Standing alone in the waiting room of a 24-hour animal hospital, with a half-cup of untouched coffee, and the tinny echo of Ron Popeil as he hocked knives from the plasma screen, I began to consider a lot of things. And, without trying to sound crass or macabre about it, the experience surrounding this decision highlighted some important lessons for businesses and marketers to understand when trying to connect with customers.

1. Everyone has a back-story.
For nearly six months, Paco had suffered with a mysterious condition. Thousands of dollars and countless consultations, second opinions and research only brought us more questions instead of answers.

What we did know was that this mutt — the vivacious puppy we adopted after the original owners couldn’t afford his Parvo treatment and abandoned him at the clinic more than 13 years ago — couldn’t stop panting. Twenty-four hours a day, he sounded as if he had just run a marathon. Even in his sleep, he was breathing and snoring so heavily he couldn’t have possibly been resting.

A veterinarian was the one who gave Paco a second chance, by paying for his original Parvo treatment and finding a home for him with our family. Our current veterinarian was very thorough but simply could not pinpoint the root of the problem. A variety of confounding symptoms, but no clear-cut disease. We thought it might be a thyroid issue. Or even Cushing’s disease.

We even took Paco and his 3-inch-thick file to an internal medicine specialist. Same problem. No real answers.

After a succession of seizures at 3:00 last Tuesday morning and the resulting complete loss of bodily control, we called our regular veterinarian and the answering service told us to go to Metro West Emergency Veterinary Clinic — their partner for this kind of situation.

I drove down the empty Interstate with him in the passenger seat and conferred with the doctor on staff when I arrived. There really wasn’t much we could do at this point. My wife and I had to make the excruciatingly difficult choice to end his suffering. To bring him peace.

I was there for his last breath. His final pant as it were.

Thanks for indulging me. I needed to get all this off my chest. Now, on to business.

The Metro West clinic staff was terrific and empathetic. Their synchronized grace helped me through a very challenging time. And I believe that fluidity stemmed from the fact that they intuitively understood I had a slide show of memories flying through my head in that moment. A back-story that meant a lot to me and my young family.

While you may not be selling an experience with the same emotional depth attached to it, your customers are bringing some form of bias with them. They are subconsciously comparing your interaction to their collective experiences on this planet.

And it’s not just service businesses who should understand the power of the back-story. The relationships we have with products or even appliances are just as dependent on the place our customers are at the moment of truth.

How well can you empathize with what your customers are going through and authentically connect to this web of context? How can you improve this?

2. Details matter.
From ensuring that my paperwork was complete prior to conducting the procedure (so I could leave without delay), to giving me a personalized remembrance of our dog (his final paw print in clay), this clinic considered every last detail. And, every detail was finely tuned to the situation.

The back-story and the transaction should greatly impact the tone and manner in which you speak to customers. The founder of a very successful car dealership in this region, Carl Sewell, built a thriving brand and lifelong customers by paying excruciating attention to detail.

Are you and your team situationally aware? What tools do you use to fine-tune the details of your processes?

3. The emotional can turn physical.
By receiving Paco’s paw print in clay, I watched the intense, yet intangible emotion over losing a loved family member transform into a physical artifact on which my wife, kids and I can project our fond memories.

That the emotional can become tangible is nothing new. It’s happened since the first painter picked up the first brush. However, the way we use that metamorphosis to develop deeper relationships with our customers can be powerful, profound and profitable.

Apple took the feelings we have with our music and created a physical connection through the design of the iPod. The Lance Armstrong Foundation wrapped pride and strength around our wrists in yellow silicone.

Where are you able to bring the emotions your customers have into the physical realm?

These are just a few
The process of losing a pet helped me gain some perspective. I hope you will forgive my sharing this story, but it seemed to contain a lot of important reminders for me about the way we connect companies to people.

Have I missed the boat here? Are you offended? Are there other lessons you would extract from this situation?

How important is it for our society to have happy endings?

What about stories with denouments which reflect the tenor of the times? Is it crucial that the sentiment matches the cultural contentedness barometer?

