In Defense of Shopping Malls

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Jen

Recently, I had the opportunity to travel to Minneapolis, MN for a long week-end. Among other things, I was really excited to visit the Mall of America. I remember the news stories of it being built when I was a kid and distinctly remember thinking it was probably, like, the coolest place ever. Honestly? It did not disappoint.

Now, I know that I should be rhapsodizing on having found the best underground, artisanal goat cheese shop or the pork belly & kumquat taco place that’s actually in the sub-basement of a vintage clothing store because those are the kind of places in vogue right now, but I have a confession to make: I love malls. And, with my marketing hat on, I tried to determine why.

Utility

I think that there’s something magic about a mall – the notion that your next favorite shirt, perfect purchased six months in advance Christmas gift, or style defining wrap dress is right around the corner and that you could find all three of those things in the same day plus get a cookie! This isn’t to discount shopping locally – goodness knows, I do a fair amount of boutique shopping – but, at least for me, there’s a much higher probability that I can knock several things off my list at once at the mall. I like that malls are constructed in such a way that you can “make a day” of it – a little shopping, some lunch, maybe a late afternoon movie when you’re worn out. City shopping is great but malls offer a level of multi-functionality that you just can’t get elsewhere.

Consistency

I’m reading a book right now – ‘Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits’ – and they break down some of the differences in the Boomer, Gen X, and Gen Y populations. One of the things they say about Gen Y is there’s a big movement towards things that are historically significant/verified, a preference for heritage type brands & activities. The author uses Levi’s as one example; Levi’s is having a moment in a big way right now because Gen Y is into it as a historically significant brand. I imagine that the ubiquitous Chuck Taylors are enjoying the spoils of that same trend. The author also points out increases in knitting, canning and the like. (I’m writing this on a flight to SFO wearing Chucks, Levi’s and a gingham button down shirt. So.)

Now, I understand that I’m at the upper age limit of Gen Y, but that’s how I feel about the mall. Going to the mall was a treat as a kid; my mom hated to shop. Having spent the latter part of high school and all of college working at malls, malls were often my “third place”, my home away from home away from home. So, because nearly every mall is at least 70% similar to any other mall, I can walk into one anywhere in the country and feel a bit of “home”. That’s powerful stuff and, I have to assume, not an experience that’s completely unique to me.

Plus, as fun as it is to be adventurous and try new things, sometimes I just want what I know. Malls provide me that experience.

Spectacle

Now, understandably, the Mall of America is a special case for this, in its scale. I joked that I loved the Mall of America for the same reasons I love Las Vegas and theme parks – over the top, rampant consumerism, clear theming, and a high cheese factor. It’s true that most malls don’t have a Ninja Turtle ride or reality competition winners giving mini concerts, but often, there’s something “else” going on. There’s community group performances, mini fashion shows, dance exhibits, Tuba Christmas!, or holiday displays. The fact that you can wander into a high school jazz band or see a kick butt Easter village only augments a day of shopping, as far as I’m concerned.

So, what do you think? Am I horribly small-town and middle America for liking a good mall day? Have you shuddered the whole way through thinking of Mike Brady’s, “Put on your Sunday best kids!”? Or, do you agree – is there something about a clean, climate controlled shopping environment? Is it maybe just that I like to shop too much to be objective?

Random Round Up

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Jen

More substantial posts coming, but for now, some things that have caught my eye and have been sitting in draft for forever.

Source: http://comicbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/man-of-steel-elevator-art.jpg

This is an incredible example of environmental marketing – the elevator doors do the Clark Kent reveal! As awesome an idea as this is, I can’t help but thinking that the ROI on something like this has to be extremely difficult to measure.

Source: http://static.neatorama.com/images/2013-03/game-of-thrones-pedicab.jpg

Along those same lines, this pedi-cab promoting the most recent season of Game of Thrones is amazing. I can see this being a big treat for existing Thrones enthusiasts, though am unsure if it generated additional viewers.

Source: my photo

This post-it note was stuck to the headboard of a Hampton Inn I stayed at. It would not have occurred to me that the bedding would not have washed for my arrival, so I’m not really sure what the purpose of. Would a pre-printed post-it note make you feel better?

Source: my photo

Panera should possibly rethink their abbreviations?

Source: my photo

And finally, damn you Ikea! I received this “congratulations on moving” coupon about 7 weeks after I moved and after I had made two trips to Ikea spending over the required dollar amount of the coupon. Was Ikea behind or was I just early? Could Ikea possibly think I needed to make three $300 shopping trips? Do I need to make another shopping trip?

Thoughts? Is there any marketing you’ve seen lately that’s been particularly good/bad/intriguing/infuriating? Drop me a link in the comments and I’ll check it out!

