I’ve gotten into a bad habit with my children. Whenever they ask me about overzealous promises from a product advertisement, I just tell them “It’s probably not true, it’s just marketing stuff“.

The bad part is that I am instilling a degree of cynicism in the little ones, but then again “buyer beware” has served us well for decades. To get their money’s worth, consumers need to be cautious, if not skeptical, of claims made and should complement personal research with word of mouth recommendations where possible.

My broad-brush description of marketers can be justified simply by witnessing the lack of loyalty transparency in favored market practices today. I really don’t want to read an email telling me that I can earn a 10% rebate on “all purchases made” only to click through and see that there is a monthly dollar cap on my savings. I also don’t enjoy seeing items priced “less mail-in rebate” while I end up paying a higher price at the register and later struggle with paperwork to realize the savings.

To its credit, Best Buy has partially broken from the mail-in rebate habit as it offered 5 Android smartphones at an introductory price with no strings attached.

In the B2B world, the use of whitepapers as the bait in email solicitation is becoming highly annoying and merits a huge Loyalty Asterisk™.  Just this week, I filled out a form to receive a “Whitepaper” from Socialtext covering critical requirements of enterprise social software. Thinking I was going to learn something, I realized as I was reading the document that it was not much more than a capabilities document for their own product reformatted as a whitepaper.

It is a simple and often used formula – take the key features and benefits of the product you are selling and create an outline that proclaims the same key points as “best practices”. The Loyalty Asterisk™ remains prevalent in advertising and promotional circles today and marketers need to accept that building campaigns with roots in gently misleading the public does not breed long term customer or brand loyalty.

In the words of Generation Y (Millennials) it’s “annoying”! Translated, it means “I’m not buying your stuff!”

If marketers are selling quality, performance, and reliability as part of their product or brand promise, then they need to deliver the message with a higher degree of transparency than is seen today. I consistently advise my clients to deliver offers with accurate pricing and all conditions proclaimed up front rather than play the bait and switch game.

The beauty of Web 2.0 and social media in particular is that consumers have the tools and communications channels available to be able to research products, compare opinions, and provide feedback to friends in an almost instantaneous manner. Brands that market with a heavy dose of the Loyalty Asterisk™ will be skewered on Twitter, Facebook, and in the blogosphere.

Rather than play the game and suffer the penalty, marketers would be wise to play it straight, exercise some Loyalty Transparency, and enjoy the complements and adulation of consumers as they award the brand for delivering just as promised. If you are running your business without social media tools to monitor brand mentions and conversations, you need to step up your game.

Adopting the right tools and building a commitment to marketing transparency will yield improved results. I am here to help you with both endeavors.

Black Cats, Black Magic, and Black Friday … sounds like a threesome to avoid.

But untold millions will be lining up the day after Thanksgiving in the wee hours of the morning with steely-eyed focus and adrenaline pumping – all with the almighty bargain in mind.

Maybe it’s a gender thing, but while you might find me up at 5am to go fishing, you’ll never find me caffeined-up and ready to shop at that time of day. Maybe Black Friday is defined less by gender and more by the American way. We’re competitive and like to win. And, after a year of economic suffering like we’ve had in this country, you can’t blame consumers for wanting to taste even a small victory.

But as any coach worth his salt will tell you, winning comes at a price. Unfortunately, the price of playing the Black Friday game reached an all time high in 2008 when a Walmart worker was trampled to death by a mob of shoppers at a store in Long Island. The repercussions have been strong and retailers are taking steps to calm the crowds and bring order to stores as the holiday season kicks off this coming Friday.

Walmart settled the lawsuits that followed with a nearly $2 Million payout to victims of the incident. Concern is so high that even the National Retail Federation (NRF) has released crowd management guidelines for its members hoping to prevent future disasters.

Consumers seeking ways to get ahead of the game have options. They can check out Top 10 Black Friday websites to find bargains in advance, or they can just sit at home after turkey dinner on Thursday and watch “what not to do” videos on YouTube ranging from Stampedes at Walmart to Scuffles at Target.

Outside of the fun that some people associate with the crazed energy of Black Friday, I have to wonder if retailers knew what they doing when they originally promoted the concept. Competing on price only leads to a “death spiral” of diminishing profit margins. And since there is usually only one acknowledged price leader in a discounting category (ahem, Walmart) the rest of the retailing pack might be much better off taking a higher road to open consumer wallets in their favor.