I read an article recently from the BBC Magazine that gave a nice overview of the ups and downs of endings.

We may think of Greek drama in terms of the unrelenting tragedy of Oedipus Rex or Medea. But even the Greeks expected a happy ending, says Alan Sommerstein, professor of Greek at Nottingham University.

“Greek tragic productions came in sets of four – the fourth was always a roaring farce. And not all tragedies had what we might call tragic endings.”

…

And there was a belief that a tragedy could actually make people happier.

“Aristotle argues that tragic drama gives pleasure, arousing the emotions. I would think myself of Shakespeare’s time which was pretty grim, with the plague liable to break out.”

I don’t pretend to have any answers as to whether or not a happy ending makes us sad or a sad one happy. What I do wonder is how this relates to marketing stories.

We bring people together with our products and services, often by way of a story. Is it important in this story to achieve the “right” ending, or is it more important to achieve an ending that elicits an emotional response? An opportunity to forge a deeper, more meaningful connection?

And, how does this level of emotional resonance change the way we start the story? How we imbue the characters with texture? How we set the stage?

Does a relationship based on emotion — either happy or sad — contain more value than one based on an outcome?

If you have thoughts, I’d like to hear them.

I’ve had one of those weeks where I’m just now getting out of the daily grind to the other things that interest me.

This post from Servant of Chaos is at the top of my list. It’s fascinating to consider.

In it, Gavin makes a clear case for paying attention to something that, for many of us, is our moneymaker — our voice. How it sounds, how it works to bring power to our messages. He cites a post from Tim Noonan where the seven strategies for vocal brilliance are enumerated:

In his excellent Your Voice PDF, he outlines the seven strategies you can use to achieve vocal brilliance:

1. Record Every Speech You Give
2. Review With Eyes Closed!
3. Build Trust and Understanding through Sincere Delivery
4. Speak WITH, not TO, the Audience
5. Warm Up Your Voice
6. Smile as you Speak!
7. Play your Instrument and Express your Passion!

These are not mere words or suggestions – as a blind man, Tim is acutely aware of the power of your voice – and has been known to do “readings” where he is able to tell a lot about your personality simply by asking a few questions and listening to the response.

Recently I’ve been thinking about all of the senses and their importance in persuasion. Understanding how each plays into a pitch (or a sermon, or a political campaign) can have quite an impact on the ultimate outcome. I think Jon Steel’s book “Perfect Pitch” initially reiterated this multi-sensory point to me.

Isolating the use of sound (through the way you use your voice), touch (paper used for the leave-behind materials), smell and so on, only serves to enhance the audience’s experience and the power of the story you are telling.

Next time you prepare to make the big pitch, think about this.

Also, consider planning this presentation under the assumption that one member of your audience will be blind, another deaf, one unable to smell and another has no mouth or limbs (just because I don’t have the vocabulary or patience to finish out the example).

Does this change how you prepare to make your case?

What’s full of holes and still floats on water?

Evidently copper with uneven surfaces and treated with a hydrophobic chemicals. That’s what.

According to a BBC News article today, researchers in China have found a way to get postage-stamp sized pieces of copper to float more successfully than any other known material.

The team treated the copper in two stages. First, they deposited very tiny structures on its surface, essentially giving the metal a rough and uneven coating.

The second stage was to dip it into a “hydrophobic”, or water-repelling, chemical.

The result is a metal with a “superhydrophobic” surface, and a boat that floats despite being covered in holes.

“Water won’t penetrate the pores in the bottom of the boats, even when they are carrying a load,” said Dr Qinmin Pan, the chemist from Harbin Institute of Technology who led the research.

Superhydrophobic materials already have many hi-tech applications.

They are particularly useful in “microfluidic devices” where the flow of miniscule amounts of liquid have to be controlled. In these devices, water can be used to carry information on a chip.

But according to Dr Pan, this is the first time they have been used to make boats.

“We believe these boats are some of the strongest ever built – in terms of the mass they can carry,” said Dr Pan.