End of an Era: Sears Portrait Studio

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Jen

I was on the phone with my mother recently and she gasped loudly (which is not unusual) and said, “Oh! Did you hear? Sears Portrait Studio is closed!”

The Wall Street Journal has a good account of the closing; it sounds like it was really abrupt and that they were in a really bad financial situation. I’m sure there are a variety of reasons why this happened: at home photos getting better, AwkwardFamilyPhotos pointing out just how silly most of those posed photos look in a few year’s time, print on demand services like Shutterfly, the fact that everyone who has a DSLR can use Facebook to promote their “photography business” to freinds & family, etc. There’s also a whole lot of negativity about personnel and business decisions over the past few years to read from employees, all of which I’m sure impacted the closing decision.

However, I don’t want to talk about the negative! As I think I’ve mentioned, my very first job was at Sears Portrait Studio and I loved it. It was hard, sure, and far more demanding than the typical cashier high school job, but I got so much from it.

So, in mourning for the place gave me my first paycheck, here are the top five things I learned about business from Sears Portrait Studio (in no particular order):

1. Strong leadership makes a world of difference. My first manager, Robin, was the greatest. She was smart, competent, good at her job. She believed in her employees, was able to identify what made them tick, and get results out of them as a result. She never underestimated the power of a gift, an ‘attagirl’, or a high expectation. Working for her in my high school hometown was a markedly different experience than working at either of the studios in my college town, hence why I ended up leaving for shoe-ier pastures.

2. Employee training is a big deal. When I started, I was given a manual. That was my manual and it held the key to my portrait studio success. Everything I needed to know – from how to pose a six month old to the best way to get someone to buy greeting cards – was in that manual. It was logically laid out, thorough, and included hands-on components. It is the best training manual I’ve seen in my professional career. At my first job out of MBA school, I was tasked with improving the customer service department. The first thing I did was ask about how associates were trained; I asked to see the documentation. There… wasn’t any, really. I was horrified. So, modeled after my Sears Portrait Studio manual, I built a customer service training manual – logically aid out and thorough. Because that manual helped me understand my job, it made it much easier for me to be a good employee.

3. Business metrics are important.

4. Competition is a keen motivator.

One of my favorite jobs was to do the end of the week “individuals” – that is to calculate the average session sales, percent of sittings with the sale of a variety of initiatives & add-ons: Portrait Creations, greeting cards, frames, Smile Saver Cards, etc. This was a fairly manual process and I loved it. Once everyone’s totals & percentages were tallied, the top performer in each category got highlighted in green. Number two got highlighted in pink.

First, this process made me really pay attention to the sales numbers in the studio. There was a correlation between selling more Portrait Creations and having higher dollars per session. Weeks with a higher number of sessions were weeks where it was difficult to have a higher percentage of add-ons. I could see that my co-workers who figured out that 20 cards were less expensive than 5 sheets of 3×5 pictures sold a lot more cards and that my co-workers who never offered a collage without a frame sold a lot more frames. It helped me to being to understand how, in the end, business should be driven by the metrics.

Second, the weeks where my numbers were all in green? Those were the BEST WEEKS EVER. There was no formal recognition nor even really acknowledgement beyond the sheet hanging in the break room. But, everyone looked at it. And on weeks when you had the green numbers? You couldn’t help but feel just a little smug.

5. You can say pretty much anything to someone, as long as you use your “customer voice”. I know I’ve been harping on customer service a lot lately, but really, everything I learned about customer service, I learned from being the most customer-centric 17-year-old ever. Portraits are such a personal thing and I wanted nothing more than to make people happy. I used to have to call all the people who had messed up pictures because I was the one who got yelled at the least. I worked all the busiest shifts over the holidays because people didn’t get mad at me when things ran behind. I had great sales numbers because people liked me. I learned that tone was just as important as words and treating customers like people took you infinitely further than treating them like customers.

Was their business model outdated? Yes. Was it inevitable that without some evolution of the model that they were going to go under? Yup.
Did I learn an awful lot there? Absolutely.

Transactional Relationships

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Jen

One of the hardest lessons I’ve ever learned is that employment is a transactional relationship. Whether it was a large retail chain, a distribution company of ten, or an enormous global supplier, I have agonized over leaving almost every job I’ve ever held. I get emotionally invested in my work; I develop personal relationships with my co-workers. I work late; I hold myself to incredibly high standards. I’ve literally left blood, sweat, and tears at most companies I’ve had the privilege of being a part of. But, at the end of the day, I’m not much more than an employee ID number, a line on a payroll budget and a couple of gigs of files to sift through after I’ve gone. That’s hard for me. I always want to feel like I matter – and I do – just not nearly as much as I would like to. But, that’s something I’ve learned in my professional career.

