Stopwatch Marketing Blog

I golf. A lot.  This doesn’t mean I’m very good (I started golfing just 2 years ago) but I am passionate about it.  I read about golf, watch golf, travel for golf, and, of course, buy a lot of golf-related clothing.  How else can I explain why I now own 5 pairs of golf shoes?

I’ve played at public and private courses.  In the Bronx and at Pebble Beach.  With friends and with clients.  On courses which are decades old and on courses which just started to allow women in 2007 (on Tuesdays only!).  

Recently, I read Seth Godin’s “The Dip” and immediately recognized the dip in my own learning curve.  Godin’s book was as impactful on my game as Ray Floyd’s “From 60 Yards In.”  Both improved my attitude and also reminded me that a winning strategy applies to not only business but also golf.

Naturally, I decided to apply our own theories in “Stopwatch Marketing” to golf.  Golfers are consumers  - we invest money and time in the sport - and can be segmented by our “shopping” behaviors.  Golf courses which are successful appear to focus on a specific type of “shopping” behavior we detail in our book.

Recreational golfers enjoy the appeal of resort courses (e.g., Sea Pines, Monarch Beach) as they want to savor our one-day or multi-day getaway.  With magnificent views and flourishes like scented towels, complimentary bottled water, and extensive menu options at the turn, these courses appease those consumers with time to spend on the experience.  The experience is similar to a spa - everything from the valet parking to the cushy locker rooms are designed to make you forget your troubles, relax (if you could when it comes to golf), and focus on the game.

Impatient golfers are those who want to play as fast as possible in order to get home to help take care of other personal commitments.  Country club and residential community courses (e.g., Sun City active adult retirement community courses) are geared to these golfers who want to “beat the clock” at all costs.  Mornings are especially full of Impatient golfers eager to “get it out of the way” - much like morning-exercisers - and “get on with their day.” 

Painstaking golfers are those who have invested serious time and money in planning once-in-a-lifetime rounds at Pebble Beach, St. Andrews, etc.  Painstaking consumers have most likely planned their entire trip around playing a particular course. Much research is done on the course, the conditions, etc.  No one sets up these kinds of memory-making rounds overnite - unless you’re Spanky, a golfer who played Pebble >200 times.   The atmosphere is heavy with tradition and the course personnel encourage you to “savor and soak it up.”  Here, the more you pay, the more time it seems that you can take snapping pictures at the famous holes.  However, because these rounds are planned to perfection, golfers do not want any surprises.  I’m still wondering why Pebble charges an additional $10 for the yardage book… 

So, how does one address the reluctant golfer?  Could there be such a thing?  If you were reluctant to golf, you wouldn’t schedule a tee time, right?  Well, some golf courses do address a little reluctant behavior.  Some offer options to lessen your time investment (9-hole par 3 courses), lessen your finanical investment (twilight rates), or to consume your time and dollars in other ways (the grill room, the pro shop, or the nearby spa). 

David Rynecki writes in “Deals on the Green” that golf is “the place where there is no need for a personality test because golf brings out a person’s true character.”  Golf also brings out a person’s stopwatch.

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Chris Kieff, in his 1 Good Reason blog, had another – and very interesting – take on the issue raised by Drew McLellan regarding the hassles he endures to avoid changing his preferred dry cleaners.

Chris’s basic point is that he doesn’t change dry cleaners because it would cause him to have to do a bunch of unnecessary work. Quoting from his post: “Let me explain- if I use the same dry cleaner then when I leave the house in the AM it’s a no brainer, out the driveway, two lights and a left, less than 1 mile. While I’m going there, I’m able to make calls, think about whatever I want to, and keep going- business as usual.”

My comment, excerpted below, emphasized that we are all saying the same thing, but using different words:

In our book, which is aimed at helping marketing managers target the right customer time segments, we discuss how time is measurable and definable but is also a proxy for RISK. It occurs to me that all four words – work and change (Chris’s) or time (Drew’s and ours) and risk (ours) – would be viewed by a classical economist as expressing the same idea. They (the economics professor) would likely define these all as something that makes their students eyes glaze over such as “dis-utility.” They would then assign the class to analyze “How much dis-utility is a given consumer willing to endure in order to get the service level – and clean shirts – which they are willing and able to pay for?”

A separate, but important issue: Drew and I put pictures of ourselves on our sites and look, I believe, like what we are – marketing consultants:

Chris’s picture on his website, below, would imply, I think, a different, more laid-back and inventive, though presumably equally effective, approach.

