Uncategorized

Evil eye? Google’s vision for the future.

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Marketing Communications, Social Commentary, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,

pay-per-gaze creepy disturbingTo understand where Google is heading next in the world of advertising, consider this:  The company has just been granted a patent on its “pay-per-gaze” eye-tracking system.

You might wonder what that might be.

Pay-per-gaze is an ad system that utilizes Google Glass for tracking the ads that consumers see online and elsewhere.  The gaze-tracking capability comes from another Google innovation:  a head-mounted tracking device that communicates with a server.

According to the patent documentation, the tracking devices includes eyeglasses with side-arms that engage the ears of the user … a nose bridge that engages the nose of the user … and lenses through which the user views the external scenes wherein the scene images are captured in real-time.

And it need not be limited to tracking online advertising, either; pay-per-gaze functionality could potentially extend to billboards, magazines, newspapers and other printed media, Google notes.

But the idea is even more revolutionary than that:  Not only does it aim to measure how long an individual looks at an ad, but also how “emotionally invested” the consumer is by virtue of measuring pupil dilation.

So the tracking system not only will show how long someone looks at an ad, but also will measure the emotional response.  The patent also covers a provision for “latent pre-searching” which would display search results over a user’s field of vision using Google Glass or another wearable computer.

If all of this seems like “Big Brotherism” at its worst … you may well be correct.  But Google is doing its best to downplay such sinister connotations.  It’s emphasizing that users can opt out of “pay-per-gaze” tracking, and that all data will be anonymized.

But let’s get this straight:  The world’s biggest search engine was just granted a patent for the most “sticky” form of advertising possible – ads that literally flash in front of someone’s eyes.

And when we add in aspects like measuring pupil dilation, it won’t be long before Google will be able to determine how good eats, or good looks, are affecting our emotional response.

One wonders how much farther we can go with measuring advertising engagement and buying intent. 

Then again, we already have an answer, of sorts.  As early as 2000, experiments with electromagnetic brainwaves have shown that people can literally “think” instructions and thereby cause an action.

Imagine combining Google’s pay-per-gaze and pay-per-emotion with electromagnetic brainwave tracking.  Add in a credit card number, and there’s no telling what could happen just with a fleeting thought or two!

If all of this sounds creepy and disturbing … get used to it.  With the likes of Google and the NSA at the helm, “creepy and disturbing” may well become the “new normal” for society.

Consumers Still Finding Weaknesses in Brands’ Web Presence

Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Marketing Communications, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Temkin Group logoThe most recently published Temkin Web Experience Ratings of more than 200 companies across 19 industries reveals continuing widespread disappointment with the quality of the “web experience.”

The Temkin Web Experience Ratings are compiled annually by Temkin Group, a Newton, MA-based customer experience research and consulting firm.  The ratings are based on consumer feedback when asked to rate their satisfaction when interacting with each company’s website.

Temkin ratings are established for companies garnering responses from 100 or more of the ~10,000 randomly selected participants in an online survey conducted by the research firm in January 2013.

Rankings are calculated via a “net satisfaction” score based on a 7-point rating scale from “completely satisfied” to “completely dissatisfied” by taking the percentage of consumers selecting the two highest ratings and subtracting the percentage who selected the bottom three ratings.

Just 6% of the brands earned strong or very strong “net” trust ratings, while ten times as many (~63%) were given weak or very weak scores.

And there’s this, too:  Not much improvement is happening.  More than half of the ~150 companies that were included in both the 2012 and 2013 Temkin evaluations earned lower scores this year than last.

Managing partner Bruce Temkin summarized it succinctly:  “The web is a key channel, but online experiences aren’t very good – and are heading in the wrong direction.”

The latest Temkin ratings give Amazon the top-rank position with a 77% overall rating score.  Other companies ranked near the top include Advantage Rent A Car, U.S. Bank and QVC.

At the other end of the scale, MSN, EarthLink and Cablevision earned the lowest ratings – MSN worst of all.

Indeed, the following industries had composite company ratings that ended up in the “very weak” column:

  • Airlines
  • Health plans
  • Internet service providers
  • TV service providers
  • Wireless carriers

Do any of these industries seem like ones that shouldn’t be on this list?

I didn’t think so, either.

