Real conversation with a real person. Social without the digital media.

I arrived in Austin yesterday around 5:00 pm, checked into my hotel and headed over to the convention center for my badge.  A few people mingled outside the main hall. Carpenters and electricians raced to get displays and rooms ready for this morning. But other than that it was quiet enough to mosey through the halls, figure out where everything was, and to peruse the display of books at the unattended bookstalls.

I met Chad Feehan, the young director of a movie called Wake, making its world premiere at SxSW.  He was busy stapling small posters to poles around the convention center.  We talked for a few minutes about making movies and what it’s like when all you have in your advertising arsenal is a box of posters and a staple gun rather than Hollywood’s promotion machine.  I wished him well.  And we exchanged Twitter handles.

Yes, there are plenty of reasons to come to SxSW. Panels on everything and anything from crowdsourcing, to the iPad, mobile technology and social media promise new ideas.  Keynotes from Clay Shirky, Jaron Lanier, Gary Vaynerchuk and Ev Williams will surely inspire and inform.

But the real reason to come to SxSW is for the human connection.  Face to face conversations with people you meet for the first time as well as those you’ve previously met, but only online.

So much of our interaction these days is via Twitter.  We give a few seconds of thought to a point we want to make or a reaction we’re compelled to offer.  We may go so far as to write a thoughtful comment on a blog post we’ve actually read or respond to the comments others leave us.  But here we can find all those people and actually connect.

My personal encounters continued. I had one-on-one conversations, over beer, with Steve Hall of Adrants and Faris Yakob of TBD. My digital exchanges with Steve typically consist of sending him a link I hope he’ll include in his blog, or answering a quick question he has about a campaign.  Last night we actually talked about life, and change, and social media and his moving to Rochester. Being Dads we even asked about the kids.

In Faris’s case, it was our first real-life introduction.  I’ve known of him for two years, been reading some of his stuff for almost one year, and interacting with him on Twitter and blog comments for the last six months.  We know lots of people in common. We even spoke recently at the same event series on different dates.  But until last night we’d never met.

Thanks to Foursquare (another post for later today or tomorrow), we discovered we were within a block of one another and got together at a bar near the Convention Center. We discussed everything from the new agency model, to transforming creative companies, the impact of social media, how to give a presentation without using any Keynote slides, and the financial model that determines whether a book gets published.  I shared a few lessons from Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto as we talked about how CMOs could ever learn to choreograph the many services and platforms needed to market today. He turned me onto Packrati.us as we both shared our challenges with how to filter and organize plethora content that comes into our lives. It was great, adding dimension and depth to all the 140-character conversations we’d had in the past.

My next few days will be pretty full; there are lots of other real people to connect with. If you’re one of them, and I don’t find you, I hope you’ll find me. Thanks for reading.

Image by: photocapy

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Don Draper, Bill Bernbach, Cliff Freeman, Bob Greenberg. Who's next?

I know, the last thing advertising needs is another award.  And yes, it’s a little pompous to think this blog is entitled to award one. But the above visual seems like too much fun to waste.  So on the eve of SXSW, Creativity_Unbound announces its call for entries for the first quarterly “Future of Advertising Award.” The idea is that every three months (advertising changes way too fast to wait for an entire year to pass) this blog and its readers (that’s you) will bestow the honor (?) on someone whose efforts epitomize positive change, innovation, new ideas that inspire us, or even miserable failures that teach us valuable lessons about how to move forward in the digitally-driven, consumer-controlled, social media world.

Winners could come from the ranks of doers, thinkers, creators, technologists or teachers. The one thing they’ll have in common – the picture offers a hint – is that they are leading us forward or inspiring us to lead ourselves forward. People who represent what comes next in the evolution of an industry that goes all the way back to J. W. Thompson in the 1800s.

The modern ad person probably begins with Don Draper, or Darren Stevens, take your pick. The species continues with Bill Bernbach,who gave us the creative team; Cliff Freeman, representing the height of TV commercials; and currently Bob Greenberg, among those who’ve led the industry’s transformation from analog to digital.  But who comes next?  That’s what we want to identify, encourage and celebrate. Emphasis on we.

