Wonderful Pistachios will run its first Super Bowl ad this year, a 30-second spot featuring South Korean pop-music sensation Psy (Park Jae-sang), of “Gangnam Style” fame. The spot, to air in the game’s third quarter, will also mark the first time that Psy (whose “Gangnam Style” video was the first to break 1 billion views on YouTube) has been seen in a U.S. TV ad. Wonderful Pistachios originally planned to run two different, 15-second ads, but changed its strategy because the Psy creative, directed by Grammy Award-winning director Mathew Cullen, was so compelling that “we decided that it needed and deserved 30 seconds,” Marc Seguin, VP of marketing for the brand’s privately-held parent company, Paramount Farms, tells Marketing Daily. The spot’s creative, which isn’t being previewed prior to the game, takes the brand’s long-running, seemingly ubiquitous “Get Crackin’” campaign to new levels, says Seguin, who reports that Paramount Farms has invested more than $100 million in that campaign in the four years that it’s been running. After the Super Bowl, the Psy spot will continue to air on cable channels and primetime television, and will be viewable on the brand’s Get Crackin’ site and its YouTube site. Also, “behind-the-scenes” footage from the shoot will be released online, says Seguin. The Super Bowl presence is also being supported by social media. One effort, launched on Jan. 9, is a Facebook-based sweepstakes in which fans who upload a picture of how they “Get Crackin' Gangnam Style” earn chances to win a 12-month lease of a 2013 Mercedes Benz SLK 250 -- the same model driven by Psy. The brand also has reached out to YouTube “stars” (creators of videos that have drawn exceptionally high numbers of views), encouraging them to create parodies of its Psy ad once it’s been aired on the Super Bowl, reports Seguin. In addition, Wonderful Pistachios will be throwing a “huge” event in New Orleans during the activities surrounding the Super Bowl, he says. Importantly, the brand also will be expanding the substantial in-store promotions and merchandising efforts that it’s already been doing each year around the Super Bowl. Starting this month, Wonderful Pistachios will have free-standing displays tied into its Super Bowl ad in about 50,000 stores (compared to about 10,000 stores for a typical promotion for the brand), with its largest-selling stores featuring two to four displays in various locations, and others featuring multiple displays, according to Seguin. Wherever possible, those displays will be near high-traffic store-entry areas or checkouts. Ads + In-Store Strategy: Brand’s Winning Formula Wonderful Pistachios’ in-store strategy, combined with its investment in advertising, is the formula behind the brand’s remarkable growth since launching five years ago, Seguin confirms. As CPGmatters recently reported, the retail strategy includes aggressive, ongoing merchandising and frequent special displays/promotions (sold and coordinated by a standing national field force of 135 merchandisers), which complement the brand’s core in-store strategy of being nearly exclusively located/sold on a regular basis in the produce departments of traditional supermarkets, rather than in center-store aisles. Being located in produce (a strategy that was successful for POM Wonderful, another brand owned by Stewart and Lynda Resnick through their Roll Global holding company) gives Wonderful Pistachios more than one advantage. First, produce is a department that (unlike some center aisles) is visited by nearly every grocery shopper, notes Seguin. Also, consumer demand for healthier snacks continues to grow, and consumers tend to look for healthier fruit, vegetable and nut snacks in the produce department, he points out. “The key is that consumers see our ads, then ‘bump into’ the product when they’re in the store,” he says. The Super Bowl ad -- and the intensified merchandising promotion around it -- is the next logical step for Wonderful Pistachios, says Seguin, who reports that it’s now the #1 snack-nut brand, having seen its dollar sales grow by 20% to 30% annually for the past several years. He also confirms that CPGmatters’ estimate of about $400 million per year in sales for the brand is in the ballpark, adding: “We expect to go well beyond that this year.” In fact, he confirms that the brand is “very confident” that it can break into the top 10-selling products in the $12-billion-plus salty snacks category, traditionally dominated by Frito-Lay brands, as noted by CPGmatters. Beyond the Super Bowl, Wonderful Pistachios will continue to release new “Get Crackin’” TV spots in 2013, including a spot tied to a new partnership that will soon be announced, Seguin says.
