I attended a talk last week that was presented by Bill Laggner of Bearing Asset Management. The talk was recommended by a friend who told me that Bill’s Hedge Fund is up 125% year-to-date. That’s quite a feat in today’s financial market.
He definitely had something to sell, but you wouldn’t know it. He was the quintessential trusted adviser. Instead of selling by selling; he was selling by teaching. He talked about how his team had been following the credit bubble, and how they realized a couple of years ago that much of the economy’s growth was due to credit expansion. And most importantly, that the growth was not only unsustainable but that many of our largest and most respected financial institutions would literally collapse. They shorted (meaning they purchased options that would allow them to benefit as stock prices fell) many major banks and Wall Street institutions when they were at their peak stock price, and then waited for stock prices to plummet. And plummet they did. Let me tell you, betting that most of our major financial institutions were going to tank at the very same time those very same stocks were soaring took guts.
His presentation was great. Within 45 minutes, you could see that everyone in the room was completely enthralled with his wisdom, ideas and foresight. Then he allowed people to ask questions.
A woman in the back of the room stood up, and launched into a speech about Bill, investments, inflation and I can’t remember what else. She didn’t actually ask a question. She made a statement, and she seemed to know Bill, but I couldn’t be sure. As she was talking, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was a shill. I didn’t say anything, but the a man behind me turned to his friend and whispered, “Is she a shill?” If I was thinking she was a plant, and the men behind me thought she was a plant, then you could be sure that other people in the room wondered the same thing. And since this talk happened about a week after the Madoff scandal broke, people were sensitized to be being lured into bad situations. And she didn’t have just one speech, she had an encore performance too.
So, let’s review. Bill spoke, established credibility, and built a rapport with the members of the audience. Then a woman stands up, and instead of asking a question, she delivers two speeches. I have no idea if Bill ever met this woman before, but the more she spoke, the more she eroded the trust that Bill built with his audience.
What does this mean for marketers? What can we learn from this? We’ve entered into a new age. Building trust is harder than ever. People are skeptical, and they’re not willing just to hand over the trust they way they once did. Even just a hint of a strange scent in the air will send customers packing. Today, marketers need total transparency. We need to lay our cards out on the table even when we have no reason to do so. The age of marketing BS and false claims is over. The age of honesty is upon us.
In my opinion, Bill could have managed the Q&A portion of the presentation better. First, I don’t think he should have even had a Q&A session because he lost control of the message. He probably would have been better off just letting people crowd around him and ask individual questions. And second, if he did know the woman who made those unannounced speeches, he needed to explain the connection in order to maintain credibility. If he didn’t know the woman, he probably needed to be more assertive in asking her to hold her comments until after the presentation. And if he did know her, she still shouldn’t have been allowed to drone.
While I enjoyed the presentation and sense that Bill is a highly capable and trustworthy financial manager, the Q&A session left me with a question mark. I wonder if others in the room had the same reaction. As marketers, we have to manage all the variables, and go to new lengths to build and maintain trust. We need to anticipate and allay concerns and fears about anything that might get in the way of our credibility and trustworthiness.
It’s not enough to be honest. You have to make sure that no one else can create any doubt about you.
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This was a highly commented post. Over 24 people, mostly marketing professionals, commented on the Staples tactic. 19 of the 24 thought it was a very bad idea, and one joked about Dunder Miflin. Only four people liked the idea. In fact, one person said that he’d be more likely to go and buy at Office Depot because they probably would have some great sales now. Another person said that they perceived Staples message as desperate indicating that perhaps they were having financial difficulties, which is why they’d resort to such a dumb message.
In short, this tactic really backfired.
Staples has the chance to gain market share. Why not continue to focus their marketing with a strong positive message? This is a clear case of the management of Staples enjoying the demise of a competitor. While they might be entitled to enjoy it, it clearly clouded their thinking and their marketing decision making. The message they delivered was, “Staples and Office Depot are at war, and Staples is winning.” The problem is that customers could care less about the war. They want great value.
They could have offered to honor Office Depot’s reward checks as a way to pull in new customers.
In short, be polite.