Life is infinitely more difficult when you have to learn the same lesson more than once, isn’t it?

Pretty much everyone I ever encountered in Buffalo knew that I loved my apartment there. I often joked that, “you’ll have to drag my cold dead body from this apartment because I’m never moving.” It was a great place, and one that I took great care of – polishing the hardwood until it gleamed, washing the stained glass until it sparkled. I took a lot of pride and was always pleased when new people visited and noted how awesome the place was. I thought I was a great tenant; I lived there six and a half years and always paid my rent on time.

My landlords were a bit… high maintenance? There were some weird clauses in the lease (the porch was not to be a “meeting place for area youngsters”, the rent needed to be paid in person, etc.) and I had to undergo an extensive interview and reference check before they would rent to me. I liked the apartment enough that I wasn’t bothered too much by most of it. There was only one time that there was ever an issue, that I can recall. One New Year’s Day, after maybe a bit too much fun the night before, I forgot to pay my rent on the first. On January 2, when I went to drop off the check, I was confronted by an irate landlord who verbally eviscerated me, making me feel like some sort of bill dodging scumbag. This was after I had lived there for more than three years and had never been a problem. As I pointed out, New Year’s Day is a federal and banking holiday. Plus, the lease stipulates that rent is not considered “late” until the fifth of the month. He continued to berate me, though later called to apologize for over-reacting.

Fast forward a few years, when I called to let them know I would be moving (giving 60 days notice, 30 more than the lease stipulated as a courtesy because I was such a long-term tenant), the same landlord was an absolute jackass to me. I was stunned. It’s not like I was doing anything wrong – I was moving across the country for a new job, giving plenty of notice. I thought that because I cared so much about the apartment, because I had been a friendly and accommodating tenant, because I had sent them yearly Christmas cards that the relationship was something more than transactional. I thought they would have wished me well and promptly returned my security deposit. I was wrong. At the end of the day, I was nothing more than a source of monthly income. That’s hard. (And the legal proceedings I anticipate needing to get my security deposit back are probably not going to be fun.)

So, what does this have to do with marketing? I’m sure that many consumers do not have my crippling desire to be liked, to matter. But, I would wager that many customers want to be treated as a person, not a transaction – and that’s a good thing to keep in mind.

There is Nothing I Hate More than Poor Customer Service, Part 2

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Jen

When we left off, it was March 13 and I had just been told that my goods weren’t scheduled to leave Buffalo until March 21. Resigned to a perpetual life of squatter-dom, I bravely soldiered on.

On March 15, the Buffalo office called me to say they had good news – that the shipment was scheduled to arrive in Buffalo on March 21. “But two days ago, your customer service team said it wasn’t going to leave Buffalo until March 21?” I asked. She assured me that the goods had left Buffalo and that the shipping tables she was looking at showered that I would get my delivery on March 21, just one day after my estimated delivery window. I allowed myself to get a little bit excited and geared up for my last week-end sleeping on an air mattress.

On March 18, I received tweets from the @Alliedvl account, whom I had included in the link to my previous article.

Allied Mistake #9: If you’re going to use social media as a customer service tool, you need to be timely about it. Though I did not tweet to Allied with a specific customer service request, it was three business days (five regular days) later that they followed-up – in a world where social interactions are almost “real-time”, that seems like a significant delay. However, this is minor. Whoever is running their social media is polite and seemingly wants to help. They don’t appear to have the agency/authority to do anything, but other than some timeliness issues, good job on being polite on the internet.

Early morning on March 19, Allied customer service called me and informed me they had a new scheduled delivery date for my goods – April 2. My reaction was, “Excuse me, what?” This was two business days after they’d told me that delivery was scheduled for the 21. To say I was confused and super irritated would be an understatement. I’m pretty sure that the woman I spoke to on the phone had read my previous article because she kept saying, “Well, I’m trying to be pro-active and let you know what’s going on. You want us to be pro-active, right?” I didn’t appreciate being mocked/parroted. (Or, maybe I was just being sensitive. Traffic stats show that a lot of people direct-loaded that page though.) She was not particularly pleasant and really didn’t seem all that concerned about their lack of service delivery, particularly given that April 2 would be almost a month after they picked up my stuff in Buffalo. In fairness, I got a little emotional about the whole thing – and I mean, at that point, it’s kind of warranted? Would you be excited about spending Easter and Dyngus Day! sitting on a hardwood floor without a pot to cook in? Plus, why does the story keep changing? I told her I didn’t have much confidence in what she’d said and that was that.

Allied Mistake #10: And this is really just a repeat of previous mistakes: know your business, be empathetic to your customers, don’t constantly change the service promise.