There have been some really good articles written about the violence of last year’s Black Friday, and academics such as  University of Delaware professor Sharron Lennon are now studying the human behaviors that lead to such incidents. There is also a groundswell of voices encouraging consumers to “Spend time together, not money”.

All of this makes me smile when people ask if Loyalty Marketing programs work. Yep, there are some lame versions of the concept out there, and even the good ones could make use of their data to be more relevant to their customers. But as a business owner, it should be attractive to preserve margins, improve the shopping experience, and justify repeat business at your store without having to fake a “going out of business sale” once a month.  Data-driven Customer Strategies do just that.

I’ll bet there are some forward thinking people at the NRF and among larger retailers that could change the paradigm. Maybe the time has come to return a bit of elegance and class into daily shopping experiences, not to mention air travel. And, retailers had better consider the impact of promoting mass shopping frenzy on Millennial (Generation Y) consumers shopping online at home from their PC’s.

Could it be time for Black Friday to “Go Dark”?

Earlier this year, I blogged on Loyalty Truth about the Ford Fiesta Movement. As you may recall, the Ford motor company gave new Fiesta automobiles to 100 social media-savvy drivers for six months—hoping they would post videos and blog about the Fiesta, to build some buzz around the car’s early-2010 launch.

I really hadn’t heard much about the promotion since then, probably for good reason. None of the participants are within my social media universe and a search of Google News reveals the Movement has gotten scant post-launch coverage from the offline or online press, aside from a few well-placed stories.

They popped up on the TV show Extra when host Mario Lopez helped launch the Movement’s “Social Activism Month” by donating items to a local charity while riding in a 2010 Ford Fiesta. They also placed a new Fiesta with a writer from Motortrend who made the equivalent of a head nod to the Movement while taking the car on a successful 600-mile trek through the mountains of Utah and Colorado.

Yet, while each of these stories gave the 2010 Fiesta some valuable press time, none featured any news about the participants themselves. What were those 100 Fiesta Movement social media mavens up to?

As it turns out, the 100 so-called “agents” in the program are not hard to find. Ford hosts a Fiesta Movement Web site with links to all 100. There are Live Feed pages that selectively highlight the latest tweets, videos and blog posts provided by the program participants. And a quick glimpse of these pages makes the program look like a buzz-worthy success with constant updates pouring in. It’s all Fiesta all the time!

But this got me wondering: how was this social media experiment working in the real world? Might I be exposed to the Ford Fiesta Movement message if I never visited the Ford Web site but was a quasi-follower of one the Movement agents?

As a quick test, I began looking specifically at about a dozen different agents’ blogging sites. What I discovered is that I had to do some real digging (or in this case, scrolling) to find news about the Fiesta or the Movement.

That’s no surprise really. The 100 agents in the Fiesta Movement were chosen because they already had a social media presence. And it appears that most involved are again writing about the things that made them Movement-worthy in the first place. The extreme spots dude is again writing about extreme sports. The hip-hop girl is out clubbing again. And just like in the real blogging world, one guy has seemingly packed it in, without a single post on anything in over 3 months.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this lack of Fiesta news, as Movement participants themselves have reported they are under no pressure from Ford to comment favorably on the cars. (Although there does appear to be an attempt by Ford to “sponsor” conversations, as one agent blogger mentions picking up 8 points for a new post.)

Still, I imagine the folks at Ford are feeling a little underwhelmed by the participation of some of the chosen 100. I also wonder if Ford’s 100 agent pool is deep and wide enough to reach beyond a small sliver of what I perceive to be the millennial target market. With hundreds of thousands of bloggers and video posters on the scene these days, it strikes me there’s a certain self-centered, party-on sameness to the Fiesta Movement agents.

But, bottom line: I think we have to give Ford an F-250 truckload of credit here for going where no other major marketer has gone before. This truly is a groundbreaking effort and a sign of things to come. More and more, social media will be used as a customer acquisition tool and will be every bit as important as other online and offline efforts when it comes to launching a major product.

