Easy button campaign tapped frustration with useless customer service, poor product quality.

But over time, we have little choice but to boil over. That’s why I scrapped my DirecWay Internet service and had my home and office wired for cable.

It had only been about a year since I was gleefully praising the DirecWay customer service team and how quickly their installer arrived. They clearly wanted my business. “Take

that, Comcast and all your service outages!” I remember thinking. But DirecWay just didn’t work. I don’t mean it just didn’t work out. I mean it failed to operate. The modem died twice during the year and we were stuck with at least a dozen service outages that lasted anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Unacceptable. Snow on the dish. Ice on the dish. Rain water in the dish. Even a hornet’s nest on the dish blocked service. Not once was the tech support team in the overseas call center able to restore my connection. Their best effort was always to request a service call from an area installer who is supposed to call within 3-5 days – “but I should call them back if I haven’t heard from them in that time.” Only once of the eight or nine times did the installer call within the 3-5 days.

I’m still surprised that any company could make the cable company look good. I had one of the first high speed cable connections years ago and though it was fast, it was plagued with outage after outage.

The root of our frustration is that things just don’t work. They’re supposed to work. But they don’t. DirecWay’s ad campaign pushed the speed of the connection but who cares how fast a page could load if there is no connection? My first DVD player worked for a few months. Then it didn’t. An early digital camera worked very well for 10 months. Then it didn’t. My combination scanner/printer/color copier worked very well for about six months. Then it didn’t.  And I had to get a new scanner and printer, which I’d been trying to avoid in the first place.

Product designers are scrambling to pack everything full of bells and whistles to get consumers excited. What they really need to do is focus on the problem their devices are supposed to be solving and solve them. Bells and whistles don’t matter if the sound card doesn’t work.

This process equipment ad effectively taps the same frustration.

Tell your advertising, marketing and public relations partners about the good news as it happens. It may verify the strategy is working as planned and trigger new ideas plus it keeps people inspired to perform at a high level.

1. Your agency is your ally, working on your behalf to help you succeed and to make you look heroic to your customers, to your boss and to your board of directors. Tell the whole story and try not to hold information back about competitors, new products in the pipeline, internal politics or failed strategies. Your agency values every bit of information and sometimes having knowledge about failed projects or internal strife can mean the difference between presenting the killer idea or presenting the idea that gets us all killed.

2. State your opinions firmly. You are undoubtedly an expert in your industry and only you can offer your unique perspective. Don’t worry about hurting your agency’s feelings. Not only is your agency professional – they can handle it – but they should also welcome your candor and use it to get more on target.

3. Provide the real budget number. A financial planner will most certainly recommend a different asset allocation strategy for a $1 million investment than he or she would for a $10,000.00 investment. Your agency would do the same – recommending very different courses of action if given very different budget figures. If you value the agency’s recommendation then just say the real number. Don’t feel embarrassed that it’s not as high as you’d like it to be and don’t inflate it beyond what you’re truly willing and able to invest. It’s ok to start small and grow. An ad agency that requires you to start big probably isn’t your best choice as a marketing partner.

4. Don’t let the agency do any work without your approval. You should be signing off every step of the way from a written estimate to a comp layout, proof and so forth. This ensures everyone agrees with the direction and execution of the project as it moves forward. It may seem bothersome to sign off on minor text revisions or on low-cost purchases but these are the day to day cases where written approvals are most important. If your agency is not asking for approval to spend your money on the little items then they may not be asking for approval on the big items either. Pay attention to where the dollars are going. Set a formal budget, demand accountability and focus measurement efforts on the line that matters most: the bottom line.

5. Give your agency the good news, too. When your new customer says he or she was impressed by your brochure and Web site and they were important reasons they selected your company, tell your agency. Or if you’ve logged a record month or were nominated for a local award, don’t hide the good news. They’ll feel good and inspired to work even harder for you.

When my six-year old daughter Cassie saw the Subway logo on a sign on I-80 somewhere in central Pennsylvania, and was reminded that she’d exclaimed just the week before, “this is the best turkey sub I’ve ever had!” about a Subway sub, we turned off at the exit and ordered the same turkey sub. She took one bite and ate no more. Though the logo had communicated a series of expectations about the product and level of service to be delivered, logos don’t actually select the quality of the turkey or flavor of mustard nor do they stand behind the counter making sub-par subs. It seems Subway is having trouble ensuring consistency from one location to another. This disconnect

Logos instantly communicate the sum of every exposure to your company and trigger a positive or negative reaction that helps determine whether or not to buy.

between the customer’s expectations and actual deliverables creates uncertainty at the time a buying decision is to be made – it makes the decision feel especially high-risk and it carries on forever. As a result, people avoid making the decision by going somewhere else. Some might cross the street to the A & W.

The big, brown logo at the A & W meant nothing to my daughter but my wife Shannon was transfixed as nostalgic memories from her childhood flashed before her eyes. Simply seeing the logo triggered positive feelings that drew her towards the restaurant. Convinced the modern version of A & W would not come close to meeting the expectations of her romanticized memories, I saved her from experiencing the painful disconnect that occurs when a company fails to meet the expectations set by its logo (I drove away). Later that night, Cassie pointed out the light fixture in the T.G.I. Friday’s was shaped just like a Chevrolet logo.

It’s clear logos take root in the subconscious at a very young age. As adults, logos instantly communicate to your customers and prospects the sum of every exposure to your company or brand and trigger a positive or negative reaction that helps determine whether or not to buy. How significant is the impact? Try to think about how you react to every logo you see while in the car today. Favorable or unfavorable? Think about how your customers and prospects might react when seeing your logo. And in eleven years I’ll reveal what kind of car Cassie wants to get – it just might be a Chevy (used).