Last month we reached out to all our clients, partners and friends to ask you all the ultimate question – would you recommend us and why or why not?

Why that question? Well, because we – like Fred Reichheld and the crowd at Satmetrix – believe in the power of word of mouth to propel you or hold you back. It was also an opportunity to do what we preach to our clients – listen. Listen to your kind words, your suggestions for what we can do better. Even your comments about how sucky our survey looked visually. (yeah… we agree. Promise to bring it some Brains on Fire flair next year!)

We’ve been tracking our Net Promoter Score for a few years now, but for the first time we thought we’d share the results. Surprised?  The simple truth is we’re proud of our successes. We’re energized by knowing that our work inspires. And we’re not afraid to admit that we have room for improvement.
This year 70% of the people we reached out to told us that they would enthusiastically recommend us to a friend or colleague (9 or 10 on a scale from 0-10). And 9% said that they were either neutral or definitively less than enthusiastic about doing so (0 to 6). Subtract one from the other and you get our Net Promoter Score – 61%.

The first question everybody wants to know is how does that rate with other companies like us?  Great question. No answers here. Though I will admit that we have a Net Promoter crush on USAA, our heroes of customer service, who have a NPS of almost 90%.  And we’re glad that, yet again, our promoters strongly and significantly outnumbered our detractors – unlike many of USAA’s counterparts in the financial industry. What we can say is our score this year is holding steady from last year, and respresents a small but significant improvement from when we first collected our NPS score a few years ago.

The second question everybody wants to know is why do a Net Promoter Score? You guys are small. Can’t you just call your customers?  We can, and we do - talk to our customers regularly that is. But we value self-awareness. And we recognize that it’s sometimes easier for people to give feedback anonymously than in person.

For that reason we’re not going to post anybody’s comments verbatim here. What we do want to do is thank everyone who took the time to give us feedback. From the person who was inspired by our Haka (but told us we were clearly not performers!) to the one who said we went together with their company like “bangers and mash” (you know who you are – and we love you). From the comments that told us we could come across as arrogant to those who cherish our blog for the fact that it’s “not the same old, rehashed, conventional wisdom.” And to the person who said we were a “darn good lookin’ group,” just know that your comment got the heartiest laugh in the room.

Henry Wadsworh Longfellow  once wrote:
“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.”

Thank you for reminding us of the impact of our work and for refueling our passion for changing the world, one movement at a time. We hope to hear from you all again next year – and in between!

Today I don’t feel like talking about marketing. Or customers. Or community. No pithy statements or meaningful insights to offer.

Motivation is a funny thing. Some people can will it to happen. Some people will spend their whole lives waiting for it to strike. Some people find it in a $ figure. Some people are driven by a smile.

When I was in grad school studying the brain, the Director of the center shared an observation with me that made a lasting impression. Parkinsons disease is a breakdown of the voluntary motor system. The result of the degeneration of a teeny tiny group of cells that produce our brain’s entire, precious supply of dopamine. By the time you see symptoms it’s too late to do stop the degeneration. Ask a Parkinsons patient to walk across the room and you’ll see evidence of their impaired ability to will the body to move.

I knew that part. But what I didn’t know that my advisor shared with me that day was that he’d seen movies of Parkinsons patients getting up and dancing smoothly with their wives, as if nothing was wrong. An old piece of beloved music from their youth is played, and the man stands up, takes his wife by the hand and glides her around the room.

In one situation the motivation is voluntary, and must be consciously willed. In the other it’s emotionally triggered, inspired by music and a memory. I will be the first to admit that I’m no expert on Parkinsons - and I do not know the research first hand. But I do believe that motivation comes from different places. And that being emotionally inspired is one of the most powerful motivators you can find. It’s what turns a campaign into a movement. A slogan into a battle cry. It’s what makes an online community bigger than the social media that connects them.

There are many places to find emotional inspiration. But nothing does it for me like stories. Stories of people who are driven by a passion and, who through that passion, overcome the impossible. Rise above their circumstances. Think Dick Hoyt. Susan Boyle. You can let the cynic in you pick them all apart, or you can just enjoy getting swept up in watching a comeback 37-year old Lance Armstrong attack on the steepest part of the climb and leave world-class, much younger riders behind as he bridges the gap to the lead. (as I write this I am eagerly awaiting the Time Trial today!)

For all those brands out there still stuck in marketing funnel think… trying to reach all those non-users, make them aware of you and drive them through the funnel…stop. What’s your story? What do you have to communicate that’s inspiring? Who is at the other end of your funnel, that can tell your story for you? With more passion and fire than could ever come out of your agency or corp comm department?

