CIM GLR

Paid, Earned and Owned

I remember the days when media planning was relatively simple. Press, outdoor, radio, TV and other Above-The-Line media would dominate any marketing communications plan with a bit of PR thrown in for good measure.

Today’s marketer now has to struggle with a plethora of digital channels as well so it has become much more complex.

But I still think simple is best – which is why I like the Paid, Earned and Owned approach to defining media developed by Forrester Research Inc and others. In a nutshell ‘Paid’ relates to channels you have to pay for – TV, radio, PPC, banner ads – and ‘Earned’ includes advocacy, word-of-mouth, social media and peer reviews, where your customers become your best salespeople (this assumes they like what you are doing).

But what really got me excited the other day was the way Pret A Manger leverage their ‘Owned’ media. In other words the way they utilise the assets they already own to deliver brand and promotional messages.

I have to admit to being a bit of a Pret advocate – I buy into what the brand stands for and I also like their coffee and food for which I am prepared to pay a price premium. So much so that wherever I go I always have one eye on the lookout for a Pret. The week before Christmas last year I drove my wife bonkers over a two day city-break in central London pointing out all the Prets I had eaten in and the ones I had not yet visited.

A couple of weeks ago we were in Windsor and found a nice Pret in the town centre for lunch. Instead of the sort of generic pictures of coffee beans you might find on the walls in other similar establishments Pret display unique and often amusing images of the ingredients they use which cleverly promote their brand values. If you are unfamiliar with Pret this is what the brand promises:

“Pret creates handmade natural food avoiding the obscure chemicals, additives and preservatives common to so much of the ‘prepared’ and ‘fast’ food on the market today”

But it didn’t stop there. Wherever we looked, on the coffee cups, plates, packaging and even on the inside of the cardboard ring wrapped round my baguette we found brand messages being delivered consistently.  The staff were also used as an ‘Owned’ media channel  – not only do they make good eye contact, have a nice smile and deliver efficient service but they also promote the Pret brand on their clothes front and back.

A couple of other good examples of ‘Owned’ media thinking: Metro Bank has a branded van that drives round London delivering stationery to their branches. The same idea is used by a firm of Solicitors in my home town of Ipswich, which has a small fleet of vans in corporate colours displaying the company name and logo. And how many of you have business cards that are blank on the reverse side?

I’m sure you can think of plenty of ways you can use your organisation’s owned physical and online assets as a media channel. Be inventive like Pret A Manger – what have you got to lose?

4:30 pm is the new 5:00 pm

I think I am turning into my father because I find myself getting a bit grumpy too often these days over seemingly trivial little things. Particularly if my experience as a customer falls a bit short of expectations.

Last month I wrote about the outstanding service provided by the staff on the Celebrity Eclipse – a text book example of exceptional Customer Experience Management. If you missed my ramblings you can find the article here.

This month, alas, I am not able to write quite so glowingly about my favourite coffee shop (or to be more precise my ex-favourite). I wouldn’t want to name names but, apparently, there are now more of these coffee shops in the UK than there are McDonalds outlets.

I had been a dedicated customer of their Ipswich Buttermarket outlet for a number of years; I was even one of the early adopters of their loyalty card, so what have they done to make me reject them?

It has always bugged me that they rarely clean the place except for the last half an hour before closing when they erect barricades with tables, chairs and little yellow plastic warning signs to stop customers using areas of the coffee shop they want to clean. This does nothing for the ‘coffee drinking experience’ but three weeks ago this premature customer part-eviction took a new sinister twist.

It was at 4:35pm on a Sunday, when the coffee shop shuts at 5:00pm that I asked for a small cappuccino and a small americano with milk. The barista informed me that the drinks would be served in a paper cup because the place “closes in half an hour”. She wasn’t joking.

I was a bit flabbergasted but composed myself before replying that I did not want my drinks in a paper cup and that I thought it was unreasonable to stop using real cups half an hour before the place shut. Nonetheless she insisted that it had to be a paper cup and that “at least I told you before we made your drinks”.

I was about to walk out when one of the other baristas, sensing that I was not happy, said he would use real cups. Too little too late I’m afraid, and I haven’t been back since.

Actually I don’t blame the staff – no doubt they are only paid to work until 5:00pm on a Sunday so why should they stay behind unpaid after closing time to clean up? Which prompts the question who is responsible for the ‘customer experience’ – is it the marketing department or HR?

According to both Mike Ashton and Anthony Thomson, Chairman of Metro Bank, who spoke at the recent CIM GLR event on Customer Experience Management, it starts at the top and cascades down throughout the entire organisation.

Wouldn’t we all want to receive customer feedback like this (from a very satisfied Metro Bank customer).