Looking ahead, I see two key questions that still remain to be answered:

• Will the online activity turn into offline success? Despite its noble effort, I’m wondering if the Fiesta Movement has made a big enough impression for a national product launch. Will it really deliver bodies to the showroom? Ideally, Ford is on top of this and is already getting a read as to whether this experiment is working or not. I also wonder if it wouldn’t make sense to feature the participants in more traditional advertising efforts, including print, banner or TV spots, that tell people about the Fiesta Movement and point them to the site.
• Was launching the program a full year before product launch a bit premature? While the new Ford Fiesta is already the number two car in Europe, it won’t be released until early 2010 here in the states. And with the promotion scheduled to be over by late 2009, I wonder if they should have started the effort closer to the car’s release date. By early next year, the Fiesta Movement’s many tweets, blogs and video and picture postings may already seem like old news.

Look for another update to come in a few months.

Regardless of your hobby, profession or even your belief system, these days it’s easy to find a group of people just like you. Go to online community organizer Ning and you’ll discover over 1 million communities, for everyone from sand volleyball enthusiasts to landscape architects to supporters of the Kwam Um School of Zen.

Now it seems more and more companies are getting into the act, especially those focused on the Gen Y (Millennial) market. From game maker Xbox to the Vans shoe company, companies with true-blue followings have created thriving online meeting centers where the devoted can exchange ideas, discuss products, solve problems and even schedule meet-ups.

But while social communities can work for some brands, it definitely feels like a stretch for others. So upon learning that Allstate had joined the fray with its Good Hands Community, I was skeptical. After all, who wants to join a community sponsored by an insurance company?

Yet, even before looking at the site, I saw how it might work—if Allstate didn’t stray too far from its core area of expertise, insurance. The Good Hands site could be a place where customers could engage with agents on insurance issues, from making sure they had the right coverage and deductibles to learning how to adapt policies to life changes like a new car, new house or new baby.

But the folks at Allstate appear to have set their sights on a much wider mandate. As the Good Hands Web site states, it’s a community where you can “share your thoughts with others about hopes, dreams and challenges. Together you can share ideas about keeping families safe, saving money and preparing for what’s next”.

The community home page feels a little more down-to-earth with menu categories that include “Making a Difference”, “Daily Spending” and “Personal Finance”, and discussions on “helping others” “stay-cations” and “living debt free”. It’s all well intentioned, but the topics feel a little off-base for Allstate and better suited for the Peace Corps, AAA or Capital One respectively.

For auto insurance policy holders, there is a category on “All Things Wheels”. But I can’t seem to find any discussions on auto insurance, as posts are concentrated on issues like checking my oil, being alert at the wheel and hybrid automobiles. How about helping me figure out how much collision I should carry on my 8-year old Saturn?

The other thing that doesn’t feel right is there is not an insurance agent to be found on the Good Hands site. You see, the chief bloggers and hosts of the community are Allstate employees Ben and Amit who are both identified by the title “Strategy and Content Manager”. No offense guys, but I think Allstate policyholders would prefer to communicate with honest-to-goodness insurance agents.

So overall, a kudos to Allstate for the effort. It’s a nicely designed site that really is trying to engage with current and potential customers. But let’s not forget, you’re an insurance company. And with so many potential communities for people to join these days, it feels like Allstate may be stretching its good hands a little too wide.

Final note: For a company that does an online community right, check out Intuit. Its Intuit community connects customers with small business owners and features discussions hosted by Intuit-sponsored business professionals. The Intuit community keeps the focus where it belongs: helping small businesses succeed.

Tom Rapsas is an independent Creative Director, Writer and Strategist. He can be reached at tomrapsas@gmail.com.

Have you heard about the Ford Fiesta Movement? It may sound like a grass roots Buy American campaign, but it’s really a pretty ingenious ploy by the Ford Motor Company to generate some buzz around the stateside launch of the European Ford Fiesta model.

It seems that Ford has signed up 100 “agents” who have been given a new Ford Fiesta to test-drive for 6 months. In Ford’s words, they’ll be “lifestreaming their experiences, and completing monthly missions to show you what the Fiesta is all about”, via personal blogs, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

So who are the agents? As you might expect, Ford has smartly selected a group of new-media savvy individuals from Generation Y who had to post an application video to be chosen. A glance at these Millennial profiles seems to indicate most of the agents were selected for their online presence, as many of them have already established blog sites and a built-in audience.

