"Flying commercial” brings up all sorts of mind pictures, most not all that appealing:

* waiting in lines
    - ticket agent lines
    - security lines
    - gate agent lines
    - boarding lines
    - baggage line
    - lines to get in other lines
* overbooking
* carry-on hassles
* cramped aisles
* cramped carry-on space
* cramped seats
* the seatmate crap shoot
* quarrels over seat backs
* make believe food
* bad air
* restrooms that are anything but restful
* weather delays
* crew delays
* tarmac delays
* late arrivals
* missing connections
* sleeping in the terminal

And that’s assuming the technical part of flying goes perfectly – all the doors get closed, the wings are securely fastened and somebody checks to see if there’s gas in the tank.

If I had a NetJets budget, I wouldn’t be concerned about such things.  But I don’t.  And most of us don’t.   Which made me perk up and take notice of this headline on Yahoo News:

           Airlines struggle to please the modern passenger.

According to the article, here are some of concerns expressed during this year’s meeting of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade group for airline execs – keeping in mind that these weren’t complaints from passengers but observations and comments by the execs themselves:

• More passenger info is needed, especially on mobile devices.  One suggestion was to “offer passengers a behind-the-scenes view of their suitcase as it moves through the airport machinery,” although methinks that could create more concern than certainty.
• Give people a “nice, reliable experience at a normal price,” one exec said.  Another added: “Make my life easy,” which sounds great except that airlines appear to staff for ordinary flying conditions in a world filled with extraordinary events, the least of which these days is the weather.
• “Don’t give me a vanilla experience”, one panelist told the IATA gathering.  But is that so bad?  Because  when I buy a pint of Ben & Jerry’s vanilla ice cream, my expectations are met every single time.
• Another exec spoke of “managing” expectations, which seems like an especially worthy goal – as in no surprises!    Just over half of meeting participants thought the airlines weren’t “doing a good job meeting passenger demands.” 

What are passengers demanding?   Here’s how a reader named Mike put it in the comments section:

“THE DAMN SEATS ARE TOO SMALL,” agreed Mr. B (dramatizing his frustration by writing in all caps), “and the answer isn’t smaller carry-ons,” even as the IATA proposes new industry-wide standards for carry-on bags.   The small places in which we now are asked to stow our carry-ons seem to be getting more restricted while people are becoming more frustrated (sometimes even rude) as they seek a spot to stow their briefcase or backpack, often rows away from their seat, causing that much more confusion when it comes time to get off the plane.   And as dissatisfaction increases, seat room and restroom room appear to be shrinking.  

It seems absurd, but perhaps not altogether illogical,that “the two most profitable airlines — American Airlines and United Airlines — have abysmal customer service satisfaction scores,” according to a recent Forbes article, quoting Kendall Creighton, spokesperson for FlyersRights.org , which advocates for air travelers.   “An airline’s customer satisfaction levels appear to be inversely related to profits,” she says.  “The higher the profits, the worse the scores.  The more modest the profits, the higher the customer satisfaction.”   And now the government is proposing new emissions standards for aircraft, which would put additional pressure on price and profit.

According to the Forbes article, Jet Blue has the highest passenger satisfaction scores and the lowest profit margin.  Spirit Airlines, whose ironic tagline is Less Money. More Go, had the highest margin and lowest customer satisfaction, while “Delta and Southwest have managed to strike a balance between profits and happy passengers.”

I have a suggestion:  In the interest of communicating clear competitive advantage, each airline could post a simple graphic at critical passenger touch points, from ticketing through to the baggage carousel.  The graphic would consist of ten stacked rectangles, one each for the top 10 measures of airline customer satisfaction.  Each rectangle’s color would change as customer satisfaction ebbs and flows, from angry red for poor performance through shades of yellow to leafy green for superior performance.  Data could be gleaned from in-flight customer surveys taken every day, on paper, through passenger devices or even later online.   The information should include date of service, flight number / seat number and accumulate over time.

I challenge each of these airlines, in fact the entire airline industry, to put their heads together and create what might be called the Airline Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a numerical way of communicating the same info the colored rectangles do.   Perhaps the IATA will choose to lead the way.  Such measures surely will be more effective in raising airline industry expectations – and performance -- than making “standardized” carry-on bags even smaller!

