Why the little details matter

I recently ordered some business cards from a company, moo.com and the entire experience thus far has been excellent.

The website itself was a joy to use – simple, clear and I’d go as far as saying a pleasure. I designed my cards easily and placed the order.

I’ve been kept in touch throughout the production stage and just received an email yesterday telling me that the cards had been dispatched. But, it wasn’t just a mechanical, mundane statement of the fact, the Moo brand carried through to the email, as you can see below:

Hello,

it’s Little MOO again. I thought you’d like to know, the following items
from your order are now in the mail:

2 x Uploader Business Cards (50)

You requested Royal Mail delivery, which means it should reach you
between 1 and 2 business days.

Remember, I’m just a bit of software, so if you have any questions
regarding your order, the best place to start is with our Frequently
Asked Questions. We keep the answers here:

http://www.moo.com/help/

If you’re still not sure, contact customer services, (who are real
people) at:

https://secure.moo.com/service/

Thanks for ordering with MOO – we hope you love your order,

Thanks,
Little MOO, Print Robot

MOO
“We love to print”

What a difference the attention to detail makes, the MOO brand really makes you want to participate further and even recommend them to others – which is what I’m doing right now in fact. What really amazes me though is how so many companies get the details wrong and undo all their hard work at the front end. The brand is more than a logo and a pretty picture or two, it’s the way a company behaves in every interaction. Being “all fir coat and nae knickers” just doesn’t cut it – it’s insincere and we humans like a bit of sincerity and believability from our interactions.

So, full marks to Moo.com – I will of course retract all of this if the cards don’t turn up in a day or so!

p.s. they turned up early!

The most underwhelming campaign of the moment

BT, the UK’s monolithic telecoms supplier has recently added Sky Sports (the televisual crown jewels) to its BT Vision package – a bit late to the game you might think, and you’d be right. This is a big deal for BT’s TV offering, which has always been a little bit like the bloke in the Corrs: nobody gives it a second glance when you can see what else is on offer (Sky, Virgin and dare I say Freeview). So, now that BT Vision has a sporting proposition to offer does BT have a fighting chance in the market: I don’t think so and neither it seems does BT!

Where I live (Bristol), you can’t move for billboards promoting this momentous moment. A pretty decent media spend I’m sure, so why then fill the space with what amounts to turning up to a party in jeans and a t-shirt when everyone else is in fancy dress?

The ads feature Premier League footballers – wow – and even a couple you may have heard of. They show Michael Owen, Shay Given, Gareth Bale and Wes Brown (yep, I had to look up the last two) with faces like they’re suffering from a collective bout of serious constipation, leaving a tunnel to presumably get onto the pitch and strut their stuff. Okay, so not going for the likes of Rooney, Lampard et al suggests that the ambitions of BT aren’t that serious, but they compound this by making them wear a bodged football strip that you’d have complained about wearing for the school team circa twenty years ago. On Shay (the goalkeeper) Given’s top you can even see where they have stitched a little yellow patch over what I can only think is some 4th rate sports brand’s logo – probably with a name like Shoot or Tackle, or more appropriately Miss!

It is a terribly constructed advert that, to me at least, suggests that BT has very little confidence in their proposition – so why the hell should the punters? BT has probably spent a decent amount of money on this integrated (TV, radio, press, outdoor, DM and online) campaign and all I can see it doing is reinforcing their position in the market as the choice for those who can’t afford any better (of course Freeview is free and pretty comparable). In fact, this advert is, in essence, much the same as Gerald Ratner telling the world that his product was crap. People who subscribe to BT Vision presumably do so because they are on a budget, but they don’t necessarily need that position to be mimicked by BT themselves.

I feel better for getting that off my chest. (and I suspect that's what Michael Owen said after removing the offending shirt)