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Two weeks ago, our family went to Disneyland - the first visit for my 5 year-old girl, Fiona, and 3 year-old boy, Rowan. The kids were appropriately dumbfounded. They are still talking about how cool it was to see REAL Tinkerbell fly from the Matterhorm to the castle to start the fireworks show. They are still talking bragging to the checkers at the grocery store that they went on Thunder Mountain Railroad and Splash Mountain. Fiona is still dreamily recalling how wonderful it was to hug and banter with Belle, Ariel, Snow White, Cinderella and others at our “Disney Princess Breakfast” (Of course, poor Rowan thought that we were going to eat Disney Princesses, which explained his terror as we headed out that morning).

But I’m still talking about the trip too. What an amazing “product”.

1. Brilliant vision. Walt Disney had a vision for a family entertainment park that was so extensive and so complete, that even 50 years later, nothing has even come close to it in the world. Like Steve Jobs - or Ghandi or Martin Luther King Jr., for that matter - Walt Disney was “all in”. He wasn’t doing a job. He found his “calling” and his work was an unconditional commitment. He worked tirelessly - obsessively - to bring his vision to life.

2. A complete experience. Disney has thought of everything. For example, when you order you tickets in advance, you receive a “welcome packet” for the family to open together around the dinner table. Pins, pictures, magical coins, an array of gleaming, beautifully-designed credit-card-like tickets, each one with a different character on them, plus a hand-written note from the person who prepared the packet for us: “I sprinkled extra fairy dust on this packet so that your trip will be the happiest of all. Jesse”. OK, if you don’t have kids that will sound incredibly corny, but to the rest of you - you know. They make it easy and fun to buy the product (Disney Vacation packages), they build excitement before you even get access to the product, and deliver an experience which is really beyond your family’s wildest dreams.

3. Execution with excruciating attention to detail. When we entered the park on the first day, we used our gleaming, credit-card-like tickets to enter the Main Gate. You scan your ticket under a barcode reader, but instead of hearing “BEEP” or “EH!!!”, we heard “Tinkle tinkle ting!!!” - the sound of Tinkerbell’s magic wand. How cool is that? The next day, we eager ly pushed though the Main Gate for day 2, and when we scanned our tickets this time we heard Jimeney Cricket’s laugh. OK, so Disney called the barcode scanner vendor and said, “I don’t want a beep sound. I want a catalog of sounds that we can upload and cycle through at different times on different days”. How much did that add to the cost of their entry system? Which brings me to…

4. An obsessive focus on product, not profitability. After exploring caves on Tom Sawyer’s island one afternoon, we headed back via raft to the dock at New Orleans Square. As we came off the raft, I noticed a man, dressed in swarthy coats leaning against a fence, playing a penny whistle. He wasn’t talking to anyone or doing much. But his presence - the lonely sound of his instrument and his old tarnished, (Disney) pocketwatch - transformed the place. In fact, Walt even invested in details that very few people ever even noticed. “Hidden Mickeys” are everywhere in Disneyland and their spotters form an elite community of fanatics. . A cost-cutting consultant would show up at Disneyland and have a field day. But they don’t show up at Disneyland, which is the point.

5. Operational excellence. Disneyland hosts 14.7 million guests per year. It is open every day of the year, some nights closing at midnight and opening at 8am. And at 8am, every morning, the place is immaculate. Everything is where it should be. Every piece of trash is picked up (I checked one day — that little ice cream wrapper in the corner of the castle moat was indeed gone at 8am the next morning). No paint is ever faded. And every cast member is “on”. Who cleans the moat at 2am? And when does Tinkerbell practice her zip-line “flight” from Matterhorn to castle? There must be a fake Disneyland / training ground somewhere where she can train? The scale, scope and level of quality is inspiring.

6. A team of people who live the vision every day. “Ahoy sailors! Looks like good weather for our voyage!” We are genuinely, honestly greeted this way by cast member Paul as we weave our way closer to the Finding Nemo Submarine Adventure. He is not tired, but downright jolly — not the way most people look at 3pm on a work day. This is the result of rigorous hiring and training practices as well as creative scheduling and staffing - cast members do only short shifts on any given ride to prevent monotony from setting in.

Obviously, modern Disneyland is the way it is because of the efforts of thousands of people, but Walt Disney started it all and grew a team with a similar quest for perfection. The following quotes from Walt Disney sum up his leadership style and approach to “product development”.

“Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.”

“When we consider a project, we really study it — not just the surface idea, but everything about it. And when we go into that new project, we believe in it all the way. We have confidence in our ability to do it right. And we work hard to do the best possible job.”

“Whenever I go on a ride, I’m always thinking of what’s wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.”

“I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it.”

“Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.”

Kids or no kids, I think it’s time to plan a trip to Disneyland…

On my flight to LA last week, in Spirit (the Southwest Airlines’) Magazine, I read about Arthur Rosenfeld and his random act of kindness in a drive-through line at a Starbucks in Florida. For those of you who missed it, the guy in the car behind Rosenfeld got angry because Rosenfeld hadn’t moved his car forward enough to free up space at the microphone. The guy in back lost it — honking and yelling. Rather than reciprocating the insults, Rosenfeld, a Tai Chi master, calmly told the barista that he wanted to pay for the coffee of the guy behind him. He paid the tab for the honker, which actually set off a spontaneous chain reaction of people paying for the next car’s coffee that lasted throughout the day.