Music lovers tuned into Pandora, the Internet radio service, in December 2012 for more than 1.4 billion hours -- up 54% compared with the prior year. Active listeners also rose 41% to 67 million for the month. And on Dec. 24, Pandora members collectively listened to the equivalent of more than 5,692 years of music. During the holidays, 31% of people in the West preferred new holiday tracks compared with classics. Midwest listeners were the earliest adopters of holiday music. Some 52% of people in the Northeast care about music more than food at holiday parties, compared with other regions across the U.S. There are 67 million U.S. users, listening about 20 hours per month. One million are paid subscribers. The company is on track to generate between $422 million and $425 million in revenue this year, according to estimates. Pandora CRO John Trimble said the Chrysler Group recently joined the extensive roster of automotive brands to integrate Pandora into its vehicle, making it the 20th automotive brand partner. The service generates revenue from audio and visual ads, tapping into a wide audience across desktop and mobile, from cars to tablets and smartphones. Brands also run promotions to sponsor 30-day trials, Trimble said. Ads get targeted through signals from the member's registration data, such as gender, age, genre, and location. Pandora doesn't use services from companies like Triton Digital, which teamed with eXelate to target in-stream audio ads to digital radio listeners. Pandora, spawned from the Music Genome Project, a DNA map for each musical piece, relies on word of mouth marketing, email, advertising within the music service to listeners, search engine optimization and social.
A new forecast from Forrester predicts that for CMOs, 2013 won’t just be another year of digital’s growing influence in marketing: It will be the year CMOs fully close the divide between digital and conventional marketing, with social principals infusing all their brand efforts. Additionally, writes Corinne Munchbach, an analyst at Forrester, CMOs at consumer-focused companies will grasp that whether tactics are digital or not, they need to drive positive customer experience and interaction with the brand. The shift comes because even though companies have been investing in digital marketing for years now, there’s finally an understanding that on some level, all marketing is inherently digital. As a result, it says it expects interactive marketing budgets to account for some $50 billion, or 20% of all marketing expenditures. “Digital disruption moves faster with more power at less cost than any force before it, tearing down boundaries to meet consumers’ needs more fully than we could have ever imagined five years ago,” she writes. “Healthcare providers are challenged by the Jawbone UP and FitBit personal tracking devices; media companies are threatened by Hulu and YouTube; and financial services firms worry about alternative payment and banking platforms, like Square and Simple.” As a result, CMOs must expand the capabilities of their brands to keep up, or get left behind. “Organizations that harness the power of digitally empowered consumers, innovate the adjacent possible, and embrace digital to extend the benefits of the product or service will be well positioned for success in 2013,” she says. And increasingly, that means the digital awareness must be bigger than just marketing efforts, seeping into every aspect of the brand experience. “CMOs should move marketing budgets out of channel silos and into new cross-platform teams organized around consumer segments, with experts on the relevant media, channels, and devices for that particular segment.” That includes giving consumers a visible value, in order to outperform competitors. (The report cites USAA, Burberry and Mercedes as examples of brands that are true to their brand mission, providing rewarding experiences in many channels.) Finally, she predicts that content marketing, already in use by nearly 90% of business-to-consumer marketers, will continue to grow as “the logical extension of existing social strategies, creating a more robust set of brand experiences for people to engage with.” It stems, she writes, from the understanding that to be “remarkable,” a brand must be worth talking and sharing about, citing Red Bull’s extreme success with its Stratos jump as just one example. “Senior marketers will see that bringing together their content marketing and social marketing initiatives is the best way to support branding goals and ultimately positive business outcomes. Social media should be used to strategically achieve three brand building objectives: relationship building, differentiating through an emotional connection by delivering visible value, and nurturing loyal fans.” That means moving well beyond basic Facebook and retweeting, “to actually focus on how to activate their branded content asset via their social presence.”