So please leave your recommendations in the comment section below.  The panel of judges (to be named soon) will consider them all and float some out ourselves, then let you know who prevails. At which time you can agree, debate or call us clueless.

The winner, of course, will receive a beautiful print with their face on the body standing tall at the front of the line.  Suitable for framing, of course.

Who do you think should win? Someone already famous: Ben Malbon, Faris Yakob, Mike Lebowitz, Ross Kimbarovsky? Someone almost famous: Adrian Ho, Jordan Kretchmer? Or better yet, someone we’ve never heard from, but will?

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As ReadWriteWeb reminded us this morning, SXSW will be overwhelming.  Just scrolling through the schedule, even after you filter and refine, leaves you wondering how to clone yourself or otherwise choose among all the options happening at the exact same time. Granted some of the best learning, interaction and conversation takes place outside the numbered rooms of the convention center and the lettered rooms of the Hilton, but there’s an awful lot of stuff worth putting on your schedule and adhering to. Here are a few of the sessions that I have planned.

The Era of Crowdsourcing: Guiding Principles

Digg’s Jeffrey Kalmikoff and Behance’s Scott Belsky are leading this one.  They may not be Jeff Howe, but I’m assuming there will be the creative perspective – much debated – and ideas and suggestions for how to make crowdsourcing work for both the content seeker and the participant.  Not sure who the other panelists are, as they’re not listed on sxsw.com, but it’s too important a topic to pass up.

iPad: New Opportunities for Content Creators

There’s no shortage of speculation. Book publishers, the print media, production companies and ad agencies are already working on how to take advantage of the iPad. A panel that brings people together from publishing, video games and the interactive space could be inspiring.  Wish Big Spaceship’s Michael Lebowitz were on this panel, but I’m assuming  the collective group will offer at least some new insights.

Improving Social Media With Live Streaming Video

No doubt live video will play a huge role in the next phase of brands using social media to connect and engage; whether it’s to broadcast news, conduct a weekly show, inform a sales force, rally a community, or simply bypass traditional media to get the word out. There is still a sense of “now” when we’re watching something and know that others are experiencing it at the same time that streaming video puts in the hands of a content creator. Ustream’s Brad Hunstable leads this one and promises to share some real results from users.

Monkeys with Internet Access: Sharing, Human Nature, and Digital Data

Clay Shirky has yet to announce his actual topic, but if you’ve read his book or his blog, you know he’s worth an hour of your time. If you don’t know who he is, click on his name for a bio. And if you can’t get there, do yourself a favor and read any of his posts or books. Even when they’re a few years old, you’ll learn something.

Story.Next — Narrating the Crowd

Anyone who’s seen one of my presentations or heard my talk knows that my view of social media and advertising is all about inspiring others to tell stories for us.  Or as Faris Yakob says, “”Rather than having ideas that are content, have ideas that create content.” (More coming on that topic in a future post.) Clearly there’s a great opportunity to take what StoryCorps is all about and embrace the approach in the social space. Everyone wants to share his or her story.  Even those that are about the brands we work on.

I have dozens of other events on my schedule, a long list of old and new friends to see, and some smaller gatherings planned.  No shortage of inspiration, information and excitement to be had.   What are your plans?  And if you see anything missing from my schedule, feel free to recommend. Hope to see you there.

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In an industry that loves buzzwords and handles, this is the new one for 2010: content without walls. It’s a fancy (or succinct) way of saying that your brand needs to live wherever and whenever a consumer wants or needs access to information or entertainment.

After all, our media habits have become increasingly complex. We get our fix of content from books, ads, podcasts, magazines and movies.  And we access it from smart phones, tablets, TV sets, and digital billboards. Not to mention search, shared links and social media.

So what does this mean for content creators, advertisers, brands? Does this suggest that we simply make sure every TV spot also gets posted to YouTube and a brand’s Facebook page? Is it all about the many different places we can put a piece of content so that it lives on every imaginable platform, ubiquitous and impossible to avoid? Is it merely about portability from one device to another?

Content can live anywhere, but is that enough?

“Hey, we can put our spot on cable, on smart phones, embed it in a tablet ad, or  play it in back of a taxi cab. While we’re at it, why not project it onto the sides of urban buildings, too.  Let’s leverage that production budget.”

