We all say it. And we say it like everyone knows what we mean. But I’m always surprised at how differently people think about what a brand is and what it takes to “build it”. Some (by no means all) design shops will tell you that your brand is your logo and tagline, so you’d better invest heavily. Some advertising agencies will tell you it’s how much advertising you have in market. A PR firm will say your brand is what influencers say about you. There’s some truth to each of these perspectives. I believe a brand is the relationship a customer has with a company. And like any relationship you have in your life, it’s defined by the sum total of all the experiences and interactions over time. You can’t craft a brand by writing a mission statement and saying, “We are a company that cares about X.” You need to go be a company that is X. It’s not your logo. It’s all that you are. 

Far-reaching definition, to be sure. But think about some of the strong brands you know. For me, Apple is about well-designed technology. And I feel that way because all the Apple products I experience are functional and powerful enough for what I need them for. They’re intuitive to use, show great attention to detail, feel good in my hands, and garner compliments from my design friends. The Apple employees I know are the most creative, talented folks I have worked with in the past. The company’s stores are innovative, high-tech, and the help is both knowledgeable and super cool. Its marketing is simple, creative and (usually) powerful – (I actually think Apple’s brand advertising in recent years is the LEAST creative/innovative thing about the company in some ways). But it’s all of this that makes Apple = well-designed technology, for me. Its chomped-fruit logo has nothing to do with it. 

Ask anyone about the Zappos brand and they will say Zappos = great service. It’s tagline is not, “We’re all about service.” Zappos = great service because of its liberal returns policy, free shipping in both directions, all the detailed information on its site (“these shoes run a little small / large for the size”), and all the great interactions customers have with its service staff. My husband ordered 3 pairs of shoes from Zappos. None fit or they weren’t quite cool enough, so he sent them all back. He then ordered another 3 pairs of shoes. No keepers again. He wanted to order another batch but wondered if he should be feeling bad about sending back yet another set for full credit. He called customer service and asked if it was really OK. Not only did the customer support person say, “YES, absolutely! That’s what we are here for!” But to thank him for being thoughtful about it, she gave him a $20 gift certificate toward a pair of shoes (if he ever found ones that fit). Again, it’s not good luck that Zappos has support people like that. Zappos actually pays customer support people $1,000 to quit, one week into training. If anyone is NOT totally committed – NOT in it for the long-haul – they’d rather know sooner rather than later. 

Brands are earned through consistent actions and interactions, and once built, they are not easy to change. Microsoft has had a tough time putting out the Zune and trying to suddenly be a hip and cool brand. Yes, there is Xbox, but we customers have too many experiences with Microsoft over many years to suddenly believe it’s hip. It’s like one of the un-cool kids on your block who’ve you known your whole life to be un-cool, suddenly showing up at the senior year grad night party in a sa-weet party suit. Maybe in the movies the guy gets the popular girl that night, but not in real life. That guy better show up at the cool coffee shop every day, show up at more cool parties, and STOP being seen playing D&D on the school lawn at lunch if he’s going to really change his brand. 

So brands are, indeed, BUILT. They are built every day, every time your customer interacts with your product or service – the store, the product, the packaging, the receipt. Your brand is defined by the conversations customers have with your people. It’s defined by your pricing decisions, your policy decisions, your hiring decisions and your training programs. It’s the website, the phone tree, and yes, I guess it’s also that logo on your business card.

The Business Technology blog over at WSJ reports on a recent study of more than 100 corporate social networks. Ed Moran, a Deloitte consultant, found that:

Thirty-five percent of the online communities studied have less than 100 members; less than 25% have more than 1,000 members – despite the fact that close to 60% of these businesses have spent over $1 million on their community projects.

Moran’s conclusion is that companies get seduced by the technologies involved without understanding the terrain. These sites fail, he believes, because companies don’t invest enough money or manpower in supporting them, and because the things the companies measure don’t really align with their professed business goals.