Wonderful Pistachios will run its first Super Bowl ad this year, a 30-second spot featuring South Korean pop-music sensation Psy (Park Jae-sang), of “Gangnam Style” fame. The spot, to air in the game’s third quarter, will also mark the first time that Psy (whose “Gangnam Style” video was the first to break 1 billion views on YouTube) has been seen in a U.S. TV ad. Wonderful Pistachios originally planned to run two different, 15-second ads, but changed its strategy because the Psy creative, directed by Grammy Award-winning director Mathew Cullen, was so compelling that “we decided that it needed and deserved 30 seconds,” Marc Seguin, VP of marketing for the brand’s privately-held parent company, Paramount Farms, tells Marketing Daily. The spot’s creative, which isn’t being previewed prior to the game, takes the brand’s long-running, seemingly ubiquitous “Get Crackin’” campaign to new levels, says Seguin, who reports that Paramount Farms has invested more than $100 million in that campaign in the four years that it’s been running. After the Super Bowl, the Psy spot will continue to air on cable channels and primetime television, and will be viewable on the brand’s Get Crackin’ site and its YouTube site. Also, “behind-the-scenes” footage from the shoot will be released online, says Seguin. The Super Bowl presence is also being supported by social media. One effort, launched on Jan. 9, is a Facebook-based sweepstakes in which fans who upload a picture of how they “Get Crackin' Gangnam Style” earn chances to win a 12-month lease of a 2013 Mercedes Benz SLK 250 -- the same model driven by Psy. The brand also has reached out to YouTube “stars” (creators of videos that have drawn exceptionally high numbers of views), encouraging them to create parodies of its Psy ad once it’s been aired on the Super Bowl, reports Seguin. In addition, Wonderful Pistachios will be throwing a “huge” event in New Orleans during the activities surrounding the Super Bowl, he says. Importantly, the brand also will be expanding the substantial in-store promotions and merchandising efforts that it’s already been doing each year around the Super Bowl. Starting this month, Wonderful Pistachios will have free-standing displays tied into its Super Bowl ad in about 50,000 stores (compared to about 10,000 stores for a typical promotion for the brand), with its largest-selling stores featuring two to four displays in various locations, and others featuring multiple displays, according to Seguin. Wherever possible, those displays will be near high-traffic store-entry areas or checkouts. Ads + In-Store Strategy: Brand’s Winning Formula Wonderful Pistachios’ in-store strategy, combined with its investment in advertising, is the formula behind the brand’s remarkable growth since launching five years ago, Seguin confirms. As CPGmatters recently reported, the retail strategy includes aggressive, ongoing merchandising and frequent special displays/promotions (sold and coordinated by a standing national field force of 135 merchandisers), which complement the brand’s core in-store strategy of being nearly exclusively located/sold on a regular basis in the produce departments of traditional supermarkets, rather than in center-store aisles. Being located in produce (a strategy that was successful for POM Wonderful, another brand owned by Stewart and Lynda Resnick through their Roll Global holding company) gives Wonderful Pistachios more than one advantage. First, produce is a department that (unlike some center aisles) is visited by nearly every grocery shopper, notes Seguin. Also, consumer demand for healthier snacks continues to grow, and consumers tend to look for healthier fruit, vegetable and nut snacks in the produce department, he points out. “The key is that consumers see our ads, then ‘bump into’ the product when they’re in the store,” he says. The Super Bowl ad -- and the intensified merchandising promotion around it -- is the next logical step for Wonderful Pistachios, says Seguin, who reports that it’s now the #1 snack-nut brand, having seen its dollar sales grow by 20% to 30% annually for the past several years. He also confirms that CPGmatters’ estimate of about $400 million per year in sales for the brand is in the ballpark, adding: “We expect to go well beyond that this year.” In fact, he confirms that the brand is “very confident” that it can break into the top 10-selling products in the $12-billion-plus salty snacks category, traditionally dominated by Frito-Lay brands, as noted by CPGmatters. Beyond the Super Bowl, Wonderful Pistachios will continue to release new “Get Crackin’” TV spots in 2013, including a spot tied to a new partnership that will soon be announced, Seguin says.
