Subscribe
Masters of Customer Experience
Author: Bill Cusick
April 14, 2009
Through serendipity and a great friend of mine, I lucked into a chance to attend the first two practice rounds of the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia last week. If you’re a golfer, I don’t have to tell you that that is an opportunity you don’t check your calendar for; you just go. If you’re not a golfer, well, congratulations.
The Masters is a special tournament, and Augusta National is a special place. You get that sense of history and tradition on television, but to go there is to truly feel the “experience” in the best sense of the word.
There are no corporate logos at the Masters, no sponsor signs on the course, no corporate tents, no ads in the course guidebook you’re handed (for free) on your way in. If you’re hungry, you can buy an egg salad sandwich for $1.50, a Coke for a buck. It’s like, as you step on the course, you’ve walked back in time about 25 years.
The course itself is immaculate, with thousands of blooming azaleas, dogwoods, 150 year-old elms, and Magnolias everywhere on the course and around the low-key plantation-style clubhouse.
Given the prestige and the rich tradition of the tournament, they have no trouble selling tickets, which they cap for both practice rounds and the tournament. There’s a lottery to grab the practice round passes, and they closed the waiting list for actual tournament passes in 2000 (9 years ago!), and still haven’t needed to open it back up.
So it makes me wonder. As we talk about customer experience, and what companies should focus on to create a memorable, positive one, what can we learn from Augusta National and the Masters. I think it’s two things.
First: Commit. At Augusta, they are committed to providing both players and spectators with the very best, traditional golf tournament in the country. To do that, they say no to quick money from additional sponsors, they leave money on the table by not increasing passes to an exorbitant amount, and they keep the number of spectators to a manageable number (again, bypassing more quick money) so everyone can move around and see their favorite players on the most famous holes. At the same time, they spare no expense in preparing and maintaining an immaculate course, tweaking it each year to make it challenging for the players, but retaining all the memorable aspects of individual holes, creating a sense of nostalgia.
Second: It All Matters. At Augusta, when you buy a sandwich, it’s wrapped in green plastic. The reason is so that, should you commit the cardinal sin of dropping it on the hallowed ground, it won’t be a distraction to the players or patrons, as it will blend into the background. That’s just one of the countless details that the members of Augusta National take into account to assure that each year, the tournament experience delivered is top shelf. They understand that the experience is made up of everything. It’s not just which players are entered, or the tee setups, or the traffic patterns to enter the course. It’s those things certainly, but it’s everything else as well.
As you think about your customer experience, do you understand what your company is really trying to accomplish? Are you willing to commit to the vision of your customer experience? And then, do you take into account all aspects of the experience, and how each might impact the customer’s perception of the experience?
If not, you have some work to do.
Follow Bill on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bill1vox
The Ingredients for a Compelling Customer Experience: Cold, Wind, Snow and Bad Seats
Author: Bill Cusick
December 3, 2008
Hockey is not the most popular sport in Chicago, and one would think sitting outside in the middle of winter would not be the way most people would want to watch a game, if they cared at all.
But the hottest sports ticket this year in the Windy City is turning out to be the Winter Classic. It’s a game being played between our own Blackhawks and the Detroit Red Wings on New Year’s Day, at Wrigley Field. Yeah, that Wrigley Field, where the Cubs play. Seats are going for $2,000 and more for the privilege of sitting in the frigid stadium, with limited views of the action. Last year, the Buffalo Sabres played the Pittsburgh Penguins at Buffalo’s football stadium in front of over 70,000 rabid fans.
Seems crazy, unless you’re a hockey fan. There’s something incredibly novel and exciting about watching the world’s best contend with the elements and the imperfections, especially for those of us who grew up playing on outdoor rinks and ponds.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere for companies: it’s not just the features and benefits; it’s the emotional connections you can create that will draw in and keep customers.
Oh, and if anyone has a line on a couple of seats at Wrigley on New Years, give me a call!
Brand Stormtroopers
Author: Aaron Huston
June 22, 2006
The World Cup is in the news and so are the “Brand Fascists”. FIFA, the international organization overseeing the world cup, is aggressively protecting its sponsor’s brands. So aggressive are they that over a thousand members of the Dutch contingent watched one of their latest matches in their underwear because of a non-sponsor beer logo on their lederhosen.
No joke! A Dutch beer, Bavaria, produced these patriotic orange shorts in a marketing push in the run up to the world cup. On June 16th, as Dutch fans lined up for the Ivory Coast match, FIFA ordered ticket holders in the queue to throw their shorts away before entering the stadium.
I really wonder if Anheuser-Busch’s Budweiser marketing team (Bud being the official beer sponsor) was closely in the loop on the FIFA decision. If they were, then that’s a really bad call on their part. If not, they should be complaining as loudly as the fans to try to set things right.
If you’re not providing the event free to the public, sponsorship should only mean prominent name placement, not a ban on competing messages. The repercussions of being perceived to be “brand fascists” must far outweigh any effort to stop brand dilution. The thing to remember is that brand expressions by the attendees wearing/carrying/consuming competing products are usually an indication of personal preference, and not a systematic attack by another brand.
When you start tangling with restricting attendee preference expressions, you’re in essence trying to dictate personal behavior - which wasn’t the core reason you sponsored the event in the first place. Even if another brand has been smart enough to piggy-back their message on something that an attendee might wear, the downside of negative customer experience isn’t worth it.
So, be a “brand fascist”, and be remembered sharply negatively as such by the people both directly and indirectly touched by your policies. That’s in sharp contrast to the soft, positive message you were trying to achieve by the sponsorship.