The title of the article - “Why Most Online Communities Fail” - is misleading, since Moran is talking specifically about corporate social networks, and the very premise of these sites is flawed if you ask me. I haven’t seen the list of companies he looked at, but I would guess that most of them actually have thriving online “communities” whose activities just happen to be distributed across the Internet. People are twittering. They’re posting about those 100 companies on their blogs and MySpace pages.

I understand the urge that companies have to contain this activity, but it’s a pipe dream. You can build the snazziest playground in the world, and most of your community still won’t show up. If you want to connect with them, you have to do it on their turf. If you want to quantify their effect on your brand perception or your sales numbers, you have to find tools that can do that.

That’s what we’re aiming to provide of course, and that’s why I believe in this product. Companies are willing to spend millions on the fantasy that they can bring their communities to them because they don’t have very good ways of tuning in to the communities that are already out there.

But that’s changing.

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?

I admit that I’m a psychological-literature junkie. I’m always interested in the latest research and theories on what makes people tick. (yes, everyone at Scout Labs knows his/her Myers-Briggs type). I’ve noticed an increasing number of research paper headlines on the topic of Internet Addiction Disorder over the last few years. So, instead of just ridiculing the concept out-of-hand, I decided to actually read through the research to see if there is any validity to the notion.

Jennifer R. Ferris from Virginia Tech defines it as “a psychophysiological disorder involving tolerance; withdrawal symptoms; affective disturbances; and interruption of social relationships”. Hmmm. Better look at the symptoms to see how I fare.

To be diagnosed as having Internet Addiction Disorder, a person must meet certain criteria as prescribed by the American Psychiatric Association. Three or more of these criteria must be present at any time during a twelve month period:

1. Tolerance: This refers to the need for increasing amounts of time on the Internet to achieve satisfaction and/or significantly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of time on the Internet.

In college I used to only email some things here and there, and now (as CEO of an Internet company) I am connected all day long! So, strike one against me.

2. Two or more withdrawal symptoms developing within days to one month after reduction of Internet use or cessation of Internet use (i.e., quitting cold turkey) , and these must cause distress or impair social, personal or occupational functioning. These include:

• psychomotor agitation, i.e. trembling, tremors; anxiety;
• obsessive thinking about what is happening on the Internet;
• fantasies or dreams about the Internet;
• voluntary or involuntary typing movements of the fingers.

This is getting eerie. For our family vacation this summer, we will be staying in a house in Bali that has ONLY DIAL-UP CONNECTION. I am already waking up in cold sweats about it. And I was wondering what that uncontrollable finger-twitching-in-the-air thing was about…

3. The Internet is often accessed more often, or for longer periods of time than was intended.

I cannot tell a lie. Once I get to CuteOverload, time seems to stand still and I can be there for hours. Gulp.

4. A significant amount of time is spent in activities related to Internet use ( e.g., Internet books, trying out new World Wide Web browsers, researching Internet vendors, etc.).

Great…our whole company hath been stricken!

5. The individual risks the loss of a significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunity because of excessive use of the Internet.

I thought everyone’s spouse yelled at them for playing Facebook games while watching the Daily Show together! Well, signing off now - looks like my case is pretty serious. Please do not let your symptoms go unchecked! Here are some additional resources for your self-assessment:

Belluck, Pam. “Net Addiction: True Disorder or Just a Cyber-Psycho-Fad?” , New York Times 1 Dec. 1996.

Egger, O., Rauterberg, M., (1996) “Internet Behavior and Addiction.”, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich

And a great Internet Addiction Recovery site.

Photo by rantfoil.

Hello, it’s Mathieu here, from France. I’ve been doing an internship with Scout Labs since January, and it’s exciting to be contributing to this very cool application. I’ve taken advantage of my time here by attending all sorts of hi-tech and entrepreneurship events happening here in sunny California.