The scientists cited inspiration from the hydrophobic properties of lotus leaves and shark skin. There is so much around us that is inspiring. How long has it been since you looked into the microscopic level of things to find answers? What impact will this have on product design? How can we use this to serve a customer better?

We have clients who don’t listen to our brilliance. The more fortunate few can’t get a photo to align like we want because of our limited HTML skills. We also get the pleasure of dealing with auto DMs on Twitter and live in places where it’s snowing another foot in town (or hit another record high for February). Wow. Can you believe the gift we’ve been given? (for those of you who don’t know me well yet, the sarcasm filter is about to rupture)

Something hit me today to put things into perspective.

In between a back-to-back meeting Friday and family obligations Saturday and Sunday, I have been thinking about any number of compelling subjects to cover. Lots of rumination on the subject of balance. There’s a post that Gavin wrote which struck a chord and I want to comment on. There’s even some amazing neurological research coming out that I’d like to consider.

As I sat down to start fleshing out some of these topics this evening, I stopped to read an article in our local newspaper (the Fort Worth Star-Telegram), which altered the way I’m seeing things.

Now, I want to talk about soccer (football) and homelessness instead.

Oh I’ll get back to heady account planner/marketer-type issues, but that will have to wait for another day.

The article I read was written by David Casstevens. It chronicled the work of two people in town who are dedicated to giving homeless men a connection to a street soccer team. It’s a local iteration of a national organization called Street Soccer USA, founded by Lawrence Cann. This particular group plays and trains regularly and even competes in with some of the 16 other homeless teams throughout the country.

Before the homeless men are allowed to compete — they will play an area team Saturday at the practice field one block west of the Presbyterian Night Shelter — each must open a savings account and deposit an agreed-upon sum every month. Gray and Wilson also request that they volunteer at the shelter. In the future, players will be asked to share their stories at churches, schools and civic-group meetings…

…They loaded into two vehicles and headed south. A member of Robbins’ church donated $200 to cover expenses for the daylong adventure. In Austin, they ate hamburgers for lunch and then went on a field trip.

“Do you want to put on your jerseys?” Gray asked.

Everyone did. Dressed in matching red and white, the players posed for a group photo and walked wide-eyed around the University of Texas. Most had never set foot on a college campus.

At that moment, this loose bunch of homeless men felt like — and became — a team, the North Texas Stars.

In street soccer, four players on each side compete on a hard surface about the size of a basketball court. The Stars played three games in a church gymnasium against what, for now, is the only other homeless team in Texas. The Stars won all three.

“Some guys were about to pass out,” Robbins recalled, smiling at their competitiveness and effort. “They played like this was for the World Cup.”

Perhaps I should pause here and open up my personal vault for a moment. I have played soccer for more than 30 years. It is part of who I am and aside from my wonderful family, the sport brings me some of the few moments of sheer joy in my days on this planet. For several years now, I have wondered how I could take this passion for the sport and use it to help others. Looks like Lawrence Cann, Karla Gray and Warren Wilson have opened up an avenue for just that.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Our industry’s work creates some profound and meaningful connections. And, I can honestly say that since I’ve started focusing exclusively on planning for my little company and thinking about the evolving world of business, I have had a genuine professional re-awakening. I am energized by what is happening and by what so many awe-inspiring marketing thinkers are doing.

However, this is an example of something so visceral, so raw that it struck a nerve. One person reaching out to another. A beneficent relationship at its most basic and pure. Help. Humanity. Hope.

It’s probably bordering on the cliche, but the issues that seem gargantuan to all of us are likely the envy of those without. And I guess sometimes it takes more closely understanding the plight of others to realize this.

I’m sure there is a lesson in here for marketers, but that seems wrong to even consider. I’d rather just reflect on the goodness of what Gray and Wilson are doing rather than soil it with talk of profit and loss. So, instead, I’m going to send my email of thanks to the reporter and start the process of connecting with these valiant missionaries to offer my assistance.

If any of you want to know what happens next, tell me. If there is enough interest to warrant it, I’ll post periodic updates.