Are these agents really just paid shills? It appears there’s no “pay-for-say” involved, although gas, maintenance and insurance are included with each vehicle. There’s also a little expense money thrown in to cover “mission” expenses. And Ford promises they’ll let their agents speak freely about their experiences.

So if all this is true, kudos to Ford. It’s obvious they have great confidence in the new Fiesta. And I can think of no better way to get the blogosphere buzzing about your hot new product than by seeding it with 100 hand-picked social media mavens.

Yet, as I applaud the effort, the proof of success will be in the excitement the Fiesta Movement is able to generate. There are lots of ideas, from reality TV shows to football game plans, that looked good on paper but fell apart in the execution.

Will the “missions” build the necessary excitement once the initial buzz wears off? (After all, this campaign is supposed to go for 6 months.) Will it be a non-step lovefest or will the agents be allowed to add a healthy dose of reality by complaining about a thing or two? Will the online buzz translate into offline sales?

Stay tuned. The missions just got underway this week. We’ll see if Ford is able to keep the Fiesta Movement humming in high gear.

Tom Rapsas is an independent Creative Director, Writer and Strategist. He can be reached at tomrapsas@gmail.com

If you’re of a “certain age” and have teenagers in the house, then you might have caught yourself proclaiming that your young Millennials (Generation Y) are wasting their lives playing Halo, World of Warcraft, or tinkering with their MySpace page. Since adolescents revel in the opportunity to point out hypocrisy in their adult family members, imagine the return volley of comments about how much time we Boomers spend glaring at the television watching yet another sports event without anything more than a trip to the fridge to break the action.

The best life lessons learned from sports are by playing them, but once in a while you can learn by watching.  The other night as I wandered between the NHL and NBA playoffs, the NFL draft, and some meaningless early season MLB, I had a vision. I found an answer for the big question about Social media.

Everyone knows about Social Media, few understand it, and there are proponents and opponents voicing opinion with increasing volume. To some, employing a social media strategy can accelerate achievement of business objectives, to others it is a greater waste of time than one more round of GTA3.  The one unifying question is “how do all these pieces fit together?” Almost every business person I know expresses interest in executing a social media strategy that is right for them.

Well I’ve got an answer and it is heavily basted in sports analogy:

The Play by Play Announcer: Your web site is the necessary foundation for your social media strategy. Present the facts without too much hype and hyperbole

Color Commentary: People blog for different reasons. I think it serves as a platform for opinion and to demonstrate innovative ideas and thought leadership

Player Roster: Being part of LinkedIn is today’s method to assemble your business network and document a circle of influence

Groupies: They hang out by every locker room door and some you’ll talk to while others you avoid. Establishing an authentic presence on Twitter allows you the same liberty

Inner Circle: You’ve got to have real friends you can trust. Approach these for deeper conversations via email, the phone, and in person (yes, in person should be part of your social media strategy!)

Your Agent: Few of us can do it all. We need a few Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) around to fill in our gaps and to add bandwidth. Find someone who really knows how to coordinate your social media efforts from a technology standpoint

Fans: Filling the seats is a requirement for success. Building a Facebook presence can be your biggest funnel to gain fans and you can connect further with them via the other channels depending on how relationships develop.

Sponsors: Someone has to pay the bills. We often call these folks “clients” or “customers”! The objectives of a social media strategy should include serious business objectives and revenue goals. Your valued customers/clients should be treated in a special way. Newsletters and more personalized digital correspondence works well to create deeper links

I’m interested to have your feedback on fitting the pieces of the social media puzzle together. Are you ready to play ball?

The promise of social media to Loyalty Marketers should be clear. We’ve been advocates of establishing two-way dialogue with program members for the past 20 years, touting that only within the trusted environment of a loyalty program will customers share their preferences, aspirations, and concerns relating to your brand.

Don Peppers and Martha Rogers coined the term “1 to 1″ marketing in what seems an ice-age ago. While the concept was right, execution was too costly for most companies to absorb. It is one thing to craft promotions, offers, and communications by segments, but to drive personalization to the individual account level was not financially sustainable. After the first wave of failed CRM installations, the ambitions of “1 to 1″ marketing were softened to a more practical “Mass Customization”.

