Voices: the CMB Blog

By Athena Rodriguez

CMB fun fact: our little street in Boston has enjoyed a few moments on the silver screen, perhaps you've seen the great moment in cinematic history known as Bride Wars, or maybe Surrogates starring Bruce Willis as a cop from the future, filmed in our lobby no less. I know, as if market research wasn't glamorous enough! All this to say we’re kind of used to strange goings on outside 179 South Street, so I wasn’t initially interested in the guy, standing in a pick-up truck outside the office, handing out cans of Diet Pepsi, I’m usually a Diet Coke drinker* anyway. However, as a marketer I have a soft spot for a good campaign and I’m not too proud to turn down a free soda.

So what’s blog-worthy about free soda? Two deceptively simple things stand out. First, there were some very cute details—the Pepsi logos were heart-shaped in honor of Valentine’s Day—pretty adorable. The whole website was done up for Valentine’s Day and there was also a contest to tweet about what you love, it was a perfect and simple tie-in with the brand and a chance to win something. Lesson: promotions don’t need to be too complicated to be really appealing.

Along with the can of soda, they handed out coupons for a free 2 liter bottle, as well as a Boston-specific flyer with little allusions to the Red Sox, Patriot’s Day, Newbury Street, the Charles, and the North End, all stuff that's very appealing to locals (and those of us who’ve been here awhile). Lesson: it's tough to lose when you're appealing to hometown pride. Just make sure it's not written by someone who's only seen your town on Google Maps.

And if all else failed, they really couldn’t go wrong with the life-sized Sofia Vergara cut out available for a photo opportunity.

*Note, I make an exception for Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi which beats both Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi by a mile.

Athena is a Project Director at CMB, she's only just forgiven Pepsico for pulling Crystal Pepsi off the shelves.

While the rest of us breathe a sigh of relief that the fiscal cliff threat is behind us, the MedTech industry is feeling the pain of the new medical device excise tax, a part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  While it remains to be seen whether the promised influx of patients resulting from the ACA will ultimately generate enough revenue to offset the tax, looking at the current state of US healthcare (Click on Figure 1 for Larger Version) it is painfully clear that additional tax revenue alone is not the solution; rising costs must be addressed in a meaningful way. 

Innovation to develop products, services, and systems that are more effective and efficient is critical to solving the healthcare cost problem. While the majority of MedTech organizations historically focused their sales and service efforts on their relationship with physicians, there is an increasingly vocal group, including doctors, patient advocates, and policy makers, who believe the key to healthcare innovation lies in empowering patients. Because patients ultimately make decisions about things like diet, exercise, when to seek treatment, and disease management, they have an enormous influence on the cost and the effectiveness of their own care.  In fact, some believe that 80% or more of healthcare decisions are made by patients, not medical professionals. The idea is that if we can empower people to be more informed and engaged in their care decisions, they will be the driving force behind improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the healthcare system. 

Assuming the care system does evolve in a way that empowers patients, many MedTech organizations will be under increased pressure to incorporate features in their products that impact patient’s behaviors and help them make better lifestyle decisions.  For example, imagine a pacemaker that can provide a patient with information in real time through a smart phone app that will help him become more conscious of decisions about sleep, diet, and exercise.  These types of patient empowering innovations have the potential to dramatically change healthcare in the US (and worldwide).  And MedTech companies have the opportunity to drive this change; however it will require a shift in how they have traditionally learned about their markets.

As MedTech companies race to innovate, they will likely hold internal brainstorming sessions, meet with physician advisory boards, and speak to their sales and customer service groups. The problem with these approaches is that it leaves out the most critical component— the patient, the key to successful innovation.  To generate this intimate knowledge of patients, organizations need a plan—a change from how MedTech organizations traditionally approach innovation.  One that does the following:

1. Identifies what customers ultimately want and need from their healthcare.  Talk to patients living with the disease state; understand their daily struggles, and what would improve their healthfulness.

2. Prioritize what matters most to patients based on the most pressing needs of the patients; organizations should not invest time and money in trying to address each item identified by patients.  Fortunately, all wants and needs were not created equal. Instead, companies should focus on developing solutions that address those needs that are most important to healthcare consumers.  Additionally, there are likely groups of patients that have different priorities, and organizations should consider whether and how they address these different groups.