While it’s true that Starbucks promotes angel behavior by encouraging “cheer chains” during the holiday season, Arthur Rosenfeld said that he had never heard of such a promotion. He said he did it to steady himself - to quell his own anger. But it was the unexpectedness and the stark contrast of his action that moved the honker, and the car after and the car after and the car after…

The story made me think on the random acts of kindness that I have encountered, personally. Thank you to the “trail angels” who have left snacks and water out along hiking trails for me to find. Thank you to the man in the green shirt at the airport this weekend who bought us a bottle of water after overhearing my daughter complaining of thirst and me explaining we couldn’t get out of the boarding queue. And on and on…

But Arthur Rosenfeld’s story also made me think about the marketing world, in which we often face angry customers, ranting on their blogs or in emails to customer support. Instead of yelling back, or issuing a cease and desist, or even ignoring the whiners, what if the company did the unexpected? Invite a particularly angry customer to the company headquarters to meet with the product team so that they can properly express their frustrations. Even a personal note sent from a person who matters at the company is unexpected enough (in this day and age) as to potentially turn the angry tide.

That’s what Dell did. It asked the angry Jeff Jarvis to the Dell headquarters to meet with the CEO. And while it wasn’t the meeting by itself that turned Jeff around, but the series of proactive changes that Dell put in place afterward, Jeff Jarvis ended up pretty happy. So tell the lawyers to step down. Tell your own employees to step up and to connect. You never know what might come of it.

Yesterday I wrote about how companies should give things away in order to attract customers and build relationships.

Well, I was looking around for good examples, and today I thought of Nike’s training tools. As an example, Nike got a lot of positive attention a while back for the Nike+ program, where a little sensor you put in your shoe tracks how many miles you run. You can sync your runs with a training program that you put together online. Even without buying the sensor or Nike shoes, however, the site lets you design a training program for yourself with the goal of completing a particular event (5k, 10k, marathon, etc.) or just getting in shape. There’s also Nike SPARQ training, a program to help you “be a better athlete” by improving the “five basic elements of your athleticism.”

All of these incorporate social and community elements. Nike+ for example suggests some playful running challenges like “Democrats vs. Republicans,” and Nike+ and SPARQ can both connect you to groups and events in your area.

Most recently, Nike launched something called the “Breakfast Club” to promote its Jordan line. You start with a self-assessment - or an assessment done by any friends you enlist, and then based on that, you create a workout program for yourself.

Here’s a great interview with Emmanuel Brown of Nike Jordan, talking with social media blogger and podcaster, Jennifer Jones.

Back in my agency life, clients were always asking us to create “viral” campaigns that would get the attention of the digital youth. Our inside joke was that there was a simple three part formula…

• Create a MySpace profile
• Enlist the Black Eyed Peas (they were especially hot at that time)
• Put some videos on YouTube

Then… POOF! it spreads like wildfire.

Even now, reading the latest online pitches from the current lot of would-be gurus, it seems things haven’t changed very much.

The basic pieces of a social marketing campaign today seem to be…

• Create a profile/group on MySpace/Facebook/Twitter/Jaiku
• Launch a blog advertising campaign
• Create a contest that has some viral hooks

This formula is attractive because none of these things necessarily requires much effort on the part of your company. You might get kudos from the Madison Avenue crowd and a few marketing pundits, impressed by your “revolutionary” foray into social media, but the long term rewards from real people will be thin and fleeting unless you do a little more.

Too many social media marketing strategies are still about pushing your brand or your message out to people. The channels are new, but the philosophy is same-old advertising.

I’m personally tired of the whole contest thing. It’s become de rigueur in the web 2.0 world to launch some kind of cheesy campaign where, for example, companies invite people to make their own commercials or slog through a ridiculous scavenger hunt for the chance at a big prize. This doesn’t count as a giveaway because contests like this demand payment (manual labor and/or creativity) in exchange for nothing but a chance at personal glory or tangible rewards.

As the adage goes, you reap what you sow. If you want something from the digital crowd, then think about what you can give them upfront.

What I’m talking about is not all that different from the old concept of a loss-leader. You give away or deeply discount something that will attract people to you, and then you try to deepen the relationship with those people and persuade them to buy more stuff - or simply hope they will. What if Microsoft simply gave away the Xbox for free, knowing that such a move would propel their console market share way past PlayStation? Could the resulting increase in game sales make up for the cost of such a move?

I’m sure Microsoft has already run the numbers on this, so I won’t fantasize about getting a free Xbox, but there are plenty of giveaway ideas that cost almost nothing.

A lot of companies have quite a bit of capital in the form of knowledge. Why not give this away?

Become the expert in your industry. Make your company’s blog the go-to source. Tell secrets. Teach people something cool or valuable. Enable. Entertain.

A while ago, I wrote about Rancho Gordo - a small specialty foods company with a great blog, sharing recipes, gardening advice and commentary on the agriculture industry. There’s also English Cut, the blog of a bespoke saville row tailor. I couldn’t care less about hand-tailored suits, but his blog is wonderfully written and hard to beat for passion and subject-matter expertise.

Some bigger companies get this too. Williams-Sonoma recently launched a redesigned website, and it prominently features their vast archive of recipes. Out of curiosity I checked Geek Squad and found a few self-service resources on their website, but imagine all the things they could give away. Same goes for banks and financial services firms - think of the tools and resources they could offer for free.

So, what could you give away?