Sustainability

This is not a post about being green. I’ve got nothing against the environment. We recycle. I turn the house lights off before I go to work and my office lights off when I head home. The Earth is cool. I enjoy living here. I’d like to keep this party going for a while.

That rambling aside, I’ve got a different sustainability on my mind today. And a question I’ve been thinking about a lot lately when it comes to the client work we do:

What are you doing to create sustainable passion for the brands with which you work?

Have you ever asked yourself that question before? Let’s face it…PR’s foundation lies in creating buzz. Buzz is cool. And it creates temporary awareness. But it’s rarely sustainable. Are you still talking about the Peter Shankman and Morton’s story these days? I’m not. How about the top story on your local news website a week ago. Do you even remember what it was? I don’t.

We need to go after buzz. But we need to better figure out how to go after sustainability as well. The question is how do we do that when the essence of our function as communicators (marketing and PR) has always been much more about campaigns and less about community?

The answer, or at least one answer I have, is to focus more on the customer experience and usability. Why do customers like our brand? Or what keeps them from liking us more? How easy does our product fit into their everyday lives?

Steve Jobs was a master of this. In fact, he positioned usability as a way to cut customer service costs. Apple’s products were and are so easy to use that the customer has less of a reason to call and ask for help; fewer complaints to lodge. The products just make sense and integrate seamlessly into peoples’ lifestyles.

I know we don’t usually come up with the product. Often we’re just asked to market it. But the next time you’re given a product to market, take the time to think about it from the customer’s point of view. If you see red flags in how the product is described vs how it intuitively comes across to you, trust your gut. Ask the tough questions.

One story to illustrate: When I worked at Sprint, we came out with the Instinct phone and immediately touted it as an iPhone Killer. But our marketing of the device fell short immediately because the device didn’t have certain basic features consumers were expecting in their mobile phone, such as Outlook calendar sync. The phone was marketed as a consumer device. But what Sprint quickly found out is customers don’t see a consumer or a business device. They see one phone that can meet all their needs. Steve Jobs saw that too. And to be fair, Sprint’s newer phones embrace this model as well. They learned from their customers’ reaction.

As communicators, we can be the conduit to that learning from customers. Both the “why they love our brand” part and the “what they’d like to see change” piece. It’s our job to be gathering that information and using it to provide counsel. Furthermore, it’s our job to push our clients to see how consistent touchpoints with customers can form an ongoing relationship where the brand learns from the consumer and in turn, becomes a part of the consumers’ daily routine.

When I think about sustainability and buzz, I always think about a baseball analogy.  Do you sign Albert Pujols for one year and try to win it all? Or do you build through your minor leagues and set yourself up to potentially win it all down the road for several years in a row like the Atlanta Braves did for so long under Bobby Cox?

One of the ways we’ll gain respect as communicators is by focusing more on sustainability and counseling our clients on how to get there. It’s not that we don’t need buzz. But if that’s where we stop and we never get to sustainability, then we aren’t doing our job.

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