3. Translates these prioritized wants and needs into solutions.  Armed with a detailed understanding of what matters to healthcare consumers, organizations can apply their expertise to develop elegant solutions that satisfy the most critical unmet needs.

4. Establishes metrics that indicate whether the solutions they have developed are truly empowering healthcare consumers and adding value to the system.

MedTech companies face a future of great uncertainty and opportunity; however it seems clear that in the context of the Affordable Care Act and the evolving nature of today’s care model, patients are going to become increasingly important.  MedTech companies will need healthcare consumer insight programs to uncover the wants and needs of their patients and discover the addressable white space. Their intimate understanding of their patients is enabling them to pull ahead and gain a decided competitive advantage.The winners aren’t going to be those who bring solutions to market first but instead those who can translate deep insight of patients into game changing products and services. 

Andrew runs CMB’s MedTech practice and has spent the better part of the past decade helping some of the most successful MedTech companies make difficult strategic decisions.  In his free time, Andrew enjoys scrubbing into tracheotomies with clients, and running with his dog Moby.

Originally published on Loyalty 360

I love New Year’s Resolutions!  Every December, I enjoy reflecting on what I’ve learned in the last 12 months, and set goals to grow professionally and personally.  On my list again this year, is studying opportunities to drive customer engagement—understanding how companies in the travel and hospitality industries can use new techniques and technologies to drive loyalty and ultimately profits.Every two years, Marketing Science Institute (MSI), a think-tank bridging academic theory and business practice, reaches out to thought leaders to set its priorities for upcoming research and conferences.  MSI’s “Priority Topic” list reflects marketing’s key challenges and opportunities (see the full list here). Topics include: Big Data; insight into people as consumers; rethinking the journey to purchase (and beyond); and mobile’s impact on how people live their lives. 

If you were to improve your organization’s effectiveness in any of these areas, chances are good you will increase your customer’s engagement and loyalty.  My “2013 professional resolution” is to share learnings about each of these Priority Topics.

Today, let’s tackle Big Data:  leveraging the customer and market information available to drive business results.  Although the topic of Big Data is just that— “Big,” the reality is when you break it down into small steps you can begin to drive customer engagement with data you already have on hand.

Big Data: The promise and the pitfalls

As computers and cell phones play an increasingly important role in consumers’ daily activities, mountains of data are collected and stored by travel and hospitality companies.  From customer transactional (e.g., bookings, loyalty program redemptions, web site visits, call center logs) to interactional data (e.g., posts on Facebook) and observational data (e.g., networked sensors in cellphones or cars), the amount of data available for analysis is immense and expanding daily.    

When it comes down to it, Big Data is useful only as we are able to glean useful business intelligence from all this data.  The true value of Big Data (or any data for that matter) is not in the bits and bytes but in using the knowledge gained to help you make better decisions—to reduce the chances of making a bad decision and to help you “sleep better at night.”  Companies can leverage big data in a number of ways including product and service development, process improvements, and revenue management.

Some companies who’ve found success with Big Data engagements (outside of travel and hospitality) include:

• Amazon.com, eBay, and Google continuously test factors—from where to place buttons on a Web page to the sequence of content displayed—to determine what will increase sales and user engagement. 

• Capital One continues to refine its methods for segmenting credit card customers and for tailoring products to individual risk profiles. According to Nigel Morris, one of Capital One’s cofounders, the company’s multifunctional teams of financial analysts, IT specialists, and marketers conduct more than 65,000 tests each year, experimenting with combinations of market segments and new products.

• The online grocer Fresh Direct adjusts prices and promotions daily (or even more frequently) based on data feeds from online transactions, visits by consumers to its website, and customer service interactions. 

The pitfalls: 

Quantum physics might be easier to explain than Big Data and brain surgery might be easier to do!  Not only do you need to conceptualize the plan, structure the data, acquire the software and/or analysis tools but then you need to do the analysis.  This is hard to get your head around! 