Which ones are the industries that score best in the Temkin analysis?  By order of rank, they are as follows:

  • Banks
  • Investment firms
  • Retailers
  • Credit card issuers
  • Hotel chains

Come to think of it, I haven’t encountered problems online with companies or bands in any of these five industries.

It’s also interesting to consider which companies have improved the most over time.  When comparing year-over-year results for the ~150 companies that were included in both the 2012 and 2013 studies, eight of them showed double-digit improvements in their scores:

  • Blue Shield of California
  • Citibank
  • Humana
  • Old Navy
  • Safeway
  • Toyota
  • TriCare
  • U.S. Bank

On the other hand, a much bigger contingent of 21 companies saw their ratings decline by at least 10 points; the six firms that dropped by 15 points of more were these:

  • Bright House Networks
  • Cablevision
  • MSN
  • ShopRite
  • Southwest Airlines
  • United Airlines

You can view the scores (and trends) for all 200+ companies by clicking here to download the full report.

If you notice any rankings that seem surprising – or that don’t comport with your own online experiences – please share your thoughts and perspectives below.

Patently Obvious: The U.S. Patent System Needs Major Change

Phillip Nones Business, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , ,

Patent lawsuitsAfter reading one too many articles about patent issuance failures on the part of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, I’ve come to the conclusion that the USPTO just isn’t able to keep up with galloping technology.

How else to explain its staff lawyers granting patents for applications they have no business authorizing?

And when that happens, the courts have to step in and fix the problem – as in the recent U.S. Supreme Court case overturning the patents of Myriad Genetics on BRCA1 and BRCA2 human breast cancer genes.

Even worse … through ineptitude, completely obvious ideas get patented, inhibiting innovation and keeping beneficial technology out of the hands of the public – which goes completely counter to the USPTO’s stated aims.

One of the USPTO’s doozies that has made it into the news was issuing a patent for scanning a document and then e-mailing it.

That is correct:  the USPTO viewed this simple function as a “unique” invention worthy of patent protection.

… Never mind the fact that thousands of people had already “invented” this idea before – but never in their right minds would they have thought it was patentable!

So what happened after patent protection was granted in this case?  The patent is now owned by one of those infamous firms that exists only to sue people and extort money from them.  In this case, a company with the deliberately innocuous-sounding and forgettable name of MPHJ.

Today, this firm’s legal counsel is demanding $1,000 in licensing fees from anyone who scans a document and then e-mails it.

At least Hewlett-Packard decided to fight back earlier this year, pointing out that it had been selling printers that could scan and e-mail documents long before the patent in question was ever granted.

But why do we even have to go there?  Is it really appropriate for a patent to be granted to someone who didn’t really invent anything … nor create a new technology … nor develop a unique engineering design or manufacturing process?

Patenting ideas for computer-related functions and programs as falling under the general category of “business methods” – a dreadful practice the USPTO started allowing about 20 years ago – is partially how we got into this mess.

The unfortunate part is this:  There will be major challenges facing anyone who decides to promote patent reform.  Too many “patent trolls” and their partner-in-crime attorneys have a vested interest in a current system which – similar to the cyber-squatting industry – enables them to make a tidy sum for very little effort.

Expect these “upstanding corporate citizens” to obstruct any moves to change the system with the same kind of zeal they employ to go after the citizens and companies who are the hapless targets of their extortion efforts.

In fact, a 2012 study commissioned by the Government Accountability Office found that of ~500 randomly selected patent lawsuits that were filed the previous year, nearly 40% of the cases were brought by “patent monetizers” (trolls).  And that doesn’t even begin to account for the untold numbers of threatened suits that were settled without going to court.

But I’m pleased to see that several states have taken up the gauntlet in the MPHJ saga.  The attorneys general of Nebraska and Vermont have sent letters to the company and its legal counsel, warning them to leave their state residents alone.

Vermont has even passed legislation allowing victims of patent trolls to countersue.  Wouldn’t that be a nice turn of events?

Greed is never pretty – but especially when greed is this transparently obvious.  It would be nice if the USPTO started contributing to the solution by making some much-needed changes of its own.

Craigslist: The $5 billion juggernaut that crippled an industry.

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Marketing Communications, Social Commentary, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,

Craigslist logoIt’s common knowledge that the business model for newspapers started going awry in a major way with the decline in newspaper classified advertising.

Craigslist played a huge role in that development, as the online classifieds site went about methodically entering one urban market after another across the United States.