Music lovers tuned into Pandora, the Internet radio service, in December 2012 for more than 1.4 billion hours -- up 54% compared with the prior year. Active listeners also rose 41% to 67 million for the month. And on Dec. 24, Pandora members collectively listened to the equivalent of more than 5,692 years of music. During the holidays, 31% of people in the West preferred new holiday tracks compared with classics. Midwest listeners were the earliest adopters of holiday music. Some 52% of people in the Northeast care about music more than food at holiday parties, compared with other regions across the U.S. There are 67 million U.S. users, listening about 20 hours per month. One million are paid subscribers. The company is on track to generate between $422 million and $425 million in revenue this year, according to estimates. Pandora CRO John Trimble said the Chrysler Group recently joined the extensive roster of automotive brands to integrate Pandora into its vehicle, making it the 20th automotive brand partner. The service generates revenue from audio and visual ads, tapping into a wide audience across desktop and mobile, from cars to tablets and smartphones. Brands also run promotions to sponsor 30-day trials, Trimble said. Ads get targeted through signals from the member's registration data, such as gender, age, genre, and location. Pandora doesn't use services from companies like Triton Digital, which teamed with eXelate to target in-stream audio ads to digital radio listeners. Pandora, spawned from the Music Genome Project, a DNA map for each musical piece, relies on word of mouth marketing, email, advertising within the music service to listeners, search engine optimization and social.
A new forecast from Forrester predicts that for CMOs, 2013 won’t just be another year of digital’s growing influence in marketing: It will be the year CMOs fully close the divide between digital and conventional marketing, with social principals infusing all their brand efforts. Additionally, writes Corinne Munchbach, an analyst at Forrester, CMOs at consumer-focused companies will grasp that whether tactics are digital or not, they need to drive positive customer experience and interaction with the brand. The shift comes because even though companies have been investing in digital marketing for years now, there’s finally an understanding that on some level, all marketing is inherently digital. As a result, it says it expects interactive marketing budgets to account for some $50 billion, or 20% of all marketing expenditures. “Digital disruption moves faster with more power at less cost than any force before it, tearing down boundaries to meet consumers’ needs more fully than we could have ever imagined five years ago,” she writes. “Healthcare providers are challenged by the Jawbone UP and FitBit personal tracking devices; media companies are threatened by Hulu and YouTube; and financial services firms worry about alternative payment and banking platforms, like Square and Simple.” As a result, CMOs must expand the capabilities of their brands to keep up, or get left behind. “Organizations that harness the power of digitally empowered consumers, innovate the adjacent possible, and embrace digital to extend the benefits of the product or service will be well positioned for success in 2013,” she says. And increasingly, that means the digital awareness must be bigger than just marketing efforts, seeping into every aspect of the brand experience. “CMOs should move marketing budgets out of channel silos and into new cross-platform teams organized around consumer segments, with experts on the relevant media, channels, and devices for that particular segment.” That includes giving consumers a visible value, in order to outperform competitors. (The report cites USAA, Burberry and Mercedes as examples of brands that are true to their brand mission, providing rewarding experiences in many channels.) Finally, she predicts that content marketing, already in use by nearly 90% of business-to-consumer marketers, will continue to grow as “the logical extension of existing social strategies, creating a more robust set of brand experiences for people to engage with.” It stems, she writes, from the understanding that to be “remarkable,” a brand must be worth talking and sharing about, citing Red Bull’s extreme success with its Stratos jump as just one example. “Senior marketers will see that bringing together their content marketing and social marketing initiatives is the best way to support branding goals and ultimately positive business outcomes. Social media should be used to strategically achieve three brand building objectives: relationship building, differentiating through an emotional connection by delivering visible value, and nurturing loyal fans.” That means moving well beyond basic Facebook and retweeting, “to actually focus on how to activate their branded content asset via their social presence.”