That may work in some cases. I watch at least as much TV on my iPhone as I do on my Samsung flat screen. And I probably sit through far more ads on YouTube than on television.  (That way I get to pick only the good ones.)  But the expression “content without walls,” could, in some cases, make us lazy if all we do is place the same idea in lots of different places.

I much prefer the idea of “engineering your presence,” a term I first heard from Michael Calienes. It suggests you need to be everywhere, but not always with the same content. Chances are pretty good that customers don’t want the same thing on a tablet as they want on TV.  The information that appears on your packaging is unlikely to double as an iPhone app. And while an honest to goodness testimonial — inspired by an effective conversation strategy — might work from a blogger you actually trust, or a friend on Twitter, it typically makes for some pretty boring advertising.

Instead of starting with the content we have, we should consider what our customers want. We should write strategies and creative briefs that offer insights about a customer’s relationship to media, content and community, not just to the brand, product or category.  Does she want to be entertained or informed? Is she interested in listening or sharing or co-creating?  Is she influenced more by friends or trusted bloggers? Are we creating a series of messages we hope will get noticed?  Or are we producing applications we know will get used?

Sticking a TV spot on YouTube no matter how many views it gets may be content without walls. But it probably won’t break through all the barriers standing between you and a loyal customer.

This post inspired by a great conversation with my brilliant colleague John Moore.

Photo by: Alex Webb

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If you believe the numbers, as many as 25—50 percent of all companies still restrict their employees from using social media during the workday. No messing around on Facebook. No connecting with digital friends. And God forbid, no sharing or talking about your employer or company.

These philistines of the business world remain convinced that time spent on social networks can only serve to jeopardize office productivity.

On the contrary, those of us who appreciate the value of listening, connecting, and engaging know just how absurd that argument is, regardless of the research. But guess what? It turns out that even when we’re just wasting our time watching senseless videos or keeping track of a friend’s late night exploits, it still might be a good thing, especially if we work in an industry where problem solving is part of our job.

Need evidence? You can find a pretty compelling one in a recent Wired column Driven by Distraction – How Twitter and Facebook make us more productive workers. Arguing convincingly that social media participation is well suited to stoking the creative mind, Brendan I Koerner reminds us of the following:

“Studies that accuse social networks of reducing productivity assume that time spent microblogging is time strictly wasted. But that betrays an ignorance of the creative process. Humans weren’t designed to maintain a constant focus on assigned tasks. We need periodic breaks to relieve our conscious minds of the pressure to perform — pressure that can lock us into a single mode of thinking. Musing about something else for a while can clear away the mental detritus, letting us see an issue through fresh eyes, a process that creativity researchers call incubation.”

OK, so Wired is clearly vested in advocating almost anything digital. But this argument has been around since before the social web.  Check out Creativity and the Mind, Discovering the Genius Within by Ronald A. Finke and friends. He’s written and entire thesis that will convince you that:

“People are more successful if we force them to move away from a problem or distract them temporarily.”

Of course all the companies still slapping a lock on digital access can roll out another argument:  the confidential nature of their company’s information or the even more effective government regulation and compliance excuse. Alas, that line of reasoning seems a little stale now, too.  I mean if the Department of Defense can embrace social media, can’t an insurance company?

In its new policy (Directive-Type Memorandum 09-026), announced last week, the Department of Defense states that the default for the DoD non-classified network (the NIPRNET) is for open access so that all of DoD can use new media.

“Service members and DoD employees are welcome and encouraged to use new media to communicate with family and friends — at home stations or deployed — but it’s important to do it safely. Keep in mind that everyone has a responsibility to protect themselves and their information online, and existing regulations on ethics, operational security, and privacy still apply.  Be sure never to post any information that could be considered classified, sensitive, or that might put military members or families in danger.”

As U.S. military. Capt. Nathan Broshear, Director of Public Affairs for 12th Air Force (Air Forces Southern) who is currently leading Air Force communications in Haiti, says:

“We’re not launching missiles, we’re launching ideas.”

My friend David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, sums it up better than I can.  So I’ll leave you with this quote from David.