I attended Startup School 2008 at Stanford University this past weekend. Startup school is an annual free conference organized by Y Combinator and BASES for hackers interested in creating their own startups. One of the most interesting and entertaining talks of the day was from David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby On Rails and founder of 37signals.

The most interesting advice he gave us was about how to make money online: Have a great product and define the right price for it. It’s interesting because it can be very hard to define the price of your great product, especially when it is sold as a service like a lot of software now (and like Scout Labs). You can fail at pricing your product correctly, and this is what happened to 37signals.

David told us that Backpack, one their applications, has been really successful (they doubled their revenues) in the last 2 months after they re-launched the application. They basically raised the price and changed their marketing message to target the long tail of businesses, what he calls the Fortune 5,000,000. You don’t have to aim at the Fortune 500, you don’t have to aim at the general consumer. There is a large and profitable market in the often-neglected long-tail, and software-as-a-service companies like Scout Labs are poised to capitalize on that opportunity.

You can find David’s talk below. All the videos from Startup School 08 are available on Omnisio.

In this week’s installment of his ‘Circuits’ column, David Pogue asks, “Are you taking advantage of Web 2.0?” By ‘you’ he means your company, and he describes the response this question got from the attendees at a recent PR conference:

“…within seconds, there were 132 responses on the screen in a huge, scrolling list. ‘Not enough money.’ ‘Don’t understand it.’ ‘No technical resources.’ ‘Not enough manpower.’ ‘No visible return on investment.’ ‘Fear of ridicule.’ ‘Fear of slander.’ ‘Fear of permanence.’ ‘Fear of the public running amok.’”

There are lots of common fears in there, and they’re all reasonable at first glance. Companies are understandably afraid of opening themselves up to ridicule and slander from a public running amok, knowing that all the messy results will live forever, just a Google search away. And they’ve seen some embarrassing failures from companies who’ve tried to embrace the new paradigm - like the Chevy Tahoe debacle, and Wal-Mart’s fake blog (or flog) scandal, to name just two incidents. So the safest bet is to simply stay away from all things Web 2.0.

The problem with this approach, obviously, is that the public is already running amok. That’s what the public does. If they want to slander you, they have YouTube and MySpace and a million other places to do it. Sticking your head in the sand doesn’t make all this stuff go away. It just makes your company look silly - or worse, aloof, uncaring and behind the times - and ultimately more vulnerable to whatever mud they might be slinging.

So if it’s unwise - or unrealistic - to stay out of the fray, then what’s the best strategy for jumping in? The other questions from the PR conference attendees fall into this category. More and more companies have recognized the need to participate, but they don’t know where to focus or how much to invest.

There are lots of success stories. Big companies like Dell and Mariott have generated good will and good press through their forays into Web 2.0, and this has surely translated into dollars. But it still comes down to the question of ROI. If one of the ultimate goals of embracing Web 2.0 is to engender good will, then how do you quantify it? How do you measure success?

Does anyone out there have a story that starts to quantify the actual value of good will?

A few years ago, a friend of mine, Michael, who comes from an upscale family and who was studying the romance literature of Latin America, conducted a unique social experiment. He dressed in simple clothes and set out to panhandle in downtown San Francisco to see how much money he could raise in one day. It took him several hours just to find a free corner that no one kicked him off of (come to find out, most corners in big cities are already “taken” by local panhandlers). But then he began: “Can you spare some change?” People averted their eyes. They looked down. They looked at the sky. They squinted and leaned into their open books as if trying to make out a foreign word. Very few would acknowledge his existence. And because his early actions did not provoke reactions, Michael started to feel like he didn’t exist. He soon found himself lunging toward people, yelling, using profanity. And this was only after about 6 hours on the streets.