Finally, to Drew: I’ll be happy to pick up your dry cleaning, next time I’m in Des Moines!

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In Drew McLellan’s Marketing Minute Blog, Drew has a humorous post (with a serious moral) today lamenting the very poor level of service he receives from his local dry cleaners. Drew, however, places great emphasis on the TIME, and this cleaner is on his daily traffic pattern, so he continues to patronize them even though he “strongly dislikes them.”

Drew is the author of an excellent marketing book, 99.3 Random Acts of Marketing. In it he makes a critical point (on page 13, “What exactly do you sell?”) that “…people buy solutions or benefits, not features.” He has, on that page, a fun story about a marketing professor challenging his students to quit focusing on product features and realize that “…people don’t buy shovels, they buy holes.” For Drew and the dry cleaners, “quick and on my way” is the benefit that trumps “superior service and recognition.”

I posted a comment on Drew’s post, excerpted here:

I agree entirely that the driving factor here is the value we put on our TIME. For the record, I have exactly the opposite relationship with my dry cleaners: they always greet me by name, wish me a good day, have never (so far as I can recall) lost anything of mine, and frequently repair broken buttons, untacked cuffs on pants, etc., that I haven’t noticed, all without charge.

Here’s the rub: Unlike Drew, I DO go out of my way to patronize them and have done so for twelve years. This dry cleaning establishment is near neither my office nor my home and there are several, presumably competent, dry cleaners within walking distance of each. I go to my preferred cleaner generally on the weekend, when I have time to go a few miles out of my way.

So, my point is that, when it comes to dry cleaning, Drew and I place different values on TIME. In Stopwatch Marketing terms, we would say that, with regard to dry cleaning services, Drew McLellan is an Impatient Consumer and John Rosen is Painstaking. Demographic targeting would not have worked here: Both Drew and I are middle-aged, male, marketing consultants, with children, who grew up in the Midwest.

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Another fine book to fill up all those empty hours until Stopwatch Marketing comes out is Michael Shermer’s The Mind of the Market. In it, Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, sets out to explain how and why people seemingly act irrationally when it comes to money. Among the familiar examples: Why do people hold onto stocks long after it becomes clear we should sell them? Why do people consistently choose options that would leave them worse off (earning $100 when everyone else makes $50) rather than one that would make them better off (earning $150 when everyone else makes $200)? Why would people walk across the street to save $40 on a $100 iPod purchase but would not walk down the street to save the same $40 on a $2000 HDTV? After all, in both cases, $40 equals 40 pictures of George Washington on cute little pieces of green paper.

The short answer, according to Shermer, is that we’ve all been programmed that way over thousands of years of years, having made the leap from hunter-gatherers to consumer-traders. Shermer amasses a huge amount of data and cites tons of research in the fields of biology, psychology, and a relatively new field called neuroeconomics. One great example: we are all social primates, having evolved from apes. Scientists have actually experimented with other primates, training them to “buy” food with pebbles. Once the apes have been fully trained and display consistent purchase behavior (that is, once the price has been set) the scientist increase the money supply (adding more pebbles). The nominal price of the food shoots up precisely as human economic models, based on decades of research into monetary policy would predict. Faced with “easy money,” monkeys, it seems, bid up the price of bananas exactly as humans do the price of homes. Let’s hope the monkeys don’t face a sub-prime lending crisis.

Seemingly irrational behavior on the part of consumers, of course, bedevils marketers. We explain much of this in our Stopwatch Marketing work with clients with the mounds of research indicating that actual buying behavior is almost always occasion-specific. Among the examples I shared with Michael in a comment on his blog: Why do millions of consumers drive past 20, 30, or 40 traditional supermarkets in order to spend MORE money on necessities at Whole Foods Market? Because, on that day, those consumers were looking for a recreational experience – browsing through a supermarket that openly bills itself as theater – rather than impatiently working their way quickly through a traditional grocery store. Research has shown that the very same people shop at Whole Foods once per month (for recreation) and at their local supermarket twice a week (for speed, convenience, and price reasons, that is, when they have a chore, shopping, to complete and are impatient to get it over with.)

In such cases, marketers make a big mistake if they tailor their marketing to the person, rather than the occasion.

The key point that I think both Shermer and we are making is that the economic behavior of individuals is not irrational to them; it is irrational only to observers trying to explain and exploit it.