“There is a huge number of companies that are putting their organizations at a disadvantage. If I managed a hedge fund, I’d sell short a basket of stocks of companies that block social media like YouTube and Facebook and buy stock in the companies (like IBM) that encourage employee use of these new tools and have an established social media policy like the DoD.”

Works for me, David. What do the rest of you have to say? Is there a legitimate excuse to restrict employees from using social media?

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The print world may owe a debt of gratitude if the iPad helps save it

I got my start in this business making print ads.  I loved everything about them: the challenge of the blank page; the possibilities of the two-dimensional plane; the art of combining an image and words to yield an idea greater than the sum of the parts; and the chance to create pictures in a reader’s mind with nothing but a perfectly crafted headline.

In the early days, Mullen was known for its print.  Campaigns for Timberland, Smartfood, Swiss Army, LL Bean and many others were a perennial presence in local and national award shows. We built arguably one of the best studios in the business, worked with renowned photographers all over the world, and attracted art directors who were obsessed with the craft.

Then, thanks to the web, it all came crashing down.  We got all kinds of new creative platforms — video, social, mobile, applications — but the rapid demise of that age-old form so many of us loved was (for those of us over 40) shocking.  At least at first.

But now, the medium is about to get a second life. Thank you iPad. It will give us back all of things that made print great:

• A large two-dimensional space on which to create a piece of commercial art that captures one’s attention.
• A palette onto which we can place stunning visuals.
• An environment (digital magazines) where a reader may actually welcome something remarkable rather than simply look for the little “x” to close the ad.

Of course, it will also inspire something entirely different:  a totally new digital form of print. Think Bernbach meets iPhone meets Wired meets UGC meets social media.  All potentially combined into a single execution that’s conceptual, engaging, user friendly.

Consdider what Pentagram has to say:

“The conventions of online advertising—banner ads, pop ups, and so forth—aren’t popular with readers, with advertisers, and certainly not with designers. But the iPad is a new medium that will create a whole range of opportunities. Once people start exploiting what it can do, we may see the kind of creative renaissance that will deliver the next George Lois or Lee Clow. People will start subscribing to certain i-mags just for the ads alone.”

If you’re not already thinking about the possibilities of the iPad and the creation of a new form of digital print you should be.  I imagine all of the following as possibilities.  Eventually you’ll be able to create ads that let consumers:

• View a product from every imaginable angle with the flick of the finger.
• Change the colors and patterns of anything from shirt and tie combinations to the interior of a car.
• Upload and incorporate images of themselves into an execution so they can try on different outfits or pieces of jewelry.
• Instantly link or connect to back stories about how a product was made; learn its carbon footprint or its nutritional information.
• Find all their Twitter and Facebook friends who have bought the same brand or product to get their personal opinion (new application for Blippy?)
• Explore a brand via digital games, back stories, or through integration with other media, i.e. TV shows.
• Decide which version of an ad or which ad from a brand he even wants to see.
• Share, vote, rate ads in real time forcing creators to get better and more responsive
  

So, while we’re still a couple of months away from the first shipments, there are a number of things you could be doing right now.  For starters, order your iPad and while you’re at it reserve at least a few for your creative department.  Then consider the following:

• Make sure your current iPhone app developers are in touch with Apple regarding what will be possible with the iPad and have them share that with creative teams.
• Learn what Conde Nast and other major publishers have planned for their magazines’ conversion to tablets and how you can create advertising that will work in their new digital formats.
• Assemble a team made up of creative technologists, UX specialists, media planners, social media thinkers and creative people to start thinking about the possibilities.
• Identify the brands and clients who are most willing and excited about re-inventing how to tell their stories.
• Avoid simply migrating old content, images and OLA type executions to this new platform. It’s a chance to create something entirely new: executions that change daily; that include digital games; that incorporate real-time conversation.
  

I don’t have my iPad yet. (It is on order, though.) I haven’t seen a Conde Nast presentation in person. And I don’t have a team assembled internally as of today. But it’s all on the to do list. What about you?

Links and other articles of interest.

