Riding
the Wave
Daniel Morel harnesses
new technology to stay in tune with customers
You
could say Daniel Morel has a fondness for technology. On any given workday, the
CEO of Wunderman can be found using four laptops, three TV systems, two headsets,
a Blackberry, a Kindle, a camera, and other gadgets. He has been known to go through
three cell phones in a single year.
But Morel's impressive collection of
electronics, which he enjoys almost as much as a ride on his Harley, is more than
a personal passion or even a tool for increased productivity. It's part of the
culture at Wunderman, a global provider of direct marketing communications for
companies including Ford, Microsoft, and Nokia. Just as Morel is always eager
to try the latest cutting-edge tool in his ongoing search for the next big thing,
so too are the more than 6,100 employees across Wunderman's 120 locations.
"Everyone
knows that I love technology and that I know it is the future of the company,"
Morel points out. "They know I don't have any qualms about their testing new ideas,
making mistakes, and trying again."
The latest big idea at Wunderman, a
division of the WPP Group's network of advertising and marketing companies, is
called the Listening Platform. Tapping into a variety of new-media tools, including
blogs, social networks, and online forums, Wunderman tracks and follows conversations
from consumers and brand leaders to uncover the most popular topics in the virtual
world.
The Listening Platform is a digital extension of Wunderman's roots,
says Morel. In the company's early days, almost 50 years ago, Wunderman tracked
customer conversations for clients by monitoring calls and letters to customer
service departments. "Today, the speed at which conversations happen is much faster,"
Morel notes. "Are we listening at that speed? That is where technology must be
applied — to keep up with the conversation as it happens, and respond to customers."
The
response can be immediate, with near-instantaneous changes to an advertising campaign,
or more long-term, in the form of new-product design. In China, Ford gained some
key insights working with local marketing agencies, finding that beyond gas mileage,
women buying their first vehicle focus on two factors: the ease of adjusting the
driver's seat and color.
"We were able to listen and learn that for these
young women, the first car was an element of their style," Morel says. "They were
engaged in conversations about colors." Information like this allows Ford to adjust
its advertising accordingly and develop products that meet the target market's
needs down the road.
While car talk is big on Chinese blogs, one of the
most prevalent topics online in India is the cell phone — from brands to functionality.
Wunderman deploys an algorithm to collect keywords and uncover trends, a strategy
that helped Wunderman advise clients on new-product development for that region.
Morel,
who joined the company in 2001, encourages his team to constantly be on the lookout
for new technologies. "When I travel to the Wunderman offices, people will come
up to me and stop me in the hall to show me what they've found," he says, "a new
technology, a new way to connect with consumers."
So, what's the next great
communication technology? For now, at least, it's not Twitter, Morel says. The
character restriction on posts and the tendency of users to type whatever they
want limits the social network's value as a marketing communication tool. "Technology
shouldn't be an excuse for sloppy communication, and you see a lot of that," he
notes.
Morel sees much promise in one new gadget he tested — a satellite
phone. He used one recently to send photos and his GPS position to his son as
he drove through Colorado. "There are locations where you can't use a cell phone,"
Morel points out. "Yet there is this tool allowing you to be connected, minute
by minute."
Still, there is one communication experience that Morel says
technology simply can't beat — the enjoyment of flipping through a top-notch magazine,
admiring the photography, and taking as much time as you want without worrying
about draining battery power. "Technology is very sexy," he says. "But it has
not replicated everything."
When it happens, Morel will likely be among
the first to know.
— Ellen Neuborne
Young
at Heart
John Stamos puts on a happy face
for a new production of Bye Bye Birdie
For most actors, being
associated with a terminally unhip sitcom that lives on endlessly in reruns might
be a mixed blessing. But not for John Stamos, who's still most identified with
his role as Uncle Jesse on Full House. Although he's kept busy since the
popular show ended its original eight-year run in 1995, Stamos looks back at the
era fondly.
"Full House went on for a long time, and it's never really
gone away. Many kids still think it's new," he says. "I've finally gotten to the
point where I've done so much after Full House that I'm at a place where
I can be super proud that I was part of it, and happy that it makes people happy
and that it was good, positive television."
Over the past 14 years, Stamos
has starred in other TV series (including the final three seasons of ER),
made appearances in the Broadway productions of Cabaret and Nine,
played regular gigs as a drummer with the Beach Boys, and produced movies (including
a TV adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun). Now he's returned to live theater
with a headlining role in a brand-new revival of Bye Bye Birdie — the first
Broadway production of the musical in nearly 50 years.
