It sounds like the worst kind of complacent pap to say that every bad experience for a customer is an opportunity for a brand, but a quote in the Chicago Tribune this week from American Airlines managing director of customer experience Mark Mitchell suggests that’s exactly the case.

Cited in an article examining the role of the ‘professional apologizers’ – aka specialist customer service staff – employed by the airlines, Mark said:

“We know how our customers score us on a routine flight, and we also know how they score us when we handle a delay situation very poorly or very well. When we handle a delay situation well, they score us about 14 to 16 points higher than they do for just a regular old on-time flight.”

Does your brand leave your customers feeling like Mr Grumpy or Mr Happy?

Staff at Southwest Airlines, meanwhile, aim to contact every passenger affected by delays or other problems within 24 hours of their experience to apologise, offer a brief explanation and a small gift - usually a discount voucher for a future flight. The result is that Southwest had the lowest consumer complaint rate of the 19 airlines ranked by the US Department of Transportation in 2009.

There are at least two differing schools of thought as to why the successful recovery of a poor experience can do wonders for brand perception. The first (and somewhat depressing) view is that consumers have come to expect certain industries to perform badly and provide poor service - a perception for which Ryanair is surely the poster child. A brand that makes an effort to repair some of the damage done, therefore, accrues bonus points above and beyond the norm.

The alternative, more encouraging possibility is that consumers understand that no brand can be perfect one hundred percent of the time, and respect those brands which acknowledge that fact and act appropriately.

Interestingly, the latter view agrees with the findings of some qualitative research we conducted recently among brand loyalists of another service provider. When talking to those most loyal to the brand, we found that they were capable of transforming even a strongly negative experience into a reason to support and believe in that brand. Thus a wrongly charged fee subsequently refunded became an  example of excellent customer relations, while stories of oustanding service from competitor brands were ignored or dismissed as ’salesman’s tactics’.

It’s often difficult for marketers to persuade senior management that the best thing a brand can do when it gets something wrong is metaphorically to throw up its hands and admit it. No organisation likes to open up a vulnerable area to attack. The alternative, however, may be to log in one  morning to find your brand immersed in a stream of vitriol from unhappy customers – particularly in this age of social media and blogging.

So the next time you find yourself in a situation when the ordure has just headed skywards, take a deep breath, tell the truth and say you’re sorry. As your mother always told you, it’s the right thing to do…

There’s nothing revelatory about the idea that ethnic foods are becoming more popular with mainstream consumers, or that consumers are seeking out more exotic flavours in food and drink. Witness Mintel’s flavour predictions for 2010, which touted traditionally ethnic ingredients such as cardamom, hibiscus, cupuaçu and rose water as emerging flavours of choice for US consumers.

Now, McDonald’s has taken ethnic marketing one step further, using African Americans, Hispanics and Asians to shape products and communications that the company then rolls out to its white, middle-class audiences.

According to McDonald’s US CMO, Neil Golden: “The ethnic consumer tends to set trends…So they help set the tone for how we enter the marketplace”.

While the fast food giant still uses specialist agencies to create communications tailored to minority ethnic audiences – particularly African Americans - it then increasingly puts mass-market spend behind them. A recent article in Business Week examines what it calls McDonald’s ’minority-shapes-majority’ strategy in more detail, and is well worth a read.

McDonald's recruitment ad targets African-American communities

The traditional model of marketing to minority ethnic communities has revolved around one of two things. In one, a mainstream company tailors its communications – and in rare cases, its product – to so-called niche audience using the services of a specialist agency. In the other, a specialist manufacturer finds their success in appealing to minority markets can translate to the mainstream, and adopts their communications accordingly.

McDonald’s decision to reverse the dynamic of ethnic marketing may not seem like a great leap forward at first sight, but it’s a strategy that could have a dramatic impact on FMCG markets in both the US and the UK.

Inevitably, success will see imitators riding the wake of the Golden Arches in the US. But with changing tastes, social trends and culture over the past decades showing that the ’salad bowl’ analogy is becoming as ripe for the UK as the US, there’s an opportunity for the real fast movers to remove the ‘niche’ from ethnic marketing – and potentially find themselves ahead of the trend.

For those interested, the Business Week article can be found here – and is well worth a read.

If you were to sit down and & examine a list of consumer insights on the subject of energy, sports and nutritional beverages it would be both long and contradictory. UK markets have evolved in these categories far faster than consumer understanding of the product and associated benefits within. This has lead to a consumer beverage landscape for such categories best described as a wilderness where, due to low levels of understanding from consumers, insight can at times be misleading and should therefore be handled with a great deal of care.

Having recently commented in The Grocer on Neuro:

http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/articles.aspx?page=articles&ID=208231

a functional beverage from the United States which soft-launched in Waitrose in the UK in January I was interested in a similar functional proposition from Crystal Light Pure Fitness by Kraft:

This represents a first journey into the fitness territory for Crystal Light who have added a fitness proposition to their long list of functional variants which includes energy, hydration, enhancement, fortification & skin essentials. The dry-mix format itself is not a familiar one outside of the ‘performance’ area of the category however the brand has credence here through the heritage of the core range. The hydration focused strap line of “water you body” highlights the necessity to educate the consumer target on the benefit however fails to communicate any benefit above and beyond drinking only water – a huge rival to the fitness beverage market.

One aspect of their strategy I find interesting is in retail where they are avoiding the crowded aisles now dominated by Zero Ranges from Powerade and Vitamin Water and other functional drinks brands in favor of alternative shelf space.

If the goal of such a launch is to increase penetration then putting any mythologies over the ingredients/reasons to believe aside (Truvia in this case) I would suggest that the in-store position might have the effect of cannibalizing their existing range rather than attracting new customers to the product. This is especially true if the US market has a similarly low level of consumer understanding as the one I’ve seen in the UK where ingredient are often misunderstood or serve simply as a check-list / safety net. That said penetration may not necessarily be the strategy supporting such a launch which could easily be focused on re-energizing a range in order to win back lapsed female consumers lost to a glut of new competition.