Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

On Ocean Drive Miami, a Unique Customer Complaints Processing System…

Yesterday before heading back to CT, my wife and I headed down to Ocean Drive for an early dinner. But first wanted to stop by the Levi’s Store.

I had heard about their 1-to-1/Permission Based Marketing in both Peppers and Rogers writing as well as in Seth Godins’ book. Specifically the customer measured jeans that you can then reorder online for the rest of your life. Sounded cool. But when I got to the store and asked about it the staff said, “oh, we don’t have that machine anymore, but let us know if you need anything else”. Apparently the idea didn’t work out as well as Seth Godin though it would.

Walking by the beach before dinner youth marketing was everywhere. Crocs and Cuervo sponsored the Volley Ball Tournament on the beach.

Sex sells, and the Miami Heat Dancers were on site dancing and taking turns playing volleyball with spectators.

Event marketing can be a useful component in the marketing mix when targeting Gen Y 18-24 year olds. However this group is swamped with promotions. Someone from Chevy with a digital tablet tried to get us to sign up for a sweepstakes to win a Chevy. We would also get a sun visor with “Chevy” on it. Many seemed to refuse. Promotions do work when targeting Gen Y, but make them easy to enter and/or make the chances of winning seem higher. For instance, it is unlikely that many will believe their chance to win an automobile by joining a sweeps will be great. However if the sweeps prize were say 1 of 100 Ipods, then you would have many more signing up. We’ve also found visualization works, so for instance if the prize is an easy chair, a small fridge and an Xbox, then it’s easy to picture how this would fit into your dorm or apartment life.

This demographic is flooded with freebies, so the visor was probably not an attractive offer either, especially since many are wearing baseball caps with emblems they care more about.

Where does Chevy fit in then you ask? Well Chevy were offering the Ipods instead, they would be associated with a very cool brand (Apple) and cool product (Ipod), and would then collect more emails so they could continue to create a relationship with these youth. Think sending them free music downloads to start… (permission based marketing strategy).

Anyway, what I found more interesting than the youth marketing going on at the beach was the marketing going on across the street at the Ocean Drive restaurants. They were apparently using a new kind of marketing strategy I hadn’t heard of before “Arrest your Customers“.

Below is the Unique Ocean Drive Miami CRM Model:

Let me explain. When my wife and I ate our early dinner I asked the waiter about an interesting looking seafood dish I saw four guys eating a few tables down. He said “oh, that’s $270″. Noticing I didn’t seem interested anymore he said, “but that’s for four people you like seafood, I can make you a special deal, same thing but for only 2 people, not four, and only $90, $45 for each of you”. My wife and I picked something off the menu that had prices clearly marked.

After dinner we were walking down the drive when we got to another popular restaurant and found ourselves in a mêlée of sorts. Four Police Cars and 8 policemen quickly showed up after being called by the restaurants management. Restaurant staff & security were arguing with several of their customers. A respectable looking middle aged man was the first to be arrested. This caused uproar among other customers. Apparently, many were upset at the 1-to-1 marketing strategy used at the restaurant when they discovered the people next to them were paying very different prices for the same dishes. I spoke to several of the patrons standing by trying to talk some sense into the police. It seems the restaurant was definitely at fault.

Perhaps when you deal mainly with tourists you can use this type of “Arrest your Customers Strategy”. Most won’t notice or know what’s happening to them, and if they do you have them arrested and carted off. Gratuity in most places in Miami is added on automatically even if you are only a party of one, so you the customer don’t even have any power there. On one of restaurant bills they even added on a $1 donation to Mount Sinai Hospital without asking us first.

Interesting way of doing business. As if getting tourists to put up with all the hassle at US Airports wasn’t bad enough…

- Tom

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