...How you met or how you broke up?

My bet would be on the break up. The way you cried (or laughed).  What you said. And the way the relationship dissolved. How you met probably  never forms  the larger part of your memory or conversation.

Last impressions count but if you are a marketer chances are you don’t think much about it. After all  we’ve heard enough times that we never get a second chance to make a first impression.

So what do we do?

We focus on the packaging, on the way our marketing collateral looks; we put all our efforts into the entrance but hardly any resources to the exit. Our logic and training says that it’s the first blush that will capture the attention of the masses  but after that what’s next?

I think plenty.

Recently my firm did some work for CARDI. Our first date was perfect. There was great chemistry. They had a need and we could deliver. We handled the media relations at two of their  conferences and we worked really hard to deliver on things that were never part of our original agreement. I think that’s  important,  to give more than necessary to anticipate needs and over deliver. 

But then came the after service call and an expressed dissatisfaction with  our photographer. 

This could have been our last interaction. And no matter how good our beginning what the principals would have remembered was that the hiccough with the photography. 

Of course we worked to correct the impression. And while it was the client who forgot an aspect of our agreement which led to  their over heightened expectation,  we worked hard to make our  last impression with them  count. We apologised, sent a card , offered a discount.

 The last interaction, in my experience, is responsible for virtually all of the word of mouth you're going to get, positive or negative.

A thank you card for the referral. The chocolates left at the counter, the call that says how much you appreciate the business week after the job is completed.  It all matters.

This morning, I stumbled across these words from marketing expert, Seth Godin, reading it, I felt as if I had a double shot of expresso. I suppose there is nothing better than hope. 

Here's Seth...

"Fear mongering is a lousy profession, one that ought to be regulated, if not banned. I'm more in favor of hope mongering. 2010 is the year that the world will change. In fact, every year is that year, but this is the only time we'll get to change the world this time." 

Our brilliant media planner, Waheeda Majid Aziz, and I have two different approaches to winning attention.

Waheeda is right when she says that  success in advertising is without a doubt, frequency. Repeat your message all the time, buy enough ads via the obvious channels, state your message over and over again and you’ll probably get the desired outcomes you’re seeking.

There is one caveat.

The Net.

If you repeat your message over and over again. People get weary. They tune out. They click on the next interesting thing. In the online world, smart people are bored with frequency and they won’t sit still for repetitive messages. 

There’s is another strategy to try. Win the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to the folks who want to get them. Seth Goodin calls it Permission Marketing.  

Of course it requires that you think differently. If the same messages time after time bores, the challenge really is to do something that embraces the audience. Give them  what they want: interesting, new content, instead of what you need (frequency). Even better, get their consent to receive this content and if interesting enough, they’ll  spread it across their own networks. You can’t pay for that kind of authencity. 

I know it’s a new way to think. It’s not that Waheeda is wrong and I am right, or vice-versa. But I do think that there are now different approaches to getting  your products/ services  to move off the shelves  and we’ve got to open our marketing strategies to them. 

The pink hand-written envelope had my name  on it and the  official stamp of the  North Western Veterinary clinic. 

“ Why would the vet be writing me?” I wondered as I opened the envelope.  Then I figured it was probably a second receipt for services rendered 2 weeks before, when my husband and I found our doe-eyed pompek, Luigi, lying still and prostrate in our driveway and rushed  him to the clinic.

I was wrong about the contents of the envelope. It contained a card. 

“ Please accept my condolences on the death of Luigi,” it read.  “You must miss him very much. God Bless.”

It was signed by  the same veterinarian who I had called frantically at 10 p.m.  asking if the St James based clinic  was opened. It was the same vet  who left her home immediately on getting my call and  who administered shots, IV and urgent medical attention. 

She understood too that my dog was an  integral part of our family and  was loved and cared for as all family pets should be. But she was also realistic. When she told me that Luigi may not make it she understood  when I declared that if that was the case  then he should pass in his familiar environment surrounded by love.  It was she  who tucked Luigi into the back seat of the car next to me with with needles  and  IV drips.

As I read the card, I thought, 'Wow!' 

Service should never be impersonal and faceless. It should matter, even if the end result as in my and Luigi’s case was not favourable. 

People will pay for personalised and meaningful interaction. They  pay for a feel good experience. They will pay for  sympathetic words   on an unexpected, pink hand-written envelope with words that mean, “I care."  

 They will pay for 'Wow'. 

5 months ago I tanked Mango Media Caribbean's  bi-monthly email newsletter. 

Sure, it was a well produced piece of collateral. The problem was there was no conversation, no feedback, no viral sharing, no Web 2.0 buzz.

About the same time that I flushed our newsletter down the tube I began noticing  the way people communicated with each other was changing.  