TakeAway:  If your business, brand or product satisfies – even delights – customers, let the world know about it.  

Content © by Brian E. Faulkner

Brian Faulkner is a content writer and Key Message expert.  He helps clients come up with words to set their businesses, brands and products apart and attract the customers they want most.  His strategic insights, and the words that go with them, have made a significant, often immediate difference for client companies over many years.  His "sweet spot" is smaller to moderate sized consumer products, retail, service and manufacturing companies that may have struggled to find just the right words to position their business, brands or products to competitive advantage:

>  blogs to establish you as the thought leader / authority in your business category
>  case stories that communicate your sales successes and invite prospect inquiry
>  testimonials that showcase customer / client satisfaction in 1-2 short sentences
>  positioning statements to guide business development & marketing
>  landing page copy to set your business or brand apart in a compelling way
>  tagline development to attract the interest of your most qualified prospects

Brian also is a three-time Emmy award-winning Public Television writer and narrator of over 100 segments for UNC-TV’s popular Our State magazine series, on the air since 2003.  

A Southwest Airlines gate agent apparently has transformed a customer service opportunity into a social-media fueled pie-in-the-face moment, according to a WCCO (Minneapolis) story.

The incident reportedly happened in Dallas when a passenger attempted to board his flight early (as was his privilege as an A-List Southwest flyer), only with his two young children in tow.  The gate agent wouldn’t allow the children to board with him, saying they’d have to wait and board later.

Step 1:  The gate agent could have instantly created a happy customer by allowing the trio to board early, thus upholding Southwest Airlines’ reputation for first class customer service.  I can’t imagine Southwest people being that rule bound.

Step 2:  The passenger threatened to Tweet about the “rude” agent, which he did after eventually boarding the plane with his two kids. 

Step 3:  The situation then went from bad to worse after the agent saw the Tweet: the Airline then threatened to remove the family from the plane.   

Step 4:  The person who asked them to get off the plane (presumably the gate agent) threatened to call the cops. 

Step 5:  The children began crying, and the family left the plane.

Step 6:  The Airline said they could get back on the plane if the passenger deleted his Tweet.

Step 7:  He did.  And they flew on to Minneapolis along with the other passengers, who must have wondered what bad stuff had come down around a dad and his two kids.

Step 8:   Back home, the passenger contacted WCCO, where an Emmy-winning reporter knew a good story when she heard one and ran with it.

Step 9:  Southwest apologized to the passenger via email and gave him three $50 vouchers for future flights, which likely never will be redeemed because he says he won’t fly Southwest again.

Step 10:  Some number of other would-be passengers also will decide not to fly Southwest because bad news always travels faster and farther than good news.

It may be that the gate agent was tired and hassled at the moment she made her choice to bar the children from boarding early.  But then she compounded her poor decision by making further unwise demands of the A-List passenger and his children.  So be it.   But, as those of us who fly with any regularity know, the moment airlines should be prepared to shine most is when the going gets tough. 

Because anybody can come up a smile on a blue-sky day.

TakeAway:  No matter how diligently a business works to create (and communicate) competitive advantage based on superior service, it all can come crashing down in a moment if your people don’t live that truth every day.

Tags:  Southwest Airlines, customer service, WCCO

Content © by Brian E. Faulkner

Brian Faulkner is a content writer and Key Message expert.  He helps clients come up with words to set their businesses, brands and products apart and attract the customers they want most.  His strategic insights, and the words that go with them, have made a significant, often immediate difference for client companies over many years.  His "sweet spot" is smaller to moderate sized consumer products, retail, service and manufacturing companies that may have struggled to find just the right words to position their business, brands or products to competitive advantage:

>  blogs to establish you as the knowledge source / authority in your business category
>  case stories that communicate your sales successes and invite prospect inquiry
>  testimonials that showcase customer / client satisfaction in 1-2 short sentences
>  positioning statements to guide business development & marketing
>  landing page copy to set your business or brand apart in a compelling way
>  tagline development to attract the interest of your most qualified prospects

Brian also is a three-time Emmy award-winning Public Television writer / narrator and is principal writer and narrator of UNC-TV’s popular "Our State" magazine series, on the air since 2003.  His distinctive sound has been heard on many hundreds of radio spots and client videos since the 1970s.  People say he has a “Mercedes voice” and sounds a bit like Charles Kuralt, which Brian considers a welcome ... but happy ... illusion.

