Gary Joins the Conversation

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certified Paper And Catalogs

My latest direct mail piece for Moosejaw is our Summer Gear '09 book. As with any significant direct mail project the quantity of printed material used (and let's be honest - a percentage of it ends up in the trash) is enough to produce a decent impact on the environment.

For this book I really wanted to go with at least a 30% Post Consumer Waste Recycled Paper. Creative Directors and VPs of Marketing must make this sort of commitment when your operation is heavy into print. It is essential to include this sort of social responsibility into any developed brand these days.

Through our printer we managed to get quotes for FSC (or Forest Stewardship Council) certified stock. I was unfamiliar with FSC at first, but have come to understand that FSC is the new news. Here's the important stuff:

•  FSC paper can be comprised of virgin, recycled or alternative fibers. The source, however, has to be an FSC certified operation. This can include well-managed forests, controlled sources or recycled wood or fiber plants.
• They operate on a chain-of-custody certification system. This means that evey step of the process has to be approved and certified (chemical treatment, ink, how the book is bound, etc.)
• The certification process is no joke. Certified sources must comply with strict requirements about habitat destruction, water pollution, displacement of indigenous peoples or wildlife. If the source produces recycled or alternative fibers they must comply with guidelies concerning chemical treatment, resulting effluence,sustainable management, etc.
• The FSC label represents that a print piece has been produced under the highest social and environmental standards in the marketplace.
• The One Million Inaugural Invitations printed by Barack Obama were done so on FSC certified paper.

The pricing works so we'll be printing on FSC-certified stock with a 30% recycled content.

Why Training Made All Customer Service Difference

I often ask myself why I am very passionate about Moosejaw customer service. A quick synopsis of my time at Moosejaw:

I started in customer service answering phones as a second job to the video production work I was doing at the time. It was a very hands-on office environment, meaning that we often ran around seeing a customers order through every step of the process to make sure there were no hiccups. 

This experience taught me how a number of jobs other than my own were done daily. Certainly not to a proficiency of those actually doing them, but I understood how the basics worked. Not only did this better empower me to know what I could promise a customer, but it let me see new ways to solve problems that may have been confounding before.

Since we all worked in one big room it was commonplace to run over to a buyer to ask a gear question or bother a shipping manager to figure out exactly how to run a correct UPS package trace - everyone was helpful because customer satisifaction was the priority for each person there.

As I moved into management and then into marketing I was only able to learn more about the following:

• Knowledge of the process matters: The more you can know about a customers order from receiving the email to the package being delivered the more creative you can be with your service solutions. You kind of know how everything works so you are able to create innovative solutions on the fly.
  
• You have the real answer: If you know why it is you do everything you do you are able to really talk to customers instead of being forced to hide behind policy because you don't know the real answer (another reason to keep the departmental doors open - why doesn't the coupon code work with The North Face? Oh well marketing was easily able to explain to you that it is due to vendor-retailer contracts)
  
• The breaking down of traditional corporate silos drives core values:  When you can see the priority given to a core value, like customer service, in every facet of the operation you feel empowered to 'make it right' for customers (I felt very comfortable pitching my customer's situation to a manager in order to win an extra concession for them like free shipping both ways or a free Moosejaw hoody.)

Zappos.com intgrates a 'boot-camp' experience in every single employee's training (from execs to graphic designers, all have to answer phones and ship packages)

It's a more corporate approach then how we do things here, but the results are the same.

Thinking About Twitter

The newest brand challenge is leveraging the immediacy of platforms like Twitter.

With Twitter you definitely sacrifice completeness of any message, but you gain frequency of message in trade. It seems critical then to convert these brand conversations into small bouts of interaction that eventually add up to a complete brand message. Sum of the parts sort of thing.

My next goal for Moosejaw Twitter efforts: develop a list of Twitter brand best practices and make sure they are being being follwed everytime we update or start a conversation.

Blurring Channels and Twitter

While many out there talk about a multi-channel approaches, at Moosejaw we've always talked about the 'blurred-channel' customer and how we can best converse with them. To blur channels is to take the best of each channel and make it available across all channels.

Our customer reviews on the website are a very powerful shopping tool, so we make it available via mobile for our in-store customers to use.

The design and photography in our printed catalogs are essential to our brand message, but are not mailed to every customer on our list. So we create a digital version that can be sent via email to the rest of the pool.

So how do we use Twitter to continue to improve the brand experience with our customers? What parts of other channels can be retrofit to be made available on a platform built on 140 character micro-blogs?