On March 21, Allied customer service called me again. “The delivery date has changed again.” (What? It has?! I find that shocking and hard to believe!) “But, it’s good news, your things will arrive either Monday or Tuesday. I asked why it was so different (a full week sooner) than I’d been told just two days before. She didn’t know but told me that my stuff would arrive the following Monday or Tuesday. I asked when I was going to be told exactly when to expect the truck; she said someone from her office would call me on Friday to confirm. Fantastic. I asked if she had the final weight of my shipment (I was curious to know if I met the weight requirement to get compensated for the delay). She said that she didn’t, that they don’t get the weight until the truck has been unloaded. This was in direct contrast to the many previous times I’d been told that they get the final weight when the truck is loaded. Okay then.

On Friday, March 22, nobody called me. At 4:45 EST, I called the customer service line and asked if they could let me know whether it was going to be Monday or Tuesday. The guy who answered the phone was really nice and said he was going to take a look through the notes. I joked that the notes were probably a bit of a mess because it had been a bit of a process. He asked if he could put me on hold so he could check with dispatch. I said sure. When he came back on the line, he apologized for the wait and said he’d spoke with dispatch and that the shipment would be arriving Monday and that he had left a message with the driver to call me back within two hours to confirm the time. The driver did not call me.

Allied Mistake #11: Over and over and over again, Allied said they were going to do things that the didn’t. Whether it was as simple as returning a phone call or as big as delivering my goods when they said they were going to, they continually failed.

On Sunday March 24 at 9:30am or so, my phone rang. It was the truck driver. He asked if he could deliver the goods that day. A day early? Sure! I asked what time he was planning to come and he said, “I don’t know, sometime. Probably this afternoon.” Okay, fair enough. I told him that I had to leave the house at 6, so he needed to be done unloading by then. (As excited as I was to get my furniture, my whole life doesn’t revolve around waiting for them to show up. I had purchased a concert ticket for that night for a show I was really looking forward to.) He said that it would probably be around 3 that he would be here. I asked him if he was sure that was enough time to get everything unloaded by 6. He said yes and that he would call to confirm when he would be arriving.

He did not call.

At 2:15pm, I called him and asked if he would be delivering my stuff that afternoon. He said yes. I asked him when. He said, “Maybe 5 or so.” I reiterated that he needed to be done unloading by 6, so that wouldn’t work. I asked him what would happen if he was unable to deliver that afternoon. He said if he “couldn’t deliver today (I’ll) deliver Friday.” What? No? I told him that if he didn’t deliver on Sunday, he would deliver on Monday like the company told me he would. He laughed at me and said he’d be there in 45 minutes. I confirmed that he’d be arriving at 3 and have everything unloaded in three hours. He said yes.

He showed up at 4:10pm and promised he’d be really quick in unloading. I was skeptical, but okay, great. They opened the side of the truck. The things that were visible were not my things, though I did see my garbage can way at the top.

Taken from my window

He came back upstairs and said, “There’s a shipment in front of yours that we have to unload first. It’s a mile away; I’ll be back in an hour.” Okay, now, I’m not a moron. There is no way he was leaving, unloading a shipment, coming back, and getting my stuff unloaded before 6. I told him as much. He said, “Okay, I’ll bring your stuff on Tuesday.” And I said, “No, you’ll deliver my stuff tomorrow, like the company told me you would.” He said, “Well, maybe. Don’t you have a friend who could stay here while we unloaded things?” I told him I did not. He told me that he was leaving and would be back. I asked him when he was going to be back. He tried to leave without telling me when he would be back.

At this point, I got really short with him and said, “Listen, I apologize for being short with you but this whole process has been a disaster. You are going to come back tomorrow and deliver my shipment. I need you to tell me when you will be coming back tomorrow.” He got really defensive and told me that nothing was his fault and he was on time and… I kind of tuned him out. I repeated my question about what time he would be arriving on Monday. He said, “I want to avoid rush hour so I’ll be here first thing, at 7 or 7:30.” (To which I wanted to ask him if he knew what rush our was….) I said okay, I’ll see you in the morning.

I then watched as he put the ramps back in the truck and drove away with the doors on the side of the truck still open. If that didn’t reassure my confidence in this whole process, I’m not sure what would have…

Allied Mistake #12: Do what you say you’re going to do. Don’t lie. (Again, some more, again, some more.)

Allied Mistake #13: Have employees that have some semblance of a clue. Nobody that I ever talked to indicated that Sunday delivery was a possibility. I was also told that I would get 24 hours notice prior to delivery. I get that there’s a lot of sub-contractors involved in this process but ohmygoodness, I don’t understand how nobody in this process had a clue. (And, I understand that after having spent so much time complaining about not having my stuff, it seems counter-intuitive to not want my stuff when he was here on Sunday. Mostly, I didn’t want to add “resentful about missing my first fun activity in SFO” to my list of Allied irritations and was really skeptical of his arrival/timing/etc.)

