Our advertising agency will be the first agency in the world with a drive through window.

Our office is in an old Victoria house with a door to the lane way running next to us, so we may also be one of the very few who can actually offer this.

Retrofitting the door will be easy, an order microphone and headsetted cashier might be harder.

Why would we do it? More than thirty per cent of fast food sales go out through the drive through window. We were wondering if we can achieve a 30 percent growth by adding this feature.

Imagine all you clients, “Business building communications ideas direct to you, in the comfort of your own car.” On your way from one meeting to another… stop by for a quick injection of creative input with a side order of media plans.

How can we offer this? Well it seems from many clients’ perspective, advertising agencies these days are only about execution. Back in the days of the Mad Men, agencies were marketing counsellors to client strategy for marketing. No more. The agency is rarely at the grown-up’s table when feeding time rolls around. Strictly kids table. Strictly execution.

Agencies are paid to come up with pretty pictures and nice, catchy lines but less likely business building ideas.

That’s why we have always called our company Advertising and Marketing Counsel. We are literally, not an advertising agency.

While we still want to be thoughtful counsellors for our clients, we recognize that many times there is no lead time and clients just want us to sling some ideas against the wall and see if they stick… or slide down the wall. For those occasions, there is the drive through window.

And our ideas are prepared to your taste, from wacky to insightful to (in our best Spock voice) totally logical. You choose. Add more hot sauce if you like. They are available in traditional formats like print, radio or television as well as digitally. We offer tweets, sweets, stunts and grunts.

We are really good at coming up with ideas quickly and making sure they are relevant and compelling. But we do not offer fries with our work.

We were traveling home from Regina after a weekend trip. While Regina is not exactly a hot tourist destination, we were there for a family visit.

We found the people exceptionally friendly and the town to be nice, as only mid-Canada can be nice.

Then went to the airport to come home. One souvenir gift we were taking back was a small jar of Saskatoonberry Jam. We thought it might be fun thing to bring back and never gave it any thought as contraband.

We were wrong.

On coming upon airport security, we were confronted and told that this particular jar of jam was a security danger. It was more than 100ml.

I had never thought of Saskatchewan as a dangerous place… a stronghold of terrorism, danger and international intrigue.

But I suppose Security officials have been watching the Little Mosque on the Prairie on the national TV network and concluded that Saskatchewan was indeed a hot bed of Muslim fundamentalism.

So a jar of Saskatoonberry jam, in the hands of a terrorist is a potential weapon of mass destruction like those found in Iraq — no wait, they never found any WMDs there – did they?

The same professional paranoid security folks who told us to surrender our freedom based on the now-missing WMDs have a theory that jars of jam can be used in ways assassins never dreamed of. I read a book once that said there were 100 ways to kill using a piece of paper. But no where in the book were Saskatoonberries mentioned… The author knew so little.

Obviously part of the screening process at airports is to prevent problems. We used to regularly get people hijacking planes and trying to get to Cuba. Now we send charters to Cuba on purpose.  Times change.

The authorities concluded from these random incidents of years passed that we were all not to be trusted. They dreamed up every dangerous scenario ever dreamed up by left brained people. Someone even thought – “Better watch out for the Saskatoonberries.”

Imagine someone applying the Saskatoonberry technique to overcome the crew. Spread a little on crackers. Entice the crew out of the cockpit. Sure the crew knows better, but who can resist these lethal berries. We obviously cannot reveal here more of the details of this technique, but it must have been envisaged by those same Security Einsteins. Why else prevent a jar of jam from travelling inside the passenger compartment?

“Well, it is not that Saskatoonberries are inherently dangerous,” said the Security man removing the jar from my possession. “We just can’t take the chance because the regulation says nothing more than 100ml.” Are we all that stupid? Someone dreams up a regulation and in being precise by arbitrarily stating 100ml creates a ridiculous scenario. And we have to stick to the regulation.

One of the screeners was laughing at the confiscation. We all knew it was a charade, yet the security personnel were powerless to accept it as ridiculous. This is a sickness of the post 9/11 society.

The purpose of security no longer seems to be to protect us. They are only reminding us they are there and it is like applying a band-aid to a cancer victim. It shows that the medical attention is there, that someone cares, but it has absolutely no efficacy.

We are constantly reading about skilled security people who waltz through the screening process with the makings for real weapons. These are knowledgeable folks showing the system can be beaten. But these pros obviously never carried Saskatoonberries.

Is there a psychological benefit to the passengers in showing “security” so passengers feel protected?

At a time when the airlines companies are crippled, isn’t it time to make it more convenient for travelers.

Surely no one really expects that some regional flight from Saskatchewan, or Topeka, or Boise will become BIG TROUBLE.

Because even if you used these Saskatoonberries to overcome the crew and take control of the plane — try to find a tall building to fly into in Saskatchewan! Arrrgh.  Tricksy hobbitses.  Foiled again!