I said I wasn’t going to talk about Marketing, but in the end I did. Because - and this is the reason why a neuroscientist feels pretty at home in marketing despite never having taken a single business class - marketing is way more than a communications strategy. It’s a motivational strategy. And the most powerful motivators - the ones that will turn your customers into fans - aren’t coupons. Or the ability to be your friend in Facebook (goodness).

So ask yourself where you find inspiration? What makes your day more than a job. And whether ANY of that is visible to your customers.

Time to wrap up our Net Promoter survey for 2009. If we have had the good fortune to work with you or for you recently, and you haven’t had a chance to give us your feedback, we’d love for you to take 3 minutes to tell us whether you’d recommend us and why you would do so enthusiastically, or with pause.

Here’s the link

For those of you who have already taken the survey (Thank you!) or don’t feel that you know us well enough to answer the ultimate question (we’d love to get to know you better), I thought I’d offer some hopefully humorous musing on surveys to go with your cup of morning joe.

Specifically telemarketing surveys.

Remember this clip from Seinfeld (thanks to Spike for reminding me)

That’s pretty good. But I think my husband can top Jerry on this one. I will admit that despite signing up for No call lists at least 5 times, AND having caller ID, I still answer the phone. Which I promptly then hand to my husband just to see what he comes up with off the top of his head. Here are some of my favorites from recent memory.

# 5

Can I please speak to the head of the household?

(in a child’s voice) “Mommy… Mommy….”

(Then he just puts the phone down and walks away until they hang up)

# 4

(in digital voice) I am a computer. Are you a computer?
insert string of random computer-like noises here
Does not compute.
(click)

# 3

I will answer your survey if you first tell me whether you have
A) Been working there for less than 2 months
B) Between 2 and 6 months
C) Between 6 months and a year
D) Over a year
(the guy actually answered his question before he hung up)

#2 (This was actually in response to his alma mater which kept calling for donations)

I would like to donate the amount that it costs to cover calling me long-distance 4x a week for about a whole year. Let’s total it up…

That’s great. How would you like to pay for that?

How about this? Don’t call me anymore.

(silence….click.)

#1

Using the touch-tone pad, please enter the name of the survey company that you work for.
Press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish.

I could keep going…. If you have a good story. Please share!

It’s time for our annual checkup. That time when we take Fred Reichheld’s advice to engage the people we touch to help us grow and continually improve. We are asking you (yes, YOU!) “The Ultimate Question.”

So please take a moment to click on this link and take our very brief, anonymous survey. If you received this link in the email, then you won’t need to take the survey via the blog… it’s all the same survey.

Thanks again to all of you who help keep the fire going. We love you all!

I’ve recently delved into Habit, by Neale Martin. Every once in a while you come across the right book at the right time - a perfect confluence of ideas. Just the right perspective for a problem you’re working on.

It’s probably not a revelation to anybody that there’s a big mismatch between the “why” consumers will give you and what’s really going on in their brain that’s driving a certain decision. Neale does a nice job of introducing one of the culprits - our habits. Those automatic behaviors that we do without even thinking about them. Without understanding our “autographics”, if you will, can we really understand why consumers do things? Or - the marketer’s dream - how to help your brand become habitual?

Two points that Neale lays out that I found particularly important to take away:

1. Our habits often operate independent of intention, and absent of conscious goals. In other words, the habit system and the goal system can be like the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other. Unfortunately, all too often we don’t even know the devil is there. We can easily talk about what we intend to do. But habits lurk in the shadows. Never gone. But always (for many of us) dominant.

2. Habits are also not driven by attitudes. Sometimes they may align. But it’s also true that the best psychographics can still do a terrible job predicting actual behavior. People say they want to eat healthy, but don’t. Say we care about the environment, but buy disposable. Attitudes are conscious expressions of our beliefs. Habits are unconscious behaviors, rooted in the past - often going back a long long time.

These simple realities present particularly big challenges for marketing - not only because they inherently limit what can be learned from the vast majority of market research. But also because they spell out a truth all too often ignored - that information is not enough to change deep seeded behavior. Healthcare compliance is a perfect example - there’s no shortage of information and health education out there. But we still smoke, drink too many soft drinks, and eat carbohydrates like they’re going out of stock.

What fascinates me these days - is thinking about how to effectively recondition habits. If you can’t do it by throwing education at the problem, how do you do it? I also find the idea of changing the goal from developing preference for your brand to making it a habit intriguing. Albeit scary. This is one of those times where I have to say that I hope neuroscience and/or marketing never quite figures it out. While the idea of really making consumers healthier, or greener is inspiring - would marketing really use that knowledge responsibly?

I guess that would mean breaking our own bad habits!