Allied Mistake #14 Nobody wanted to take responsibility for anything. The lack of clarity “wasn’t customer service’s fault; they were just telling me what dispatch said.” The delay “wasn’t the driver’s fault; I’m on schedule.” The lack of pro-active communication “wasn’t the home office’s fault; the local office should have handled that.” It was a lot of excuses, finger pointing, and lack of accountability.

In the end, the driver did come back Monday morning, right around 7:30. It took them three hours to unload. Other than my media tower getting destroyed and the fact that, for some inexplicable reason, they took my couch apart, everything arrived not too much worse for the wear. So, all’s well that ends well, I guess.

But, even as I sit here on my loveseat (which is such a glorious feeling after two weeks in a tailgating chair), I can’t help but look back at this experience and be more than a bit annoyed. If your business is service and logistics, you should be good at service and logistics. And, if your marketing message is all about how you make moving easier, you shouldn’t make moving harder.

There Is Nothing I Hate More Than Poor Customer Service

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Jen

The first in a couple posts about the atrocities of moving…lucky readers!

Moving is pretty much always an arduous task, especially for someone with a sensitivity to the concept of “home”. You’re taking everything you know (six steps before you turn into the bathroom on the left, avoid the floorboards in that corner, the bathroom light is tricky) and uprooting it. To move across town is a trial, usually surrounded by friends that you’ve bought off with pizza to haul boxes. To move across the country, especially by yourself? That’s a whole lot of emotional upheaval before you even get to the logistics.

However, sometimes that’s what needs to be done. So, you do research. You read horror stories online about moving companies holding belongings hostage or charging ridiculous fees upon delivery of the goods. You do every bit of due diligence possible to make sure that you only consider reputable companies who have fair prices. You meet with estimators (sales guys). You pack up your belongings and hope for the best.

And, that’s what I did. After extensive online research and talking to everyone I know who has ever hired a moving company, I decided that for a big, cross-country move, I wanted to go with one of the “big two” companies. I received estimates from United and Allied. I chose Allied, based on their shorter time to delivery, price guarantee, and better explanation of services via leave behind collateral. I felt I had done the appropriate research to have made a good choice. All my stuff got loaded up on a truck on March 5, and I set off on my week-long drive from Buffalo to California.

On March 11, a bit concerned that I hadn’t been contacted by the company about a delivery date, I called the Buffalo office. I am fairly confident the man who answered the phone was the estimator/sales rep who sold me on their business, the one who indicated that he would be available for any questions or issues I had along the way, though he did not identify himself. I politely asked for an estimated delivery date of my goods. He said, “Oh, the girl that does that isn’t in the office today. I don’t know. Can you call back tomorrow?”

Allied Mistake #1: It is never acceptable to refuse service to a customer, particularly one who has already paid.

Allied Mistake #2: In a service oriented industry, it is not acceptable to put the onus on the customer to do the work. (This will come back later.)

I politely told him that wasn’t acceptable. “My goods were picked up a week ago; the delivery window is coming up. I need to make parking and time off of work arrangements. Is there a home office or some other number you can call?” His response was, “Oh, maybe there’s someone I can call. Let me call you back.”

When he called back, I expected him to have the estimated delivery date. He said, “Oh, you have to call this number. Here’s the number.”

Allied Mistake #3: Again, this just seems like very non-customer-centric behavior. Why is it my responsibility to call your home office routing center?

So, I called the central customer service number. The woman I spoke to was perfectly pleasant and told me that she could not give me a delivery estimate date because my goods had not left Buffalo. “They should be loading the truck sometime this week,” she said, “but I see your delivery window was supposed to be between March 15 and 20. There is no way we are going to make that date.” I was a bit aghast. Why was my stuff still sitting in Buffalo? Why had I not been informed that my stuff was still sitting in Buffalo?

Allied Mistake #4: (And this is a BIG one.) I received NO proactive communication from either the Buffalo branch or the home office that my goods were going to be delayed. None. Nobody at Allied thought it would be appropriate to reach out and say, “I know we promised this delivery window, but we aren’t going to hit it.” When I was 17 and worked at Sears Portrait Studio, one of the first things they taught you is that if someone’s pictures are delivered with a mistake (misprints, dust on the film, etc.) or if they’re going to be late, you call the customer as soon as possible. Those phone calls aren’t fun, but they’re SO MUCH BETTER than having the customer get to the studio to pick up their pictures and be surprised.

The woman I spoke to apologized, explained that unless my shipment hit a certain weight, there was likely nothing they could do in terms of financial compensation and indicated I should call back later in the week.