Without its hole, a donut is an undifferentiated mass of dough (limiting discussion, of course, to the ring-shaped donut variety). Likewise, without meaningful values and clear purpose at its center, a company can be an undifferentiated mass of people working for no clear purpose.  It may even be undifferentiated from its competitors.

Values and purpose combine to create mission.  Values are the common beliefs that knit a culture together, whether country, church, non-profit, or business – the U.S. Marines are a fabulous example.  Purpose is the “product” people create together plus the difference it makes in the marketplace (or on the battlefield).  

People Make The Difference.

One of business leadership’s key challenges today is to increase the productivity of its human resources, to give people a new vision of themselves -- and their potential -- while maximizing their combined contribution.  Values are the qualities that meld people into a team.  They help make success happen.  It’s the cultural part of “work” that gets folks up in the morning and charges their batteries.

As Adam Smith suggested over 200 years ago, it is the participation of individuals working in their own and the collective self-interest that makes capitalism work so well.  At its best, capitalism creates personal freedom as well as profits and seems to work most effectively for both people and businesses when there is a comfortable convergence of personal and business goals.  What gives meaning to forging tools or making T-shirts?  Or to a non-profit cause?  Realization that the collective purpose is worthwhile.  Herbert Hoover called it a “lifting purpose.”  

Most people don’t want to just work.  They want to contribute; they want to be part of something.  It’s eye-opening to realize, even today, that work often has nothing to do with “real” life.  All too many of us live for the weekend and count the days ‘til vacation time rolls around.

If the unproductive and uninspired workers in our country -- never mind an unfortunate percentage of students in our schools -- could be given hope, could be empowered to contribute beyond the ordinary, beyond the constraints of their “jobs”, the productivity transformation within America could be incredible.

I have seen companies with strong, can-do manufacturing cultures and weak management but seldom the reverse.   I have seen retailers selling great brands who have created (or allowed) a depressing, discouraging atmosphere for their people to work in but also great cultures where people have worked together to transform a good brand into a great one.  

I also have seen retailers who sell essentially the same mix of products as their competitors but set themselves apart by hiring people who care, aren’t shy about showing it and who are given the freedom to make service decisions at the customer contact level.   Robin, the young woman who used to answer the phone for one of my clients years ago, always made a positive impression.  Her upbeat attitude and willingness to serve reflected the attitude of her company's management, their manufacturing excellence and their product superiority. In contrast, companies that choose to have a machine answer their phone communicate the opposite message:  “We don’t care enough to put our very best people on the business end of your inquiry, so your call is not really all that important to us.”

In conclusion, values and purpose are intimately connected in an organization’s mission.   Values is the why part, the reason people come to work charged up about their potential contribution.  Purpose is the product part, whether a manufactured item, a variety of essentially off-the-shelf components integrated into something new or selling things like smart phones or cars, groceries, medical supplies or personal services.  It includes everything that makes success happen, from strategy to marketing to customer /client contact to manufacturing and those all-important support functions that keep things running smoothly. 

People who are energized about coming to work every day create great products and provide great service, competitive qualities your present and future customers or clients won’t be able to find anywhere else.

TakeAway:  Take a look at your mission through the business donut hole.  Do you see a team looking back at you that cares deeply about your products and customers and has the freedom and energy to help you create a future charged with success?

Content © by Brian E. Faulkner

Flying commercial has been compared recently to waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles office to register your car.   So which of the two has gotten so much worse that it invites the comparison?

Nearly every DMV wait I’ve experienced through the years has been annoying, hot, boring and lengthy, so not much has changed there.  In fact, I recall one especially memorable clerk in Connecticut back around 1970 whose snarl was genuinely world class.  She did not enjoy being helpful.  But most DMV clerks I’ve encountered have been helpful.  Just recently, a young woman here in North Carolina was not only helpful but pleasant as she sorted out my registration/ inspection mix-up, despite the long line of grumbly folks awaiting her attention.   

To be sure, life can dish out far greater unpleasantness than waiting in line at the DMV.   But the experience of traversing a busy airport these days apparently is running neck and neck with the DMV for customer dissatisfaction.

