On the mark

A concept which seems lost on a number of contemporary marketers is the idea of treating customers well. Marketers make much ado about positioning, value propositions, leveraging new media, and employing brand activation strategies, yet at the same time we see the proliferation of such consumer hostile practices as restrictive DRM, service contracts designed to lock customers in to a particular provider, and of course, continuation of wave after wave of brand experience damaging cost cutting.

I am of the opinion that, rather than embarking in one promotional* campaign after another, in many cases, marketing dollars would be better spent on improving product quality. However, the concept I’m advocating in this thread, that of simply Being Nice to customers, is an idea that extends across the four Ps of marketing.

I’d like to propose concept of the “Nice Company” as a conceptual framework for the rest of this post. The Nice Company is a company that makes a concerted effort to treat all of its stakeholders with some degree of common courtesy, or as AT&T’s Ed Whittacre somewhat brilliantly rephrased the Golden Rule, “You treat people the way you’d want to be treated.”

A Nice Company:

•    Does not bombard prospective customers with messages that are annoying, obnoxious, or excessive in number.
•    Provides clear, concise and accurate information about pricing, and does not attempt to bury potentially expensive details in the “Fine Print.
•    Makes every effort to ensure that the qualities and benefits of its products are accurately, and without exaggeration, presented in its communications.
•    Charges fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory prices for its products, and does not gouge customers on items such as peripherals and replacement parts.
•    Provides products which are well designed, reliable, and do not contain built-in limitations to deliberately reduce their functionality.
•    Provides a high level of post-sale service, in the manner appropriate to its industry. Its employees are trained to be polite and helpful to customers.

I think that, unfortunately, to some extent, there have been relatively few companies that have managed to live up to the above standards consistently over an extended period of time. This has inevitably fueled the fires of anti-business extremists, and indeed, in the long run, if the institution of the private corporation is to flourish, the principles I have just outlined must be followed.

Unfortunately though, a number of managers out there are concerned only with the short term, and care naught about the agony they stand to inflict on their stakeholders.

Well, to be fair, it has been over for several weeks now, I just haven’t had time until this evening to comment on it.

For the time being, it looks as though none of the major US airline brands is in immediate danger. The US Airways hostile takeover attempt on Delta failed miserably, and consequently, the proposed United-Continental merger also seems to have evaporated. These developments have effectively forestalled major consolidation in the industry for the time being, and I personally feel this is beneficial for all parties (though many would disagree with me on that point).

One common statement about the airline industry is that consolidation is somehow neccessitated by the overcapacity that is supposedly present in the industry. However, capacity among all US airlines declined significantly post-9/11, and is now on the rise in response to growing demand. A number of industries operate extremely well in spite of chronic overcapacity: retail, for example. One might ponder how those who so actively advocate mergers between airlines might feel about a Wal-Mart/Target combination.

In any event, talk of consolidation will inevitably continue. It is entirely likely that Midwest, an airline with a premium brand and a highly differentiated product, will be acquired by AirTran, an airline with a much lower end, undifferentiated product, and I am not personally thrilled by that prospect. At least, however, from the branding perspective, none of the surviving “great names” of US aviation is on the chopping block…