On March 13, I tried the Buffalo office again, hoping that perhaps since they’re the ones that actually sold the business, they would have more insight. I was hoping to hear, “We’re so sorry for the delay, but your goods got loaded this morning and are due to arrive on ________.” That is not what happened. The woman who answered the phone in the Buffalo office was rude to the point of surly. “I can’t help you; you have to call the customer service number. I can’t tell you anything.” Click.

Allied Mistake #5: (This is another BIG one.) If your job is to answer phones and interface with customers, under no circumstances ever, is it okay to be short or rude to a customer. It’s not.

So, I called the home office customer service number again and spoke to a different CSR. I explained the situation and asked if I could just know when my stuff would be arriving. She said, “Oooh, it looks like your goods are scheduled to leave Buffalo on March 20 or 21. I won’t have a delivery window until they actually leave.”

Allied Mistake #6: Have accurate information to give your customers. The woman I spoke to on Monday indicated the goods would be leaving “sometime this week” (the week of March 11). The woman I spoke to on Wednesday said they wouldn’t be leaving until March 21. I doubt that things changed that radically in two days. If the woman from Monday didn’t know when goods were leaving, she should have said that.

The Wednesday CSR went on to reiterate that unless my shipment hit a certain weight, they couldn’t compensate me for a delay and that she was sorry for my trouble. She indicated that the reason for the delay was that there were no trucks going within 500 miles of Buffalo to swing by and pick my stuff up (Which, I mean, I kind of think is crap? There are no trucks within 500 miles of Buffalo over a 3 week period? It’s not like I was moving from a holler in West Virginia or something.), but that’s why there was such a delay.

Allied Mistake #7: They over-promised and under-delivered, by a long shot. Plus, there was no upfront explanation of the fact that a delay like this could happen. The sales rep didn’t say, “This is our delivery window. So that you know, there could be scheduling issues that result in delays up to _____. Etc., etc.” What I was told is, “I’ve looked at the trucking schedules and your shipment will arrive between March 15 and March 20.” It sounds like this was never actually a possibility based on the lack of trucks going near Buffalo, per my Wednesday conversation.

Allied Mistake #8: They forgot the emotional impact of their industry. Again, I know this is really personal for me – this move was big and far and emotionally challenging, but I have to believe that most people who are up and going across the country have at least a bit of this same emotion. It is a lot harder to get excited about coming home to my new San Francisco apartment when I’m going “home” to an air mattress and a couple of suitcases, which while hilarious for 4-5 days (that I expected and planned for), is going to be pretty unbearable by the end of 3 (??) weeks. They treated me like a customer number, just another shipment, and not like a person.

So, if you are in a business that services customers, which, duh, they all are – learn from Allied’s mistakes. Be open and honest with service promises. Be friendly, or at least polite. Remember that your customers are people. It’s really not that hard.

(Confidential to Allied Moving: Please don’t hold my goods longer because I wrote this! Thanks!)

Apparently, they understand customer service in theory, just not in practical application…

Best of Buffalo #1: Wegmans

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Jen

Living in beautiful Buffalo, NY is an experience in and of itself. There’s a reason that it’s called the City of Good Neighbors; there’s a reason Buffalo receives national attention as a great place to live. It is really a great place to live. The twelve years I’ve spent here have been beyond incredible and I am really, really sad to leave. As I lead up to my big cross-country move, I thought I would pay respects to some of the brands I’m going to miss the most.

#1: Wegmans

What I Love About the Product

In fairness, Wegmans isn’t exclusively a Buffalo brand; it was started in Rochester, NY – an hour down the thruway – and they have locations in much of the northeast. But, when I think about what I’m going to miss the very most when leaving Buffalo, it has to be Wegmans.

Let’s get real: grocery shopping is usually pretty awful. It’s something you have to do; it can get expensive. It’s often crowded and/or difficult to find what you’re looking for. Plus, I always end up forgetting at least one thing I need and getting all huffy about it. However, at Wegmans, grocery shopping moves from miserable, past tolerable to almost enjoyable, which is quite a feat.

Their products are high quality; their stores are well laid-out and easy to maneuver. Plus, there’s always something new to distract you from the doldrums of your trip. The staff are almost always extremely competent and friendly. The stores are always impeccably clean. And, their Market Cafes insure that I never grocery shop hungry (am I the only one who goes and eats in the cafe and then shops?).

All things considered, Wegmans has taken a chore and made it a fun outing; they’ve reinvented shopping for commodities.