With CRM’s legacy of unfulfilled potential, one would think that Loyalty Marketers would be tearing apart the box labeled “Social Media” like a child on Christmas morning to see what’s inside.

I’m not sure it’s happening and here’s why:

Attending Card Forum & Expo in Marco Island last week, I heard a great keynote from Joshua Peirez, MasterCard Worldwide. His topic was innovation and he took an informal poll in the room of 200 bankers:

• Who’s on Twitter? – less than 5% raised their hand
• Who has a MySpace? – no one raised their hand
• Who has a Facebook page? – 25% said “yes”
• Who knows what a Kindle is? – 10% positive response

Given the median age in the room, I was almost relieved with the MySpace answer, but noticed the uncomfortable murmuring that waved through the room upon the mention of Twitter and Facebook. Mr. Peirez had made his point that “we” in the banking and card issuing industry need to understand, if not embrace, these new communications tools if we are to stay current in the market.

Listening to other sessions, my suspicions that all things social media were regarded as distractions to be enjoyed by the younger generation but not to be taken seriously by business, were reinforced.

There was a fascinating panel of “Retail Loyalty Leaders” facilitated by my friend and colleague, Rick Ferguson, Editorial Director Colloquy. Executives from Best Buy, Macy’s, and Saks shared how it was their most loyalty customers who continued to shop even after the economic downturn last fall, but made no mention of  social media until an attendee posed a question at the end of the session. Responses from the panelists were general and non-committal, indicating that social media was “interesting and deserved study” while not citing any ongoing programs.

Imagine you are standing on the crest of a ridge with the entirety of loyalty marketing knowledge under your arm. Across a deep ravine on the next ridge is Generation Y, all 80 Million of them. You can’t just walk over and engage them in what you have to say as there is a river running swiftly through the bottom of the ravine. You’ve got to build a bridge to reach the other side or you will miss the opportunity to engage this massive consumer audience.

Social Media could be the bridge. Read carefully, as I am not telling you that Social Media is THE answer or the ONLY answer. But, it is the best opportunity we have ever had to fulfill the promises of 1 to 1 Marketing.  The technology allows business to tailor messages to small groups if not individuals and the Millennial Generation is the first ever to be so forthcoming with personal insights and opinions.

There is evidence of experimentation in the space, with AirMiles Canada adding a community to its web site. It’s purpose is clear as the landing page advises  “Now there’s a place where you and other collectors can swap tips, experiences, and chat about anything and everything Air Miles”.

And there are a few active Loyalty Marketers with a presence on Twitter. If you open your own account and wonder who you should follow, you could start with @andrewkinnear,  @barrykirk,  @Phil_Rubin,  @Kobie_Marketing,  @LoyaltyLab,   @Loyalty 360 and don’t forget @billhanifin.

One of Hanifin Loyalty’s rules for engaging Generation Y is this:

• Don’t rationalize the need – you don’t have to like it or even fully understand it, you just have to do it.

Meeting the Millennials where they are sets the stage for engagement. How you present your brand from there is a topic for another day.

Follow me …….

The population group born between 1977 and 1996 known as Generation Y or “Millennials” is roughly 80 Million strong and represents almost 25% of the US population. Nearly equal in size to the Boomers, the segment is 50% larger than Generation X and is the most ethnically and racially diverse generation in US history.

Understanding Millennials results from study of their perceptions of Career, Technology, Communications, and the Future. Millennials stand to become more prosperous than their elders more quickly, but may be challenged in exceeding their parent’s lifestyle in an increasingly complex and global economy. They are fully immersed in their technology and live in an “always on” world communicating with friends and colleagues. Their future outlook is influenced by a well documented dose of narcissism and Morley Safer may have captured the essence when he stated “they want to rock their iPods, set their own flexible work schedule, and still be CEO by Friday”.

The dilemma for consumer facing companies is whether to pay attention to this group as a new breed of consumer, or dismiss current observations as characteristics of another maturing generation that will “grow out of it”.  Chief Marketing Officers are concerned as over 75% polled in one survey believe that the Millennial generation will have a major impact on their businesses in the next 3 years, while over 54% admit they do not have a strategy for engaging the group.