Flying used to be fun – back when airliners had propellers and you were eight years old and didn’t know any better.   In 2014, flying commercial (as distinct from renting or owning your own airplane and getting to fly whenever and wherever you want) can be a white knuckle experience, from the check-in line to the security line to the boarding crush to the two-hour delay on the tarmac to maybe getting to your destination on time or maybe not but still having to deal with the baggage crap-shoot no matter what.   Unless, that is, you're a passenger on Southwest Airlines, which has managed to fly above its competitors by offering a straight-ahead, efficient, value-priced product with fewer customer surprises.

Of course, in between the many hassles that greet the flying public today is the flight itself, which has morphed into a crammed-in-your-seat, uncomfortably public experience that nobody in their right mind would recall fondly unless they maybe lucked out and hooked a spot next to Harrison Ford or Angelina Jolie who had been forced to fly coach because this was the last flight out to East Sagebrush, Texas, where they were shooting a Western first thing in the morning.

Every business has its challenges, but some provide a greater sense of reward than others – compare the commercial airline business to selling flowers, for example.  The big challenge of flower selling may be running out of red roses, but as long as the stock holds, delivering bouquets of happiness can be fun.  Ideally, the airline business also should be about delivering happiness.  Instead, the challenge of most airlines these days appears to be annoying as few customers as possible.   Although I’ve never done it, selling flowers seems like it might be a pleasure compared to working an airline ticket counter.

From the time you go online to buy your ticket to the time you and your fellow passengers have to wait as some unthinking clod attempts to stuff his slightly oversized carry-on into the slightly undersized overhead bin while the harried flight attendant tries to introduce some discipline, pleasure is not usually what comes to mind when thinking about commercial air travel, with its ever-skinnier seats and the exorbitant fee they charge to make sure your extra suitcase actually gets on the plane with you.  I’ve even read lately that some airlines are considering shorter lavs to save space – you don’t mind bending over to do your mid-air business, do ya?  

It makes you wonder, What are they thinking?! when airlines slight passenger comfort or convenience to shave a buck or two off their fares.

“Offering our low fares requires doing some things that some people complain about,” Spirit CEO Ben Baldanza recently wrote in a letter to Bloomberg Businessweek, “—more seats on our planes with a little less legroom, no Wi-Fi or video screens, and no refunds without insurance; however, these reduce costs which gives our customers the lowest fares in the industry.  Judging by the number of customers on our planes and repeat customer rate,” he concluded, “most people like this tradeoff.”

This strikes me as long-range customer service suicide. 

So back to the comparison between flying and the DMV. 

“Forty-two percent rated the DMV as worse than a busy airport, while 40 percent said being in a packed airport is worse than standing in line to get a new driver's license,” according to an article by CNBC.com’s auto and airline industry reporter, Phil LeBeau.  "No doubt the airline industry is doing a better job of pleasing passengers, but there still is a lot of room for improvement," LeBeau writes, quoting J.D. Power's Rick Garlick. "Satisfaction is improving, but it's a stretch to say passengers are truly happy."

Now there’s an understatement.  

It’s also an understatement to say that the airline business is tough and complex.  Margins are thin at best and beset by high fuel costs and other profit-munching expenses.  As Richard Branson so wryly put it, "How do you become a millionaire?  Start as a billionaire and then buy an airline.”

Even so, the knack of the airline business to rile up its customers astonishes me no end, despite the often herculean efforts of individual employees to do the opposite.   In light of this unfortunate reality, I have created a pair of taglines to dramatize the difference between the two nearly equal customer service experiences.

DMV Tagline:  Bear with us, it will be over in 15-20 minutes.

Commercial Airlines Tagline:  Bear with us, it will never be over – and have a nice flight.

TakeAway:  When the service in your industry descends to joke status, there’s an opportunity for somebody to  break the mold and create real competitive advantage.  Will that be you … or your competitor?  

Content © by Brian E. Faulkner

Brian Faulkner is a Key Message expert.  He helps clients come up with words to set their businesses, brands and products apart and attract the customers they want most.  His strategic insights, and the words that go with them, have made a significant, often immediate difference for client companies over many years. He thrives on strategic communication problem solving, complex subjects, new ideas, concepts-as-products, challenging marketing situations and demanding deadlines.  His "sweet spot" is smaller to moderate sized consumer products, retail, service and manufacturing companies that may have struggled to find just the right words to position their business, brands or products to competitive advantage.


