Not only do they attempt to act interested in your situation, they go out of their way to be friendly and to get to know you and your needs regarding the mobile phone. One rep talked to me about my business for a good 3-4 minutes and seemed genuinely engaged.

Moreover, on a couple occasions they reinforced the purchase I have made (“oh, that’s a great phone you chose”) regarding either the phone or the service plan, thus alleviating any cognitive dissonance I may have had about my purchase

All in all, kudos to T-Mobile. I’d reco them on this CS feat alone.

In the video below, Condomerie, a Amsterdam-based condom shop shows how they used the platform to launch a wonderfully creative and meaningful guerrilla advertising campaign. The clip shows numerous people randomly connecting with the young lady at the bottom. Then it shows their response as she reveals the message on the placard she’s holding.

I found this over at Amsterdam Ad Blog.

Check it out.

The link above lists a few good rules and some interesting perspectives around them. In short, these rules are:

1. Create a culture of customer service. In other words, live it and love it throughout the company. Also, realize that there is no end state. No company can ever say, “Ok we’re here! We’ve reached the pinnacle of customer service”. There’s always work to do and improvement to be made. Customers are always changing.

2. Don’t lie to your customers. Pretty simple huh?

3. Share your company’s customer service vision. When leaders do this, employees will be more likely to pass it on to each other and to customers.

4. Build engaged employees. Hire right. Listen to them and take action. Praise them. Prepare them.

5. Understand the attitude is as important as action. How someone serves is often as, or more, important than the physical service itself. Gee, service with a smile, there’s a novel concept.

On March 27th I spoke to about 80 people in Osaka at a Kwansei Gakuin University symposium organized by their International Business and Accounting (IBA) school. The symposium topic was “What is needed from tomorrow’s MBA in a global economy.”

My position was that what the corporate world needs are MBAs who can lead, and to do that properly our MBAs need to be what I called “Fearless MBAs”. I used an old Gordon MacKenzie story at the beginning of my presentation to illustrate what I feel is one of the biggest problems with MBA education. Students too often view their MBA learnings as immutable and gospel, and they become “hypnotized” by Adam Smith, Michael Porter and Net Present Value, rather than using them as starting points to build, evolve and be creative with.

I offered up two ideas for creating the Fearless MBA; teaching MBA students to 1. Be Creative and teaching them to 2. Challenge more often.

Be Creative
Students and current business professional too often fear creativity. They either view it as a waste of time or too uncertain to bother with. When I did my MBA I ran into far too many students that only wanted to do what they were told and did not want to creatively explore all the options. In the business world, this is clearly just as rampant. Unfortunately, in a globalized business world, where new ideas and innovation is critical, creative aversion is a death knell. I urged that programs should not simply contain the occasional “creativity” class, but rather every class should overtly encourage creative thinking. Some professors naturally do this. Most find it completely unnatural and shy away from it.

Challenge
The leaders of today’s businesses typically got there by taking risks and challenging the approved, expected and agreed upon. Those who didn’t got left behind as illustrated by countless examples in countless case studies, and in books like the Innovator’s Dilemma, Good to Great, and Billion Dollar Lessons. Business professionals, especially MBAs, have the tools to excel and so should be the ones constantly challenging. This problem is especially relevant in Japan, where consensus building is a corporate way of life and confrontation is almost always avoided. Too many meetings in Japan focus on finding common ground rather than finding what is “right” or “needed”. As Japan’s need for international growth becomes greater, it will be essential for their business leaders to be able to conduct business on different playing fields where consensus isn’t as important and confrontation is the norm.

I was clearly not the majority voice at the symposium. I spotted a lot of folded arms and serious expressions as I spoke. But I also saw some vehement head nodding too. So, clearly there were some creative minds in the audience prepared to challenge.

Very telling stuff.

Ok, so Right Brain/Left Brain Marketing only came in at #73. But I have Seth’s Blog squarely in my sights. Watch out Seth! Take a look at the list at CoolMarketingStuff.com for some other great marketing reading.

And keep coming back. I’m randomly shooting for #48 next:)

This campaign breeches that wall with creative that makes people talk, laugh and smirk. And, it has clearly generated more than its fair share of PR just by being what it is. Selling sex isn’t always the best way to go. And in fact, some campaigns do it gratuitously and with little strategic rationale. This campaign uses it to its advantage.

Below, I have listed five simple rules for naming your brand or company that apply pretty well across the board of naming projects. This is a good middle-ground that will help you put the job of naming on the right track without suffering the 9 months and half million dollars that branding and naming agencies will try to convince you are necessary.

1. Decide On A Direction

This is the first step and unfortunately the one that most companies skip. What do you want the name to communicate? Without this strategic direction you and your team will be floundering in uncertainty. Take the time at the beginning of your naming project to write down the primary messaging goal for your new name. For instance, if you are naming a new whitening toothpaste your name should obviously communicate white, shiny, glistening, beauty etc. If you’re renaming an investment company your task is a little tougher. Do you want to communicate safety, know-how, international scope, or something niche, like environmental finance? Pick ONE direction, rather than three of these and your naming project will go much smoother.

2. Know Your Competition

Don’t come up with 100 names and then see if any of your competitors are using them. Instead, research your competition first. See what’s out there. Then attach a competitive landscape and name list to the strategic messaging your wrote. This will provide those brainstorming names with immediate parameters of where they can and can’t explore. I’ve seen companies skip this step, pick URLs and get all the way to the trademark office before realizing the name (or a close variant) was already being used.

3. Be Creative

Ok, so maybe this one is obvious. But creativity isn’t just a good idea — it’s absolutely necessary today. Unless you are a creative naming professional, there is a very good chance that your first 10-30 names are going to be taken or unavailable in URL form. Today, companies need to expand their name boundaries and the lexicon itself (create new words) to really succeed and stand out.

4. Don’t Ask Your Best Friend’s Sister’s Mother’s….

If you have a good direction and you have smart, knowledgeable and professional people developing names (whether internally or through an agency), you don’t need your sister’s, wife’s or secretary’s opinion. Focus on your direction, and goals, and leave this decision to the experts.

5. Realize That You Are As Important As Your Customers

If the Marketing Director, CEO or Sr. Sales Manager doesn’t like the name, they might not work as hard to back it up and support the brand around it. That may sound petty, but it’s reality. Make sure that all the key influencers and stakeholders (not everyone in the entire company) are onboard with the new name — especially if it is a new company name. Once everyone is singing the same tune, ask them to go out and sing it to the rest of the company, their subordinates, customers etc.

Finding the “right” name isn’t easy. It’s a very subjective thing. By following the five tips above, some of that subjectivity can be mitigated, making the process a whole lot smoother.

Good luck and good naming.

Hurray!

Of course, that hurray might come at the cost of this site ever being found in a search on Google again. Nevertheless, hurray! Traditional media has been caving in for years now, when they should have been fighting back. As the Salon article states, this isn’t a new refrain, but it is a memorable one. And maybe it’s one the the industry can get behind in cooperation mode. Of course, it’s a crazy uphill battle, that many think won’t amount to a hill of beans. But I wonder why Cuban spent his breath on it if he wasn’t going to forward the cause

We’ll see.