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David Meerman Scott’s book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR has been a top seller for a while and will remain an inspiration for me. More importantly, it is as clear an explanation of the implications of blogs, podcasting, and online media for marketing as I have come across. Continuing with his strategy of blogging his books as he develops them, David has posted his latest, The New Rules Of Viral Marketing. That’s right; you can easily (and freely) download the current draft of David’s book right now, long in advance of the official pub date.

David’s whole strategy must seem strange to traditional publishers, but it has worked spectacularly for him and is a page straight of the new world of Wikinomics. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything is another book I recommend for those, like me, who were trained in traditional marketing long before things like blogs existed. We all need to leverage these new communications opportunities and David is way out ahead of most of us.

David’s publisher, by the way, is Wiley. Wiley’s head of sales, Dean Karrel, is an old friend, a hell of a good sales manager, and one who embraces – rather than rejects or fears – the advent of New Media. Wikinomics, by the way, is published by our own publisher, Portfolio, and the equally progressive Adrian Zackheim.

So, it is now the official position of MCAworks that the two most progressive publishers on the planet are Wiley and Portfolio.

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This time of year, some people equate the term “go-cup” with their first experience at Mardi Gras. New moms think of their children when they hear the term. I, however, think of a brilliant customer service initiative from Ditch Plains restaurant.

After a lunch at Ditch Plains recently, my tablemates and I ordered coffee - and were soon handed a go-cup of joe for us to takeaway.

Brilliant, right? After all, most luncheon customers at any restaurant are on a tight schedule (what we call “Impatient”) and anything (faster food prep, timely service, quick processing of the check, etc. ) is greatly appreciated. Plus, this saves us a trip down the street to Starbucks - and gives us something warm to hold onto in winter months. With this initiative, I imagine that the restaurant itself also benefits by a quicker table turnover at lunch. Less service is provided after the bill is paid in favor of putting more attention on those customers who are about to sit and order.

As I walked on to my next appointment with DP’s go-cup of coffee in hand, it didn’t matter what the coffee tasted like (fortunately, it was good)… what stuck with me was that the restaurant understood its customers and adapted its service and product accordingly.

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McDonald’s is taking on Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts by installing coffee bars with “baristas” serving cappuccinos, lattes, mochas and the Frappe. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119967000012871311.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news The lower price points will likely get trial… but time will tell if there will be repeat.

Can McDonald’s meet the needs of impatient convenience-oriented consumers with a product (and related counter service) which appeals to recreationally-driven consumers?

McDonald’s already serves two masters by attracting their loyal base — the impatient customer who counts on a consistent fast-food (and emphasis on “fast”) experience — as well as the recreational customer (typically the child who receives a Happy Meal as a reward). Now, McDonald’s is going after the squishy middle. The WSJ article didn’t say it but it seems that the squishy middle (e.g., the consumer who wants convenience and some theatre) is the female consumer.

McDonald’s has tried to target women before. Remember the push on diet-friendly salads? Yogurts? Bottled water? Now, a convenient+cheap indulgent coffee drink seems to be their answer to this elusive market.

I visited a re-vamped McDonald’s - which not surprisingly was just steps away from both the McDonald’s corporate HQ and the upscale Oak Brook, IL shopping center. (Note: I love visiting the stores near any company HQ’s. It’s usually a great look into what acompany is piloting - just like seeing the various flavors of Ben & Jerry’s in any Vermont supermarket which unfortunately never see the light of day in my neighborhood!) The Oak Brook restaurant gets high marks on comfort, service, and taste – which are not necessarily attributes which I typically use when I think of McDonald’s. And, I’ve been back 2x since to that particular restaurant. Perhaps the fancy coffee bean will be the magic bean for Mickey D’s pursuit of women.

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Yes, the blogosphere is really, really, really fast. I sent an email earlier today to Miel van Opstal, a Microsoft employee who writes the highly entertaining and informative CoolzOr blog, asking him to review our upcoming book, Stopwatch Marketing. He was kind enough to agree to review it and, before even receiving the copy we’re sending to him, he has written a post noting his anticipation at reading both Joseph Jaffe’s new book and ours. This, Miel indicates, will be a pleasant diversion from his frequent rants on such things as lottery winnings, 30-second commercials, and social networking. While I certainly hope he does take the time to read Stopwatch Marketing and (I hope) give it a good review, I also hope this activity doesn’t cause too serious a drought in Miel’s insightful and thoroughly enjoyable rants (his word, not mine).

At least as important, I’m trying to figure out when he sleeps…CoolzOr is based in Belgium, so he must have posted at about 1 or 2 in the morning his time. And my team thinks I’m a workaholic! Someday Miel and I will have to share and compare how we value…time.

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