Brian also is a three-time Emmy award winning Public Television writer and narrator of UNC-TV’s popular Our State magazine series, on the air since 2003.  

Went shopping for a new laptop last weekend at Best Buy.  Over the years, I have avoided Best Buy because it’s too big and sometimes too loud and because the help doesn’t always know what they’re talking about.  Truth is I don’t like big box stores in general.  I miss the small, more specialized, more personable shops (and shopkeepers) that used to populate our towns and cities. 

But if I want a wide variety of laptops to select from – at least in Piedmont North Carolina, there is no choice other than to frequent Best Buy, or one of the office boxes. 

So there we were, two somewhat older, would-be Best Buy customers wandering around trying to figure which laptop from a mind-numbing array of choices would best suit my wife.  Within minutes, a young guy in a blue Best Buy shirt appeared, briefly inquired about our needs and said he’d find someone to help us out – a positive start!  Then he (and apparently his helper) … disappeared.   Later, after having selected an HP laptop totally on our own, he approached us again as we sauntered over to the camera department and went through the same routine again, not realizing that he had spoken to us fifteen minutes earlier.

In the camera department, I asked another blue-shirt about a specific Canon product that they were likely to have in stock considering the price range of cameras already on display.  “No,” the clerk said.  “We don’t have that one.”  He wandered off.

Hmmm …

Then I turned around, and there – at eye level on an end cap display – was the camera I’d inquired about in all its promotional glory!

The clerk came back.  I pointed out the display.  He seemed genuinely shocked.  Then said that the camera department “expert” would be back from lunch in a few minutes and that we should hang around and talk to him.   We did.   He didn’t.   After a while, the clerk returned with news that the expert wasn’t actually working that day and that we should come back during the week.

Hmmm …

So on to checkout.  Only one register open, and there was a line.   After a while, it was our turn.   The young woman behind the register acted bored beyond hope and asked far too many pre-programmed questions, which was one reason the line moved so slowly.   After completing our single-item transaction, her final note of disdain was to mutter “Thank you, have a great day” in a tone that made me want to dope-slap her (or her manager, or his/her manager, or the president of the company).

One miscue I can handle, but five?

1.  The disappearing greeter, Part I.

2.  The disappearing greeter, Part II.

3.  The uninformed camera clerk.

4.  The missing expert.

5.  The disappointing checkout.

Best Buy had five chances to shine but muffed them all.   Sure, the company is having trouble finding its way in a world that’s getting more expansive on one hand (think Amazon.com) and more specialized on the other (think Apple stores).   If they don’t reinvent themselves – and soon, upstart competitors, including those yet to emerge, will eat their lunch and their dinner.

The Best Buy merchandising concept emerged in the late ‘70s after the owner of a small chain of Minnesota stereo shops discovered the power of discounting following a store fire.  Five years later, the enterprise was renamed Best Buy and took off like it was being chased by the future, with innovative store formats and ever more product categories, including appliances.   By 1992 they were a billion dollar company and expanding nationally as more and more personal technology came on line to sell.  With more than 600 stores in the U.S., Best Buy glided into the Millennium as if nothing could slow their inevitability.  By 2007, they were in China – with eyes on other international locations. 

But pervasive market change had begun chewing away at their success, including online gaming, music streaming, online merchandising and (of late) software migration to the cloud.   Strategic disruptor Amazon.com sold their first book online in 1995.  And reached a billion dollars by 2001.  Today, they’re busily selling the everything from A-Z that Jeff Bezos envisioned from the start.  

Years ago -- centuries in terms of business change, Wachovia Bank rolled out their Personal Banker concept.  It paired customers with a branch banker who stuck around instead of rotating into the next training slot, as seemed the usual banking custom.  “You Have a Personal Banker at Wachovia,” proclaimed their tagline.  It was true.  And it worked!   For a long time.

There were two keys to the success of Personal Banker:

(1)  It maximized (and managed) the customer experience: created value by creating valuable relationships. 

(2)  It was authentic.  Wachovia delivered on their promise, day in and day out.