Marketers ignore the opportunities with Generation Y at great risk. Over 62% of global teens are apathetic to traditional advertising messages and 42% make purchase decisions based on the recommendations of their friends. Traditional methods to engage and retain best customers may not work with Generation Y. The Loyalty Marketing industry is just 28 years old and was launched in 1981, meaning only the oldest in the Millennial group are conversant with traditional models.

The good news for any company wishing to build brand loyalty is that the drivers of loyalty are not materially different across generations. Just about all human beings respond to a blend of tangible reward and personal recognition. The difference will be in how companies communicate their message, enable feedback, and the types of value propositions they construct.

Hanifin Loyalty has invested significant time and resource to create a methodology to develop strategic marketing plans to engage, retain, and increase business with members of Generation Y. Integral to the inventory of work is understanding the elements of a value proposition compelling to this group and their preferred methods of communication including their preferences for the growing portfolio of social media tools and networks available.

Possibly the highest priority task is to establish where marketers should set expectations for developing brand loyalty across Generation Y. Hanifin Loyalty has categorized the formula to match up with Millennials in 4 areas including Lifehacks, Community, Personalization, and Transparency. More work needs to be done documenting the “Voice of the Generation” to validate expectations of consumer marketing companies and establish whether they should set enduring brand loyalty as a key business and financial objective.

Working with our growing research panel, we hope to establish primary research from Millennials which will help to answer these additional questions and benefit leading consumer facing companies throughout the North American market.

The creators of television and cable reality shows could be sued for practicing deceptive bait and switch tactics. The genre which includes The Apprentice, The Girls Next Door, Miami Ink, and The Hills are touted to chronicle people interacting in real-life situations. I’m sorry but what is portrayed is much closer to pure entertainment than reality. I’ve never seen meetings run as they are in The Apprentice and pray that my daughter doesn’t consider the escapades in The Hills to approximate reality.

On the other hand, social networks like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and micro-blogging site Twitter are growing at exorbitant rates while continuing to suffer from criticism by mainstream business as time-wasting black holes exposing people to career risk with unproven business return. Facebook has doubled its traffic in the past 18 months and had over 70 Million  unique visitors in February 2009.

Twitter has been growing at triple digit rates but it’s nearly 8 Million unique visitors in February trailed LinkedIn and were only roughly 10% of Facebook traffic. Despite its meager proportions to big brother Facebook and in the face of market skepticism, it’s still my opinion that Twitter is the New (and true) Reality Show.

The veracity of the conversations that take place in Twitter and the way it has been adopted by Millennials (Generation Y) and others is undeniable. Maybe it is the “reality” of having only 140 charachters at your disposal that forces “tweeps” to craft their message in a more meaningful and concise way. If you are a direct marketing copywriter and are still trying to adapt your writing style to the web, a crash course in Twitter will train your brain to make the message punchy and attention grabbing.

Business is taking notice as well.

In Brazil, one of the best known TV hosts, Marcelo Tas, has engaged in “sponsored tweeting” with Telefónica paying the tab. “This idea of compensating influentials to talk about your brand is probably going to grow” says Andrew Frank, an analyst at Gartner.

Blackbottom, a Utah based apparel company posted this Tweet to promote a special on cycling jerseys and shorts. Using hashtags and cross-referencing with their own email subscriber list, the company is taking baby steps towards the Twitter version of direct marketing. I have seen this with other companies, notably Athlinks, a company that aggregates race results for all sorts of endurance events, and expect to see more examples in the near future.

The New York Times documented the success of “Wine guy” Gary Vaynerchuk, a well known Web 2.0 guy who started the Wine Library and began online sales in 1997 when he was still in college. Since then he has steadily advanced his Internet-based marketing skills. His sites include winelibrary.com, where his daily webcast, “The Thunder Show,” has won a wide following, and garyvaynerchuk.com.

Last December, seeking to enhance sales, he offered free shipping and promoted it three ways. As a result, he said, a direct marketing mailing cost $15,000 and brought in 200 new customers; a billboard ad cost $7,500 and won 300 new customers; and tweeting the promotion on Twitter attracted 1,800 new customers.

This is just the kind of evidence that we all need to justify social media tools for business purposes, but there is more than pure ROI to be gained from micro-blogging. I’ve been able to conduct and take part in mini-surveys, have contributed to executive search, learned of breaking news before it hit the AP wire, found a triathlon coach in Vermont, and the best pizza in Buffalo, NY.

