building a friendship.

Brands are like people.

You name it, there’s an app for that. A year from now, you name it, and there will be apps for that and the ten other things you didn’t think of.

These are all conveniences iPhones owners have enjoyed. I have taken these services for granted. I don’t worry about where anything is anymore, I can find it on Google Maps. All of this convenience is fantastic for the consumer, while those trying to sell apps on the iPhone are finding it harder to stand out.

The most competitive category is Games. There are few categories as popular as the Games section of the App Store. There are more Games than any other category. At over 20,000 strong, avoiding obscurity will be a challenge.

But not only that, you need to have a lasting impression. You may have created the hottest iPhone game to date but, what is going to stop someone from releasing a $.99 clone? How do you ensure a cheaper clone isn’t going to eat away at your sales and market share?

Take the once popular iShoot. It made $800,000 in five months and prompted its creator, Ethan Nicholas, to leave his job at Sun Microsystems. iShoot has since been buried by competitors and copycats. Nicholas says it’s “terrifying” and that iShoot’s success was “pure luck”.

Pure luck is not going to work for a business selling games on the App Store. Relying on luck to run a business is the surest way to the land of businesses-that-were. And I’m not sure all businesses go to heaven.

Luckily, the solution is as old as time: marketing. Why do you buy Tide instead of Acme Brand? They may have exactly the same quality and stain fighting power but, Acme Brand isn’t going to hold a candle to the power of Tide.

There was a time when only a handful of games were on the App Store. The best games sold well in those prehistoric times. Those days are long gone. You can release a game on the App Store tomorrow and it’ll be in the company of a hundred other games. Only a small fraction of all iPhone users are going to know your game came out. People can’t buy what they don’t know about!

This is logical reasoning but, not everyone is on board. In an interview with Wired, Austin Sarner, CEO of Design by a Knife, said this:

“Basically everybody’s on the same level once they submit an iPhone app. Unlike traditional marketing, there’s no ad campaign: A user just sees what he sees in the iPhone store, and the applications kind of have to sell themselves to some extent.”

Sarner’s philosophy is that great content drives App Store success and not “marketing”. Sarner is a developer by profession so this an understandable point of view. Sarner confuses advertising with marketing and doesn’t realize that developing a great product is a fundamental function of marketing.

It is inaccurate that there is no advertising behind iPhone games. EA didn’t come to the party without their advertising muscle. And with hundreds of games being added to the App Store every week, the clutter alone will make you invisible no matter how good your game is.

It is suicide to release an app and hope it will be magically discovered. Only 7% of iPhone users download through iTunes, 62% knew what they wanted, 60% browsed the top lists, and 46% were from word of mouth according to AdMob. The 62% who knew what they wanted heard it somewhere first. It didn’t come to them in a dream.

If you are convinced that making the greatest iPhone game in the world, releasing it to the App Store, and then praying it will sell is a viable strategy, I have two words for you: good luck. You are going to need it.

However, if you want a viable business, there is a better way.

Game developers worldwide will disagree and hate this but, marketing has to be part of the development process from day one. You can’t create a game and then sprinkle some marketing pixie dust as an after thought. That’s the equivalent of wearing a blindfold, spinning around a few times, and then trying to hit a pinata. You have no idea where the target is. You are going to miss.

The development process starts with an audience. You need to target someone. You don’t need to go after the same audience as everyone else, but you need an audience. Who is going to buy your game? You need to make a game for them. You can make a game for yourself, but that’s not a business–it’s a hobby. Doing things in that fashion means it’ll always be a hobby.

Your game needs to be characteristic of your company brand–your company does have a brand right? There is a reason EA has multiple brands. Each brand has its own image and their games reflect that. EA Games caters to a more traditional audience, EA Sports develops games for the sports audience, and EA Play is solely focused on the casual market.

Engage with the community. If your audience is there, you need to be there engaging them: blogs, forums, YouTube videos, LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, etc. If your audience is there, you need to be there. Being engaged does not mean spamming. Join the conversations and use your company as the name of contact or end each comment noting your company. Don’t be obnoxious. Be informative, helpful, and provide useful discourse.