Big Data exercises to predict customer behavior have been met with limited success.  Netflix offered a $1 Million prize to the firm that could improve its movie selection algorithm by just 10%.  Three years later, a group managed to create a model using available data however the formula was too complicated for Netflix to implement.   If you haven’t read it yet take a few minutes to check out this HBR post that talks about the challenge of modeling consumer behavior: Big Data Hype (and reality).

Big Data: Baby steps

Here are some practical ideas for you to begin to look to incorporate some ‘Big Data’ activities into your 2013 plans:

• Link financial data to your customer satisfaction.  Understand the monetary value (in the short and long-term) of a satisfied guest to make informed decisions on investments and initiatives. 

• Build bridges between different data sources.  First, use the same categories to code responses in your customer satisfaction study, social media analytics and your call center. Second, ensure a person is tagged with the same identifier in all data sources so you can look at a customer’s responses across the silos of your organization. 

• What? So What? Now what?  Start your quest for decision-support with the end in mind.  Get agreement on the “Essential Question” you are looking to address, and identify the supporting information (from all relevant sources) you need to support your recommendations.  Make sure your recommendations answer the question:  Now what action should I take? 

We see a bright future for travel clients in using Big Data for building engagement and loyalty.  Develop a plan to answer your Essential Questions and, then you will be in a better position to practically analyze the right data from the right data sources – applying a laser-like focus on the problem you are trying to solve. 

How will you use Big Data (or any data for that matter) to drive customer engagement and loyalty in 2013?

Judy is VP of CMB's Travel & Entertainment practice and loves collaborating with clients on driving customer loyalty.  She's the mom of two teens and the wife of an oyster farmer. Follow Judy on Twitter at @Judy_LC

Happiness means something a bit different to each of us. To Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com, happiness means working for a company that you’re excited about, surrounded by people who feel the same way.As a researcher, I read his book Delivering Happiness as a subliminal message to anyone working with customer satisfaction or loyalty data. Reading his book, it’s clear Tony set out to highlight his journey, not to write a comprehensive corporate history or autobiography.  This is the golden rule in report writing as well – pull out the highlights and tell a story around the most important pieces.  

Tony adopted another critical rule of report-writing: write for your audience.  Tony admits his book is not a work of grammatical perfection, but it’s written in a way that makes it easy for everyone to read and enjoy. This separates Delivering Happiness from many of its neighbors in the world of “business books” – its informal tone is easy to digest. Throughout the book, Tony seamlessly juxtaposes comical stories of growing up with Asian-American parents with stories of his ambition, failed attempts, and successes.

Beyond the autobiographical elements of the book, I found the managerial guidance in Delivering Happiness also relates to research. The following principals are important context when writing recommendations, but also when thinking about survey design and analysis interpretation. As an added bonus these “rules” might also serve you well in your personal interactions:

1. Remember that you are an n of 1; other people have opinions, too. When Tony was first approached with the idea of starting an internet shoe website, he was skeptical because he himself had never considered purchasing shoes through a catalog and couldn’t imagine people buying shoes without trying them on. My toes are thankful that Tony realized “it didn’t matter whether I would be willing to buy shoes without trying them on first.”

2. Embrace change with an open mind.
Zappos.com was originally based on drop-ship sales, and had shied away from opening a warehouse with inventory because it was not part of their business model. When they realized they were limited in what they could offer their customers, they thought, “If changing our business model is what’s going to save us, then we need to embrace and drive change.”

3. Listen to employee’s feedback. Customer feedback is great – but it’s important to also hear from your employees. Happy employees are critical to delivering a positive customer experience, and employees working in the thick of daily processes often have valuable insight and ideas around what would enable them to better deliver.

4. Pay attention to word of mouth and the lifetime value of customers. It’s important to think about how your company is interacting with customers at every level – one happy customer with a large network of friends may be more valuable than he first appears. Zappos.com trusts their employees and empowers them to help customers in any way they can – even if that means recommending another site for their purchase.

From a research perspective, mobile technology strikes me as the most obvious application for these principals. As mobile technology changes the way consumers shop and interact, we are presented with new opportunities for listening and observing. As you think about your personal and professional goals for the new year, keep an open mind and hopefully happiness will find you.