Our pseudo security folks should learn when to apply real security and when to let people freely live their lives.  Right now this kind of security is just a negative service for a troubled poor service industry.

Ever wondered about how the business of sports is different for golfers?  Unlike other sports, they are self employed.

I was attending the RBC Canadian Open in the pouring rain.  Quite a few of the professional golfers competing here bolted after the first and second day.  They just left because of the delays and their early poor scores.  Eleven, in fact, left after the first round.

In what other sport will players simply leave in mid game?  But these golfers are compensated based on performance.  If they don’t make the half way cut, they get nothing.

True some get appearance fees and Pro-Am money, but that’s not from the competition.  So eleven guys would rather leave than pay for hotel bills and travel costs.  That’s different.

The PGA Tour is owned by the players.  That means workers control production.  The MLB, NFL, NHL and NBA are owned by owners of teams.  In those sports, players are employees.  They get paid whether they are successful or not on any given week.  Their expenses are paid when they travel, uniforms and equipment also paid for by the teams.

To cover costs, golfers will sell their hats, shirts, bags, clubs and even their balls for money.  That’s right the workers source revenue for the enterprise.

It gives them a steady cash flow as long as they are prominent enough to get some visibility.  They also sell their likenesses and appearances much like other sports figures do, but golfers can actually play their sport with customers – for a fee.  Presidents famously play golf with Tiger Woods, but I would hate to see one play hockey with Sidney Crosby.

So which sports business model works best?  Hard to say if there is any way to compare.  But one thing is absolutely true, there are no feather-bedders in golf.  Every dollar earned is from performance.

In other sports, players can make big bucks riding benches based on previous year’s performances.  There are many stories of inequality in compensation.  Toronto Blue Jays recently released their former closer who lost his zip.  He was making $12,000,000 this year and had 2 saves.  He made the same last year and got 38.  Hard to equate compensation with results.  Baseball, like other sports, allows players to live on their rep.

Doesn’t happen in golf.

So while the golfers may be communists — that is employees owning their source of income — they are also the ultimate capitalists.  Paid for performance.

Revenue sharing has always been a bone of contention in other sports.  Who should get more?  The team owners?  The cities?  The players?  The league?  Certainly not the fans.

The only consistency is that the taxpayers in the host cities bite the biscuit.  The remaining groups squabble over the millions and millions on the table each claiming a “poor and hard done by” status.

Now what about golfers?

They have to pay their own expenses and entry fees.  They pay for membership on their Tours.  On some of the minor league tours those entry fees and membership fees are sometimes what the prize money is created from.  The golfers are independent contractors, affiliated with Tours.

Consider the economics of someone who is not well established on the PGA, European or LPGA Tours.  Just to show up and compete might cost $70 to $80K per year.  If you are not among the gifted, you have to struggle — some driving from tournament to tournament, often sleeping in your car or sharing a room with a buddy, just to get the experience needed.

Today, in the pouring rain, no one is getting paid diddly.

The leaderboard includes some players who are still trying to break even.  Canadian Chris Baryla has made the cut and will get a payday likely better than any other he will have this year.  He is working on the Nationwide Tour where so far he has earned about $60K in five events as he plays himself onto that Tour after losing his card due to lack of performance in the past.

This weekend the winner at the Open takes home $900K US.  In his current spot he would take home $36K+. But today that means no play, no pay.

And getting on the PGA Tour doesn’t result from being  “drafted.”  It means fighting your way through all kinds of Qualifying tournaments, Q-schools as they are called.  Rare is the player who can go directly to a Tour and start playing.  You’ve got to earn your card.

Isn’t that capitalism at its core?

Capitalism gets tainted by unions that demand too much and won’t accept cuts when the going gets tough.

Consider the Toronto Trash Union who are currently on strike.  They get 18 sick days a year and can bank them for use as paid days off, maybe playing golf on the City tab.  They refuse to reduce these from when they were granted them by more charitable City governments in better times.

They are cousins of the non-performing baseball player, assuming entitlement for past year’s adequate performance.  Same is true of the auto workers who seemed more bent on letting their employer go broke than reducing their rates when the company’s performance took them to the brink.  Why are they entitled to any pay security?

Take a lesson from the golfers.  You should earn it every day.  When your company is floundering, it is like being demoted to the Canadian Tour to play for $150,000 in total money instead of the $5 million at the Canadian Open.

Post Script:  Our example, Chris Baryla came raging in with a final round 66 and finished with a share of eighth place to win $123,037 – double his winnings so far this year.  Nice payday.  Better than that he gets an automatic invite into next week’s PGA event, the $5 million Buick Open.

We have worked with scores of retailers and retail chains to create their advertising programs for them. While we are not always right, we are tried and true advertising professionals and have learned a lot about retailers and how they operate.

Here are five big mistakes that retailers make. And they make them time after time. We can see it in lots of retailers who are not our clients.