But what about Best Buy?  They clearly need a fresh approach, perhaps one as bold and innovative as the concept that first set them apart.  However, instead of looking to selection, scope and scale (even price) for differentiation, there may be strategic ground to be gained in activating their sales culture.

Like Wachovia Bank did so effectively with Personal Bankers, people power can be let loose relatively quickly and provide an enduring source of competitive advantage.   Under this scenario, Best Buy would hire (and retain) a top tier of professional sales consultants whose primary mission is to create valuable customer relationships, product knowledge experts who have been granted the autonomy to give their loyal customers set-apart service (essentially an expansion of Best Buy’s Geek Squad concept).   The consultants would be amply rewarded, based on metrics like better conversion, more frequent purchases by “their” customers, increased average transactions, time in grade, etc., and newer employees would aspire to join their ranks.  Customer satisfaction and repeat business would skyrocket.  Service complaints would begin fading away. 

Transforming Best Buy’s sales culture into a high performance human asset may sound like a stretch.  But even if the idea were only moderately successful, it beats the heck out of the errors, ignorance and indifference that pervaded our recent Best Buy laptop shopping experience.  And it certainly would give the company a long-term competitive advantage worth shouting about.

To be fair, Renew Blue, a Best Buy performance improvement initiative designed (in part) to “reinvigorate and rejuvenate the customer experience” has been underway for just over a year.  But for the moment, these two Best Buy shoppers are in no hurry to come back -- although when the new laptop breaks, we’ll be first in line to check out the Geek Squad.

TakeAway:   Differentiate your business, brand or product in a meaningful and enduring way.  Create value by creating valuable relationships.  Reward the people who make it happen.   Then tell the marketplace about your success – instead of letting it shape you.   People will want to be your customers.   And will return again and again.

© Brian E. Faulkner.

Related posts: 
www.brianefaulkner.com/1/post/2014/01/minimum-wage-should-be-stricken-from-our-business-vocabulary.html
www.brianefaulkner.com/1/post/2014/02/mr-grumpy-gets-his-due.html

Brian Faulkner is a Key Message expert.  He helps clients come up with words to set their businesses, brands and products apart and attract the customers they want most.  His strategic insights, and the words that go with them, have made a significant, often immediate difference for client companies.  He thrives on strategic communication problem solving, complex subjects, new ideas, concepts-as-products, challenging marketing situations and demanding deadlines.  His "sweet spot" is smaller to moderate sized consumer products, retail, service and manufacturing companies that may have struggled to find just the right words to position their business, brands or products to competitive advantage.

Brian also is a three-time Emmy award winning Public Television writer and narrator of UNC-TV’s popular Our State magazine series, on the air since 2003. 

A guy from GoDaddy called me today.  That’s never happened before.   At first, I was suspicious.  What is he trying to sell?   Nothing, as it turned out, other than to offer help in renewing (or not renewing) three Web domains I have registered with them.  A helpful and altogether thoughtful gesture, I must admit – especially for a small change customer like me.

Heretofore, I’d not been all that impressed with GoDaddy.  

As an occasional user over the years, whether to add, renew or cancel a domain name, I have found their site uninviting, difficult to navigate and tricked out with product offers I didn’t need – and often didn’t even understand.  They assumed I had a degree of technical knowledge, which I do not.  To me a computer is an appliance, a tool:  turn the thing on, start working on my thing and that’s as far as I care to go.  Which is pretty much what I told Adam when he called.

We had a positive discussion.  As if Adam had any power to change things, I suggested that GoDaddy needed to reboot their marketing after having cranked up their visibility with the famously controversial GoDaddy Girls.  It’s time to position themselves more effectively to the vast, largely unaddressed portion of their potential market:  people like me, who would almost rather undergo a root canal than struggle with a tech-belabored Web site.  He said they were working on that, thanks to their relatively new CEO, Blake Irving.  

What actually IS GoDaddy? I wondered.   And what is Blake Irving up to?

A little wandering around on GoDaddy’s pleasantly refreshed, more accessible site revealed Web site building options, email services and online bookkeeping products in addition to domain registration.  There’s a new service called GetFound, which helps spread clients’ basic information across the Web and makes it easier for people to find them.  And now, WordPress blog hosting and management, which especially caught my eye as a blogger thinking about a hosting change. 

