Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
188
 www.ideavirus.com
great brand. We envy the folks who built Coke or Nike or Starbucks or Star Wars. But all
these heroes found their success in a different world—in a factory-based, interruption-
focused marketing environment.
Today, the world is suddenly very different. Almost without exception, every single win on
the consumer side of the Internet has been due to marketing, 
and the most effective part of
that marketing is about the ideavirus
.
Hotmail, Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, GeoCities, Broadcast.com, Google—all of them succeeded
because an ideavirus was unleashed and spread.
So, yes, the underlying tenets behind the ideavirus are obvious indeed. But executing against
them, fighting the status quo, getting it right—that’s not obvious at all.

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Unleashing the Ideavirus
189
 www.ideavirus.com
Your Company’s Worst Enemy
She might just work in your office. She’s certainly underpaid. And not very well respected.
I’m talking about the folks who staff your customer service department. Admit it—you and
most of the folks in your company would be delighted if you never heard from or about
these guys and what they do. Their job is to make angry customers go away… quietly.
In the old days, this was a pretty easy job. After all, very few people went to all the trouble to
find your mailing address, get an envelope, get a stamp and write a letter. And if you sent the
writer a coupon good for a few bucks, well that was the end of the story.
Today, it’s very different. Planetfeedback (find them at www.planetfeedback.com) makes it
easy for angry customers to find you. And they can carbon-copy their congressman or the
FAA or ten friends.
With digitally augmented word of mouth, an angry customer can leave an online record…
one that lasts for centuries! There’s no statute of limitations online.
Take a look at
www.deja.com/products/at_a_glance/glance.xp?PCID=11819&PDID=32765
. As I write
this, more than 90 people have ranked Flashcom, a provider of DSL services. Flashcom is
ranked as one of the worst providers of DSL service in the country. Actual comments: