The ZenMango blog is taking a hiatus as we focus on writing our upcoming book Marperations®.  ...

If Marketing Ran the Airline World:  As passengers board the plane, marketing would love to create “a moment” to start the experience. The moment could include a video where employees or the president of the airline thank customers for choosing the airline, then present a feel-good section where happy customers and employees showcase the cities around the world that the airlines connects to. At the end of the video a jingle and tag line would play that connect to the customer such as, "Your friendly airline," or "Bringing the world closer," or "You focus on the destination and we take care of the journey".  All these messages would be the airlines ways of making the customer realize that they are part of this big family and larger than life experience. Before the flight takes off, marketing would use the captive audience to sell. After the welcome and feel good messages a limited time offer would appear on the screen. "In the next ten minutes, buy a $400 gift voucher for only $300, a 25% savings. This is our way of saying thank you."  The message would be followed with a link passengers could access from line and a 10 minute countdown.   If Operations Ran the Airline World:  In an effort to be efficient, operations would want all passengers to get to their seats as soon as possible. We all realize that an airline does not make money when its planes sit on the ground, hence effectiveness in the airline industry would be measured as percentage of the daily hours the plane is flying. The airline would then facilitate speedy airport transitions and ask de-boarding passengers to clean up their place and get it ready for the next passenger.  Then “marching band” music would play during boarding to encourage customers to move faster to their seats. If passengers’ speed in taking their seats was not up to par, the crew might gently shake the plane to encourage taking a seat. The operations team motto might be, “How can we get passenger butts in seats as soon as possible.”  Once the plane takes off, vending machines would be stationed throughout the cabin where passengers could purchase their own food. This would eliminate the need of the flight attendants as service personnel completely. Even though the above examples make sense from each department's point of view, is this in alignment with the vision of the airline? When an airline's marketing team positions the brand as "Your friendly airline", does putting a vending machine in the cabin make it friendly? Or does making customers buy a voucher at 25% savings before take-off sync with getting passenger butts in seats ASAP? Taking a customer centric, Marperations approach tells us that each functional department in a business cannot act like a sovereign nation with its own territorial boundaries, laws, and constitutions. They are all part of a bigger customer nation. Hence following the vision of the customer and aligning the department goals around that is it's key to success....

Written for and distributed at the Marketing Executives Group, Chicago, May 19, 2011;  Published in Restaurant Marketing Group's MEG Consumer Talk   Lane Cardwell President, P.F. Chang’s China Bistro I have had a lot of beginnings lately.  In the past two years I have doubled the number of restaurant companies that I have worked for in the past 32 years.   I was recently the CEO of Boston Market, and have just joined P.F. Chang’s China Bistro as its president.  My other two restaurant companies, going back 30 years, were S & A Restaurant Corp. (Steak and Ale, Bennigan’s) and Brinker International. It gives you a different perspective on our industry when you start fresh with a company after so many years in the business.  Let’s call it “nuanced naivety”.  You are naïve about the way that the new company that you have joined does business; however, you understand the nuances of the way that business is done in the restaurant industry.  It must be how a professional athlete feels when they join a new team after a long time in the league.  To be of value you must take what you already know and make it work within a team that you don’t know well yet. I remember all of the new people that joined my earlier companies.  Full of questions (“why don’t we?”, “could we?”, “have we ever?”), lots of ideas, and challenges about the way that we have been doing business for a long time.  They were irritating.  It took us old hands several months to break these new people of their question-asking and mold them into one of us.  Some never could be taught the way that we did things and moved on to annoy some other company.  I never stopped to question the opportunities to reexamine our company and concept with fresh eyes that we may have missed. I have been that irritating person over the past two years.  I am early into annoying my team at P.F. Chang’s with my constant questions about why we do things the way that we do them.  “Why did we decide that?”  “What else did we consider?”  “Is it working?  How do we know?”  It’s hard to join a successful team and a successful concept.  It’s easier to join one that is struggling.  It makes sense that you would question things in the struggling company, not so the successful one. The one thing that I have noticed in most of the restaurant concepts that I have worked on is that the customer rarely gets a seat at the decision-making table.  They are paid great lip service, but rarely are consulted about changes to a brand that they make possible with their money.  Our front line employees talk to our customers every day.  