Comments posted to Blake’s Blog lauded GoDaddy's customer service (Adam is a terrific example, and they’re said to have 3,500 people just like him engaged in “customer care”).  And Wikipedia reveals the company to be staffed by true-believers with shared values, which makes them rightfully particular about who they host. 

So what would you do if given the opportunity to help elevate Go Daddy’s marketing?  

My first task would be to develop and launch a more strategically differentiated message.  I would answer the question, “What does GoDaddy do and how does it benefit me?” while maintaining their enviable 80% aided, 50% unaided brand awareness with ad buys during the Super Bowl, NASCAR races and other high visibility events.    I’d present some grounded-in-reality customer success stories that present tangible benefits to the great bulk of prospective customers who have yet to “tune in” to GoDaddy's wavelength or who have been put off by the tone of their advertising.  

After writing the previous paragraph, a modicum of online sleuthing showed me that GoDaddy already has shifted in that direction.  See their Super Bowl spot about the woman who quit her day job to start a puppet making business here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf0vzLgF-OI .      

And according to the blogged transcript of a GeekWire Summit discussion he participated in last year in Seattle, ( http://blakesblog.com/?p=223 ) Blake Irving is a man with a plan that rings my bell and clearly should ring the bell of tomorrow’s GoDaddy customers.

The basis of GoDaddy’s move into the future is a 32-page strategic document that includes a “bigger than life” vision of “radically shifting the global economy toward small business.”  He described their target market as “1-5 people trying to turn themselves into a real business” and talked about changing the world for them.   In a more recent online article, the GoDaddy leader noted that 75% of U.S. businesses are sole proprietorships.  So the opportunity to add more paying customers to the 12-million-plus they already have is huge.

“Changing the world for small business” is a great example of a compelling Key Message that's extracted from a larger strategic document and used to communicate to the prospect base about -- and rally company culture around -- what now is possible. 

“We’re in a deep transformation of the company,” the GoDaddy CEO said.  “Who we serve, how we serve them, how we position ourselves, how our employees feel about themselves, about serving those little guys, is really different.  Our mission in the company is we help small business kick ass.

“It’s a quest, not a company.  Everybody’s leaning into this thing …”

Irving finished his GeekWire conversation by challenging the audience (and me) to check out the company’s Kick Ass Manifesto video online.  I did.  You should, too (see it below).  The only thing missing is that daring but powerful potential tagline:  We Help Small Business Kick Ass.

I deeply abhor edginess for edginess sake because so much of it is in-your-face tasteless, smug and self-serving, so I would pause when considering whether to include “Kick Ass” in my tagline -- and who knows how it will translate internationally.   But those six words are true.   “Kick Ass” will require some elaboration, but so do oft-used positioning words like “leader” and “world class.”   A less dramatic way of saying the same thing might be:

       GoDaddy Helps Small Businesses Build Their Dreams (incorporating their recent ad theme). 

I like taglines that make a bold statement and communicate Marketable Truth© -- in any language.  So, either way, I say go for it GoDaddy! 

TakeAway:  Develop a meaningful strategic vision that points your business toward the future.  Then extract a compelling Key Message from it that charges your team with purpose and makes the customers or clients you want most want to do business with you.    

Content and images © by Brian E. Faulkner unless otherwise noted.  All rights reserved.  

Tags:  Go Daddy, GoDaddy marketing, Blake Irving, WordPress, customer service, brand awareness, GeekWire, small business, vision, strategic vision, powerful tagline, taglines, Kick Ass Manifesto, Manifesto of Kick Ass

Brian Faulkner is a Key Message expert.  He helps clients come up with words to set their businesses, brands and products apart and attract the customers they want most.  His strategic insights, and the words that go with them, have made a significant, often immediate difference for client companies.  He thrives on strategic communication problem solving, complex subjects, new ideas, concepts-as-products, challenging marketing situations and demanding deadlines.  His "sweet spot" is smaller to moderate sized consumer products, retail, service and manufacturing companies that may have
struggled to find just the right words to position their business, brands or products to competitive advantage.

Brian also is a three-time Emmy award winning Public Television writer and narrator of UNC-TV’s popular Our State magazine series, on the air since 2003.