And now we have quantification of just how impactful Craigslist’s role was.  It comes in the form of a May 2013 study authored by Robert Seamans of New York University’s Stern School of Business and Feng Zhu of the University of Southern California.

Titled Responses to Entry in Multi-Sided Markets:  The Impact of Craigslist on Local Newspapers, the study explored the dynamics at play over the period 2000-2007, focusing on newspapers’ degree of reliance on classifieds at the time of Craigslist’s entry into their markets.

What the researchers found was that those newspapers that relied heavily on classified ads for revenue experienced more than a 20% decline in classified advertising rates following Craigslist’s entry into their markets.

But that isn’t all:  The outmigration of classified advertising to Craigslist was accompanied by other negative trend lines — an increase of subscription prices (up 3%+) and lowering circulation figures (down nearly 5%).

Even newspaper display advertising rates fell by approximately 3%.

Were these developments “cause” or “effect”?  The study’s authors posit that fewer classified ads may have diminished the incentive for people to purchase the newspapers.  Also, display advertising rates tend to track circulation figures, so once the “decline cycle” started, it was bound to continue.

The study concludes that by offering buyers and sellers a free classified ad alternative to paid listings in newspapers, Craigslist saved users approximately $5 billion over the seven-year period.

Those dollars came right out of the hides of the newspapers, of course … and changed the print newspaper industry for good.

But here’s the thing:  The experience of the newspaper industry has relevance beyond just them.  “The boundaries between media industries are blurred and advertisers are able to reach consumers through a variety of platforms such as TV, the Internet and mobile devices,” the authors write.

The unmistakable message to others in the media is this:  It could happen to you, too.

A full summary of the Seamans/Zhu report can be found here.

Expect Stormy Weather for the U.S. Cloud Computing Industry

Phillip Nones Business, Social Commentary, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

NSA SpyingMy brother, Nelson Nones, has lived and worked outside the United States for years.  From his vantage point “outside looking in,” I find that his perspectives on U.S. socio-political developments are often somewhat different from the conventional thinking here at home.

This was clearly evident when the news broke In early June about the National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance of e-mail and other digital content.  Within just a couple days, Nelson had penned a thought piece on the implications of these revelations on the cloud computing industry.

In his view, the NSA revelations are likely to have numerous serious implications.  As he states in his analysis:

“… these threats will be perceived to be so serious that many businesses could decide to abandon the use of cloud computing services going forward — or refuse to consider cloud computing at all — because they bear full responsibility for compliance yet now realize that they have little or no ability to control the attendant non-compliance risks when utilizing major cloud services providers. 

In view of recent revelations, the tantalizing cost savings and efficiencies from cloud computing may be overwhelmed by the financial, business continuity and reputational risks.”

Geoprise Technologies logo
Out front: Geoprise Technologies was among the first to warn about the negative consequences of NSA surveillance programs on the U.S. cloud computing industry.

You can read Nelson’s full article on his company’s website, Geoprise Technologies Corporation.

I wondered how long it would take for these views to gain traction here in the United States.

It didn’t take long at all.  In fact, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank focusing on technology policies, released a report a few days ago in which it projects the U.S. cloud computing industry to forfeit between $22 billion and $35 billion in lost business as a result of the revelations about the NSA’s electronic surveillance programs.

That represents between 10% and 20% of a cloud computing market that is expected to be a $207 billion industry by 2016 – revenues which are likely to be sucked up by European and Asian companies instead.

ITIF logo (Information Technology & Innovation Foundation)The ITIF report warns that the NSA’s surveillance programs “will likely have an immediate and lasting impact on the competitiveness of the U.S. cloud computing industry if foreign customers decide the risks of storing data with a U.S. company outweighs the benefit.”

The implications are huge because up until now, the United States has been the acknowledged leader in cloud computing usage and innovation, even as other countries have tried to play catch-up.

The ITIF report has garnered the attention of the business press — big time.  The Guardian has published a story as has the Financial Times.  The story has leached into general news and opinion sites as well, such as The Daily Kos — and others are sure to follow suit.

All of this is a pretty major deal because the cloud computing industry represents one of the fastest growing sectors of the digital communications market.  Global spending on cloud computing is anticipated to grow by 100% between 2012 and 2016.

That compares to growth of only about 3% for the global IT market as a whole.