Sports Illustrated: Tablet Demo

Made by Many: Content design with cojones

CNN Tech: Print media hails iPad potential

Daily Illini: iPad could save print media

Pentagram: Five ways the iPad will change magazine design

C-Change Media: Why ads on the iPad and other tablets won’t make a difference

Steve Jobs photo by: curious lee

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Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy, James Walter Thompson: ad agencies have been around a long time

It remains the topic du jour.  We talk about it from every conceivable angle: the future of advertising; the future of advertising agencies; the impact of digital on advertising; the new consumer-control; even the death of MadMen.

But when Forrester talks about it people listen.

A few months ago I participated in Sean Corcoran’s research on where it’s all going. The Forrester analyst interviewed more than 60 agency leaders, clients and media in pursuit of the answer.

Well last night, at a MITX-sponosored event here in Boston, he debuted some of this findings, all of which Forrester will eventually turn into advice for both agencies and marketers as they continue to navigate the turbulence brought on by digital technology, the social web and changing consumer behavior.

Here are some of the findings from Sean’s presentation, due out in final form in a couple of weeks. Anything in italics is my take or conclusion. In the next week or so I’ll develop additional thoughts and share examples of what people are doing and or struggling with in light of his observations.

It is a new world defined by technology and consumer control

• Consumers today have a complex relationship with media: it poses challenges as to how and where to engage with them
• Despite Edelman’s recent findings, Forrester insists that consumers trust consumers more than they trust brands: it means we need to mobilize fans and followers to evangelize on our behalf
• The Groundswell has gone mainstream: the consumer is now a creator/sharer/distributor; learn to harness and inspire that
• WOM reigns again: your content and the experiences you create must stimulate it
• 3.5 billion brand conversations happen every day, all of them in public: time to master the art of listening

Consumers hate most advertising

• Only 5 % agree with advertising claims: start being honest and authentic
• 50 % say brands don’t live up to advertising promises: really, start being honest and authentic
• 67 % complain there is too much advertising: forget messages, create experiences and conversation

Adaptive marketing is the new model

• Everything is powered by digital: hire digital, think digital, learn digital or die
• Real time response, as in political advertising, is the future of marketing: monitor social media regularly and get everyone a Flipcam
• It’s all about pull not push: the formula is SEO plus value equal traffic
• Addressability is here: you should be thinking versioning, customization, options
• Intelligence and analytics will drive everything: make it part of your strategy before and after creative development

Media needs to combine paid, owned and earned

• Paid: for scale and reach and speed: social can’t do everything, reach, scale and speed come from paid
• Owned: for content, relationships, listening and co-creation: open source opportunities are everywhere so create great content, utility and apps
• Earned: social, WOM, PR, bloggers, influencers: paid can’t do everything; you need a social and conversation strategy, not simply a presence on Facebook

Successful agencies will move well beyond campaigns

• Build campaigns PLUS platforms:  you need both, Nike-plus without a brand behind has no plus
• Stop thinking in terms of audience and think about a community of participants:  a brand’s consumers may be your best creative resource, or at least your best medium
• Undo unbundling: unbundled won’t work anymore: agencies need to find ways to integrate; become curators; and  learn co-creation, curation, and crowdsourcing
• Embrace and master new technologies quickly:  you are working on the re-invention of print ads on the iPad, right?

Clients will look for three things

• Ideas:  note this does not mean messages or ads
• Interaction:  engagement, connection, community, media
• Intelligence, as in you need to collect, report, analyze and predict: if you don’t have robust analytics, you’re in big trouble

Sean has other findings and conclusions, but I’ll leave it to him to package, reveal and explain. Suffice it to say, this is what’s been released as of last night.

Finally, the photo above (stole the idea from Sean who talked about the history of agencies as well) is a reminder that this is an old business. Agencies have been around for a long time.  They have adapted from being agents who sold, to owners of the brand, to creators of the big idea, to specialists in advertising, DR, CRM, PR, design and digital.  It’s time to adapt again.  And quickly.

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The week before last I had the privilege of being an interview subject for a comprehensive study on creativity.  Thomas Vogel, an Emerson College professor currently on sabbatical to research and write a book on the topic, inspired me with questions for well over an hour.  Thomas has a very specific hypothesis and framework for his project that I’ve promised not to reveal, but suffice it to say he’s interested in the following:

Techniques for identifying creative talent.

Whether a culture or environment can encourage creativity.

How to evaluate creative ideas.

Ideally, Thomas’s book will deliver both a report on how great creative organizations do what they do, as well as offer a blueprint for companies striving to become more creative themselves.

There are plenty of people who’ve written about creativity as it relates to our business.  There are the classics like Bob Levenson’s The Bill Bernbach Book, filled with quotes from the master and remarkably relevant to this day; The Book of Gossage, arguably the genesis for the creative perspective that defines Goodby, Silverstein and Partners; and Richard Wilde’s Problems: Solutions: Visual Thinking for Graphic Communications, lessons that have helped teach two generations how to think visually.

More recently, anyone interested in creativity has been rewarded with Sir Ken Robinson’s The Element, a brilliant thesis that admonishes the public school system for confining us to such narrow definitions of intelligence; instead it implores us to find our personal passion and a tribe that can foster it.  IDEO CEO Tim Brown shares his insights in Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation. And, of course, there’s always Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers with its simple message and evidence that it’s all about practice.  Lots  of it.

But thinking about organizational creativity – is that an oxymoron? – makes a lot of sense in an age where ideas, stories, technology and media aren’t simply converging, they’re crashing into each other.

Yes, Jaron Lanier, in his You Are Not a Gadget, reminds us that group think won’t yield the kind of original creative idea that one brilliant individual can conceive, but the fact is that we create more and more in teams now.  Take a look at Pixar for example. What comes out the back end is so much more than a writer’s or even a director’s original vision.  Sure someone has to be the benevolent (or not so benevolent) dictator, but the finished product requires not only lots of individual creativity but a culture and organization that fosters it. One that accepts diverse opinions and doesn’t suffer the “not invented here” syndrome or tolerate the ugly kind of competition where people feel compelled to stand up and declare, “that was my idea.”

When we made ads, it was easy.  A writer and an art director had an idea and executed it.  But today, the possibilities of technology, the difference UX can make, the need to design, program, and build something complicates matters.

It’s hard enough to identify creative talent.  Getting different kinds of talent to work together, toward a single goal, all welcoming each other’s contributions to make something better is a challenge. Whether or not one book can help remains to be seen. But an effort to explore how creative companies foster originality — comparing techniques for hiring, identifying common characteristics, understanding  how leaders inspire — is a welcome one.  It will be both fun and interesting to compare one company to another and learn each other’s tricks.

My guess is that Professor Vogel’s ambitious project may not give aspiring creative organizations all the answers, but it will at least force them (and us) to ask questions about what they’re doing and whether or not it’s fostering more creativity, or just getting in the way.

I wish you luck with the project Thomas. Can’t wait to read the results.

Photo by: Lisa Dragon

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I’m not sure what’s more interesting, the fact that the first college to encourage personal videos as part of the application process was Tufts University, a liberal arts college just outside of Boston, or that more than 1000 applicants responded to the optional request.

The former shows just how mainstream content creation has become and the latter reinforces the new level of comfort and familiarity the digital generation has with expressing itself publicly through virtually any medium – images, blogs, videos.

Obviously there are advantages to both college and student. The admissions officers get a better look at the whole student and sense of how creative he or she is. The applicant receives a signal he’s considering a school that thinks progressively and looks beyond the standard academic record and test scores.

Granted the idea of using video as part of the application process isn’t entirely new. Plenty of organizations and contests, from the Ford Fiesta Movement to MTV have employed the technique. And other colleges allow applicants to include portfolios or writing or even websites to augment their application.  But this example brings the video application even more mainstream, generating response from kids who aren’t necessarily pursuing careers in film, social media or entertainment.

It seems there are a couple of takeaways. The first is we better make sure our kids (as if they need any help) are good at conveying ideas and arguments using all of the new tools if they’re to compete for a place in those coveted classrooms. (See this blog from 13-year-old Orren Fox.)

But for those of us in the business of advertising, marketing and branding, there’s this. Tufts’s little experiment is clearly one more reminder why user-generated content, crowdsourcing, and personal branding will continue to grow in popularity.