Marketing your game is a full-time job. People who solely work on the development side find this difficult to swallow. In their world, they are doing the hard work. Their point of view isn’t without merit. Without them, there would be no product at all.

To make things worse, it is difficult to accurately measure the impact marketing has on your business. You may never know how or if someone who interacts with your marketing ends up buying your product. In fact, they might not buy your product at all. They might talk to ten other people about their experience with your company and then one or more within those ten may end up buying. We cannot accurately measure this.

For people who are used to concrete and visible patterns, marketing may as well be voodoo. However, this doesn’t make marketing less important. It does mean marketing requires a different mindset than that of development.

Social medias has allowed us to monitor our audience’s thoughts, concerns, and feelings in real time. This lets us adjust our marketing efforts on the fly if it isn’t working or is having a negative effect. You need to be constantly monitoring your audience. It isn’t just a matter of marketing during a release–you will end up like iShoot. Cultivate your audience and develop a community.

Infinity Ward, the makers of Call of Duty, understands the importance of a strong community. They have a community manager, Robert Bowling, whose sole job is to monitor the Call of Duty audience. Without him, Modern Warfare 2 may not have become the highest grossing entertainment release of all time. The game would have done well no matter what. Call of Duty has a history, the first Modern Warfare was excellent, the hype surrounding Modern Warfare 2 was spectacular, it was a high quality product, and Call of Duty is a known entity–a brand. But, would it have done as well without marketing? Of course, we can never actually measure it but, I’m willing to bet marketing made the difference between one of the highest grossing and the highest grossing.

2010 is going to be different. For starters, we can’t call it “oh-ten”. That doesn’t make sense. Are we going to call it “ten”? Maybe we’ll need to actually say the entire thing: “twenty-ten”. No matter what becomes the accepted way to say the year, it is a change from the last nine years.

And change is something we are all dying for. We thought we were getting change in 2008 but, 2009 has shown us that it was just wishful thinking. No change to be found! So that begs the question, are we looking in the right places for change? Maybe we shouldn’t be looking to others. Afterall, the late King of Pop told us to look at the Man in the Mirror.

And we all know a mirror shows us everything in the opposite. Maybe 2010 is the year to take a look at ourselves and see if our lagging endeavors need to be evaluated in a completely different light. Perhaps, we need to do the opposite.

The economy is suffering the effects of being stabbed a thousand times by a toothpick. You wonder if now is a good time to make radical changes. To that I ask, would it be a good time if we went back five years? We all know it’s not about the times–there is never a good time. There is only now.

Now is as good a time as any! And if not now, when? If there is never a good time, perhaps that’s the first thing we need to apply the opposite to: it’s always a good time.

Besides, the economy can use some opposite thinking right now. The old ways of thinking have sunk the Titanic. And as everyone carries on thinking the same way and doing the same things, the water keeps climbing!

We think what we know is safe. It could be killing us, but it’s familiar so we stick with it. Well, it’s time to do the opposite. Take the plunge. Take the leap. Just do it. Whatever jingle you like.

It could be the best of times or it could be the worst of times. It’s impossible to know. But, we do know what doing the same will result in: the same results we’ve always gotten.

Some of us will choose to do the opposite. Things are going to change. Some of those changes will be so dramatic that we will all feel it. We’ve already seen it in the past decade. Ask someone about Twitter or Facebook in 2000 and you’ll get a blank, puzzled stare. Social networks have become a part of everyday life and used in everyday language. And it took less than a decade.

We know one giant is opting to do the opposite in 2010. Pepsi is foregoing advertising during the Super Bowl to focus on social media. This could go terribly wrong or it could be a banner year for Pepsi.

Take Pepsi’s lead and do the opposite. At least you don’t have $20 million on the line.

So my marketing blog is called omfg!marketing. This is where I talk about social media, online, interactive, word of mouth, new marketing. I am a believer in this “new” era of marketing where it isn’t about shouting at your consumers but, conversing with them.