They know what they like, don’t like, don’t understand, and what delights them. Somehow a lot of this information gets distorted or filtered as it drifts its way up the chain of command.  Sometimes we drown in the quantity of the information.  We try to capture it with customer feedback systems and formalized marketing research, but it’s like trying to report on local weather from across the country.  Nothing quite replaces stepping outside and looking up in the sky. Every day decisions are being made throughout the industry about the care and feeding of our restaurant concepts.  Different departmental groups with different views of what is important weigh-in with their opinions.  Very different operating regions must often compromise by deciding on one approach, with the result neither exciting nor disappointing all of their guests.  Like the story of the three blind men trying to describe an elephant by touching its leg, trunk and side, each constituency sees the situation a little differently. There are three normal outcomes of a decision being made about a concept: Good for the company, good for the customer (the proverbial win-win) Good for the customer, not as good for the company (absorbing a cost, or adding a new service or offering) Good for the company, not good for the customer (large price increases, quality cuts, concept elements being trimmed or deleted) We will assume that good management would not allow something bad for both the company and the customer to occur (but sometimes they do) I have learned over time that if you stay vigilant against letting #3 dominate (Good for the company, not good for the customer), everything else will tend to take care of itself.  Sometimes it is a lonely voice representing the customer when decisions are being made.  Often your co-workers are not even aware that the decision-making process is one-sided.  They don’t understand why something that cuts costs, or makes the restaurant run more smoothly can sometimes be a bad thing.  After all, aren’t we paid to take care of the company? I always tell people that gravity works on restaurant concepts like it works on everything else…it pulls things down.  Usually a concept is at its best in the early years.  It is fresh, new, exciting, and pleasing the customer is an all-consuming activity each day.  As you grow you begin to look for efficiencies that offset the difficulty of managing 10, 100, or 1,000 restaurants remotely.  Programs are introduced.  Policies are spelled out.  Buying power and standardization are introduced.  When you add up the impact of all of these “efficiencies” over the years you begin to see the effects of gravity.  The concept is bigger, but not better, than it was in the early glory years. Do you want to make a difference on the restaurant concept that you work on?  Every time a change is proposed, ask yourself whether it is good for the customer.  There is nothing wrong with something being good for the company, but is it also good for the guest?  If you can bring this mindset to the job every day you will be a success in the long run. Brand building is hard work and good companies want to be challenged on issues where the customer is not the winner. Do you find that your company doesn’t want to hear it?  Go find a good company that does.  A career is a terrible thing to waste, and you are wasting your time waiting for the inevitable decay that sets in when each flip of the decision-making coin comes up heads only for the company. Let your own new beginning be the way that you think about each decision affecting your brand that crosses your desk, or is raised in a meeting.  It takes a lot of effort to hold on to the things that made your concept successful when it started, much less to improve it.  By being customer-centric you greatly improve your long term odds of success....

As we work in the area of Marperations, it is important to understand the origin of the marketing-operations divide. This understanding will help us figure out why operations cares so much about efficiency and why marketing has an eye single to effectiveness. A look back in history shows that the 18th and beginning of the 19thcentury marked the rise of production. Producers focused their energy on producing more, making efficiency suddenly more important than ever. But the ongoing focus on efficiency came to a point where, in the1940s, production started to surpass demand. The country gradually evolved into a sales era to move surplus inventory. In order to bring more structure to sales, the concepts of marketing evolved and came into being in the 1950s.From the start, marketing primarily came into existence to counter the effectiveness of operations. Since marketing came into being to sell surplus inventory, over promising and setting high expectations became common practice among marketers.Marketing did not come in to build demand, but to work in tandem with operations. Operations had already put itself in a position of producing more than the demand required. Marketing was simply getting rid of the surplus as a profit. There is still a divide today. Operations still wants to do more of the same thing, and doing more of the same thing is a complete no-no in the world of marketing. The divide still runs deep; it is time for a Marperations approach to take over. Companies need to understand that marketing today can connect to consumers and help operations choose its product mix and production quantity. Marketing can influence the features and benefits offered by a product. Marketing can lead and support. Operations on the other hand, cannot be stubborn about its leadership. It too must open the doors to change and realize that they only way for the entire brand team to truly win is to make the consumer happy....