Jeannine is a Project Manager working with our Tech, eCommerce, and MedTech practice. She finds happiness learning about new places through reading, travelling, and talking with just about anyone she can find.

What's your plan for delivering happiness in 2013?

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Tech Tuesday… the offers keep rolling in, and this year, I cracked.  Yes, I still love you LL Bean, Lands’ End, Williams Sonoma, and Wal-mart.  But I can’t take your daily barrage anymore; it’s time to purge.Despite my innate skepticism—no matter what you do or say, you can’t get off a mailing list–I forged ahead to try to staunch some of the flow.  I mean, if I am spending even 10 seconds on each of the 100-odd commercial emails I get a day, couldn’t I find a better use of my time, like baking cookies?  Not to mention, I remember reading somewhere about how much energy an email takes to generate, send and store, etc.  So really this was a green effort on my part. 

But I digress.   As I got rolling, I noticed several unsubscribe methods.  And it got me thinking about how they—the marketers, should keep contact with me—the consumer, while not annoying me (yes, me over here with the credit card at the ready!). Because, as I mentioned, I still love those guys for the most part. 

And so here’s how the world of unsubs breaks down in my recent experience:

The Clean Cut and Run: This is the one I wonder about the outcome of most.  While everyone pretty much has to offer the unsubscribe option when they email you, my suspicious side makes me think they are actually validating my email when I click through and unsubscribe.  I am, after all, confirming my existence with a live email address.  Sometimes you hear back that, “yes, you are off the list now,” while at other times it feels like you’re shouting into the void.  The latter situation leaves me with a less than positive feeling.

The Good Bye and Good Luck: This is when they say something like, “Aw shucks!  We’ll miss you.”  And you feel a moment’s regret, but know in your heart of hearts they will be back someday… well maybe.  At least you parted on good terms.

The Really?  Good-bye?: They will let you go, but not without a last ditch effort to ask, “Why?  How could you do this to me?  You’re really are breaking up with me?”  And you might, if not doggedly persistent, find yourself caving and not following through on the unsub.

The But wait, there’s more: Here’s where the real genius starts to kick in (or is it just common sense).  I click the unsubscribe link, get to a page that says something to the effect of:  “OK so how often would you like to get emails from us?  Is once a week too much, how about once every two weeks or once a month? Would you be willing to get a quarterly update?  You don’t want to never get them, right?” And chances are I don’t want to cut them off completely, but I sincerely do want to de-clutter.  So I end up saying, sure, you can keep sending me something once in a great while.  

Then there was one with the option to choose a contact timeframe, and the options were:

Multiple times a day
Once a day
2-3 times a week
Once a week
Never

Umm.  I have to say “never” wins here.  Who is clicking an unsubscribe link only to say, “Yes, please send me emails several times a day?”  Fact is, and this is undoubtedly personality driven, if I am going to shop, chances are I already know what I am looking for and I start from Amazon or the retailer’s page directly, not from an advermail.  They probably have some offer right there on their home page after all.  It’s not as if I truly believe they are only sending me the alert that they have a 10% off + free shipping deal underway… plus there’s always RetailMeNot for a coupon code!

But I think my favorite unsub result may be when you get an email confirming you just said you didn’t want any more emails.  Granted, I really DID need to purge that pizza joint from a trip 2 years ago to DC.  I live in Boston and good as it may be, their pizza won’t be delivered all the way up north. 

So at the risk of dismaying some email marketers with my Scrooge-like email purge, just know I feel fresh and invigorated again now in the anticipation of a clean start to the New Year.  Some of you marketers made me feel listened to and heard.  And I am grateful for it.  Maybe even grateful in a way that reminds me to check you out next time I need a new blender, or a pair of fingerless gloves.

Kate is a Project Director, working with clients across many industries at CMB. She has been known to perform in local musical theater here and there, speaks three languages well and a few others passably, and loves coincidence.

Learn more about why people subscribe to emails (or don't) with our Consumer Pulse: 10 Quick Facts about How and Why Consumers "Like" and Subscribe.