A new StrongMail survey, conducted via SurveyMonkey, reflects the attitudes of business leaders in regards to their planned marketing budgets, priorities and challenges for 2013, as well as data on the top email marketing tactics to be employed for the current 2012 holiday shopping season. According to the survey, total marketing budgets are set to rise in 2013, with 45% of companies increasing and 44% maintaining current levels. Email marketing, social media and mobile continue to be the top areas of investment; however, data integration challenges continue to plague 45.6% of email marketers – a half-percent increase over last year. Marketing Budget Change for 2013Change% of Respondents Increase 45.2% Maintain current spend 43.9 Decrease 10.9 Source: Strongmail, December 2012 Email, social media, and mobile rank as marketers' top spending priorities for 2013, according to the survey. 55.5% of marketing executives say they plan to increase spending on email campaigns in 2013; 51.8% plan to boost spend on social media; and 42.8% plan to up their spend on mobile marketing. In addition, 39.8% of surveyed marketing executives plan to increase spending on search marketing in 2013. By contrast, tactics such public relations and direct mail will likely take a back seat in the coming year, according to the findings. Planned Marketing Spending Increase by Program (% of Respondents) ProgramPlanning Increase for 2013 Email marketing 55.5% Social Media 51.3 Mobile 42.8 Search 39.8 Advertising 26.8 Trade shows & events 17.3 Direct mail 15.4 Public relations 13.9 Other 10.2 Source: Strongmail, December 2012 Planned Marketing Spend Decreases 2013 (% of Respondents) Program% Planning to Decrease Direct mail 37.4% Tradeshows & events 33.6 Advertising 23.0 Public relations 11.6 Search 9.3 Social Media 4.8 Email marketing 2.4 Source: Strongmail, December 2012 Two-thirds of businesses surveyed plan to increase their investment in mobile marketing programs such as mobile apps (39%) and SMS alerts (21%), a combined increase of 11% from last year. There is a lack of consensus on the primary value of this emerging channel, but building customer loyalty (44%) was identified as the top benefit, followed by expanded reach (34%) and awareness building (33%). 60% of businesses surveyed see Facebook as the most valued social media channel for marketers, followed by Twitter and YouTube. The least valued in order are Yelp, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Google+ and Pinterest fall in the middle with 31% making them as the fifth and sixth most valuable channels for marketers. Planned Social Media Program Marketing Increases (% of Respondents; 2013) Program% of Respondents Planning Increase Facebook marketing 39.6 Social media management 26.5 Viral referral campaigns 23.6 Twitter marketing 23.3 Appending social data to customer database 18 Staff 16.1 Training & education 15.7 Pinterest marketing 14.9 Listening platforms 14.8 Agency services 13.9 Source: Strongmail, December 2012 Social media is a key focus, even for email campaigns: 46.2% of marketing execs plans to increase spend toward email marketing programs focused on social-media channel growth. In addition, roughly one-third plan to focus on promotional batch campaigns, lifecycle programs, and newsletters: Increased Spending in 2013 For Email Marketing ProgramsProgram% of Respondents Social media channel growth 46.2% Promotional 38.8 Lifecycle programs 36.6 Newsletters 34.7 Referrals 15.6 Progressive polling 5.5 Source: Strongmail, December 2012 Two-thirds of businesses plan to integrate social media and email in 2013, and integration of mobile and email increased from 44% in 2012 to 52% in 2013. The strong ties between email marketing and social media are also underscored by the 46% of respondents who plan to increase investment in using email to drive growth in their social media channels, such as corporate Facebook and Twitter pages. Tim McQuillen, founder and CIO at StrongMail, concludes that “... integration is a top trend for 2013... accessing an increasing volume and variety of customer data... and integrating messaging across email, mobile, social and other channels... ” Highlights Summary