Ever since the inception of the Marperations concept, I have been searching for  examples where operations completely defines a brand and marketing simply must reflect the differentiated operations. Last weekend I found an example where I would have least expected it. I was in the Cherry Creek area of Denver waiting for a meeting. To kill time I looked for a place to get a cup of coffee. To me, coffee has become synonymous with Starbucks. So naturally I was looking for the nearest Starbucks when I came across a local coffee shop called Aviano Coffee, I walked in and immediately realized that this was a different kind of a coffee shop: the décor was modern, trendy, but unassuming and not in my face. They were not trying too hard. I walked up to the counter and ordered my usual, a small cup of coffee with room for cream. My first surprise came when the coffee maker did not look surprised with my use of the word “small”, as in the Starbucks world, “tall” is the new “as small as it gets”.  Then he started making my coffee. First he poured some hot water into the coffee pot, and then he ground some fresh coffee beans, fresh just for me. After that he poured the ground coffee in the filter and a little hot water on the coffee grounds, then he paused. I was anxious now. All I could think was, “Come on, pour the rest of the water and give me my darn coffee!” That is when he explained, “I soak the coffee grinds for a few minutes first so that when I brew your coffee you get the best flavor.” Now I was intrigued and thoroughly engaged in the coffee making process at Aviano Coffee, as the impatience in me was overcome with interest and curiosity. I was ready to play this coffee making game. A few minutes later when the coffee maker started pouring more hot water into the filter, he further explained, “The pre-soaking makes sure that any carbon dioxide or other gases trapped inside do not make it to your coffee.” I had not yet tasted the coffee but by now I was nearly sure that this would be the best cup of coffee I will ever have.  I was getting really excited to taste this special coffee. Finally, he poured my coffee into a small cup, and again I was happy to notice that the small cup was actually small. As he handed me my coffee he said, “Please let me know how you like the coffee.” I simply loved the cup of coffee. As I left the coffee shop I realized what Aviano Coffee had done to me: they had completely changed the definition of the best cup of coffee for me. All of a sudden I could see through the branding and marketing of Starbucks where branding was everything. I could see that the coffee at Starbucks is made by a high dollar machine that the barista simply stands behind and operates. Starbucks had suddenly become a production facility in my eyes where Aviano practiced the art of coffee making. Aviano Coffee had no fancy branding. It was not trying to appeal to my five senses by building a store that follows the Disney principles where every interaction is planned and orchestrated. Instead they were simply making the best cup of coffee they could, just for me. Now if that is not pouring your heart into coffee, I do not know what is. It was not the marketing of the brand that intrigued me to try the shop. There were no coupons, no marketing stories, and no feel good charity promotions. Instead I discovered the shop on my own and they offered me an experience that was etched in my mind forever. The experience was simple yet detailed, nothing too complicated yet intriguing, very personal and simply memorable. When a brand has operations so breakthrough, marketing does not have to work extra hard to scream about the brand, instead it should simply take a back seat and showcase the experience. Please do not get me wrong, I will still visit Starbucks as they have me surrounded where ever I am. But every time I get a coffee at Starbucks I will ask myself, “Hmm, why the machine? Why not hand grind? Did you release all the bad gas? Did you soak the beans? Did you give me a small when I wanted a small? Did you make me feel that I just had the best coffee I could have?” Brands like Aviano Coffee are few and far between, but they are out there and deserve a place in the Marperations hall of fame.  Next time you are in Denver, venture out to the Cherry Creek area and try Aviano Coffee for yourself.  Let me know what you feel. And if you have experienced a brand that has broken all paradigms for you, please share your story with me too. Please note: ZenMango has no connection with Aviano Coffee. In fact they do not even know that I am in love with them....