Dear All, The ZenMango blog is back.  Had to take time off to finish the book Marperations®, which is finally completed.  Also have been planning to blog in a way that will be more relevant today and have some cool ideas that will launch in the next month. As I restart the blog, I want to start with the basic fundamental element that defines and measures every businesses success.  Most businesses have numerous KPI's (Key Performance Indicators). They are trended and measured against benchmarks. But what is the one thing that is most critical to measure?   TRAFFIC DEFINES BUSINESS SUCCESS When I look at a brand’s success, it is all about transactions or traffic. That is the one number measure that is real. Think, even for a single store operator, success is defined by how many times they open the cash register and how much they put in every time. If they are opening the cash register fewer times every day, they should be worried right away.   WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TRAFFIC STARTS TO DECLINE I have seen that there is a lag between traffic starting to decline and the realization that “something is really wrong.” In many a case, when traffic starts to decline, there is a dial that marketers have easy access to, called “price.” Often they will increase price to offset the traffic decline. As a result sales remain flat and it appears there is no imminent danger or challenges to the brand. Now think from the consumers’ point of view, what is going on. Of course the brand is not operating at its best and because of that a group of customers are not coming back causing the traffic decline. The remaining customer groups, who are loyal through the tough times, are “taxed” with a price increase to maintain sales levels. The higher price may push a sizable group of the loyalists to stop coming in, and that will cause further decrease in traffic. At that point there is no price increase that will help sustain sales.   WHAT ACTIONS SHOULD YOU CONSIDER TO FIX  DECLINING TRANSACTIONS First and foremost detect it when it is in its early stage. Find where it is concentrated: if it is happening in a few specific markets, newer brands, or some other focused area. Once you have a clear idea where the problem is stemming from, the most important thing you can do is to decide what NOT to do. I always advise marketers to stop putting marketing dollars in a down market. The reason is very simple: putting money in a down market is similar to inviting customers to come and experience the brand when there are service challenges. You will create rejecters at a higher rate if you do so. So pause marketing, invest in learning why customers are not coming back, and fix that. Then, and only then, should you invest in marketing to ask customers to come back and experience the brand again.   [caption id="attachment_241" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Traffic Lifecycle[/caption] Again, I am excited to return to blogging and I thank you for reading the blog.  Please share with me how measuring traffic count has defined your business’s success. Arjun Sen...

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....