Nielsen recently released overall numbers for 2012. While some statistics were expected, others were surprising. Among the most baffling is the fact that only 6% of teenagers said that Twitter is their main social media source. How can this be? Hasn’t Twitter been one of the fastest-growing social media platforms over the past four years? The answer is “yes.” But the reason Twitter has gained so much popularity may be precisely the reason it is not popular among teens. Twitter is, in its simplest definition, a news-sharing service. If there is one thing we know about teens, it’s that they are one of the most narcissistic demographics out there (sorry to sound so harsh, but it’s true). Twitter doesn’t allow them to express themselves the way that they desire. Sure, there is the occasional observation or cry of angst, but, overall, Twitter is a window into a world bigger than their own – and they don’t care. While teens eventually grow up, there will always be a new batch to fill their shoes, and their mentality will be the same. The cycle will continue. So what is the lesson here? Well, for one thing, stop putting so much effort into reaching teens through Twitter. But to that point, start realizing that marketing to teens is a totally different animal than marketing to adults, especially through social media. In the past I have stated that visual is the future of social. Instagram absolutely exploded this year. It was so much so that Facebook wanted a piece of the action, while Twitter didn’t want any part of it (recently opting to try its own picture-sharing service, ending any relationship with Instagram). Instagram receives hundreds of millions of fan views a month, with a large amount of those being teens. However, what separates teen users from adult users is the type of content they post. While adult users typically post photos of landscapes, family trips and (rolls eyes) their food, teen users are by and large posting pictures of themselves and their friends. But the differences between adult and teen usage doesn’t stop at photo sharing. It goes without saying that engaging consumers through social media will reinforce loyalty and create conversation. Yet, for teens, many other factors must be considered. While adult social activity is focused, teen activity is unpredictable. Pew Research came out with a survey in 2012 that revealed even more surprising statistics regarding teen behavior. For example, mobile campaigns, which so many brands are clamoring to utilize, may not be worth it when targeting teens. Only about 23% of teens, age 12 to 17, currently have smartphones versus nearly half of all adults who use mobile. Building upon that, 88% of teens are more likely to access social media via desktop or laptop over a mobile device. How about this? Only 6% of teens admitted to using email daily, while 39% said they hardly use email at all. I could go on and on with numbers about teen use of social media and technology. However, what should ultimately be learned from this is that audiences cannot simply be clumped together when it comes to marketing campaigns heading into 2013. We as marketing professionals are obsessed with the latest and greatest trends. Yet, we have to keep in mind that what is good for some is not good for everyone.
