Although they've yet to launch an advertising campaign, the New York Metropolitan Baseball Organization (aka The Mets) is doing a nice job of managing my audience experience.
After hearing that Las Vegas odds makers picked the squad to finish dead last in the National League's Eastern Division, as well as be this season's worst team, Mets ownership didn't overreact.
Instead, embattled team owner Fred Wilpon had specially-made T-shirts distributed to the squad that contained the letter U for ‘underdog’. And the squad's general manager and field manager have gone on record as saying they'd field “a competitive squad” and “may just surprise people.” That’s InsideBaseballSpeak for 'We're guessing we'll lose 100 games.'
All of the above beautifully manages my expectations for the 2012 campaign. The Mets are easily the worst run organization in Major League Baseball and, in just five short seasons, have gone from fielding the best possible team (on paper) to the worst. The reasons for their precipitous decline are many and don't need to be enumerated here.
But, in a blog dedicated to best and worst practices in reputation management, I'd give the Mets executives an A-plus (for now).
Far too many organizations say one thing in their messaging and then deliver a far different audience experience. Typically, that occurs because the folks handling customer service complaints are completely siloed, and have no real interaction with their marketing communications peers who, relying solely on data, create the brand promise and messaging.
We're trying to help Corporate America fix this HUGE legacy issue by partnering with Emily Yellin, a noted author and former New York Times reporter, who literally wrote the book on customer service: “Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us.” We're calling our solution Audience Experience (Download Audience Experience).
I have great expectations for Peppercom’s Audience Experience. Unlike the owners of the 2012 Mets, I won’t be handing out t-shirts with the letter U. Instead, I’m thinking the letter C for champion works better. In fact, I think Audience Experience is so new and so smart that it has the potential to become the Carolina Panthers or Florida Marlins of business: brand new offerings that go all the way to the top in the first season or two.
How about you? What company promises you one thing and then delivers a very different experience? Besides Peppercom, I mean.
