Joseph Jaffee, Author, Join the Conversation and Life After the 30-Second Spot

Joseph Jaffee has opinions. And you can’t help but get engaged by the bold statements he makes.

Our second keynote for the morning shook up the room, and I understood why my colleague, Deborah Eastman, had recommended him so highly as a speaker for the conference. I also understood why he uses the job title, “Chief Interruptor.” You can’t get change without shocking the system. Hard.

I had started the day by asking everyone what functional area they worked in. I’d say about 20% of the room were from marketing, and Joseph asked them to throw out much of what they had learned about marketing in business school. Gone are the 4 P’s of Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion. Instead, he offered a different framework that more accurately reflects the two-way dialogue between “the people” who work at companies, and “the people” that buy their products and services And yes, it is all about REAL people, not just marketing messages and ad campaigns. But it’s also about how people express themselves in the digital and virtual world online. And he challenged us all to strip away the corporate persona, and join the conversation with our customers…one on one. What about Net Promoter? Joseph shared several points that tied his approach to the core concepts of Net Promoter: "You have to LISTEN and HEAR long enough to be INVITED IN to HELP the customer," he said. Combine that statement with the idea of REAL PEOPLE communicating with REAL PEOPLE…and you have some key elements of the Net Promoter discipline…like closing the loop with customers after they provide you with feedback, and striving to get more promoters in your business so they will share your message with others honestly and organically.

My final big takeaway from Joseph’s talk was that you can’t control the conversation. You can only participate in it and contribute to it, as honestly and openly as possible. Companies that try to control the message will either render it stale, or turn the judgment against them.

Having described every marketer’s worst fears in full video and graphic detail (including the infamous Comcast Technician video, and Dell Hell website), Joseph ended with some glimmers of hope. Both Comcast and Dell have come around, and are effectively responding to the feedback leveled against them by disgruntled consumers. And companies like Panasonic are reaching out to influential bloggers to involve them in the innovation process.

Being that open may not be easy, but who ever said running a business was easy.

Thanks, Joseph, for interrupting us for an hour or so today! I’ll look forward to hearing what our audience thought on Episode 122 of your podcast series at Jaffejuice.