We are only a few years away, at most, from marketing to prospects and communities who themselves are as comfortable at crafting messages, making videos and earning people’s attention as those of us who practice these crafts professionally. And they clearly welcome any opportunity to do so.

Sure, the cynics and over-confident among you will view these videos and feel you have nothing to worry about. It’s not as if any of these are likely to rival a quality TV commercial, or even find enough of an audience to take them viral. But this is still a trend worth watching.

And it should make make things interesting. When we’re all communicators, who’s talking and who’s paying attention?

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Rolls Royce customer service is as legendary as the motorcar

OK, the examples I’m about to share do not rival the legendary tales of Rolls Royce. You may have heard the oft repeated tale of the plutocrat whose Phantom develops a transmission problem in the South of France.  He telegraphs Rolls Royce and that evening while he’s sleeping blissfully in his hotel room, the motorcar manufacturer helicopters in a team of mechanics who repair his touring car before dawn and then leave neither bill nor record of the repairs. After all Rolls Royces do not experience transmission problems.

Stories like that live on since they epitomize both the brand and the definition of service.  These days we have come to expect the total opposite. And, in fact, they are the stories that get told. Usually via social media. Receive lousy treatment in a restaurant?  Shout it out on Yelp or Foursquare. Airline refuses to replace your broken guitar? Compose some angry lyrics and post them on YouTube. Comcast doesn’t show up when scheduled?  Rant about it on Twitter.

True, more often than not such condemnation is deserved.  It feels good to vent. And in some cases our outbursts actually yield improved products or services.

But it strikes me that if we can so effortlessly dish out anger and accusations, we ought to, at least once in a while, offer up praise when it’s deserved. Just maybe, by doing so, we’ll encourage other brands and marketers, service providers and retailers to emulate that Rolls Royce behavior – or something remotely similar — that could earn our loyalty.

So here goes, a recap of some good service I recently received on a family vacation in Florida.

Jet Blue is responsive on Twitter

Delayed flights are the bane of every traveler, but when you’re on vacation with your family it’s even more annoying. Worse yet is not having accurate information. The word “Delayed” doesn’t quite cut it when it comes be keeping you informed. But on a recent trip to Florida, I found that all my questions regarding the arrival of my aircraft, accurate departure time, and other updates were delivered in close to real time via @JetBlue on Twitter. I even got more information than was available on the airline’s mobile website and got it fast. Not sure how they do it and if they can do it all the time for their many travelers, but definitely impressive.

Hertz delivers exactly as they said they would

I’ll start with the fact that rental car prices the week of school vacation are nothing short of highway robbery. In fact the sales manager at Tampa International Airport’s Hertz office actually admitted that the company jacks up prices by 15 to 20 percent that week. But I can’t argue with how great the service was. We had a brand new VW Routan that ran fine, but a few days into the trip, when a malfunction indicator light came on and left us reluctant to drive any distance without knowing the cause, Hertz delivered another brand new vehicle to us less than two hours after we called. No insistence that we come to them.  No questions asked.  A pretty good way to assure my next rental will be with Hertz, too.

Tommy Bahama Tropical Café is not laid back when it comes to service

I can honestly say I’ve never had this happen before, and I’ve patronized some pretty good restaurants all over the world. Two days after eating at this popular spot in Sarasota’s St. Armand’s Key, I got a call from the manager asking about our experience. In a brief but meaningful call she wanted to know about our reception, the preparation of the food and the service of the wait staff.  I’m pretty sure she was even taking notes when I suggested the sauce on my grilled Snapper could have been a tad more subtle.  She told me the restaurant calls most of its patrons who make reservations for a quick follow-up. Given that the place did virtually everything right and nothing wrong, one might conclude that they actually listen.

It doesn’t seem it should be that hard to provide great service. Zappos (a Mullen client) does it all day long every day. Apple delivers it in virtually all of its stores. The W Hotel has built a brand around service.

If you want stories told about your brand, perhaps you should forego trying to save money on service by trying to limit the length of phone calls or refusing to treat customers as individuals (Chase, are you listening?) and take a lesson from some of these companies.

What do you think? Is it possible to encourage better service with praise?  Or should we resume venting?

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