These are the big five.

1. Running redundant messages to the manufacturer or chain
2. Putting their Ego ahead of business results
3. Buying media by announcements instead of their target audience
4. Ads filled with tons of information but no message
5. Fear of professional help

There may be others, but we will be posting blogs on each of these topics and explaining what these mistakes are, with examples, and showing how retailers can learn to have more effective advertising. After all, advertising is our expertise.

Advertising should be something that drives people to the retailer. It doesn’t get retailers any customer satisfaction. That is the retailer’s job and one retailers are constantly struggling with.

Don’t know why they think they can do advertising, just serving customers is really a big enough job. Here’s a quote we heard from a franchisee of an international food service chain, “These people, they keep coming into my store asking me for this, asking about that. What’s the matter with them? Can’t they see I have a business I am trying to run!”

Advertising’s job is to herd people into the store. That is also challenging. It is surprising to hear all the advice we get from people who don’t know our job and have never even tried to do it. So this is our way of sharing back with some advice for retailers.

Come back over the coming weeks to see what we have to say.

I had to phone to complain about a charge from my telecom solutions provider. I don’t know when they became that instead of a telephone company.

Here is what happened, and why I think that a lot of companies are training their customers to be jerks. The bigger the jerk customers become, the better it is for them.

After getting through the first obvious lie on the inbound call that “Your call is important to us and it may be monitored for training and accuracy purposes,” I sat on hold. And hold. I got to listen to bad music that was designed to calm me down.

I am a customer and I start to think… “if the call was really important, there would be enough operators to handle it quickly.”

The mind wanders to the “monitored for training and accuracy.” I doubt if the recording is to train anyone. It is just so they can protect themselves on my call. They are starting to train me to be suspicious and distrustful. Hey, “paranoia strikes deep.”

When a live person comes on. “Hi, how can I help you?” – or worse – got this one a few times – “How can I exceed your expectations today?” – now there is a genuine, non-scripted response. Who doesn’t use language like that every day?

So off I go explaining what has caused the problem from my point of view.

There is a ready paradigm that in-bound service personnel follow for customer complaints that usually goes something like this:
1. I’m here to help you
2. Do you understand the company policies
3. Let me help you understand the policies
4. It is too bad, but there is nothing I can do to help you because that is company policy
5. Well, if you feel that strongly about it you can speak with my supervisor, let me put you on hold (background music and “your call is important”)
6. Supervisor goes through the same paradigm and then if you are really irate and obnoxious, they relent and allow your complaint, reverse a charge do something to compensate for your problem.

Their paradigm works well for getting rid of frivolous complaints, and I guess there are abundant consumers who do make downright stupid complaints. Since it is such a hassle to get service and go through the telephone waiting they force you into, I only complain when I think I really have a problem. I can’t tell you how many times I have had my call dropped by this particular telecom company while waiting for service.

However, it occurred to me that this paradigm also serves to train customers to be more and more abrasive and aggressive, more and more paranoid, whether their complaint has any merit or not.

Maybe these businesses may feel that they are rebuffing the meaningless complaints so it is worth it. It might even save some money. I guess they calculate how many customers simply wilt under the telephone system and the assurances that they were not the only one being screwed versus the cost of really providing decent service or making good on a bad product.

The problem I see is that this approach to customer service is not just used by the in-bound call centres. Retail responses to complaints operate the same way. Ask for some small special treatment and half the time you get a sneer or a shocked look instead of a “yes, sir.”

Our professional experience is that the special treatment is what cements positive customer relations. No matter how small that treatment is.

Stimulus-Response Theory tells us that when reward is given for a particular action, the subject learns to respond to that action for the reward. If I give you a dollar every time I see you scratch your ear, you will start involuntarily scratching your ear every time you see me. So if you do me a favour once in a while, I will keep coming into your store. Even if the favour is just a smile and some recognition. The lady at our local pho restaurant always knows what I want and is happy to give me my pho without onions. I love it.

So back to my in-bound telephone complaint: that company was really training me to be more and more aggressive in complaining. Why? Because there is a positive reward for very aggressive and persistent complaining. There is no reward for the wimpy complaint.

Companies should realize that every single contact they have with you is a training point. How they deal with us will not only reflect on them, it will be part of our training for future interactions with that company.

In many cases they are training you to be confrontational. Until you get so pissed you change services.

In this tough economic environment, we customers are girded up to hear “NO.” If there is a smiling helpful face or voice to interact with, you are going to feel welcome and pleased to do business with them. Otherwise it is only a matter of time before you walk down the street to another option.

Unpleasant experiences are spoken about much more than positive ones. I can’t tell you how many people I told about my frustrating experience with this telecom and other mind boggling dumb policies I run into. A lot of companies are just training grumpy customers.

They shouldn’t be. In this economy, there are already enough assholes out there.