Twitter is a thought aggregator that can be a highly valuable research and networking tool. It’s becoming so popular that someone even cooked up a fake loyalty marketing program just for fun.

I’m not a Twitter apologist, and have to note that part of the evidence for it being a true Reality Show is the emergence of spam, scams, and random human drama appearing in the public timeline. Just as offline people offer to solve all your problems in a book for $19.95, deliver you the miracle diet while you still eat fast food 3x/day or find you a cheap Rolex, Twitter is not immune.

Twitter complies with the truism that your benefit is in direct relationship to your investment. At a very rapid pace, expect to see more companies listening about and promoting their brand as well as testing direct product promotions.

Follow me and join in the conversation!

Of the many investments that a business can make, one of the most precarious is its corporate brand. Investment in brands run into the millions of dollars and, on the heels of the Ad-Fest known as the “undercard” of Super Bowl Sunday, the extent to which companies will spend to have their message heard is abundantly clear.

Millennials (Generation Y) are the most technology enabled generation yet. They take advantage of the tools available, staying immersed in their devices and social networks, always connected.

The investment of millions by Super Bowl advertising brands (US 3 Million per 30 second spot) creates an unspoken promise that must be kept on Monday morning. Millennials constantly reevaluate their favorite brands consciously or not. Over time, brand equity is established through a series of positive impressions. Human nature being what it is, this intangible equity can be wiped out through one disastrous service experience.

Competition is just that fierce these days, and the velocity of information collected by this increasingly powerful group of consumers enables a “react, reevaluate, and decide” cycle that can have multiple revolutions even before your Monday afternoon Marketing meeting can address a single issue. How many in the Millennial Generation do you think will pick up the phone and call to complain? How many less will take time to write a letter? If they have a negative customer experience, they just simply move on down the road to the competitor.

Here are two examples of companies whose flourishing brands suffered irreparable harm based on poor customer experience. I know, the sample of this study is small. It is nonetheless poignant and meaningful. As they say, “out of the mouth of babes…comes truth”. In this case, Loyalty Truth!

Not too long ago, Dell had a cache to its brand and their sales showed it. In our house, we made several purchases of desktops and peripherals only to grind teeth as a series of hardware failures ensued, subjecting us to time consuming calls to customer support. No call to the Help Desk is fun, but speaking with offshore support desks that grudgingly escalate the request up the chain of command can be infuriating.

The culmination of several of these negative experiences caused the Millennials in my house to swear never to buy Dell. I have attempted to convince them to reevaluate as the company has largely rectified service shortcoming through Gold Service packages that offer US based support, short hold times, and rapid problem resolution.

Just before the 2004 Olympic games, DHL lost a racing bike that I shipped to a race site. How ironic that DHL was the official shipping partner of the games and continually aired a commercial showing professional cyclists warming up on the ramps behind a DHL truck. Each time the commercial aired, a chorus of “Daddy, there’s your bike!” came from the couch, chiding me for my perceived poor choice of shipper. Now that DHL has announced it’s exit from the US market, maybe the issue is moot. Nonetheless I have a legion of young ones that wouldn’t trust DHL with a fruit cake.

On the positive side, JetBlue’s introduction of personal videos and a selection of interesting in-flight snacks served to delight my gang of Millennials. In all, JetBlue has consistently executed well and has created brand loyalty without my Millennials ever noticing their advertisement efforts.

Apple is a slam dunk example of product quality and retail execution cementing the brand message. Yes, their early ads featuring dancing silhouettes were cool, but the Millennials I know first identified with the brand via their innovative music playing device, the iPod. No wonder that iTunes accounted for about 80% of all digital music sales in the US during 2008. The excellent service provided by Apple retail stores and well-executed promise to migrate PC user data to an Apple PC have attracted legions of new customers.

There are two points of learning from these tales:

Groundbreaking marketing strategy and million dollar investments in brand campaigns are all easily trumped by poor execution. More time and investment should be allocated to employee training and incentives to realize flawless business operations.

Brand is important, but the super-glue known as a loyalty program needs to be in place to overcome service problems. Conceived correctly, a loyalty or customer strategy can cause customers to think twice before bolting for the competition.

How secure is your brand investment?