And in case people are thinking that the ITIF report might be unduly alarmist … it appears that the giant sucking sound of cloud computing business going elsewhere has already begun to happen.

Some U.S. tech companies are reporting that they’ve already lost customers, as concerns mount over the NSA’s PRISM program that lets the federal government tap into user information and e-mails held by Internet companies.

The Cloud Security Alliance, a coalition of industry practitioners, corporations, associations and other key stakeholders whose mission is to promote the use of best practices in providing security assurance within cloud computing field, conducted a survey in June and July of companies located outside the U.S.  That survey found that ~56% of the responding companies are now less likely to use a U.S.-based cloud computing service, thanks to the NSA’s spying program.

One out of ten respondents reported that they have already canceled contracts with U.S. companies.  And that’s only within the past few weeks.

Meanwhile, non-U.S. players in the cloud computing market must surely be laughing all the way to the bank.  For example, Artmotion, the largest hosting company in Switzerland, reported a ~45% increase in revenue within just the first month after Edward Snowden’s release of details about the PRISM program.

To be sure, Europeans are wasting no time weighing in on the messy situation the American cloud computing industry suddenly faces.  Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Digital Affairs, had this to say:

“If European cloud customers cannot trust the United States government, then maybe they won’t trust U.S. cloud providers either.  If I am right, there are multibillion-euro consequences for American companies.  If I were an American cloud provider, I would be quite frustrated with my government right now.”

Germany’s Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich was even more blunt:

“Whoever fears their communication is being monitored in any way should use services that don’t go through American servers.”

What are the companies that fear their communications are being monitored, as Mr. Friedrich posits?  Pretty much all of the bigger ones, I’d think.

OK, U.S. government and administration officials:  Have fun unscrambling this egg!

Google finds that in hiring practices, what’s old is new again.

Phillip Nones Business, Employment, Human Resources, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Google hiring practices
Google Gone Retro: Its hiring practices look more familiar than different today.

Has Google made an about-face when it comes to the way it hires staff?

Over the years, there have been numerous articles written about Google’s unorthodox and highly selective recruitment and interviewing process. 

The company seemed to take a certain delight in the degree to which it subjected job candidates to mind-bending suitability tests and humiliating proctology-like HR examinations.

So I was a bit surprised to read this June 19, 2013 article in the New York Times, in which staff business reporter Adam Bryant published excerpts from an interview he had with Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google.

A major objective of the interview was to determine to what degree so-called “Big Data” can be used to help find the right candidates fill leadership and managerial positions in companies.

Instead of giving us all sorts of ways in which Big Data is helping to do that, Mr. Bock focused instead on the limitations.  And in the process, he revealed that Google has made attempts to harness more experiential data to come up with more effective hiring practices.  Here’s what he said:

“We’ve done some interesting things to figure out how many job candidates we should be interviewing for each position, who are better interviewers than others, and what kind of attributes tend to predict success at Google.

On the leadership side, we’re looking at what makes people successful leaders and how we can we cultivate that.”

And what about some of the more infamous Google hiring practices, such as looking at college transcripts from a million years ago or asking people to solve impossible “challenge questions” or equations?  Bock revealed these learnings:

“We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time.  How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane?  How many gas stations in Manhattan?  A complete waste of time.  They don’t predict anything.  They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.”

And about GPA stats, Bock revealed that after all of the data crunching, Google’s HR department came to this conclusion:

“GPAs are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless – no correlation at all, except for brand-new college grades where there’s a slight correlation … we found that they don’t predict anything.

After two or three years, your ability to perform at Google is completely unrelated to how you performed when you were in school, because the skills you required in college are very different.  You’re also fundamentally a different person.  You learn and grow.  You think about things differently.”

So now Google has reverted to the tried-and-true formula of structured behavioral interviews, consistently applied across all applicants. 

This includes using standardized behavioral questions to listen to open-ended responses, which then makes it possible to see how candidates actually interacted in real-world situations, as well as what they consider to be “easy” or “difficult” situations in which they found themselves.

Regarding leadership qualifications, according to Bock, Google has found that these are ambiguous or amorphous characteristics:

“For leaders, it’s important that people know you are consistent and fair in how you think about making decisions, and that there’s an element of predictability.  If a leader is consistent, people on their teams experience tremendous freedom because then they know that within certain parameters, they can do whatever they want.”