Stamos believes the
timing of the revival couldn't be more appropriate. "I mean, it's not Hamlet or
anything," he says in characteristically deadpan style. "But it's exactly what
we need right now, what with all this darkness and heavy stuff that's happening
in the world. To go to the theater and escape for a couple hours is what the world
needs."
Not too long ago, Stamos probably would have played the title character
of Conrad Birdie, an Elvis-like rock star. In fact, he was approached to play
the role for a 1995 TV movie adaptation. In the new Broadway production, Stamos
plays Albert Peterson, Birdie's manager, whose personal and professional life
is unspooling right as Birdie is about to join the Army. It's a role that has
been played by actors ranging from Dick Van Dyke to Jason Alexander, and it requires
Stamos to sing old-timey numbers like "Put On a Happy Face."
"Oddly enough,
Albert is a lot closer to me than the Conrad/Elvis type that people think I'm
more like," Stamos admits. "I'm more neurotic and quirky and complicated and confused
with women than people would think. And that's kind of Albert's track."
You'd
never know it given Stamos' on-screen persona. Whether playing a streetwise kid,
a doctor, a musician, or a criminal, he has always been cast as a heartthrob.
And with his affable personality and good looks, at age 46 he remains a charmer.
Stamos now calls himself a "happy bachelor" (his marriage to model Rebecca Romijn
ended in 2005), and he says he's grown up a bit since those Full House
days.
Not entirely, though. Playing with the Beach Boys every summer "keeps
me young," he says. He still enjoys nights out with the guys, especially good
friends like Full House costar Bob Saget and comedian Don Rickles. And
believe it or not, he's even been in talks about producing a Full House
movie.
"I've had a good life," Stamos says. "It's been a slow, steady climb
for me, which has been great. I've never been the biggest star on the planet and
I've never dropped too low, and that's been nice."
— Martin Lieberman
Continental is the official airline of Live Broadway and the League of American
Theatres and Producers.
Mind
of the Buyer
What do your customers want?
Michelle Helin has words of advice: ask them
Despite the economic downturn,
one basic fact of business hasn't changed: the need to devote resources to marketing.
But time and again, marketers forget a tenet of Business 101: asking buyers what
they want. Michelle Helin, a former airline executive who owns a Houston-based
market research firm, believes organizations that rely on traditional methods
to determine buyer behavior are swimming upstream. To be successful, she says,
marketers must look past the obvious and find the deeply held beliefs that move
buyers.
"Marketers decide the answer, and then they're surprised when their
products or services don't sell as well as expected," says Helin, who has helped
numerous Fortune 500 companies improve their marketing. She recently co-authored,
with Linda Goodman, the book Why Customers Really Buy: Uncovering the Emotional
Triggers That Drive Sales.
Although buyers will tell you what they want,
Helin says their initial thoughts are preferences or opinions, and don't represent
authentic feelings, beliefs, or values. For their book, Helin and Goodman conducted
in-depth in-person interviews to collect insights into buying behavior that couldn't
be gleaned from a focus group or questionnaire. They were surprised to learn how
few people actually understood what drives their purchasing behavior.
When
interviewing a client's customers, or the ones that got away, Helin and Goodman
use open-ended questions to find a specific event — the emotional trigger — that
makes them take action or choose one path over another. The process takes time,
Helin acknowledges, but when clients hear the results, adjust their strategy,
and see their sales rise, they become believers.
The emotions associated with
impulse buying not only play a part in selling to consumers, but are also crucial
in the business-to-business sales process. "What makes emotional trigger research
so powerful is that it's so simple," Helin says.
One business Helin worked
with was a Houston data storage company that pitched a lot of business in the
weeks following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but failed to close many sales. When
Helin spoke with some of the companies that business had contacted, she learned
that on sales calls, the data firm's technical expert dealt exclusively with his
counterpart at the prospect company, effectively pushing sales and purchasing
aside. In fact, the tech guru even wrote the proposals. After hearing Helin's
report, the data storage CEO had a pointed conversation with the salesperson and
the firm started winning projects.
The bottom line, according to Helin: "Don't
pull back on your interactions with customers just because we're going through
difficult times. It's important to be proactive now more than ever, and savvy
companies understand that."
— Pat Olsen
For more information on
Why Customers Really Buy: Uncovering the Emotional Triggers That Drive Sales
(Career Press, January 2009), visit emotionaltriggerresearch.com or e-mail the
authors at query@emotionaltriggerresearch.com.
Photographs: Jeffrey Salter (Morel); Brie Childers (Stamos); Ricardo Merendoni
(Helin)