So check it out! I only have a few posts as I try to not reiterate the news–there are plenty of other outlets for that. Trying to actually provide useful and possibly unique things! I’m on Twitter a lot these days–can’t imagine living without it now! A little scary.

“Yes, social media is huge when it comes to marketing on the internet but not all so called social media gurus know what they are doing.”

That is probably the truth of the matter too when it comes to social media. The field itself is so new and bleeding edge, what defines your guru status? I thought it was a good read–I did a retweet. Particularly loved this part at the end:

“Marketing in the social web or utilizing social media for marketing purpose is built on one premise which coincides with the age old form of marketing : word of mouth. That is exactly what social media marketing is. Word of mouth marketing but on the web. You do things that makes others talk about you. Whether through meaningful relationship on a one on one basis with your fans or followers or by doing things that gives value to the people on the other end.”

I’m reading Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz right now so that resonates. I also believe it.

I find it easier to look at it in business terms: 80% of profits come from 20% of customers. I follow Nabbit on Twitter and Nabbit had a tweet about the 90/10 rule of Twitter. I actually think it applies to a lot of social media, interactive, and word of mouth marketing.

This new age of interactive marketing requires that we give and give a lot. What we receive will be directly porportional to what we give. Those just trying to push things down our throats are not going to get much from us. Web 2.0 brought about online communities and information sharing.

I believe the way to successful interactive marketing is by giving away as much useful information as possible. To be helpful and kind and caring. The greedy evildoers are going to be caught redhanded and their faces plastered all over Google. This is an age where you can’t get away with poor customer service and bad products.

Instead of give me, give me, give me. It’s give, give, give.

The quality of the coffee appears to have gone down significantly. I have received less than preferable temperature for a regular tall coffee more than once. The Starbucks I remember always had their coffee at a certain temperature and the staff were well-trained to make sure that happens. The new pike roast is just not as good as what Starbucks used to have.

Last week, I had went into a Starbucks to accompany someone who was actually buying a cup of coffee. I had went to Dunkin Donuts prior and bought a medium cup of coffee and a bagel with cream cheese. We entered this Starbucks and the staff behind the counter proceeded to heckle me about the Dunkin Donuts’ product I was holding. It would have been friendly teasing if the barista had not suggested that they provide me with a paper bag with place my DD in as to not embarrass Starbucks when I walk out–how insulting.

The barista should leave the marketing to the marketers. Due to the barista’s faulty misplacement of brand image over customer service, I have since told many friends and acquaintances about this story. And now, I have made it available to the internet. This whole social network thing is a rather powerful means of spreading a message.

I am unlikely to buy coffee from a Starbucks again in a long time and I would suggest that when you have the option of Starbucks or some other coffee house, go with the latter. A company that is no longer operating in a fashion that justifies its price should be punished by decreased revenues and market share.

Then came their new marketing campaign. I’m not sure about Starbucks stores outside of New York City, but they started putting up little signs on every Starbucks that said something to the effect of having the best neighborhood coffee. Starbucks was trying to go back to their original image of small and local. I find that rather difficult in NYC when there is a Starbucks on every other street corner.

Discounting their hard to swallow new image, I noticed that a lot of Starbucks stores were losing quality. The staff or associates did not seem as well trained as I remember them being. I had read The Starbucks Experience and could relate to some of those stories in the book so I had a rather high image of Starbucks as a business. There was a quality to Starbucks that you came to expect and remembered but, it was no longer there.

At Dunkin Donuts, I don’t expect the kind of quality service that Starbucks had built their business on. The coffee at Dunkin Donuts is not as good but it is cheaper. I’m also not a big fan of the white cups that Starbucks have been using–I know it’s temporary but, it is still ugly. So, for the foreseeable future, I will likely continue my patronage at Dunkin Donuts over Starbucks. Of course, Starbucks can’t reach everyone with their marketing campaigns and I have not looked into how well their new campaign is performing. I did see in the news that Starbucks had closed hundreds of stores recently.

I still believe Starbucks is a good company and with Howard Schultz at the helm again, perhaps Starbucks can reinvent themselves and at least be a good stock to buy regardless of whether I ever choose to exclusively go there for my coffee again.