Where “big data” comes in to play here is in twice-a-year employee surveys that Google conducts on all of its managers, evaluating a variety of factors. 

Those factors are the fundamental ones — things like sharing information, treating all team employees fairly, and providing clear goals and performance standards.

But Bock cautions that leadership success is highly dependent on the context; what works at one company isn’t necessarily right for another firm.  “I don’t think you’ll ever replace human judgment and human inspiration and creativity,” he notes.

I was pleased to read these comments, because I always felt that attempting to develop a radically new paradigm for job hiring, while being an interesting and novel endeavor, was also somewhat presumptuous on the part of Google. 

At the end of the day, human nature is what it is:  fickle, unpredictable, fallible.  No amount of “re-engineering” is going to change that.

400 Blog Posts and Counting …

Phillip Nones Uncategorized

BloggingI started blogging about four years ago.

Four hundred posts later, I can say with certainty that maintaining this weblog has been well worth it.

Not only has keeping a blog given me the opportunity to write about topics I care about, it’s sparked some great give-and take and generated very interesting feedback from readers.

I’ve also forged new business relationships and friendships I would never have made otherwise.

From the outset, the focus of my blog has been on marketing and business primarily.  But I’ve also tried to write about about some of the larger social and cultural topics that “inform” our lives and seep into the world of business.

Some of my blog posts that fall outside the strict realm of business have generated traffic that far outstrips other posts.  (Other business writers like Aaron Goldman of Kenshoo and MediaPost have reported the same thing about their blogs.)

Several people suggested that I commemorate this 400th post milestone by linking to a few of the posts that have proven to be the most popular with readers.

An interesting idea … but it pre-supposes that blog topics written several years ago would continue to have relevance today.  In the fast-moving world of marketing, that just doesn’t happen very often!

But thanks to WordPress’ analytical tools, I’ve looked over the stats and identified those posts that generated the most buzz.

So here they are.  Perhaps several are ones you haven’t read … or maybe you’ll want to revisit one or two of them, just for kicks!

Is Charlie LeDuff’s Book the Final Word on Detroit and its Social Pathologies?  (May 18, 2013)  Detroit:  the urban migraine headache that never goes away …

Persistent Myth:  The Ten Most Persuasive Words in the English Language  (December 9, 2012)   If you add up the words on all the lists, it’s a lot more than ten …

David Goodis, The “Poet of Losers,” Finally Gets His Due  (March 25, 2012)   The noir novelist breaks into the sunlight …

Hedy Lamarr:  A Hollywood Tale where Truth is Stranger than Fiction  (December 4, 2011)   Beauty and brains are the perfect combination …

America’s Symphony Orchestras Taking it on the Chin?  (April 17, 2011)   Agitato, ostinato – and sour notes all over the place …

Celebrity endorsements in advertising:  All that glitters is not gold.  (March 23, 2011)   Or to quote William Shakespeare:  “Much ado about nothing …”

Otto von Habsburg at 97:  A Link to the Past … and the Future  (January 1, 2010)   How much better would the 20th Century have been had it looked more like this man …?

The Berlin Wall Looking Back 20 Years:  What Caused the Fall?  (November 5, 2009)   All hail Austria and Hungary, the bravest little kids on the block …

$100 cost-per-click on Google AdWords?  It’s already here.   (November 1, 2009)    “Mesothelioma” must be another word for “money” …

Hotels vs. TripAdvisor:  A losing battle.  (April 29, 2009)   “Hotel horror-ama” – brought to you by on-the-scene guests in living Technicolor® …

I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane.

And as for the next 400 posts, as long as people keep reading … I’ll keep writing!

Hotels Finally Turn the Corner on Customer Satisfaction

Phillip Nones Branding, Business, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Hotel guest satisfaction surveys
According to J. D. Power, hotel guest satisfaction ratings in North America are up for the first time in years.

One of the industry segments that took the biggest beating in customer satisfaction during the recent recession was the hotel sector.

Annual surveys conducted by J. D. Power charted a continuing decline in satisfaction rates.  In everything from reservations and the check-in process to the cost of stay, hotel customers have been giving “thumbs down” for the past half-decade.

Until now.  

Marketing information services company J. D. Power & Associates, part of McGraw Hill, has just released the results of its latest annual survey, based on responses from more than 68,700 hotel guests in the United States and Canada collected between July 2012 and May 2013. 