I thought of Michael last week when I read BusinessWeek’s article “Consumer Vigilantes”. In it, we hear from some ultra-disgruntled customers who are bashing companies everywhere they can—on existing sites (amazon.com), specially created new sites (comcastmustdie.com) and through more “direct” channels, like 76-year old Mona Shaw who smashed keyboards and phones with a hammer at the Comcast headquarters yelling, “HAVE i GOT your attention NOW?!”

These customers desperately need to be noticed. Their efforts to gain the attention of the companies they seek to connect with have produced no reaction. They’ve tried the phone tree. They’ve tried email. They’ve tried letters to management. They’ve waited patiently (for hours) at headquarters waiting for a manager to appear. All to no avail. And, like Michael during his panhandling experiment, their voices and actions become ever more extreme.

Run away?

In the face of such aggressive consumer vigilante-ism, it’s tempting for us marketers to be afraid—very afraid—and remain safely hidden behind our one-way mirrors. But if we acknowledge that our very own corporate “mass” practices (mass marketing, mass communications, mass-ive cost-cutting) have actually caused much of the anger, then the way forward should feel less scary. We created this problem and we can make it better.

In fact, what struck me in the BusinessWeek article, and in my own life experiences, is how easily people can turn from foe to friend. They rant and kick and scream, “but then someone reached out to me from the company, and now I’m very happy.” Or, “… but then they fixed it, and now my loyalty is very high.”

How could such a small gesture—a simple call or email from a company representative, an inexpensive new part sent out in the mail—result in such a radical about-face? The reason is because it’s SO RARE. It is rare that a customer ever talks to a real person at any of the product companies they give their money to. Think about all the products and you buy and use—your deodorant, your sofa, your cereal, your jacket—how many people have you talked to from these companies?

Go on, engage—it’s OK

It’s time for companies to start talking to customers again, to start building real relationships again, on a mass scale, with help from technology. Customers are out there, on their “corner”, talking away, hoping for some attention, hoping someone will notice. They’re endlessly discussing the products and features they care about, praising and complaining, panning some brands and applauding others (yes, they do this too). It’s OK to jump in to those conversations. Scout Labs conducted a survey (posted out across the blogosphere) and asked the following question:

Do you like it when…you are involved in a conversation with other consumers about a product or service (on a blog or in a forum) and a representative from that company joins in online?

The responses we got:

That’s 70% who say you are welcome, even encouraged, to jump in. But there’s a clear caveat: only real efforts to connect allowed. No spinning.

How to do it well

Marketers are going to have to practice a bit. Many of us are out of touch with real customers in the real world. At some point in our careers we mutated, and now speak marketing-ese, which doesn’t play where we’re going. In this new world, using your real name is essential (gasp!). Typos are just fine (double gasp!). In fact typos get you subliminal brownie points, because it signals to customers that your response was not pre-filtered or canned. Note: those of you who wrote down, “Include a typo” in your notebook page titled, “How to talk to customers”, keep practicing, ‘cause you still don’t quite get it Your customer communication goals should be to educate, explain, connect, ask, listen, and be yourself. If you strive to do these things in your direct communications with customers, you can’t go (far) wrong.

Google does a good job at having conversations. eBay, where I received a crash course in keeping it real, is a pioneer in interacting with its community. Dell’s getting really good. DirecTV does a great job of participating in its influential communities in a very real way, in both official and unofficial capacities. Here’s an older but illuminating exchange between a DirecTV employee and semi-hostile hockey fans complaining about the DirecTV options. In the thread, you see the hardest-core complainers turn into fans, responding to the employee’s openness and candor with statements like, “…thank you so very much for your post clearing up some of the many questions that us hockey fans have. It is great to know that DirecTV cares about us and is trying to improve its Center Ice package.” And of course, myriad startups and small companies are gaining on the big guys thanks to smart products and masterful participation in influential communities online.

You can’t afford not to

Customers just want to be heard. Don’t wait until they work themselves into a frenzy. The line between brand-basher and fanboy may be closer than you think. Look up, make eye contact and jump on in.