What I Love About the Marketing

Again, in fairness, I love Wegmans overall strategy more than their marketing, specifically. In every business strategy class I took, both graduate and undergraduate, Wegmans was used as a case study/example of how a company gets it incredibly right. Wegmans has employed a variety of strategies that give them, from what I can tell on the outside, significant, sustainable competitive advantage. Some highlights include:

Employee Centricity
Wegmans has been on Forbes’ ’100 Best Companies to Work For’ list for the past 16 years, one of very few companies to have made the list every year since its inception. That’s incredible for a company that relies largely on part-time workers. Danny Wegman has said that he feels Wegmans employees are one of the keys to their success. Cashiers and other employees go through a much more rigorous recruitment/selection process than other comparable jobs, to ensure that they will be a fit. Additionally Wegmans is committed to employee health, going so far as to establish the Eat Well Live Well Challenge that challenges employees (and employees of other companies in the community) to get healthier. Wegmans also offers scholarships for their employees, a management training program, casual summer dress codes and more. By investing in their employees, Wegmans ensures that their customers receive outstanding service.

Private Label Excellence

Have you ever tasted Wegmans mini chocolate chip cookies? They’re a staple of every tailgate I’ve ever organized. How about Wegmans peanut butter? It’s better than any national brand I’ve tasted. Have you ever enjoyed a Wegmans cannoli? How about their apple oat bread? Literally everything that has the Wegmans name on it is delicious, and is a lower price than a comparable national brand competitor. One strategy professor noted that “Businesses either get to be premium product or low cost, not both. Somehow, Wegmans has managed to be both.” I estimate that 60% of the groceries I buy are Wegmans brand, which gives you an idea of the depth and breadth of their offering. By making store-brand products that are, in many cases preferable, at much higher margin (I assume) than the national brand products they sell, Wegmans is keeping more money in their own business.

“Second Mover” Advantage

You’ve heard of first move advantage – a company sees an opportunity and, by virtue of the fact that they’re the first to move on that opportunity, are able to gain market share. I have always thought that Wegmans has developed something new, “second mover advantage”, that is the uncanny ability to be about three seconds behind a trend, but create an offering that is better. Some examples I can think of off the top of my head include: gluten free product offerings just after gluten allergies became a national topic of conversation, a burrito bar in the market cafe following the success of Chipotle, in house bakery artists following the great cupcake craze of the early ’00s, etc. I don’t have any inside intelligence on Wegmans, but it seems like they have great trend-forecasters who put plans in place to pull the trigger on implementation exactly when a trend has proven itself a revenue opportunity.

In short, the people of upstate New York have a lot of hometown pride in Wegmans – and for good reason; it’s an impeccably run company that receives national honors regularly and stores that have finally made grocery shopping less of a chore. I’m pretty sure the first time I get groceries in CA, I’m going to cry.

Best of Buffalo #2: Vera Pizzeria

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Jen

#4: Vera Pizzeria

What I Love About the Product

Think about the very best cocktail you have ever had. Now imagine that cocktail is five times better – better ingredients, better mixing technique, a fun swirly stirrer, something set on fire, a glass that fits perfectly in your hand. Imagine the most skilled, knowledgeable, personable bartender you have ever ordered a drink from. Now imagine that bartender is five times better – more knowledgeable, able to tell you a story about your cocktail, presents your drink with a flourish, asks about your day, has spent time practicing the perfect pour. That’s the Vera experience – five times better than the best you’ve experienced – every time.

I know I tend towards hyperbole but believe me when I say that, without a doubt, Vera is the best bar in Buffalo.

What I Love About the Marketing

To spend more than two minutes in Vera is to understand their brand. To spend any time thinking about that understanding is to see how a brand is built. I’ve talked about defining and building brand personality before and essentially it boils down to this: determine who and what you want your brand to be. Ensure every action reinforces that identity. Vera does both very well.

First, there is no question about who the brand is. The brand is cool. It’s your roommate’s older brother who comes to town for the week-end and makes you believe that you can be cool too. The brand both honors history and is on-trend. The brand doesn’t take itself too seriously, but seriously enough to know that it’s aspirational. The brand demands the best for itself and its customers.

Second, every detail of the physical location (and social media presence) reinforces that identity. From the overall look of the room – exposed brick, vintage style painting, well-maintained bar to the smallest details, everything works so well together to build a brand that it all had to be placed “on purpose”. From the glassware to the bartender tool set ups to the purse hooks under the bar to the hand-made by decoupage pin up girl wallpaper in the ladies restroom to the button down, vest, forearm tattoo uniform of the bartenders, everything looks like it was placed deliberately, with intention. Being this tenacious with the details makes the bigger picture easier to see.

I’ve always said I wanted to be a regular somewhere. It’s been my honor to be a regular at Vera during their year and a half in business. The look at stellar brand-building was just a bonus to the many, many delicious cocktails.

The Bare Knuckle Boxer, my favorite!