Some thoughts:

• Seems obvious to use Twitter to compliment your email and live chat service efforts.
• Release breaking products news or 'door-buster' style immediacy promotions; "the following coupon code will give you 25% for the next 2 hours."
• Tell interesting, branded stories in small chunks, like serialized novels released in newspapers.
• If you have an 'expert brand' deliver useful tidbits of advise that positions yourself as the most knowledgeable and helpful out there.
• Setup customer feedback kiosks that customers can sing immediate praise about their shopping experience immediately after they checkout.
• Sponsor athletes that are doing exciting things and have them Tweet through your account to give updates on their endeavors. Or just re-tweet their updates.

Even more interesting is the thought of having every department / shop / manager in your company keep an up to date account of events and thoughts, effectively leveraging the casual immediacy of Twitter to keep the entire corporation (or any interested customers) on the same page and in an open conversation - something key to any brand effort.

I'm excited to see the ways others find to really make twitter work for a brand (tweet-a-thons seem to be a great way to gain exposure for a cause) and encourage anyone with ideas to comment here or blog about it.

The Obama 'Team' vs The Bush 'Administration'

Caught an interesting tweet tonight that asked why the media refers to the Bush 'Administration' versus the Obama 'Team' - why the difference?

'Team' after all invokes images of a common struggle; we act together to reach a goal. 'Administration' on the other hand sounds like that time the principal censored your high school newspaper. 

The Obama campaign so crystalized the Obama brand as one made up of 'us' and based on cooperation for change. Obama has a public brand built by his staff, speeches and action - while Bush had a public brand built by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. 

The same can be said for any corporation in today's new economic space. Either you are active in creating your public brand (both by defining it and acting accordingly) or you offer it up to be defined by those that may not like you. See Jeff Jarvis' Dell Hell as a good example.

Keeping the Conversation Authentic

Looks like Seth's post got a few people thinking. Over at YouCan'tBuythat.com Neal brought his experience at PBR to the discussion. 

At Moosejaw (we market to a similar demographic as he did with PBR) we've always found that you don't have to disguise marketing as long as we are engaging our customers on a level they are comfortable with. We make every one of our emails silly and try and bring a welcome break to a boring day (we tend to say notable) - first for us, and then hopefully for the customer.

If we aren't laughing we don't consider it funny. If we wouldn't care then we don't consider it to be noteable. It's not a clever marketing strategy, it's simply who we are and who we want to be. I don't think we could do it if we had to fake it.

Are Marketers Evil?

Great post today over at Seth's blog.

As someone who has started to think critically about the business I find myself in, the question of what role we play as marketers is an interesting one. The pressure (especially in this economic climate) to generate sales as an 'end' to the 'means' of the marketing process is great. Every dollar seems to matter these days in ways they haven't in the past.

I can understand the temptation to cut corners or be disingenuous about a product in order to get it out the door. After all getting product out the door is what we get paid to do, right?

I think Seth Godin gets it right when he says that marketing is beautiful when you are able to create joy in the process of marketing a product to a customer. This is an open relationship between your brand and your brand consumer. It's win-win because it's honest.

If you fulfill a rational or emotional need for your customer you get to belong in that special group. If you trick your customer into thinking you fulfill a need that never existed then your days are numbered. The customer has all the power in this relationship and it's only a matter of time before they figure it out.

Where Do Strong Brands Come From?

We can all identify those companies that we've had strong brand experiences with. Those interactions that left us not only with a level of rational satisfaction but a lasting emotional experience. After all, that is what a brand really is; a true brand is the emotional connection between your company and your customer.

So how do you create an emotional connection? Easier said than done, you use passion. Passion for the brand demonstrated by the CEO. Passion for the brand from the COO. Passion for the brand for head of HR. Passion for the brand in every designer, marketer, manager, call center employee and shipper. If you lead a team you must inspire. If you follow a leader you must be able to be inspired. Otherwise you should leave. Easy as that.

Pothole City

The Detroit Free Press has leveraged the Google Maps API to allow users to pinpoint every pothole in the city. You see the city streets department is nearly out of funds for Winter repair which could leave many of our busiest streets broken and dangerous.

Not only is this a great way to get users to converse about where the trouble spots are, but it effectively creates an instant community that can be mobilized politically to pressure lawmakers to come up with a solution.

Or better yet - the streets department could use the user input (as opposed to having to pay employees to do road surveys) to determine where they can most effectively spend the dollars they do have.

Are Two Blogs Better Than One?

I also blog here.

My favorite post are about our Moosejaw Roller Hockey team that i play on. We are a little short on wins right now.

I am the Creative Director at Moosejaw, an outdoor gear and apparel retailer. I get to draw pictures and play with cameras all day and somehow still get paid to do it.

Moosejaw is a great company to work for and has a very unique company culture, as anyone who has visited one of our shops or website can tell you.