In men, images they consider to be beautiful appear to activate brain regions responsible for locating objects in absolute terms — x- and y-coordinates on a grid. Images considered beautiful by women do the same, but they also activate regions associated with relative location: above and behind, over and under. The difference could be the result of evolutionary pressures on our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

With something as ethereal as beauty being linked to specific, gender-based neurological pathways, can we begin to consider the same processes valid for other subjective judgements? Are the same neurons firing as customers interact with and adopt our brands? How should marketers and planners account for these variables of perspective and behavior?

While laid up in bed this weekend (and with the blushing bride and young-uns out of the house), I watched Barton Fink for the first time in many years.

In fact, it had been long enough since I’d seen this movie that I had really forgotten most everything about it. I remembered images — John Goodman running down a burning hallway, extreme closeups of John Turturro sweating over a manual typewriter, wallpaper peeling off the hotel walls — but I couldn’t remember the exact plot.

It’s so refreshing to see something with new eyes every once in a while. New perspective = new insight.

It’s a typical Coen brothers piece full of fascinating characters and hysterically dark situations, but what a film.

On the surface, a bizzare murder mystery. Below the surface a genius allegory for the painful journey of creating. An appropriate way for me to think about the process of creating a brief at times.

Staring at that page. Everything seems distracting. The place is burning down.

When, in the end, all we need to do is listen.

Anyone else find this film as phenomenal as me?

Image via Creative Commons: http://flickr.com/photos/vinduhl/

Like many of you, today I learned about the change in Facebook’s Terms of Service which essentially gave FB the right to “use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute” something that a user has posted, forever. My first exposure to this change was from The Next Web, and during the day an article appeared comparing TOS from FB, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. The story also got picked up by CNET and the New York Times.

Thinking I could try to contribute to the solution, I even started a Facebook group protesting the policy. Ha! Guess I’m not as popular as the much larger group here.

Anyway, by 5:00 this afternoon, Mashable was reporting on Zuckerberg’s response via a post to the Facebook blog.

I don’t want to predict how this will shake out in the end. There are people much more attuned to those issues than me.

What is compelling to me is the way this might effect the Facebook brand. As Gavin adeptly points out in his cautionary post from this afternoon:

This change in the Facebook Terms of Service is a significant about face in the way in which Facebook treats its members. It may be too late for the content that I ALREADY have on my profile, but I will clearly be more SELECTIVE about the content I upload in the future. Because I won’t just be uploading, I will be GIVING it away.

Think about it. “A significant about face in the way in which Facebook treats its members.”

Would there be an uproar if Disney decided to welcome “customers” instead of “guests”? How about if Nordstrom decided to stop offering its signature service and instead adopted the technique of Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi?

The core values of a company cannot and should not be sacrificed for fear of eroding the foundational promise on which the whole of the brand rests.

No question, Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla of social media these days. After all, business is business. FB has to protect itself and keep its interests first. But, one would hope with that importance comes responsibility.

In that same post, Gavin warns bloggers and agencies to approach FB knowing that your content will no longer be your content. Sage advice. And, if I’m in the boardroom at FB, this advice should make me feel a hole burning in my lower intestines.

One of the very reasons my company exists — to generate traffic by connecting people with shared interests — might now be threatened by the content creators second-guessing my integrity. Thing is, content creators aren’t just agencies and bloggers. If you upload your vacation photos to FB, the new TOS say FB can do what they want with them.

That they can use my fish-belly-white chest photographed on the Michigan shore in future ads without my permission is where their trust (not to mention their level of taste) disappears.

The minute you start taking for granted the trust of your customers (the very population on which your business plan and funding rests) someone else is going to capitalize and fill that void.

I hope Shakespeare will forgive my paraphrase, but the question now seems to be, “To share or not to share? To connect or not to connect?”

Perhaps this will all blow over. Maybe FB will reverse its stance (not without losing some ground). Heck, maybe there’s not a large enough percentage of the 175 million users out there who care. Maybe I’m just shouting into the wind.

What if I’m not? Will you continue to post to Facebook? If you blog, will you use FB as a way to connect to your audience?

Will you share?

(Image via Creative Commons: http://flickr.com/photos/wooandy)

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