J.D. Power has conducted these hotel industry surveys annually for the past 17 years.

According to the 2013 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study, the overall guest satisfaction rating index is 77.7 on a 100-point scale. 

That may seem like a “Gentleman’s C,” but it’s an increase from last year’s 75.7 score. 

More to the point, it’s the first time in quite a few years in which the aggregate rating has gone up.

Where has satisfaction increased?  Pretty much in every category surveyed, with the largest gains coming in the reservations process, check-in/check-out procedures, and hotel costs and fees.

Other categories included in the study were guest room satisfaction, food and beverage service, other hotels services, and hotel faciliites.

The largest area of continuing discontent is in Internet usage.  Customer complaints are all across the board — ranging from spotting connectivity and slow speeds to usage charges.

Other areas where improvements are sought are in HVAC comfort and controlling noise levels.

What about customer reaction to rising hotel rates?  After all, they’ve gone up by about 5% over the past two years. 

But the J. D. Power survey found little concern about rate increases.  Rick Garlick, director of the survey, suggests that pulling out of the economic downturn might explain this lack of concern.  “The economy may be playing a part in price satisfaction because people have a little more to spend,” he noted.

The people who appear to be the least satisfied with their stay experience are the ones who chose to stay at a hotel based on price alone.  It’s like the adage says:  “You get what you pay for.”

On the other hand, the most satisfied guests weren’t necessarily people who stayed at 5-star properties.  Instead, they’re ones who evaluated hotels carefully beforehand using online tools such as third-party hotel reviews and ratings.  The “eyes wide open” strategy, as it were.

Such evaluation tools have made it easier to know what to expect from a hotel stay, contributing to overall satisfaction ratings because there’s less likelihood of a “rude awakening.”

The J. D. Power surveys also ask respondents to rate hotel brands.  I was interested to see which hotels scored highest in the various different categories in this year’s survey:

  • Luxury category:  Ritz-Carlton
  • Upscale:  Hyatt
  • Midscale Full Service:  Holiday Inn
  • Midscale:  Drury
  • Economy/Budget:  Microtel (Wyndham)
  • Extended Stay:  TownePlace Suites

Come to think of it, none of these results is particularly surprising.  In fact, three of the brands (Ritz-Carlton, Holiday Inn and Drury) have been tops in their category for three or more consecutive years of the J. D. Powers studies.

Additional survey findings are available here.

Social Marketers Behaving Badly …

Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Marketing Communications, Social Commentary, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , ,

Social marketers behaving badlyEx-Cong. and New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner hasn’t been the only one misbehaving on social media.

Chipotle Mexican Grill also gets a time-out to sit in the corner for its social media hi-jinks. 

It turns out that a supposed hacking of Chipotle’s Twitter account in mid-July was nothing more than a ploy to grab attention and gain more Twitter followers.

For those who haven’t heard, Chipotle’s Twitter stream appeared to have been hacked as a series of bizarre and nonsensical tweets were posted over the span of several hours – until the company claimed to have solved the problem.

As it turned out … the whole thing was completely manufactured – all of those crazy tweets published by the company itself.

A few days later, a Chipotle spokesperson came clean, admitting that the whole episode was actually a carefully orchestrated effort to gain more Twitter followers, in concert with the company’s 20th anniversary.

Did it work?  Evidently yes … because Chipotle had ~4,000 more Twitter followers at the end of the campaign than it did at the beginning.

But some marketing professionals were critical of the ploy.  Here are a few representative comments:

  • “Chipotle is a brand about honesty and authenticity; faking a hack if off-brand.”  (Rick Liebling, Y&R Creative Culturalist)
  • “Most of these stunts … strike me as being pretty lazy.  It’s like making your CEO do a press conference drunk and then apologizing for it once he sobers up.”  (Ian Schafer, Deep Focus CEO)
  • “Chipotle’s pico de gallo was more ‘weak sauce’ than ‘muy caliente.’”  (Saya Weissman, Digiday Editor)

On second thought, perhaps it’s not such a good idea to “mess with the market” when upside is a few additional social media contacts (that probably won’t stick around), and the downside is brand irritation or even humiliation.

After all, Chipotle’s net gain in Twitter followers represented an uptick of just 1.7%. 

That seems a bit paltry considering the potential blowback and reputation risk.