Best of Buffalo #3: Dyngus Day Buffalo

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Jen

#4: Dyngus Day Buffalo

What I Love About the Product

The “Lev” in JenniferLev is short for Levanduski. For those of you who may not know, having the last name Levanduski means that I am Polish… some might say super Polish. This means I had a childhood rife with dumb Polack jokes, a constant and compulsive need to tell people how to spell my name (me: It’s phonetic! my brother: with three Js and a silent Q), and the pleasure of taking polka lessons as a child. There is, that I have found, nowhere else on earth it is as cool to be Polish as it is on Dyngus Day in Buffalo.

One of my very favorite holidays, Dyngus Day is a Polish-American holiday celebrated on the Monday after Easter and indicates the end of Lent. It can be loosely traced back to various Polish traditions associated with the end of Lent and the beginning of Spring. (More details can be found here.)

The celebration is an all day festival of polka bands, pussywillows, parades, pierogis, and more fun than most people know how to have. It’s like Polish Mardi Gras, only better because there’s pierogis involved.

What I Love About the Marketing

One of my favorite news & PR stories in all of 2012 was when Anderson Cooper featured Dyngus Day on his Ridicu-List.

Anderson Cooper on Dyngus Day

Now, as you can see from the video, Mr. Cooper did not take my favorite holiday very seriously. In fact, he was kind of mean about it, right? He called the celebration stupid and treated it as nothing more than “an excuse to drink if you can’t wait for Cinco de Mayo”.

Anyone who has ever met a Buffalonian knows that was not going to go over well. Dyngus Day Buffalo’s revenge? Turning this into a PR goldmine.

Within 48 hours, a box of Buffalo’s finest Polish wares from the Broadway Market were shipped to Mr. Cooper, along with an invitation to be Dyngus Day’s first Pussy Willow Prince. This action got Dyngus Day even more press and an on air apology.

As of last week, the saga isn’t over. Though Cooper indicated he’d like to make the trip to visit this year’s celebration, it seems he’s not going make it. The press around all of this can be found here. Continuing to milk the exposure, some Buffalonians have established PartyPooperCooper to urge him to attend.

Talk about making lemonade out of some really bad press lemons. Not bad for a bunch of drunk people hitting each other with sticks, huh?

Best of Buffalo #4: The Buffalo Bills

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Jen

#5: The Buffalo Bills

What I Love About the Product

They say that you cannot know pain as a sports fan until you have been a fan of the Buffalo Bills. Well, okay. I’m not sure that anyone actually says that besides the people who live in Buffalo but that doesn’t make it any less true.

There is something about watching a Bills game – either at the stadium, at one of Buffalo’s fine local watering holes, or in your own home – that is more than a football game. It’s a sense of community. It is the sense of so many people all focused in on one thing. It’s the feeling of hope and dreams possibly coming true. When the “Shout!” song plays, everyone shouts; it’s what we do.

Plus, Buffalo has some of the best tailgating in the country.

What I Love About the Marketing

It’s not the marketing, per se, but there are few brands I’ve encountered that have greater loyalty than the Buffalo Bills. One local pastor posed this question to his congregation, “What is the biggest church in Buffalo?” His answer was the Bills – and they only meet 16 Sundays a year.

To be a Bills fan is to be a fan of team that has not gone to the play offs since 1999 – one year before I moved to Buffalo. To be a Bills fan is to sit in a stadium in 15 degree weather and watch them lose. To be a Bills fan is to get heckled for wearing team apparel in pretty much any city not in upstate New York. To be a Bills fan, according to media sources that will just not give it up, is to live under the constant threat of the team moving to Toronto. But, above all, to be a Bills fan is never give up hope.

There was a Yahoo Sports article in 2011 that was shared via social media by roughly 80% of western New York’s residents. The article makes the case that there’s some magic to the Bills – nowhere else in the country can you go to a game and see a former player/hall of fame quarterback grill his hot dog just like you. The article is not wrong.

Yahoo isn’t the only one to notice the Bills’ fans loyalty. Last fall, Grantland published a look at the Bills, exploring everything from the Bills Mafia (tweeps unite!) to the ongoing popularity of Zubaz in Buffalo (Jim Kelly was a spokesperson; these pants are outdated everywhere else) to the correlation between the Bills, the hope in the Bills and the economic downturn and hope for the future of Buffalo itself and the message of Vincent Gallo’s ‘Buffalo 66′, a film that includes a look at one family of fans gone over the edge.

At the beginning of every season, I say that my favorite part about Bills games when it’s warm is that all the windows are still open, so I can hear everyone on my block cheering along with me. Though I’m not a super fan by any means, I’m going to miss the unwavering loyalty and die hard enthusiasm that the whole city has for our team. It’s that sense of ownership – they’re “our team” – that makes the brand loyalty for the Buffalo Bills such an amazing thing.