A lot has changed since I first reported on how Hispanic online publishers were using Facebook in June 2010. Back then, only a few Hispanic publishers were taking Facebook seriously, but over the past year and a half, Hispanic publishers have significantly increased their presence on Facebook and now view it as a critical channel for them to remain competitive. For Hispanic publishers, a robust Facebook presence is critical for a few key reasons:
At some point during the one-mile caravan ride to Best Buy featuring my Mazda minivan and a Geek Squad Beetle, I thought to myself: “Wow, this Twitter thing is entirely awesome – and phones are increasingly useless.” It was just before Christmas, and the morning after the Geek Squad was supposed to come to my house to mount a new flat-screen TV and the xBox in our newly renovated basement. (Even if you’re tech-savvy, it’s important to know your limitations; a Social Media Insider I may allegedly be, but a media-center installer I am not.) I was coming off a long evening spent staring periodically at the email that absolutely confirmed that the Geek Squad would show up between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., an evening punctuated -- with increasing urgency and frequency -- by the same plaintive question from the 14-year-old and the eight-year-old: “When are they getting here?” As the clock struck 7:30 p.m., I called customer service; I would be getting a call from the Geek Squad in a few minutes, I was told. The call never came. I called again, at some point talking to someone in such a faraway place that it only served to mock the fact that I was trying to get someone to come from a Best Buy/Geek Squad outpost that was but a mile away. I called the store; the woman who answered the phone informed me that tracking down Geek Squads was not handled there, even though that’s where I’d set up my appointment. And no one had an explanation for why the Geek Squad had gone rogue. However, because my social media gig has taught me that Best Buy knows a thing or two about Twitter, I did one more thing that’s probably obvious to anyone who reads this column: I tweeted out to @geeksquad and @bestbuy. You know what happened, don’t you? Later that night, after the kids had been put to bed with distressing visions of unconnected flat-screen TVs dancing in their heads, @agent3012 got in touch with the social media team’s email address. The next morning, within ten minutes of sending them an email, the phone rang. It was the Geek Squad, calling from one of their, well, squad cars. They were on there way over. Only minutes after that, three Geek Squad members, outfitted in Geek Squad gear down to their booties – yes, they wear booties when they enter your house! – were standing in my basement. In fact, I was such a VIP that both a van and the Beetle had been dispatched to my house. (Upon further review, I guess a 46” TV wouldn’t fit in a Beetle.) After assessing the task at hand, Geek #1 determined that Best Buy should have sold me a wall mount and a few cables – which is when we launched our caravan. We were going shopping! (Side note: To the extent I have ever imagined myself engaging the services of a personal shopper, I had always figured the mission would be to transform me from a jeans-and-sneakers-attired, work-from-home Mom into a red-carpet-ready seductress. Instead, Geek #1 loaded my cart with HDMI cables, a wall mount, and a surge protector. Story of my life.) But back to our tale of bad customer service gone great. As we prepared to check out in the line reserved only for now-special customers like me, Geek #1 leaped above and beyond the call of duty. He walked up to the store manager, explained that I’d been inconvenienced, and negotiated a discount. Back home, the Squad finished the job in about 45 minutes, periodically seating me on the couch opposite the TV to judge viewing angles. And then, like that, they were gone. I wrote an appreciative @geeksquad tweet and got on with the task of calling Cablevision, the next step in the byzantine media center installation process. I tell this story for several reasons. One, because what’s more fun than writing about me! But also because, as great as the Geek Squad responsiveness was on Twitter, it’s confounding that the phone channel – the one that most of us still use – was so entirely lacking. All told, I called customer service four times in about 12 hours, and never got an appointment scheduled, an explanation, or a call back when it was promised. (I did get a gift certificate.) It seemed as if I were dealing with two different companies, one where the customer service people were empowered and passionate, and one where they were not. Such service imbalances between different channels shouldn’t exist, but I’m going to speculate that among other issues, the phone channel is overburdened, while Twitter is primarily used by those with inside knowledge of how effective it is. Not surprisingly, my so-called confirmation email promotes the customer service phone number and doesn’t even mention Twitter. Talk about imbalance. The fact is that many people wouldn’t even know how to use Twitter in a similar situation. They would need to be led by the hand to what is so obviously a more useful channel when it comes to Best Buy. I was recounting this story to a neighbor the other night. And, she – no slouch when it comes to gadgets – admitted that she wouldn’t even know how to use Twitter to get someone’s attention. As addicted as many of us are to it, for many, it’s not a mainstream channel in any way. The part of me that gleefully wallowed in my Twitter triumph would like it to stay that way, nice and exclusive, on call when I need it. But the part of me that knows how crucial customer service is to creating a great brand is troubled by how disparate my phone and Twitter experiences were. On balance, I was tremendously pleased with how my day with the Geek Squad turned out, but for every one of me, there are dozens of people like my neighbor, who may still be calling customer service and wondering if the term is an oxymoron, meanwhile leaving the reputations of Best Buy and the Geek Squad twisting in the wind.