The Net Generation used email less and less and facebook-ed each other more.  My friends were putting videos on youtube and  sharing photos on flickr and bookmarking cool stuff they liked on delicious. Mango Media Caribean’s blog,  which was first  published 9 months ago, got 1,000 unique hits during its debut month (today we have over 22,000 unique visitors and a 3.9 comment  rate per entry).  Without being in constant touch I was suddenly and  inextricably involved in the lives of folks who I cared about and people were interested in what I had to say.

Then along came Twitter, a microblogging network which is set to make emailing a thing of the past.    

What does this all have to do with our newsletter? A better question may be what does this all have to do with marketing?

All these tools are changing the way we communicate and market and brand.  If you are in PR, advertising or marketing know that you won't get much results if you continue to push your  information to people who don’t care and who would more readily get their  news and information  from the people that they know or to whose network they  belong.

You’ve got  draw people in,  befriend them on the social networks, sign up for  RSS feeds  follow them on Twitter in other words, you must offer value and merit, and build trust and relationships. Our newsletter has evolved into a more interactive product and we can measure the way conversations are spread.

 It's the new way to market and it's not going away anytime soon.

I think its two things....your expectation times the persuasive power of that expectation. It’s that simple. 

It's like we were waiting with bated breath. And so the moment that Michelle Obama appeared on ccn.com/live in her yellow Isabel Toledo sheath and coat, my friends and I started hurriedly facebooking each other. "She looks gorgeous," I wrote "Yes," my friend typed in. On no!" another wrote, "Her dress looks like my Christmas curtain." And so we went, until another friend, John, signed in with a terse comment as cold as ice water " People, please!!" he wrote I knew it was a cautionary post. A poke to tell us that we were missing the main point, that this was about a bigger issue, about the first African American President appearing on the White House steps, an important historical moment and there we were blogging about fashion. My friend could not be more wrong, He was already speaking to the converted. But I also knew that before President Obama opened his mouth to say a word, the world would judge the moment he appeared, how he looked (confident or not) and what Michelle, his wife, wore. Clothes and fashion are an important part of the Obama appeal and you can bet the First Lady's staff put as much thought into her coming out wardrobe as Jon Favreau placed on the words coming from the President's mouth. The consequences of her choice were immediate. American designers roared with approval. "Her choice," they raved, " showed she both her enviable confidence and her bold approach to fashion." And J Crew''s stocks rose by ten cents (her J. Crew green leather-gloved hands clasping her husband's were everywhere). The world was endeared.  

First impressions affect everything and everyone. Studies show that job interviews are basically decided within the first few moments of an encounter and research indicates that we determine whether we feel someone is trustworthy in just 1/10 of a second. That is pretty powerful. And so was Michelle in her yellow Toledo dress.

Great conversations happen in the most unexpected of spaces. Take on the eve of the New Year, I was trying on the dress I'd ring in 2009 with and as its designer, Claudia Pegus, tugs  on  the elaborate skirt she says; " You know what's going get us through this recession? Productivity." 

Productivity she reasons equates with profit.

 She's right. Working harder. Delivering more. Measuring output and aligning it to the  outcome will matter more than ever.

The problem is that as marketers we've become too complacent. Buoyed  as we were by a thriving economy there was a decided  arrogance in the way we worked, served and communicated the value of our products and services. We forgot that after the boom comes the blast.

Still all it means is that we will have to get more creative. More relevant.  The market will benefit too because  we will be forced  to design better products that are easier to use. We'll have write our material in a way that our audience hears, price in a way that moves our products and services  and present in a manner that our audience  hears. 

I predict that we will be forced to count less on big budget  advertising, employ more cheap media, rely more on great talent (lucky you if you have it),  and build and  leverage skills of our  teams. 

The biggest enemy of profit is indifference. Productivity is simply belief in action. 

Cap: Model, Kim See Tai displays one of Claudia Pegus creations at her 'Breeze' Collection launch 2008

I swear most marketers have no clue whatsoever what to do. So we do unoriginal  things, or stall, or fail to deliver on our brand's promise.

Take this weekend for instance, master designer Claudia Pegus launched her resort collection," Breeze" at the picturesque Crews Inn. Her line was stunning, what was in the goodie bag was not.

I imagine that the designer's team  asked the show's   sponsors and corporate partners for stuff that  could be placed into  the bag and guess what they all did? Each (with the exception of one)  gave the exact same thing: flyers, brochures, newsletter, all good stuff, sure, but nothing bold or remarkable.

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Marketers need to make decisions based on what is relevant to customers.  

You need to ask: 'who are your best customers?' When are they buying?' 'What messages will you send, and what format is the most appealing  way to do that?'

When you do this and when customers receive 100 emails, yours is the one that they read.

Because every time they do they'll know that the content of the message is timely and anticipates their needs.